"Crown of thorns starfish numbers are up.They can kill the reefs." "I don't see a passion, an emotional concern about the unprecedented losses we're witnessing." "We're not gonna solve this problem if we allow the fossil fuel industry to continue to pollute the planet."
Watch-: Coral Reefs - The Ocean's Rain Forests in Decline, Climate Emergency Forum Oct 6 [Sep 17 broadcast] Clean transcript follows:
Dr. Peter Carter - MD, Expert IPCC Reviewer and the director of the Climate Emergency Institute Paul Beckwith - Climate Systems Scientist. Professor at the University of Ottawa's Paleoclimatology Laboratory as well as at Carleton University Herb Simmens - Author, Co-founder of the Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC), Climate Emergency Board Member and former college instructor.
[Transcripts are here st Heating Planet for readers writers and researchers. Plus, video can disappear. The printed word is forever.]
So obviously the most significant risk to the coral reefs is the warming of the 0:06 water. We're getting more and more of these marine heat waves around the planet. The 0:10 ocean currents and wind patterns are shifting. So the warm water on these reefs, several degrees warmer temperatures than normal is, of course, stressing the reefs, causing the bleaching. We're getting these more and more frequent 0:27 and severe bleaching events around the planet. 0:31 [Music]
0:50 Herb: Hello and welcome to today's program at the Climate Emergency Forum. We'll be talking about coral reefs, the ocean's rainforest in decline. I'm Herb Simmens, I'm the author of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future. And we'll be diving into, no pun intended or maybe intended, to one of the most critically important features of our planet, coral reefs. These vibrant ecosystems are not only breathtakingly beautiful, but also vital 1:20 to life on Earth, and they're facing unprecedented threats.
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They host an astonishing 25% of the world's ocean species, providing a home, breeding ground, and food for countless marine organisms.
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They're among the most productive 1:26 ecosystems on the planet, which is why we're calling them, and others have, the rainforests of the sea. They're often also called oases in the desert, as they're often much more productive than the areas around them. They host an astonishing 25% of the world's ocean species, providing a home, breeding ground, and food for countless marine organisms.
Beyond their ecological value, 1:52 millions of people, coastal communities, fishermen and women, and those in the tourism industry, depend on coral reefs for their livelihoods. These ecosystems are economic and cultural lifelines, supporting food security and local economies worldwide. But they're also the most sensitive ecosystems to environmental changes. And since the 1980s, we've seen a devastating decline in their health, primarily due to heat-related stress from global warming, as well as pollution.
Rising ocean 2:25 temperatures have triggered widespread coral bleaching, where corals expel the algae that give them life and color, often leading, sadly, to their death. This rapid loss is a stark warning of the broader impacts of climate change. We'll also be looking at innovative solutions to slow their decline, such as Coral Assisted Evolution, which aims to help corals adapt to warming weathers.
There is hope, but the clock is ticking.
Make sure to stay until the end of the program, where 2:56 we'll touch on some of the latest climate change news and what it means for our planet's future. Thank you for joining us, and let's get underway. I'm always happy to introduce Peter Carter, Dr. Peter Carter, a retired medical doctor from British Columbia, who has been an IPCC expert reviewer and the founder of the Climate Emergency Institute. Peter, it's always good to see you. 3:21 Tell us your thoughts about coral reefs.
Peter: Thanks, Herb. Thinking about coral reefs, 3:28 my thoughts go back 30 years to 1990, 1992, when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed. At that time, there was actually way more emphasis on particularly the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia than there is today, which is quite amazing, but that's my memory, and it's true, I think. One of the things was that it was fairly recent that it had been identified by satellites out in space as the single largest living organism on 4:01 Earth.
A lot of us environmental people focused on the Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs in 4:07 particular. Now, I can go back even further. I can go back even before, as Herb, I think, indicated. We've always known that the coral reefs, in particular the Great Barrier, were highly vulnerable to climate change because highly vulnerable to sea surface temperature increase. And I remember the publication projections saying that at 1.5 degrees C, 4:36 the coral reefs would be at extremely high risk. And actually, that was one of the main reasons why at the time I went on the sort of side of changing the 2 degrees C limit to the 1.5 degrees C limit,
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identified by satellites out in space as the single largest living organism on Earth.
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4:51 because it was obvious even way back then that the tropical coral reefs would not survive 2 degrees C. There's absolutely no way. Subsequently, of course, the IPCC assessments are saying the same thing. The 2018 IPCC 1.5 degrees C special report had a chart there on the coral reefs, Great Barrier Reefs. And at 1.5 degrees C, over 80% of the Great Barrier Reef would basically eventually disappear. And at 2 degrees C, practically all of it would disappear. They had a number of 98 or 99% loss of the reefs.
Now, coral reefs, yes, are absolutely amazing. One of 5:38 the wonderful things about them is that they are the result of a symbiosis. Unlike us human beings, nature tends to work together extremely well. And there's no better example of that than the Great Formation of the Barrier Reef in particular. I just want to mention that if you're interested in barrier reefs, I did a YouTube some years ago of a lecture by Charlie Veron.
Charlie Veron is the big 6:09 name on barrier reefs, coral reefs. He's named more coral reefs than anybody else on Earth. A completely, completely amazing man. He gave this lecture where he's not academically trained, but he's the top man in coral reefs, at the invitation of the Royal Society. And I’ve got a YouTube on that. I just copied the whole thing. It's absolutely amazing to watch.
Coral reefs are perhaps the most resilient of natural collections of species and ecosystems on earth. They're truly 6:42 amazing how they can come back. They're not going to come back to 2 degrees C. I mean, there's just no way. Actually, just a year ago, there was a bit of a comeback of the Great Barrier Reef. But since that's been sort of negated and it's down at pretty well record loss of hard coral. So yeah, we're looking obviously at a progressive loss of the Great Barrier Reef in particular.
And the El 7:08 Niño, of course, had been very, very impacted on that. And the last El Niño, the recent one, the tropical coral reefs right across the tropics were in very, very, very big trouble indeed. Herb: Thank you, Peter. If it's available, we'll provide a link to the video that you mentioned because from what you've said, it's something that we all should be taking a look at. With that,
7:34 I wanna turn it over to our other regular Paul Beckwith. Paul, as everyone knows, is a climate system scientist who lives in Ottawa, has taught at universities in the area, has a YouTube channel with over 1200 videos covering every aspect of the climate emergency. Paul, it's always good to see you and you always have a unique perspective on everything. I'm eager to hear what yours is on coral reefs today.
Paul: Well, thank you, Herb, and thanks, Peter. So 8:04 obviously the most significant risk to the coral reefs is the warming of the water. We're getting more and more of these marine heat waves around the planet. The ocean currents and wind patterns are shifting. So the warm water on these reefs, several degrees warmer temperatures than normal, is of course stressing the reefs, causing the bleaching and so on. We're getting these more and more frequent and severe bleaching events around the planet, especially on the Great 8:36 Barrier Reef, as Peter's mentioned.
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a 30% increase in acidification.
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But there's other factors that are stressing the corals, which 8:41 perhaps aren't thought of as much. So the first of those is ocean acidification. So the pH of the ocean has gone from about 8.2 to 8.05 on average. That's a 30% increase in acidification. Of course, we think of the coral as, most of it is calcium-based and that calcium backbone, the architecture of the reefs is being eroded away by increasing ocean acidification.
In Australia, 9:13 on many reefs and some other places, there's been a proliferation of starfish since the 1960s. Numbers of starfish, something called the crown of thorns starfish is specifically mentioned on many Australian coral reefs. And there's been a proliferation and they're very detrimental to the reefs. They actually can kill reefs and which leads to a third factor related to the starfish and that's runoff. There seems to be more and more storms and extreme weather events that are filling up rivers and causing runoff off in coastal areas to increase into coastal waters. And for one thing, there's a lot of land-based agricultural fertilizers that are used.
And when there's 10:03 torrential rains, it washes the fertilizers into the rivers and the rivers flow into the water. And if they’re near coral reefs, they can, well, for one thing, the nutrients are thought to be one of the main reasons for the proliferation of the crown of thorns starfish, but also the fresh water is detrimental to the reefs. Of course, it changes the salinity of the water. Often the water from a torrential rain event is very murky. That murkiness blocks sunlight, of course, which is detrimental to the photosynthesis of the polyps in the coral and the reefs. So that's a big 10:39 factor.
There's also more and more storms, the mechanical wave action and the changes in the 10:47 ocean currents and cyclones going through can cause tremendous amounts of coral reef damage on top of the damage from all of these other factors. Coral does grow, people forget, and it takes a long time, but over a decade, you could have quite a bit of coral growth rates and the growth rates are severely reduced. So if you take growth rates relative to 25 degrees Celsius water, it's reduced, add a couple of degrees to the water temperature, growth rates are down 30% and then add a couple more degrees of temperature to the water and the coral growth rates are down by 70%.
11:28 And they're doing a lot of interesting study of different species of coral in the islands Atoll of Palau, they're at seven degrees north latitude and it's an island chain east of the Philippines in the Pacific. They're doing a lot of studies of different types of corals and which ones are more tolerant. There's some sort of reefs around the world, they're lucky for some reason, they haven't experienced any severe bleaching over the last number of decades. So what is 12:02 special about these reefs? Why are they so-called lucky reefs?
And that's the case for a lot of the 12:09 coral reefs around Palau. They've somehow escaped the ravages of bleaching and other things. So is there something in the species mix, so scientists are studying these and they're growing a lot of coral cultures to measure growth rates and to try to find out how they can make the reefs more resilient to what's happening.
Herb: Thanks, Paul. I think you would probably 12:32 agree that these efforts at resiliency and what's often called assisted evolution are critically important, but they're ultimately stop gaps. As long as temperatures increase, sea temperatures increase, it's a race that we're losing as with so many other aspects of climate change. Another toxin that most of us probably use in one form or another has been shown to be very damaging to coral reefs and that's sunscreen. And in places where you're swimming or fishing near 13:06 coral reefs, please don't wear sunscreen.
When I was checking in preparation for this program, 13:12 I saw that sunscreen can lead to viral infections of coral to DNA damage, to photo toxicity, as well as ecosystem damage. Of course, that also raises the question: what kind of damage is it doing to our own skin and our own bodies? But that's a subject of another program. 13:32 So with that, let me turn it back to Peter.
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Crown of thorns starfish numbers are up, specifically on Australian coral reefs. They can kill the reefs
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Peter: Yes, thanks Herb. Thanks, Paul. Well, 13:38 I mentioned that the incredible resilience of the coral reefs, and as Paul mentioned, there are deep coral reefs, very, very deep. There are cold water coral reefs. So there are other coral reefs apart from the ones that we really pay attention to and we really should be very emotionally attached with. That whole emotional thing concerns me. Again, if I go back to the 90s, people were very emotionally attached to the attraction of the Great Barrier reef and the great tropical 14:13 forest.
It was very strong everywhere. I just don't see that nowadays. I don't see a passion, 14:20 an emotional concern about the unprecedented losses that we're witnessing that our scientists are reporting to us. Adaptation. I'm hearing more and more and more about adaptation, less and less and less about mitigation. So less about reducing emissions, stopping emissions, ending the fossil fuel industry. That seems to have almost disappeared from the public discourse and 14:46 more and more and more about adaptation. So I will say one thing.
Years ago, the scientists, 14:52 the climate scientists had a rule. There's no such thing as adaptation without mitigation. Don't seem to be applying that rule now, but really it's logically obvious that if we are not reducing our emissions because we're increasing emissions now, last year was a record year for CO2 emissions and a record year for greenhouse gas emissions as a whole. That just came out from the big EDGAR report. The same thing applies to other applications of ideas to solve our problem. We're not gonna solve this problem all the time we allow the fossil fuel industry to continue to pollute the planet with air pollution, deadly air pollution, and atmospheric greenhouse gas 15:38 pollution.
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I don't see a passion, 14:20 an emotional concern about the unprecedented losses that we're witnessing that our scientists are reporting to us.
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We need to focus back on the fact that, I mean, we've had talks even in the UN 15:46 climate conferences of phase out of fossil fuel. A phase out of fossil fuels fast is an imperative for our future survival. That may be a scary thing to consider, but with respect to the future, with respect to all the children on this planet in the whole world, we're in a very, very scary situation. So a couple of appeals there. Herb: Thanks as always, Peter. Of course, your appeal and that of others needed to have been effective. Not that it's anyone's fault except for 16:18 the fossil fuel industry and others 20 or 25 years ago.
I saw one study that suggested that once we 16:24 got over 320 parts per million of carbon dioxide, that coral reefs essentially became endangered, if not on their way to extinction. And we're a hundred parts per million over that. And even reducing and eliminating carbon dioxide emissions that are excessive will not bring us back down without pulling out what we have already put in the atmosphere back out again, which of course is 16:49 a mammoth but necessary task. Paul, yours.
Paul: Yes, so I just want to emphasize the 16:57 importance of coral reefs. So not only are they wonderful to swim amongst and scuba dive on, and they're just beautiful, vibrant colors, because they're in shallow water and the colors are still visible, but they're vital to ecosystems, marine ecosystems. In fact, they're home to about 25% of all marine life that spends at least part of their life cycle on coral 17:25 reefs.
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Peter: We're not gonna solve this problem if we allow the fossil fuel industry to continue to pollute the planet
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Often, fish lay eggs among the reefs, which provide protection. So they're vital 17:31 to many other species and the loss of coral reefs will have very negative cascading effects through the entire marine food chain. It's not just the coral reefs. I should mention that also kelp forests around the world are being threatened, these massive kelp forests. I was very fortunate when I was in California a number of years ago to dive on the kelp forests off the Channel Islands. And, they're anchored on the bottom.
And these literally forests, they 18:02 stretch through from the bottom up to the surface through a hundred plus feet of water, vital for marine life. Also sea grasses are very important, another marine ecosystem that is being threatened. And, all of these things are very important for carbon capture. Obviously with the vegetation, the sea grass and kelp forest, you can see it, but because of the 18:26 proliferation of marine life on coral reefs, there's a lot of embodied carbon in there, 18:31 which is very important.
Peter mentioned, there's not the same public awareness of these reefs. And 18:37 I think a lot of it, when I was growing up decades ago, there was a lot more interest in the ocean, I think. And part of that was through different personalities. So specifically Jacques Cousteau and his Calypso and all of his movies and expeditions and books really excited the imaginations of many young people and young and old alike. He basically opened up the 19:05 public's eyes to the wonders of coral reefs and the oceans.
And more recently 19:11 from Cousteau, I think some of his kids carried on his work for a while, but also there's a woman, Sylvia Earle, who has written a number of books on the ocean and explored lots of the ocean, done lots of diving. And her nickname is Her Deepness instead of Her Highness, Her Deepness. The way we describe what's happening, I think is very important. Words are like arrows, they're very powerful. So, I like that there's obviously lots of work done in Australia 19:45 on reefs and what's happening.
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Coral reefs are beautiful, vibrant colors, yes, but they're also vital to ecosystems
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And what we call wildfires in North America, they call bushfires 19:51 in Australia. And they talk about the heat waves destroying coral reefs as basically marine bushfires, or, we would maybe call them water wildfires. They're very, very high temperatures that are decimating the reefs. So, how we describe things and how we, inform the public is very important. I just wanna close in talking about 20:17 mentioning Joni Mitchell's song from 1970. I think it's like the yellow taxi or something. She says, 20:24 you don't know what you've lost until it's gone, paving over paradise into, 20:30 turning paradise into a parking lot. Very famous song from 1970.
They paved paradise put in a parking lot click here to hear the song
https://cityofangels25.blogspot.com/2025/10/joni-mitchell-big-yellow-taxi-preview.html
**********And that applies directly. 20:38 Often we take things for granted. We don't know how valuable they are until we've lost them. Herb: Well put, Paul. I mean, I guess the one sort of scientific boring term for what Joni sang so eloquently is the changing baseline syndrome. I much prefer Joni's rendition to that, as I suspect you do. And I think the points you're making thoug about the absence of innovative leaders in various fields that galvanize the need and the desire and the love for a particular set 21:15 of features of our planet, I think is really a huge problem.
And of course you can't just snap 21:21 your fingers and have people like Sylvia Earle or Cousteau or David Attenborough on the land and sea. They can galvanize millions of people who otherwise are preoccupied with their computers and their TikToks and all the day to day mundane necessities of life. So I wanna thank both Peter and Paul as always for your perceptive comments and analysis. We hope to do another program on 21:50 coral reefs.
We're gonna focus more on solutions and we'll have more information about that later. 21:56 And before we wrap up, I just wanted to turn our attention for a few minutes to some of the latest news on climate change just in the last few days, as we are recording this year in the middle of September. It's rare to find any good news. And so if you're looking for good news, you might wanna switch to another channel at this point. But we've got a study that was just released a few days ago in Europe, estimating that some 16,000 people died of heat waves, climate-induced heat waves in Europe this past summer. And of course, Europe is one of the more, 22:34 if not the most advanced continent in terms of its ability to protect people.
And yet we have 22:40 that incredible loss. At the same time, the EU announced they missed their deadline to submit their new 2035 climate pledge. So you've got this sort of bad news on both sides. And yet at the same time, potentially good news is that the world shipping community got together recently and came up with plans to basically make the shipping industry net zero through a series 23:08 of taxes and fees and so forth, an unprecedented sort of international cooperative efforts.
I think 23:16 in part, they were able to do that because unlike the COPs, for example, or the IPCC, they didn't require unanimity in reaching that conclusion or that plan. But the president of my country, the United States, has intervened, literally threatening these countries that if they go through with the plan, that they will have tariffs imposed upon them. The visa restrictions, port levies, essentially the United States administration is apparently desperate to 23:49 keep anything from happening that would reduce emissions.
New York Climate Week is coming up. 23:56 Interestingly, it's become so popular that even people from countries all over the world are coming to New York. But there was a story about the fact that, again, because of our president, there are many countries where the residents cannot get visas to enter the United States, and many countries will not be represented at Climate Week in New York. Lastly…
So with that, 24:45 I wanna thank everybody for watching and listening today. Please, please like this video, subscribe to our channel, share it with your friends and your colleagues, leave us your comments, leave us your suggestions for future programs, and do go to our website, the climateemergencyforum dot org, and take a look at the articles that are ther…
So 25:33 with that, as always, I wanna thank everybody, and we look forward to seeing you next week.
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