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Comment by sirtaj | Hacker News Reader

The ocean reacts to temperature changes in the order of decades. The effect of things we do today will only really be apparent in approx. 20 years. Even if by some stroke of universal good sense we stop global warming today (this is not going to happen, of course), this only gives us hope for whatever's left unbleached at that time.

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That's a good point, but nonetheless the article doesn't provide any figures or estimates. So other readers can point to the continued life on the reef and say 'lies', and bury their heads in the sand too. Even if it will all be dead in 20 years, or 40. The article talks of 450[units] carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We're at 400 now. No data on when we get there nor graphs or estimates of when the rest dies off.

Roughly 50 ppm per 30 years. Early 50s was 300 ppm. That seemed to be the upper limit for a long time. There are a bunch of graphs around. It's seasonal and has a hint of an exponential.

1000 ppm starts affecting performance from co2 poisoning.

2015 was the first year we broke 3 ppm in a year.

Average for the last decade was ~2.25ppm/y

1000ppm by 2100 is probably not going to happen, but considering the significant lag behind the effects, it's starting to look more and more likely that we will hit 1000ppm at some high point, perhaps in the 22nd century, before it starts going down again.

Regarding the poisoning comment, that's not very accurate. It's true, there is reduced performance at high CO2 levels, but 1000 is probably the lowest bound for the most sensitive people and the effects aren't really noticeable until high teens. You can still function indefinitely at those levels.

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