A great journalistic triumph on the ABC this morning was the report on the all female hatching of green sea turtles at the northern end of the Barrier Reef. The study was funded by US weather agency NOAA , the Australian Government and WWF (the World Wildlife Fund), a notorious pusher for climate change propaganda. The research was carried out by scientists (I would use that word cautiously) from James Cook University, another institution devoted to the climate religion.

Anyway, using DNA samples from turtles in the wild they were able to trace where they hatched from and deduced that all turtles from the northern end of the reef born last year were female. We know that the warmer the environment the more likely the hatchlings are to be female.

The journalist asked a very wise question, “How much have temperatures here increased?”

There was a pause while the scientist was obviously thinking “Crap! We haven’t thought this through.” Eventually she said “We know that the average global temperatures have increased by 0.8 degrees since the 1880’s and we need to do more to fight climate change.”

We don’t know how the temperatures have changed at the place where the turtles are hatching, but they are obviously under threat because temperatures in other paces have increased a little since the Little Ice Age.

Being the modern journalist at the ABC, there was no pressing of the point.

Also I was intrigued by other questions that were not asked like:

• How are the turtles at the other breeding sites doing? Are they producing males who then mix in with the wider population?
• What role does habitat destruction play in the health or otherwise of the turtle population?
• Since they were only measuring older turtles and working backwards, is it possible that there were in fact many males produced but something other than slightly higher temperatures was killing them?
• Is it possible that the last two years of warmer than average temperatures were caused by something other than “climate change”?
• If we stopped all CO2 production tomorrow would the turtles notice the supposed change in temperature?
• How did the sea turtles survive the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods, not to mention other geological periods when temperatures were much higher?

Here is the problem for environmentalists. If you think that climate change explains everything that is bad in nature, then if there are other causes for bad outcomes focusing on “fixing” the climate will kill the very things you are trying to save.

What a pity we can’t get proper journalists and scientists to ask the necessary questions.