The world has now lost fully one-fifth of its coral reefs to due warming seas, according to a global survey released on Wednesday. The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Report also warned that much of the rest could be destroyed within 40 years if warming continues unchecked. As global warming raises the temperature of sea water, it makes the water more acidic, adversely affecting reef-building coral that rely on calcification to build their shells.
From MSNBC:
“The report details the strong scientific consensus that climate change must be limited to the absolute minimum. If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinctions,” network coordinator Clive Wilkinson said in a statement.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature, which maintains a list of threatened species worldwide, cited warming as the latest and most serious threat to coral, already damaged by destructive fishing methods, nonnative species and pollution like raw sewage.
“If nothing changes, we are looking at a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide in less than 50 years,” Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of the IUCN Global Marine Program, warned in a statement. “As this carbon is absorbed, the oceans will become more acidic, which is seriously damaging a wide range of marine life from corals to plankton communities and from lobsters to seagrasses.”
“The world has lost about 19 percent of its coral reefs during the last 20 years,” added the IUCN’s director general, Julia Marton-Lefevre. “If current trends in carbon dioxide emission continue, many of the remaining reefs will be lost in the next 20 to 40 years,” she told reporters in Poznan.
We’re losing one of the world’s most beautiful treasures at a really frightening pace. We have got to get this under control as soon as possible. With news like this, aren’t you thankful that the United States is about to have a president who doesn’t just believe that global warming is real, but wants to take action immediately?
Link [MSNBC]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
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