Scientists call for urgent 'global cooling' to save coral reefs

University of Queensland: Australian marine scientists have issued an urgent call for massive and rapid worldwide cuts in carbon emissions, deep enough to prevent atmospheric CO2 levels rising to 450 parts per million (ppm). In the lead up to United Nations Copenhagen Climate Change Conference Professors Charlie Veron (former Chief Scientist, Australian Institute of Marine Science) and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Queensland, have urged the world's leaders to adopt a maximum global emission target of 325 parts per million (ppm).

This will be essential, they say, to save coral reefs worldwide from a catastrophic decline which threatens the livelihoods of an estimated 500 million people globally. This is substantially lower than today's atmospheric levels of 387 ppm, and far below the 450ppm limit envisaged by most governments attending Copenhagen as necessary to restrain global warming to a 2 degree rise, on average.

“This may take a long time. However, climate change is an intergenerational issue which will require intergenerational thinking,” Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.

“If CO2 levels are allowed to continue to approach 450 ppm (due by 2030–2040 at the current rates at which emissions are climbing), reefs will be in rapid and terminal decline world-wide from mass coral bleaching, ocean acidification, and other environmental impacts associated with climate change,” Professor Charlie Veron, Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, Dr Janice Lough of COECRS and the Australian Institute of Marine Science and colleagues warn in a new scientific paper published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. “Damage to shallow reef communities will become extensive with consequent reduction of biodiversity followed by extinctions,” they said...

Illustration of coral from the Vienna Dioscurides, from: Pedanius Dioscorides – Der Wiener Dioskurides, Codex medicus Graecus 1 der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek Graz (in Austria): Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt 1998 fol. 391 verso (Band 2), Kommentar S. 52. ISBN 3-201-01725-6