[Coral-List] Number of Signees of ISRS Coral Bleaching & Climate Change Petition reaches 1000

[Rupert Ormond]

Dear Coral Listers,

The number of ISRS members, coral-listers and colleagues signing the 
on-line petition in support of the ISRS Consensus Statement on Coral 
Bleaching and Climate Change has passed a thousand! Indeed at the moment 
of writing it has reached 1129! And this in only 5 days, a point to note 
when lobbying congressmen, government ministers, and COP21 delegates.

The Society is enormously grateful to all of you who have taken the time 
to sign the petition and lobby friends and colleagues to do likewise. It 
is a privilege to find oneself among a community of like-minded 
scientists, willing to speak up on behalf of the coral reefs we study 
and care so much about.

If you have not so far signed the on-line petition, please consider 
doing so. It should only take a moment. It can be found at: 
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/isrs-stop-climate-change-killing-coral-reefs

If you have yourself signed the petition, please consider sending an 
email to your like minded friends and colleagues encouraging them to 
also do so. The draft of a suitable email that you might like to copy as 
is or adapt is shown below.

With thanks to all,

Prof. Rupert Ormond, Corresponding Secretary, International Society for 
Reef Studies
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland

DRAFT EMAIL TO COPY AND / OR ADAPT:

Dear Friends and Colleagues!

I am writing to you, because, as you may know, corals are uniquely 
sensitive to above normal ocean temperatures, and increasingly, as a 
result of global warming, coral reefs around the world are being 
devastated though a mechanism called coral bleaching. When water 
temperatures increase above about 30 degs C, the corals turn white, and 
then, if unusually warm conditions continue, they die. Because of this 
and other factors the amount of live coral on reefs as far apart as the 
Caribbean and the Great Barrier Reef is now only a third to a half of 
what it was historically. In fact, as I write, coral bleaching is 
occurring across the Pacific in places as far apart as Hawaii and the 
Great Barrier Reef, and right across the northern Caribbean. The 
International Society for Reef Studies, to which most reef scientists 
and managers belong, has recently produced an evidence-based Statement 
(that can be downloaded from their website: www.coralreefs.org 
<http://www.coralreefs.org>) urging nations and negotiators at the 
forthcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Paris to adopt restrictions 
on carbon emissions that will insure global temperatures increase by no 
more then 1.5 deg C in the long-term. At present we are heading for an 
increase of at least 2.5 deg C, which will prove very difficult if not 
impossible to reverse. Please support this statement by signing the 
petition at

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/isrs-stop-climate-change-killing-coral-reefs

PLEASE DO THIS and pass on this request by forwarding this email to 
like-minded colleagues and friends, urging them to do likewise.

with thanks,




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