Although researchers believe climate change, fishing and pollution are to blame, the lack of baseline data prior to the 1970s has made it hard to determine the precise reasons for these coral die offs. ASU researcher Katie Cramer wanted to document when corals first began dying to better understand the root causes of coral loss. Now, in a new paper in Science Advances, Cramer has combined fossil data, historical records, and underwater survey data to reconstruct the abundance of staghorn and elkhorn corals over the past 125,000 years. She finds that these corals first began declining in the 1950s and 1960s, earlier than previously thought. This timing is decades before climate change impacts, indicating that local human impacts like fishing and land-clearing set the stage for the widespread coral declines that are now accelerating in response to warming oceans.In other words, the simple facts agree with what we USED TO KNOW. Simple facts aren't enough now.
"Recent studies are showing that reefs are better able to cope with climate change impacts when they are not also stressed from overfishing and land-based runoff. So let's get a handle on these tractable problems now to give reefs a better chance of weathering the current climate crisis," said Cramer.The cause is overfishing AND CLIMATE CHANGE, even though the observed facts say nothing at all about climate change.
Labels: Carbon Cult
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