First it was bluefin tuna, then Playboy bunnies, then the world's wheat crop. Now the Great Barrier Reef is going to be gone in 20 years, according to marine scientist Charlie Veron:
Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told The Times: “There is no way out, no loopholes. The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so.”
Once carbon dioxide had hit the levels predicted for between 2030 and 2060, all coral reefs were doomed to extinction, he said. “They would be the world’s first global ecosystem to collapse. I have the backing of every coral reef scientist, every research organisation. I’ve spoken to them all. This is critical. This is reality.”
Frank Pope of The Times Online has the interview: Link
Everything's going extinct like it's going out of style! What's (or who's) next? Miley Cyrus?
From the Neatoshop: Having Great Vocab Didn't Save the Thesaurus From Extinction
Wow, that must take some fancy science to pin the date down so precisely.
Perhaps what is affecting the reefs isn't CO2, but something else?
If the Coral Barrier really is doomed, that's it, nothing to do unfortunately. Trying to scare people into action usually backfires because of the very tone of doom and gloom inevitability so prevalent in certain areas these days.
Finally, two questions:
-carbon cycles: can we even try to control them? Should we blame every single catastrophe on it?
-evolution: to what extent can and should we try to influence it? Should all species, including humans, just grow and grow exponentially?
The thing about evolution is its inherent trait of entropy and Fail. Sometimes the forces of survival screw up and cause the extinction, like the species of bird that was having problems attracting females, so the males evolved to be more colorful, which attracted predators who destroyed the species.
So, humans can try grow and grow, but it'll probably just bite us in the ass. Besides, are we evolving? Really?
Read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and you'll see whay evolution cant be blamed for this. We as humans have stepped past evolution and it is just a matter of time before it bites us.
Also, adaptation can be self-destructive as you mention.
As a layman, I never understood how some biologists argue that human evolution is over. If evolution works, how can it possibly stop? Also, the fact that we are aware of these evolutionary mechanisms and often influence it(saving Pandas from extinction, for instance) adds even more unintended consequences to the whole equation.
It's like when you try to measure a signal on an oscilloscope and instead of the nice sine or square wave you were expecting you get a flat line and you think there must be something wrong - then you you crank the sample rate knob over to the right and try again -lo and behold, your sine wave appears. We are all living in the trough of a sine wave :-)