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The world’s coral reefs are undoubtedly in deep trouble. But as we and our colleagues argue in a review published today in Nature, we shouldn’t give up hope for coral reefs, despite the pervasive doom and gloom.

Instead, we have to accept that coral reefs around the world are transforming rapidly into a newly emerging ecosystem unlike anything humans have experienced before. Realistically, we can no longer expect to conserve, maintain, preserve or restore coral reefs as they used to be.

This is a confronting message. But it also focuses attention on what we need to do to secure a realistic future for reefs, and to retain the food security and other benefits they provide to society.

The past three years have been the warmest on record, and many coral reefs throughout the tropics have suffered one or more bouts of bleaching during prolonged underwater heatwaves.

A bleached coral doesn’t necessarily die. But in 2016, two-thirds of corals on the northern Great Barrier Reef did die in just six months, as a result of unprecedented heat stress. This year the bleaching happened again, this time mainly on the middle section of the reef.

Reefs are being degraded by global pressures, not just local ones. Terry Hughes, Author provided

In both years, the southern third of the reef escaped with little or no bleaching, because it was cooler. So bleaching is patchy and it varies in severity, depending partly on where the water is hottest each summer, and on regional differences in the rate of warming. Consequently some regions, reefs, or even local sites within reefs, can escape damage even during a global heatwave.

Moderate bleaching events are also highly selective, affecting some coral species and individual colonies more than others, creating winners and losers. Coral species also differ in their capacity to reproduce, disperse as larvae, and to rebound afterwards.

This natural variability offers hope for the future, and represents different sources of resilience. Surviving corals will continue to produce billions of larvae each year, and their genetic makeup will evolve under intense natural selection.

In response to fishing, coastal development, pollution and four bouts of bleaching in 1998, 2002, 2016 and 2017, the Great Barrier Reef is already a highly altered ecosystem, and it will change even more in the coming decades. Although reefs will be different in future, they could still be perfectly functional in centuries to come – capable of sustaining ecological processes and regenerating themselves. But this will only be possible if we act quickly to curb climate change.

The Paris climate agreement provides the key framework for avoiding very dangerous levels of global warming. Its 1.5℃ and 2℃ targets refer to increases in global average land and sea temperatures, relative to pre-industrial times. For most shallow tropical oceans, where temperatures are rising more slowly than the global average, that translates to 0.5℃ of further warming by the end of this century – slightly less than the amount of warming that coral reefs have already experienced since industrialisation began.

If we can improve the management of reefs to help them run this climate gauntlet, then reefs should survive. Reefs of the future will have a different mix of species, but they should nonetheless retain their aesthetic values, and support tourism and fishing. However, this cautious optimism is entirely contingent on steering global greenhouse emissions away from their current trajectory, which could see annual bleaching of corals occurring in most tropical locations by 2050. There is no time to lose before this narrowing window of opportunity closes.

A crisis of governance

Reef governance is failing because it is largely set up to manage local threats, such as overfishing and pollution. In Australia, when the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority was set up in 1976, the objective of managing threats at the scale of (almost) the entire Great Barrier Reef was revolutionary. But today, the scale of threats is global: market pressures for Australian reef fish now come from overseas; port dredging and shipping across the reef are spurred on by fossil fuel exports to Asia; a housing crisis in the United States can batter reef tourism half a world away; and record breaking marine heatwaves due to global warming can kill even the most highly protected and remote corals.

Increasingly, coral reef researchers are turning to the social sciences, not just biology, in search of solutions. We need better governance that addresses both local and larger-scale threats to coral reef degradation, rather than band-aid measures such as culling starfish that eat corals.

In many tropical countries, the root causes of reef degradation include poverty, increasing market pressures from globalisation, and of course the extra impacts of global warming. Yet these global issues desperately need more attention at just the time when some governments are reducing foreign aid, failing to address global climate change, and in the case of Australia and the US, trying to resuscitate the dying fossil fuel industry with subsidies for economically unviable projects.

Effective reef governance will not only require increased cooperation among nations to tackle global issues, as in the case of the Paris climate deal, but will also require policy coordination at the national level to ensure that domestic action matches and supports these larger-scale goals.

Quite simply, we can’t expect to have thriving coral reefs in the future as well as new coal mines – policies to promote both are incompatible.

Terry Hughes receives competitive research funding from The Australian Research Council.

Joshua Cinner receives competitive research funding from the Australian Research Council and currently holds a fellowship from the Pew Charitable Trust

A wide range of industrial processes have released greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Paulo Resende/Shutterstock.com

The most comprehensive collection of atmospheric greenhouse gas measurements, published today, confirms the relentless rise in some of the most important greenhouse gases.

The data show that today’s aggregate warming effect of carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) is higher than at any time over the past 800,000 years, according to ice core records.

Building on half a century of atmospheric measurements by the international research community, we compiled and analysed the data as part of a group of international scientists, led by Malte Meinshausen from the University of Melbourne in collaboration with CSIRO.

Together, the data provide the most compelling evidence of the unprecedented perturbation of Earth’s atmosphere. They clearly show that the growth of greenhouse gases began with the onset of the industrial era around 1750, took a sharp turn upwards in the 1950s, and still continues today.

Research has demonstrated that this observed growth in greenhouse gases is caused by human activities, leading to warming of the climate – and in fact more than the observed warming, because part of the effect is currently masked by atmospheric pollution (aerosols).

The new collection of records comes from measurements of current and archived air samples, air trapped in bubbles in ice cores, and firn (compacted snow). The data cover the past 2,000 years without gaps, and are the result of a compilation of measurements analysed by dozens of laboratories around the world, including CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology’s Cape Grim Station, NOAA, AGAGE and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, among others.

These data include 43 different greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere from dozens of human activities and industrial processes. While CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O are on the rise, some other greenhouse gases such as dichlorodifluoromethane (CFC-12) are slowly starting to decline as a result of policies to ban their use.

Author provided The greenhouse gases

Most of us know that CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O are among the principal causes of human-induced climate change. They are found in the atmosphere in the absence of human activity, but the increases in their concentrations are due to human activities such as burning fossil fuels, deforestation and agriculture (livestock, rice paddies, and the use of nitrogen-based fertilisers). They are all from biological or fossil fuel sources.

But there is much more when it comes to greenhouse gases. Our analysis features a further 40 greenhouse gases (among hundreds that exist), many of them emitted in very small quantities. Although many might play a small role, dichlorodifluoromethane (CFC-12) and trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11) are the third and fifth most important greenhouse gases respectively, in terms of their overall contributions to global warming.

Most of these gases are emitted exclusively by humans, the so-called synthetic greenhouse gases, and have been used variously as aerosol spray propellants, refrigerants, fire-extinguishing agents, and in the production of semiconductors, among other industrial applications.

Synthetic greenhouse gases include chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), most perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆), and others. Several, most famously CFCs, also deplete the ozone layer and are regulated under the Montreal Protocol. Others, such as HFCs, were actually first produced in large quantities to replace the ozone-depleting substances, but unfortunately turned out to be potent greenhouse gases too.

Importantly, all 43 greenhouse gases offer opportunities to tackle climate change, either by reducing their emissions or, in the case of synthetic gases, finding non-greenhouse alternatives.

Not all greenhouse gases are the same

How much a greenhouse gas contributes to warming depends on three factors. The first is how much gas is emitted. Second is how much a kilogram of that gas will warm the planet once it’s in the atmosphere. And third is how long the gas will remain in the atmosphere.

CO₂ is the most important greenhouse gas in warming the planet, despite being the weakest greenhouse gas per unit of mass. Its contribution to warming comes from the sheer scale of emissions (40 billion tonnes emitted each year), and the fact that a large part effectively hangs around in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years after emission. The resulting concentration makes CO₂ responsible for about 65% of all warming due to greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

This makes CO₂ the most important factor in determining future global warming. Unless we can cut CO₂ emissions to zero by the second half of this century, primarily by finding alternatives to fossil fuels, the world will continue to warm beyond the 2℃ target of the Paris Agreement, not to mention the aspirational 1.5℃ goal.

Provided by University of Melbourne http://climate-energy-college.org/more-climate-spirals.

Methane (CH₄) is the next most important greenhouse gas, with current concentration contributing about 15% of overall human-induced warming.

Most synthetic greenhouse gases have very high global warming potentials. The one with the highest current emissions is the refrigerant HFC-134a, which is 1,300 times more potent than CO₂ (per mass unit emitted). Other synthetic greenhouse gases have even more extraordinary warming potentials, with CF₄ (used in the semiconductor industry) and SF₆ (from industrial electricity transformers) being 6,500 and 23,400 times more potent than CO₂, respectively.

CFC-12, a former refrigerant, is both a potent ozone-depleting substance and a powerful greenhouse gas. Although its emissions and atmospheric concentrations are now declining thanks to global compliance with the Montreal Protocol, it is still the third most important greenhouse gas and responsible for 6-7% of all warming since the beginning of the industrial era.

What are these GHG data good for?

Our new compilation of greenhouse gas data is the most complete and robust picture to date showing the main drivers of climate change, and how we humans are altering the Earth’s atmosphere. Global temperature is now about 1℃ warmer on average than pre-industrial temperatures.

The new database also serves as an accurate measure of greenhouse gas concentrations resulting from past human and natural emissions, which will in turn help to improve the performance of climate models. Building trust and confidence in climate projections starts by testing and running models with real data during historical periods. The new climate projections will feed in the next major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due to be released in 2021.

Continued greenhouse gas monitoring, including significant contributions by Australia, is crucial to understand how the planet reacts to human interference, and to better plan for adaptation to a changing climate. Global and regional greenhouse data can help nations to track the long-term global targets under the Paris agreement, and to inform actions needed to stabilise the climate.

Pep Canadell receives funding from the National Environmental Science Programme - Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub.

Cathy Trudinger receives funding from the National Environmental Science Programme - Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub

David Etheridge's research has received funding from the Australian Climate Change Science Program (a partnership between the Department of the Environment, the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO), from the University of Copenhagen, from the CO2CRC and from the Gas Industry Social and Environmental Research Alliance.

Malte Meinshausen works for the University of Melbourne. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Paul Fraser is a CSIRO post-retirement Fellow and in the recent past as a CSIRO officer has received funding from Bureau of Meteorology, NASA/MIT, Department of Environment and Energy, Refrigerant Reclaim Australia; future funding is likely from CSIRO, NASA/MIT and Refrigerant Reclaim Australia

Paul Krummel is employed by CSIRO and receives funding from MIT, NASA, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Department of the Environment and Energy, and Refrigerant Reclaim Australia.

One of the biggest icebergs ever seen is a step closer to forming on the edge of the Larsen C shelf.

• Beijing and Brussels to set up new alliance to reduce global carbon emissions
• ‘Now is the time to further strengthen these ties’ – EU climate commissioner

China and the EU will forge an alliance to take a leading role in tackling global warming in response to Donald Trump’s expected decision to pull the US out of the historic Paris agreement.

Amid growing fears that the US will soon join Nicaragua and Syria on the small list of countries refusing to back the climate accord signed in 2015, Beijing and Brussels have been preparing to announce their intention to accelerate joint efforts to reduce global carbon emissions.

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For the first time, Exxon Mobil will have to consider the impact of climate change on its business.

The space agency re-brands its mission to "touch the Sun" after a living scientist.

Reef conservation must not be an attempt to restore reefs of the past, but to identify the parts essential to their continued existence, and protect those

The survival of coral reefs requires a radical rethink of what conservation means, as well as embracing some of the changes they are undergoing, according to a paper by leading coral reef scientists.

“Helping coral reefs to safely navigate the Anthropocene is a profound challenge for multiscale governance,” the scientists say in a paper published today in the journal Nature.

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• Trump tweets that he will be announcing decision ‘over the next few days’
• Withdrawal would sorely weaken landmark deal by nearly 200 countries

Donald Trump is poised to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, according to multiple reports on Wednesday, in a move that would profoundly undermine the landmark agreement by nearly 200 nations to curtail global warming.

Trump tweeted on Wednesday that he would reach a final decision in a few days, shortly after a wave of reports said he was about to exit from the deal. The reports follow his refusal to express support for global efforts to combat climate change at a G7 summit with European leaders last week.

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President Trump is poised to pull the US out of the Paris climate accord, US media report.

The president has reportedly made his decision on the landmark climate deal, as exasperated world leaders get ready to move on with or without the US

Donald Trump’s Twitter pledge to make a decision on whether to remain in the Paris climate agreement this week promises resolution to months of fevered lobbying over US involvement in the global accord.

Related: The top five worst things Trump has done on climate change – so far

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A ‘faceless’ fish has been rediscovered by scientists on an expedition in the depths of a massive abyss in waters south of Sydney. The 40cm fish was found 4km below sea level. It was last seen in waters off Australia in 1873

• ‘Faceless’ fish missing for more than a century rediscovered by Australian scientists
  

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Environmental lawyers who have defeated ministers twice return to court in a bid to remove ‘major flaws’ from air quality plans

Environmental lawyers are taking the government to the high court for a third time in a bid to remove “major flaws” from minister’s plans to tackle the UK’s illegal levels of air pollution.

ClientEarth has inflicted two humiliating defeats on the government over previous plans, which were ruled not to meet legal requirements. Lawyers from ClientEarth had requested improvements to the latest plan from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) but were refused, prompting the new court action.

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Peter Wohlleben’s book has become bestseller in Germany but he tells Hay festival audience it has annoyed scientists

Trees are social creatures that mother their young, talk to each other, experience pain, remember things and have sex with each other, a bestselling author has said.

If that persuades you to go and hug the nearest tree, then great, said Peter Wohlleben. Just avoid a birch: “It is not very sociable. Try a beech.”

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Nearly seven decades ago, Jo Lancaster became one of the first pilots to eject from a plane in an emergency.

Expedition leader says the deep-sea fish had not been seen in waters off Australia since 1873

A “faceless” deep-sea fish not seen for more than a century has been rediscovered by scientists trawling the depths of a massive abyss off Australia’s east coast, along with “amazing” quantities of rubbish.

The 40cm fish was rediscovered 4km below sea level in waters south of Sydney by scientists from Museums Victoria and the Australian government’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) on the weekend.

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As the US president weighs up whether or not to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, we look at his most frightening actions on global warming

In March, Scott Pruitt infamously said about carbon dioxide that “I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see”, in contradiction to climate scientists, including those at his own agency. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief has deep ties to fossil fuel interests and joined with them on numerous occasions to challenge EPA pollution rules while attorney general of Oklahoma. He has opined that the EPA has become distracted from its core mission by climate concerns and has begin the process of ripping up Obama-era emissions regulations.

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Harmful chemicals in shampoo and other personal products can cause real harm once they're washed down the drain. Shutterstock

Every year thousands of new contaminants enter the market in common consumer products and are washed down our drains without treatment. They end up in the water we drink, the fish we eat, and other marine life. These contaminants are lawfully produced and sold by the chemical, pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries.

Contaminants can range from microbeads and nanoparticles in cosmetics, to microthreads or cancer-causing NPEs and pthalates in synthetic clothing and flame retardants. They can also be antimicrobials and endocrine disruptors from our medication.

Regulations are unable to keep up with the barrage of potentially dangerous contaminants entering the market. Instead, we believe companies should take more responsibility for the damage they cause our environment and public health, by making sure their products aren’t toxic before they hit the market.

Tens of thousands of contaminants

Contaminants in common products like shampoos, toothpaste and makeup are almost impossible to manage once they hit our shelves. Once sold, they almost inevitably end up washed down the drain, where the burden of dealing with them falls largely on the taxpayer-funded wastewater system.

US researchers have identified some 80,000 chemical contaminants in wastewater sludge, while the European Union has identified at least 140,000. It is hard to say how many exist in Australian wastewater, but given that Australian consumers buy and use similar products to Americans and Europeans, we can safely assume broadly similar levels.

This makes for a vast range of substances for regulators to consider. Furthermore, restricted pollutants, such as bisphenol A (BPA), can be substituted with compounds that haven’t attracted the same level of scrutiny. Current guidelines mostly focus on a narrow list of “mainstream” contaminants, such as heavy metals like lead and mercury.

The environmental risk is increased by the changing ways we manage solid waste and wastewater, especially as waste is increasingly diverted for use in energy and food production. We need to act on the potential threat of chemical compounds in our wastewater that don’t break down or become concentrated in higher quantities as they move up the food chain. And wastewater contaminants are typically much harder than solid waste to trace back to their original source.

The potential impacts on the environment, human health and infrastructure are broad and in many cases unknown. Some contaminants can exert their toxic effects in local aquatic ecosystems very quickly. An example is the impact of oestrogen on the feminisation of fish.

While other countries have begun regulating these hazardous compounds, we are falling behind. A Greenpeace report, Toxic Threads, singled out Australia as at risk of becoming the dumping ground of the Western world.

Presently, much of the burden to manage these risks falls on wastewater service providers, environmental protection authorities, regulatory bodies and ultimately ratepayers. However, we have the opportunity to transform how we manage tens of thousands of emergent and existing contaminants. We have the potential to involve the companies that produce these contaminants in their responsible life cycle management to ensure environmental and public health is maintained.

Microfibre material is often used in hand dusters. 'John Keogh/flickr' Extending responsibility to producers

These companies can take a lesson from the solid waste sector. A good example is the EU, where manufacturers of everything from cars to carpets can be legally required to take back their products at the end of their life. This is known as “extended producer responsibility”, or product stewardship.

A UN project, Chemicals in Products, helps fill in knowledge gaps along product supply chains to ensure potentially hazardous chemicals can be traced back to their source. In Australia, more than 20 predominantly voluntary industry-led initiatives promote active responsibility for products across their lifespan, including after they have been discarded.

These schemes can help to drive innovations in product and process design, such as building computers and refrigerators for easy disassembly and reuse. Currently, such rules only apply to solid waste products, but the federal government’s Product Stewardship Act (2011) is soon to be reviewed. There’s an opportunity to expand this type of extended producer responsibility approach to a broader range of products and contaminants that end up in wastewater to better share management and the burden of clean-up among manufacturers, retailers, waste service providers and consumers.

Transforming our approach

Given the rate at which new contaminants of unknown toxicity enter our cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and cleaning products (and end up in our waterways), the precautionary principle may need to apply.

For example, companies could be required to prove their new chemical compounds have a benign effect on the environment and human health before being released onto the market.

This precautionary principle, which puts the burden of proof on companies, was first applied to hazardous chemicals introduced to the European market. This pre-market approach has since been implemented in California and China.

Mitigating risks of individual contaminants will require a range of possible policy, industry and consumer responses. In the case of microbeads, for example, consumers can choose to avoid buying such products, and governments can and are banning microbeads.

Extended producer responsibility provides an incentive for industry to avoid contaminants altogether at the product design stage. In the pharmaceutical industry there are examples of companies adopting “green chemistry” approaches that avoid the use of hazardous ingredients in the production of medicines and the need for downstream waste treatment. Either way, questions about the potential risks and environmental impact of the different approaches taken will need to be answered.

However, managing unknown risks of thousands of emergent contaminants in wastewater for which there is little traceability – and hence accountability – may require an integrated and precautionary approach. But the question still remains: whose responsibility?

Dana Cordell receives funding from the Environment Protection Authority Victoria to research organic waste management.

Dena Fam receives funding from the Department of Environment and Energy to research the convergence of the water and waste sectors in regard to risks, opportunities and future trends

Nick Florin previously received funding from the Department of the Environment and Energy for research into approaches for managing hazardous chemicals in products.

Last night, the Melbourne City Council voted unanimously to welcome the VRET and endorse passage of legislation enshrining the targets in state parliament.

Wholesale price rises mean higher solar tariffs for Ergon network, but forces government to lift annual subsidy to supply regional homes with mostly coal power by $200 million a year.

St Dominic, Tamar Valley Pennywort and mosses add to the verdure of the shadiest lanes, now green tunnels overhung by ash flowers

Rain enhances the growth of luxuriant ferns that dominate hedge banks and undergrowth in the woods. Beside narrow lanes, fronds of male ferns and soft shield ferns overwhelm the pink, white and blue of campion, stitchwort and bluebell, masking the eroded earth of rabbit burrows.

Foxglove, sorrel and bracken emerge through the leafy tops of these old banks, where, despite the annual cutback with mechanical flails, diverse woody shrubs are covered in fresh leaves interwoven with new shoots of rose, honeysuckle and bramble.

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