Great Barrier Reef Has Died Five Times In Last 30,000 Years, Study Says (newsweek.com)

schwit1 quotes a report from Newsweek: You may well have heard that Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef is dying as warmer and more acidic waters bleach the system's vibrant coral reefs. In fact, a heat wave killed nearly a third of the system's corals in 2016. Now, scientists writing in the journal Nature Geoscience have discovered the reef has bounced back from near-extinction five times in the last 30,000 years. The current stresses, however, are probably far more intense than those felt in the past.

Low sea levels 30,000 and 22,000 years ago killed coral by air exposure. The remaining reef shifted seaward and eventually bounced back. Rising sea levels -- like those we see today -- killed off the coral twice between 13,000 and 17,000 years ago. This time, coral inched close to land to survive. The reef system, the scientists think, migrated up to 60 inches a year in the face of a changing environment. The last of the five great die-offs occurred about 10,000 years ago, and was likely caused by a huge influx of sediment, a reduction in water quality and a general sea level rise. The reef system may be due for another die-off sometime in the next few thousand years "if it follows its past geological pattern," study author Jody Webster told AFP. "But whether human-induced climate change will hasten that death remains to be seen."

Comments

Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA

[Required Snark]

Let's apply that argument to your body. Just consider it as a thought experiment, not a threat IRL.

If I were to lop off a limb, you would not bleed to death right away. The blood vessels automatically contract to keep you alive. But that only helps you with short term survival. You still might not make it.

If I chop off all your limbs at once, even if the blood stops flowing out where your arms and legs used to be, your chance of survival go way down, obviously. There are military personal who have lost multiple limbs and lived.

If your limbs are off and I keep hacking so you keep bleeding, you become dead meat.

Apply the analogy to the Great Barrier Reef. Loosing a limb is like rising/falling sea levels. Loosing all limbs is like ocean acidification. Changing sea levels plus acidification plus rising water temperature plus plastic ocean waste plus ... is like hacking up your body without stopping. And it's not just the Great Barrier Reef, it's all the oceans, the Amazon Basin, the atmosphere, basically the entire planetary ecosystem.

Do you get the picture? If this doesn't convince you them perhaps you could volunteer and we could do the experiment. Or course you would have to buy a coffin and a burial plot first...