The Sydney Morning Herald goes full Coral Reef Seer — predicting not just the end of the vast Great Barrier Reef, but the complete loss of the entire world’s coral reefs. That’s a quarter to a half million square kilometers of reef, gone, pfft, destructo, just like that.
The basis for the prophesy is a set of photos taken last week from one point at the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef. Apparently, like tea leaves and chicken entrails, this spot has magical forecasting abilities.
Prophesy by Mike Foley, SMH
The photos that show nothing so far has saved the Great Barrier Reef
Australia’s climate targets must be bolstered to meet the global action needed to prevent the complete loss of the world’s coral reefs, experts warn, after the fifth mass bleaching event off Queensland’s coast since 2016.
So last year for the second year in a row, the Great Barrier Reef was recorded as having more coral cover than has ever been recorded since data started being collected in 1986.
People who actually dive on the reef to research it find it recovers from mass bleaching in as little as 18 months.
After 37 years of non-stop pollution, there are more corals than ever growing on the Great Barrier Reef.
The first coral reefs evolved 485 million years ago when the world was hotter and CO2 levels were ten times higher.
The worlds temperature has been swinging wildly for three million years. Somehow coral reefs survived this just fine but will be wiped out with another half a degree?
h/t David of Cooyal in Oz
Temperatures estimated from a stack of 57 globally distributed benthic δ18O records.
REFERENCE
L. E. Lisiecki and M. E. Raymo (2005) — A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic δ18O records, Paleoceanography 20, 1003