I always wanted to see this Great Barrier Reef since I was a small child, now it looks like there might not be any of it left by the time I get there. Is it even worth it at this point, or should I just look at pictures and imagine what once was?
I have been hearing about it being dying and on the way out since the 1980s. This time may be different and it may not be a wolf cry as it turned out to be each time in the past.
If it really is in deep trouble, that card has been played so often that I'm jaded hearing it yet again. Maybe I shouldn't be but you see the downside of playing this card repeatedly as hyperbole.
The point is that it may well be under grave threat your entire life and still exist when you die. That doesn't mean it isn't under grave threat. There have been northern white rhinos in existence my entire life. There still are presently: 2 -- both female. Last chance to see...
There have occasionally be natural predators too, like the Crown of Thorn starfish.
The current threat to the reef is ocean warming -- a vastly different threat. There is not much humans can do in the short term to mitigate the problem.
The ocean has warmed to the point where to coral cannot survive. The reef is H-U-G-E (1,400 miles long according to the article). If there was a technology capable of reducing the ocean temperature around the reef, the waste heat the technology would create would cause more problems elsewhere.
The reef is an indication that the global warming problem has become to big for human technology to fix.