Comment Re:really - the whole world's ? (Score 1) 57
Taking a step back, isn't this just evolution at work? Survival of the fittest? Corals that can survive the warmer temperatures will evolve and spread?
In the long run it is, but the current warming is too fast for evolution to keep up. If species can't adapt fast enough, they just die. In the long run, other species will probably re-occupy the ecological niche, but this can sometimes take a long time. After the extinction of rugose corals at the Permian–Triassic extinction event, for example, there was a gap of tens of millions of years until unrelated species evolved to fill the ecological niche.
Yeah, we're definitely part of the cause of it, but an asteroid millions of years ago caused dramatic climatic change as well.
That did not work out well for the species living at the time. Of the animals, nothing larger than a squirrel survived. We would prefer this not to happen while we are to the species living at the time.
From 110,000 years ago until 11,000 years ago we were in the middle of a pretty substantial ice age.
Yes, the last glacial maximum.