Three years ago, Australia was supposed to have its “climate change election.” Polls had predicted a win for Labor, which had promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent by 2030, and nearly two-thirds of Australians agreed that the climate crisis was a major problem that required action. Despite this, the conservative Liberal-National coalition […]
There’s hope that an innovative idea may have what it takes to help save the beleaguered Great Barrier Reef. For the first time, Coral IVF babies have themselves reproduced on a previously degraded reef, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation (GBRF) announced Monday. “We couldn’t be more excited to see that these coral babies have grown […]
The news is full of dire warnings about the future and current health of the Great Barrier Reef, but the World Heritage Site is not dead yet. Scientists on Tuesday night recorded videos of corals spawning en masse off the coast of Cairns, Queensland. “Nothing makes people happier than new life, and coral spawning is […]
The Great Barrier Reef is in trouble. It has experienced five mass bleaching events since 1998, three of them in the last five years. Now, new research published in Current Biology Thursday finds that only two percent of the reef escaped some bleaching during that time. “This is one of the most confronting results of […]
Australian scientists are trialing a unique strategy to protect the Great Barrier Reef from the climate crisis: altering clouds to keep it cool during marine heatwaves. The idea behind the ‘Marine Cloud Brightening for the Great Barrier Reef‘ project is to reduce the risk of coral bleaching in the short term while global greenhouse gas […]
By Jake Johnson An intense lobbying campaign by the pro-fossil fuel Australian government succeeded Friday in keeping the Great Barrier Reef off a list of World Heritage Sites considered “in danger,” despite experts’ warnings that the biodiverse ecosystem is increasingly imperiled by the global climate emergency. The 21-nation World Heritage Committee — organized by the […]
The UN World Heritage Committee has proposed to downgrade the Great Barrier Reef‘s World Heritage status due to climate change and the Australian government isn’t happy about it. The World Heritage Committee is a group of 12 nations, chaired by China. If the status of the reef is downgraded, it can affect the tourism revenue […]
By Hannah Thomasy On its own, a single sea cucumber may not be very impressive. But get enough of these floppy, faceless creatures together, and they—or, more specifically, their poop—can physically and biochemically reshape a coral reef habitat. In a recently published study, an Australian research team used drone surveys, satellite imagery, and observations of […]
By Dana M Bergstrom, Euan Ritchie, Lesley Hughes and Michael Depledge In 1992, 1,700 scientists warned that human beings and the natural world were “on a collision course.” Seventeen years later, scientists described planetary boundaries within which humans and other life could have a “safe space to operate.” These are environmental thresholds, such as the […]
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