We can add another tale to the growing list of truly alarming environment stories that would have seemed like science fiction twenty years ago, but nowadays often elicit a "ho hum" as our capacity for shock wears down.
World's corals reefs are vanishing, report says
By Matthew Knight
For CNN
LONDON, England (CNN) -- The world has lost almost one-fifth of its coral reefs according a new report released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
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Scientists are warning that reef destruction will have alarming consequences for around 500 million people who rely on coral reefs for their livelihood.
Left unchecked, remaining reefs could be completely wiped out by 2050, the report says.
Professor Olof Linden from the World Maritime University in Sweden said, depressingly, "We must focus on helping corals to adapt to climate change and on diverting people away from destructive practices such as overfishing." So it has gotten to the point where all we can do is help the species of the world adapt to climate change.
At the moment, though, 45% of the world's coral reefs are healthy; the CNN Intl. report takes this to be a glass-half-full kind of thing, calling it an "encouraging sign."
An ICUN press release on the report can be read here. A story at Environmental News Network is even more blunt than the CNN Intl. story above:
Coral Reef Loss Suggests Global Extinction Event
Rapid releases of greenhouse gas emissions are changing habitats at a rate faster than many of the world's species can tolerate.
"Indeed the world is currently facing a sixth wave of extinctions, mainly as a result of human impacts," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme in a statement.
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A study earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science said the current extinction period, known as the Holocene extinction event, may be the greatest event in the Earth's history and the first due to human actions. Recent studies suggest that a quarter of the world's species may go extinct by 2050.
The remark about the "Holocene extinction event" alarmed me enough to click through to the abstract of the linked study at Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. The abstract discusses past extinction events and adds, "By contrast, the current extinction resembles none of the earlier ones and may end up being the greatest of all." You can read more about the Holocene extinction event at the Wikipedia entry here.
(Hat tip to Patriot Daily New Clearinghouse and srkp23)