Corals Won't Survive a Warmer Planet, a New Study Finds (nytimes.com) 44
If global temperatures continue rising, virtually all the corals in the Atlantic Ocean will stop growing and could succumb to erosion by the end of the century, a new study finds. From a report: The analysis of over 400 existing coral reefs across the Atlantic Ocean estimates that more than 70 percent of the region's reefs will begin dying by 2040 even under optimistic climate warming scenarios. And if the planet exceeds 2 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial temperatures by the end of the century, 99 percent of corals in the region would meet this fate. Today, the planet has warmed about 1.3 degrees Celsius over preindustrial temperatures.
The implications are grave. Corals act as the fundamental building blocks of reefs, providing habitat for thousands of species of fish and other marine life. They are also bulwarks that break up waves and help protect shorelines from rising sea levels. A quarter of all ocean life depends on coral reefs and over a billion people worldwide benefit from them, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The implications are grave. Corals act as the fundamental building blocks of reefs, providing habitat for thousands of species of fish and other marine life. They are also bulwarks that break up waves and help protect shorelines from rising sea levels. A quarter of all ocean life depends on coral reefs and over a billion people worldwide benefit from them, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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No, it really isn't. None of your distinctions are meaningful to where they should cause any confusion.
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Yes, it's misleading. I read that title and thought "OMG, corals have existed for 500 million years through average global temperatures as high as 36c (compared to 15c today). How hot is it going to get!?!?!?!?"
But then you read that it's just current reefs, and corals will do what they have always done and move/start new colonies where the temperatures are more to their liking.
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Corals are also not immune to evolution. The heat tolerant mutants will go on just fine.
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That kind of evolution has never happened over decades. Those kinds of changes lead to extinction.
Re: "Virtually" (Score:2)
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Well sure, maybe they'll be okay with heavy human intervention. That doesnt mean they arent in a fucked spot without it.
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"Corals are dying worldwide. Ask the great barrier reef."
I asked the Great Barrier Reef and it said everything was fine, in the King's English no less. More than that, the Great Barrier Reef was annoyed at the assumption that it would know about other reefs worldwide. The Great Barrier Reef told me to tell you to F off.
Migrate north? (Score:1)
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I guess the second-best time to plant them is now?
Living Coral (Score:2)
The fast-growing reefs take around 100K years to reach their current sizes.
That may be but a lot of the coral in a reef is not alive. The important question is how long does it take to establish a number of living coral elsewhere equivalent to the number in current coral reefs? It may be that this also takes far longer than the time we have available but it should be much less than hundreds of thousands of years.
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I don't think that is a relevant question, actually. Just because the entire reef isnt currently 'living' does not mean it isn't habitat for things that are. A layer of coral microbes just establishing themselves on previously glacial plane, probably isn't a sufficiently similar home for a various wildlife the existing reefs support.
None of this is say the situation is a dire as is being suggested but if this analysis is correct, I don't think "transplanting" or replicating a coral reef in a meaningful fa
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"Just because the entire reef isnt currently 'living' does not mean it isn't habitat for things that are."
Dead coral isn't under threat from climate change.
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Dead coral isn't under threat from climate change.
Yes it is - the increasing amount of CO2 concentration in seawater causes it to become more acidic, which dissolves calcium carbonate, the main component of coral, as well as the shells of many crustacean species.
Reefs begin to dissolve when pH gets to 7.8 or lower.
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, ocean pH has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1, and by the end of the century, it is predicted to drop below 7.8, and at that point the rate of reef dissolving will be faster than the rate at which it can b
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They don't need to reach "current sizes".
It's all bullshit anyway. Corals live in a broad range of temps and a great range of depths. Corals will be hurt in some areas yet thrive in others. It's not an excuse to ignore dire climate problems, but bogus coral threats have been claimed for decades now. Coral reefs are enormous and grow down to significant depths. The Florida keys may be in for hard times, but not all reefs will be.
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They don't need to reach "current sizes".
It's all bullshit anyway. Corals live in a broad range of temps and a great range of depths. Corals will be hurt in some areas yet thrive in others. It's not an excuse to ignore dire climate problems, but bogus coral threats have been claimed for decades now. Coral reefs are enormous and grow down to significant depths. The Florida keys may be in for hard times, but not all reefs will be.
Corals have been around for 500,000,000 years. They have had worse than anything we can throw at them. They will be laughing at us when we are long gone. Well maybe not the laughing part, but they will indeed still be here when we are long gone.
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Another factor though is the acidification of the seawater, which is in every location.
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Corals grow slowly. Like very fucking slowly. They aren't going to migrate anywhere in any real meaningful way to outpace how fast we're fucking up their current homes.
Additionally sea temperatures are not localised. There's a reason temperatures inland swing more than at the oceans. The ocean is a huge moderator and its temperature swings cover truly immense areas. Take the great barrier reef for instance. It spans over 1500km north to south and experiences 5degC gradient over its location. On the flip sid
So Long... (Score:5, Funny)
...and thanks for all the fish.
Will Existing Coral Reefs Adapt? (Score:2)
Probably not fast enough.
Eventually, something else may evolve to take the place of living coral reefs on a warmer planet. But there will be currently unpredictable benefits and consequences to what ever that will be. And before that happens it will mostly be consequences for everything dependent on those living reefs.
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Corals are Ancient (Score:2, Informative)
The Earth has frequently been much warmer than it is today and coral reefs grew much faster then.
Perhaps they have a fine point to make but the implications fly in the face of established evidence.
And not shaky evidence - you can go vacation on huge islands made of these old reefs, from when the oceans were higher.
You can go visit Chazy Fossil Reef today and see coral fossils 480 million years old, from when Northern Vermont was a tropical marine environment.
These data aren't disputed in the field.
Re:Corals are Ancient (Score:5, Informative)
Big omission in your thinking. Past high temperatures took thousands of years at a minimum to get that high, meanwhile we're doing the same in decades. Most life cant adapt that quickly and present day reefs cant handle those high temperatures.
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Only a small part of coral systems are sufficiently close to thermal limits to need to "adapt". A rise of a few degrees is enormous, but not lethal for corals that live in cooler waters. Some conspicuous examples may not survive, but that doesn't define a threat to the world.
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A rise of a few degrees is enormous, but not lethal for corals that live in cooler waters.
The gradient of temperatures in the oceans is very shallow compared to on land. Those few degrees are hugely significant. Even across the great barrier reef which experiences vast differences in health there's only a couple of degrees difference in water temperature (compared to >10degrees difference in the coastal towns on land).
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Exactly. We're heating the oceans rapidly, as well as changing their chemical composition. We're making it more acidic and adding toxins. We're doing it on a timeline that is much faster than evolution operates at.
Since coral is a fundamental part of ocean life, the consequences can be a lot worse than just the coral dying out. It could devastate most ocean life. Some life on land relies on ocean life, so the impacts would be planet wide. A comparable situation that is easier for us land dwellers to underst
Re:Corals are Ancient (Score:5, Informative)
You can go visit Chazy Fossil Reef today and see coral fossils 480 million years old, from when Northern Vermont was a tropical marine environment.
Not exactly. You can see fossils of organisms that are called "corals", but they are not related to the organisms we call coral today.
Rugose and tabulate corals became extinct in the Permian–Triassic extinction event 250 million years ago, and a different form of reef-building organism arose ten of millions of years later.
Rate of Warming Matters (Score:2)
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Coral doesn't migrate, it spawns. Spawning covers significant distances of the currents enable it.
And while the time period of the current threat is short in geological time, it is irrelevant compared to annual variations in temperature corals are already adapted to.
It is amazing just how wrong the thinking is on this subject, the corals under threat are the corals that live at the boundary of livability. Relatively little coral is in this range. Coral reefs extend down to significant depths, and a singl
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Those corals are all dead. These corals have evolved to live in the current environment -much like humans (we were not alive then either).
The EARTH has been both colder than the present environment. The EARTH will be fine -life on Earth... not so much.
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What if, and hear me out on this, the fossilized reefs aren't the same species as today's corals. Having gone extinct, and evolved again...
Convergent evolution: the same type of organism evolving multiple times...
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Agree, coral dying off is scary and makes big headlines, but coral will establish itself via polyps in cooler, or otherwise more appropriate waters, new species will form. Every 2 years or so there's a big media scare about the coral reefs bleaching but that's not actually a die-off, they run in low power mode until conditions change, then recolor
We already know this. (Score:1)
Why are we wasting time, money and research into something we know already?
Once again time wasted , money spent and no action taken.
Once again , there is no reason to refute the fact that we are on course for extinction
with only a 5% chance of changing trajectory.
Once the bottom of the food chain goes its gone forever.
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"Why are we wasting time, money and research into something we know already?
Once again time wasted , money spent and no action taken."
"We" aren't, it's just a troll. Scientists study things all the time, environmentalists troll on the health of coral reefs all the time. Besides, what could be done for corals?
Jaques Cousteau used to dynamite coral reefs to make it more convenient for his boat. The world's most famous environmentalists did not give a shit, rules for thee.
As long as the fundamental principle
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Yes but... (Score:2)
Who cares? Apple might finally release a touchscreen MacBook Pro!
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So the coral reefs, which formed during theCambrian Period, and also vertebrates, which was about 540 million years ago, when the average temperature was about 10c hotter than it is now, and when CO2 was over 1500% higher than its is now, are at risk of things getting a bit warmer?
Just a reminder, those "corals" you reference which formed during the Cambrian Period are all extinct. No survivors, no descendants. They all died, 100%, in the end-Permian extinction. After a while-- tens of millions of years-- new species rose up to occupy the same ecological niches, and we also call those corals, but they are unrelated, and in fact even use a different mineral for reef forming.
Bluntly (Score:2)
Every time a line ends with "new study finds" the argument is clickbait at best and bullshit at most.
That's a statistically proven fact.
How then? (Score:2)
If corals are going to go totally extinct in the next century or two due to a degree or three (c) of warming, how is it that they as a species have lasted HUNDREDS of millions of years, most of which were several degrees warmer than today?
And don't talk about "speed of change" - corals have likewise survived (and frankly thrived) major extinction events for the last half-BILLION years that were EXTREMELY, traumatically short & intense, such as Chixiclub (66mya) which warmed the earth by +5C for more tha
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I know the global climate change strawman is pretty much everywhere. I've been fighting you morons on this for 30 years since IPCC 2. That's back when they left their sources online - eg tree ring data - so I could gophur it, throw the raw data into excel and see there was NO SUCH TREND as discussed.
"Climate is changing" well yes it's always changed
"but now it's warming" yes we're coming out of an interglacial, duh?
"no, HUMANS are causing this" they really aren't; the climb of temperature is basically ide