The Great Barrier Reef a potential global warming casualty

The Age newspaper in Australia has obtained an early draft of the second installment of the IPCC fourth assessment, and it doesn't bode well for the Land Down Under.

An excerpt from the BBC story:

The Great Barrier Reef is regarded as the world's largest living organism.

It is Australia's number one tourist destination, attracting a million visitors a year, and is home to sharks, turtles and numerous brightly coloured fish. ...

It warns that the Great Barrier Reef will become "functionally extinct" because of coral bleaching - which occurs when the plant-like organisms that make up the coral die, leaving behind a white limestone skeleton.

It takes at least a decade for coral to start recovering from severe bleaching.

But the reef may not have the chance to recover, scientists warn, as temperatures continue to rise and the sea becomes more acidic. This raises the risk that the coral will die outright.