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A lethal disease known as stony coral tissue loss is devastating coral colonies across Florida’s coast and much of the northern Caribbean. Likely caused by bacteria or a virus, the disease spreads through water currents and on the bottoms of shipping vessels, reports Douglas Main for National Geographic. It can infect and kill at least 22 coral species, including slow-growing and reef-building corals — which build up massive layers of calcium carbonate and help form fully functioning reef ecosystems. 

“Colonies that took hundreds of years to grow can be wiped out in a matter of weeks,” marine ecologist Craig Dahlgren told National Geographic. 

The stony coral tissue loss disease outbreak could put even more pressure on Caribbean corals, which are already severly threatene...

Scientists and leading climate experts have voiced concerns about the outcomes of the COP26 climate conference, in Glasgow. Those who spoke to the BBC praised the conference for getting countries to agree to meet again next year to pledge deeper emissions cuts. And they welcomed agreements on forests, innovation and especially methane – from fossil fuel extraction and livestock. 

But the scientists fear politicians won’t deliver. And they say the hope of holding temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is far too unambitious anyway.

The experts say that with a temperature rise so far of just 1.1C, the world is already in a state of dangerous heating, with record temperatures, wildfires, floods and droughts.

Prof Sir David King, former UK chief scientist,told me: “...

Coral reefs have been called the “canary in the coalmine” for the devastating impacts of climate change. While these colorful underwater ecosystems cover less than 0.2% of the sea floor, they are critically important: 25% of all marine life depend on them at some point in their life cycle, and nearly 1 billion people rely on them for everything — from food security to tourism and livelihoods, and to protection from storms. 

But they’re dying fast. Coral reefs face the greatest extinction risk of any ecosystem on earth. More than half of them have been lost over the past 50 years. Even if leaders succeed in hitting the 1.5 degree Celsius climate targets, the world is projected to still lose up to 90% of its coral reefs, posing a major disruption of coastal communities.

The world is warming because of emissions from fossil fuels used by humans, like coal, oil and gas. Extreme weather events linked to climate change – including heatwaves, floods and forest fires – are intensifying. The past decade was the warmest on record and governments agree urgent collective action is needed. For COP26, 200 countries have been asked for their plans to cut emissions by 2030. 

Under the Paris Agreement of 2015, they were asked to make changes to keep global warming “well below” 2C – and to try to aim for 1.5C – in order to prevent a climate catastrophe.

The goal is to keep cutting emissions until reaching net zero in 2050.

What’s been agreed so far at COP26?

A draft COP26 text has now been released, which it’s hoped will form the basis of an agreement...

Just 2% of the Great Barrier Reef remains untouched by bleaching since 1998 and 80% of individual reefs have bleached severely once, twice or three times since 2016, our new study revealed on November 4. We measured the impacts of five marine heatwaves on the Great Barrier Reef over the past three decades: in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017 and 2020. We found these bouts of extreme temperatures have transformed it into a checkerboard of bleached reefs with very different recent histories.

Whether we still have a functioning Great Barrier Reef in the decades to come depends on how much higher we allow global temperatures to rise. The bleaching events we have already seen in recent years are a result of the world warming by 1.2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times.

World leaders meetin...

The 1980s were a time of global consciousness and a willingness of individuals to take responsibility for others. It was a time of global events to raise awareness and funds for people in need.  It started with Live Aid and continued with Sport Aid, Hands Across America, Canada’s Northern Lights and The First Earth Run. It was an incredible time when people removed responsibility from policymakers and took action themselves – individually and collectively. 

The movement started with music – Live Aid, Tears Are Not Enough, We Are the World, Do They Know It’s Christmas?

But I believed people could do more than listen to music and make donations – they could actively engage in the cause.

‘I Ran the World’ is my story about that time – how the world demanded change and delivered ...

World leaders are heading to Glasgow tonight, ahead of their meetings tomorrow for COP26.

Their goal is to keep global warming limited to 1.5C, or at worst 2C, by 2100 but we are currently on track for 2.7C – which the UN says will result in “climate catastrophe”. But already, the climate summit is at serious risk of failure because countries are still not promising enough to restrict global temperature rises to below 1.5C.

In a blunt admission after two days of preliminary talks at the G20 meeting of world leaders, the UK prime minister conceded little progress had been made – and the conference is not on track to achieve a deal that keeps the goal alive. He puts the chances of success as “six out of 10”. But then, can World leaders at #COP26 only promise so much?

I passio...

Feathery orange moss, bouquets of tightly bound lime green and mustard yellow buds, gently swaying blood red branches, and huge pebbles adding a shock of blue and purple – to the uninitiated, this dazzling display might resemble an underwater garden, albeit an improbably colourful one.

And in a way it is. Except when you get up close, really close, and you see the thousands of tiny creatures, often no bigger than half an inch wide, packed tightly together in colonies to create this ethereal Red Sea landscape. We are of course talking about coral polyps, the soft-bodied organisms that together can form reefs the size of islands.

They only cover a tiny area of the earth – less than one per cent – but they are the vital building blocks of a healthy marine ecosystem...

The planet, you’ve likely heard, isn’t doing so well. The latest report from the United Nations’ chief climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, shows global temperatures are very likely to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels in the next few decades. Human-generated greenhouse gas emissions are unequivocally the cause. 

Increasing temperatures, scientists have shown, will see more extreme weather events occurring more often — more hurricanes, more flooding, more fire, more drought — and result in a host of knock-on effects that threaten ecosystems, livelihoods and life as we know it. 

Unless nations take drastic action to wean themselves off fossil fuels in the coming decade.

That’s why November’s UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, is being ...

The world lost about 14 percent of its coral reefs in the decade after 2009, mainly because of climate change, according to a sweeping international report on the state of the world’s corals. The report, issued late Monday, underscores the catastrophic consequences of global warming while also offering some hope that some coral reefs can be saved if humans move quickly to rein in greenhouse gases.

“Coral reefs are the canary in the coal mine telling us how quickly it can go wrong,” said David Obura, one of the report’s editors and chairman of the coral specialist group for the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The 14 percent decline, he said, was cause for deep concern...