A child born today will experience an increase to sea level of about three to six feet. The rate of change is so remarkable and so dramatic. We are already seeing the consequences of man-made climate change.
Jeff OrlowskiThe really valuable thing about documenting coral bleaching is that it is this straight, very direct visual indicator of how hot the oceans are getting. If the temperature of the water passes a certain threshold, the corals turn white. It's that simple. There's nothing natural about the cycle that's going on right now. In 2016, we lost 29 percent of the Great Barrier Reef. So 29 percent of the Great Barrier Reef died in a single year, because the water was hot.
Jeff OrlowskiThe question is not, "Is climate change happening?" Nor is the question, "Is climate change man-made?" Rather, we need to realize itสผs already here, and start asking, "What are we going to do about it?"
Jeff OrlowskiThere's a huge challenge around coral bleaching specifically, because when most people think about coral, they think about the beautiful, white sculpture sitting on their mantle. And it looks so pristine and clean and beautiful. It's not supposed to look like that when it's in the ocean. It has color, it has animal flesh living on it, it has plants living inside of that. They look very, very different when they're healthy in the ocean than they do when they're sitting in somebody's home.
Jeff Orlowski