The explosion of industry and commerce over the last 50 years, based on capitalism's endless insane drive for more growth and more profits, has pushed Earth's energy imbalance way out of whack. Temperatures keep rising, and our oceans are murderously hot...
Derek Manzello, coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch Program, said in a news briefing that around 60.5%, or nearly two-thirds, of the world’s coral reefs have experienced heat stress at levels high enough to cause bleaching, a major health threat.
The world’s oceans have gone “crazy haywire,” he said, with record-high temperatures imperiling coral reefs.
Conditions last year were so unusually warm in parts of the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico that heat stress levels were literally off the charts of NOAA’s existing alert system.
“We had to add additional bleaching alert levels to appropriately categorize just how hot it was,” Manzello said.
“For an Alert Level 5, we are estimating that approximately 80% or more of corals on a particular reef may die,” he said. “This is analogous to a Category 5 hurricane or cyclone.”