Great Barrier Reef Has Ten Years to Live

According to the University of Queensland’s Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, mankind has only ten years to curb the release of CO2 gasses into the atmosphere. If we fail to do this, we will forever lose Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

This flies in the face of reserch that came out a few years back, which suggested that the reef could cope with the increasingly warm ocean temperatures by swapping out the algae. But, as it turns out, only about 1/4th of Earth’s coral species can actually do that, while the remainder of the algae will simply migrate their way to colder waters.

So, what does Hoegh-Guldberg have to say about this?

“Individual coral larvae can travel great distances, but the entire reef system can’t. The uncomfortable conclusion is that we might lose the reef.

Well… damn. For the record, the Great Barrier Reef stretches some 1,600 miles and covers 133,000+ square miles of ocean. As ocean temperatures continue to rise, the reef is undergoing what is called a “bleaching,” which is the result of ding bacteria within the coral.

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One comment

  1. Well, you can kiss goodbye to that reef cause mankind aint giving shit about CO2 emissions which we scientists have been trying to encourage going green so far.

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