Reducing pollution and curbing overfishing won't prevent the severe bleaching that is killing coral at catastrophic rates, according to a study of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. In the end, researchers say, the only way to save the world's coral from heat-induced bleaching is with a war on global warming.I was in the Bahamas last year and a lot of those islands looked like old coral reefs - when the ocean was 150' deeper.
Across the world, scores of brilliantly colored coral reefs once teeming with life have in recent years become desolate, white graveyards. Their deaths due to coral bleaching have grown more frequent as ocean temperatures rise, mainly due to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
So remind me again - what caused the global warming 56 and 58 million years ago?
Preserving coral reefs is crucial, given we depend on them for everything from food to medical research to protection from damaging coastal storms. Scientists and policymakers have thus been scrambling to find ways to prevent bleaching. Last year, for example, Hawaiian officials proposed several measures they hoped would fight bleaching on the state's reefs, such as limiting fishing, establishing new marine protected areas and controlling polluted runoff from land. Shirley, there must be other tax-funded ways to control nature?
Ultimately, the study concluded, saving reefs from the ravages of bleaching requires urgent action to reduce global warming.