This was published 8 years ago
All at sea with Rupert: Murdoch on the marine environmental crisis
By Andrew Darby
It's sometimes hard to know how serious @RupertMurdoch is being on Twitter.
But when the influential 84-year-old media tycoon devotes his tweets to the oceans, now and in the future, it's at least time to pay attention.
A healthy reef at Heron Island (left), and a degraded reef off Townsville (right) after Crown of Thorns attack and bleaching.Credit: Ove Hoegh-Guldberg
Murdoch is reported in the Australian Financial Review to be holidaying in the Whitsunday Islands on the Great Barrier Reef, a ground zero of marine environmental troubles.
He tweeted clear recognition that the oceans were being damaged by pollution from toxic wastes, plus the scourge of over-fishing. Then he proclaimed these to be more of a problem than carbon emissions.
He went on to assure his 593,000 followers that he wanted coastlines protected for all people.
Murdoch, who receives torrents of negative replies to his tweets, may occasionally taunt his followers over climate.
It's hard to imagine that a man with the mental capacity to build a globe-spanning corporate empire would really think this thought bubble stood up to scrutiny:
But his dismissal of carbon emissions, and resulting climate change, as less serious than other marine environmental issues flies in the face of evidence now, and scientific consensus on the future.
The oceanic uptake of carbon dioxide has already brought acidification of the ocean, there are more extreme weather events, and an increase in sea levels, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The IPCC predicts sea level rise later this century that will cover, or destroy, many of the beaches and river estuaries that Murdoch wants protected for people.
As Murdoch was tweeting, a scientific conference in Prague heard Canadian Professor Peter Sale say: "I find it very unlikely that coral reefs as I knew them in the mid-1960s will still be found anywhere on this planet by mid-century.
"Instead, we will have algal-dominated, rubble-strewn, slowly eroding limestone benches.
"Even if (the COP21 Climate Change Conference in) Paris is wildly successful, and a treaty is struck, ocean warming and ocean acidification are going to continue beyond the end of this century," Sale said.
Among the Twitterati, the last word on this Murdoch musing belonged to the News Corp watchdog, @TheMurdochTimes.
It claimed history on its side: