First it was bluefin tuna, then Playboy bunnies, then the world's wheat crop. Now the Great Barrier Reef is going to be gone in 20 years, according to marine scientist Charlie Veron:
Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told The Times: “There is no way out, no loopholes. The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so.”
Once carbon dioxide had hit the levels predicted for between 2030 and 2060, all coral reefs were doomed to extinction, he said. “They would be the world’s first global ecosystem to collapse. I have the backing of every coral reef scientist, every research organisation. I’ve spoken to them all. This is critical. This is reality.”
Frank Pope of The Times Online has the interview: Link
Everything's going extinct like it's going out of style! What's (or who's) next? Miley Cyrus?
From the Neatoshop: Having Great Vocab Didn't Save the Thesaurus From Extinction
It's like when you try to measure a signal on an oscilloscope and instead of the nice sine or square wave you were expecting you get a flat line and you think there must be something wrong - then you you crank the sample rate knob over to the right and try again -lo and behold, your sine wave appears. We are all living in the trough of a sine wave :-)