“There’s trouble brewing in those waters, oceans of trouble,” is the less than cheerful remark from CBC’s Quirks and Quarks‘ host Bob McDonald for the first program of the new season (it’s 35th). His first guest is a journalist, Alanna Mitchell, who has a book out on the grave danger for the ocean and, she says, the grave danger therefore facing life on the planet. He has two sets of guests in this long show, most of them scientists, all (apparently – I hadn’t time to listen to it all this morning) concerned that the public and most national leaders have no idea how fouled up the ocean is – warming, getting more acid, overfished, pocked by dead zones, polluted, full of debris….  The Tracker is unable to quite believe one suggestion here from Mitchell – that dead zones are palpably viscous. Relatively immiscible, maybe. But viscous? Really?

If you’re headed out for a long walk or drive, this appears to be a good mp3 to pipe through your ears. Unless you want to get there whistling a happy tune.

Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.