Prof. Terry Hughes tweeted this photo (below) on 2 May 2016: “In 1998, global warming #bleached and killed this mature thicket of Acropora pulchra. Note the recovery since then.”
And in his 2009 Royal Society presentation, Charlie Veron included a slide (below) which said: “400 (ppm) will be reached by ~2015; will cause major weather events; will cause severe bleaching, mainly during El Nino years”. He was spot on. So the science-aware have known for at least seven years that this moment would arrive.
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Slide from Charlie Veron’s Royal Society presentation in 2009 |
Now we need an urgent conversation about what it would take to “Save the Reef”, given the conditions that now exist.
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