'Unprecedented' Bleaching Damages Two-Thirds Of Australia's Great Barrier Reef (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Unprecedented coral bleaching in consecutive years has damaged two-thirds of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, aerial surveys have shown. The bleaching — or loss of algae — affects a 1,500km (900 miles) area of the reef, according to scientists. The latest damage is concentrated in the middle section, whereas last year's bleaching hit mainly the north. Experts fear the proximity of the two events will give damaged coral little chance to recover.
It's not so much the cute fishes that the problem here, it's the underlying mechanism of ocean acidification:
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/16/world/ocean-oxygen-nature/index.html
aka, the Permian Triassic exctinction, the "great dying", where lots of stuff in the sea died, and algae and fungi bloomed, poisoning the atmosphere killing 90% of all spiecies and snowballing the CO2 level to 2000ppi and 8 degree celsius increase.
http://www.newsweek.com/carbon-emissions-could-spark-mass-extinction-321061
It's whether the Trump's and Pajits of this world do enough damage to take pass that runaway point.