Since 2016, Half of All Coral In the Great Barrier Reef Has Died (theatlantic.com)

A new paper, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, reports that the Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half of its corals since 2016. The authors inspected every one of its reefs, surveying them on an almost species-by-species basis, and found the damage to be widespread across the entire ecosystem. "Two of its most recognizable creatures -- the amber-colored staghorn corals, and the flat, fanlike tabular corals -- suffered the worst casualties," reports The Atlantic. From the report: "On average, across the Great Barrier Reef, one in three corals died in nine months," said Terry Hughes, an author of the paper and the director of the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, the Australian government's federal research program devoted to corals. "You could say [the ecosystem] has collapsed. You could say it has degraded. I wouldn't say that's wrong," Hughes said. "A more neutral way of putting it is that it has transformed into a completely new system that looks differently, and behaves differently, and functions differently, than how it was three years ago."

In the summer months of 2017, warm waters again struck the reef and triggered another bleaching event. This time, the heat hit the reef's middle third. Hughes and his team have not published a peer-reviewed paper on that event, but he shared early survey results with me. Combined, he said, the back-to-back bleaching events killed one in every two corals in the Great Barrier Reef. It is a fact almost beyond comprehension: In the summer of 2015, more than 2 billion corals lived in the Great Barrier Reef. Half of them are now dead. What caused the devastation? Hughes was clear: human-caused global warming. The accumulation of heat-trapping pollution in the atmosphere has raised the world's average temperature, making the oceans hotter and less hospitable to fragile tropical corals.

Comments

Human Caused Global Warming?

[BoRegardless]

Given the "ups and downs" of long term cyclical temperature shifts over the last 10-15,000 years, how can that conclusion be justified?

After all, during the last ice age there was no "Great Barrier Reef" as the sea-level was some 50 meters lower than now.

I hate mixing seeing political agendas thrown in with science.

Re:Human Caused Global Warming?

[sg_oneill]

Given the "ups and downs" of long term cyclical temperature shifts over the last 10-15,000 years, how can that conclusion be justified?

Because we have an accurate picture of a very long picture of climate variation, and what is happening clearly is not global warming.

Remember, its the "climate change isnt man made" people that have the burden of proof here, because thats a huge claim. For this to be true, a mechanism must exist that stops Carbon Dioxide absorbtion spectra from working. This would represent a massive shift in physics, chemistry, astronomy. earth sciences and undo over 200 years of fundamental physics. Oh and you'd also have to come up with a reason why physics only looks like it works. Since scientists first warned about the greenhouse effect in the late 1800s after the discovery of CO2 absorbsion lines in the spectra, multiple fields of science have built their discoveries on that very science in almost all fields. So theres the thing. Whats the mechanism thats stopping all that CO2 from behaving according to conventional physics. The basic laws of thermodynamics says that energy has to go SOMEWHERE, be it thermal (warming), kinetic (storms, cyclones etc) or in the oceas. It goes SOMEWHERE. So whats your counter theory? Why are two centuries of scientists wrong?

PS: Theres probably a Nobel prize in this.

After all, during the last ice age there was no "Great Barrier Reef" as the sea-level was some 50 meters lower than now.

Irrelevant

I hate mixing seeing political agendas thrown in with science.

Change begins at home my friend. And it starts with laying off the conspiracyt theorist and watts-up type quack-science sites

Re:Human Caused Global Warming?

[nonBORG]

The ice age. Mammoths eating grass died and were frozen still with green grass in the stomach. From green field to frozen wasteland before they had time to finish digesting. Now is the credibility regained for the parent?

Okay! Let's stand around wringing hands!

[Chas]

Okay.

CAN anything REALISTICALLY be done in a time-frame that would help save ANY of the remainder?

Because if something CAN, all the whingeing and bitching is wasting time.

It's not a rate, it's an event. Right there in TFS

[raymorris]

> That's assuming that it's an exponential and not either a power function or just an extremely fast, but semi-random, rate of decay.

It's not an exponential rate, a power rate, or a fast rate. It's not any kind of rate. It's an event that happened in 2017. A current came through. It happens.

The summary included a nod to that truth while the headline "since 2016" tried to puff it up as a global warming thing.

Re:Okay! Let's stand around wringing hands!

[PopeRatzo]

CAN anything REALISTICALLY be done in a time-frame that would help save ANY of the remainder?

Yes. First, we stop digging.

Because if something CAN, all the whingeing and bitching is wasting time.

The problem is that the leaders of the worst offending countries don't really give a fuck or are actively trying to make things worse. A surprising number of world leaders seem to be self-absorbed nihilists.