This represents a significant sea change.
"But it's a very significant sea change in the thinking of the union.
One of the most significant sea voyages in history began 180 years ago under something of a cloud.
What's more, the great linguistic flourishing exemplified by Shakespeare and his contemporaries coincided with Britain's arrival as a significant sea power.
"If you talk to glaciologists privately they will tell you they are very concerned we are locking in much more significant sea level rises than the ice sheet models are telling us.
It is clear that the 1C temperature rise over pre-industrial levels that we have seen so far has triggered a whole range of effects including melting of mountain glaciers, significant sea-level rise, devastating droughts, and flooding.
Despite a small but significant sea level rise of 20cm last century, Ford found that the last half of the century saw a general (although not uniform) trend of accretion across 100 Pacific atolls.
"I think really at our core we are a very progressive, very tolerant, very open-minded community," said Mr. O'Rourke, 39. "So I am hesitant to say there is some significant sea change taking place here".
His comments represent a significant sea-change in the Vatican's approach to the ongoing child abuse scandals that have thrust the Roman Catholic Church into one of its worst crises in living memory.
Last week, the World Bank issued a report suggesting that a temperature rise of 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, which scientific forecasts say is possible, could cause widespread crop failures, malnutrition and significant sea-level rise.
The precise consequences of the increase of man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are hard to determine, but scientists are predicting significant sea level rise; more extreme weather events like storms, tornadoes and blizzards; and, of course, much more heat.
