Corals Won’t Disappear, Contrary to What the New York Times Claims

[rangerrebew]

Corals Won’t Disappear, Contrary to What the New York Times Claims
8 hours ago Anthony Watts

In a recent The New York Times’ article, “Corals Won’t Survive a Warmer Planet, a New Study Finds,” Sachi Kitajima Mulkey reports that nearly all Atlantic corals will cease growing by the end of this century due to projected rising temperatures. The article claims that over 70 percent of reefs will begin dying by 2040, and that 99 percent could vanish if global warming exceeds 2°C. This is false. The piece frames corals as doomed victims of climate change, unable to adapt to increased temperature, but paleoclimate data and peer reviewed research refute the NYT’s assertions.

From an interview, the NYT article quotes University of Exeter geoscientist Chris Perry, one of the authors of a new study on coral, which was published recently in the journal Nature. Perry claims, “We’ve seen off-the-scale warming, the magnitude and longevity of which has never been seen in the region.” Study co-author Alice Webb adds that “the reefs have changed so much that they’re not even slightly doing what the reefs of the past used to do.” These sweeping statements, framed as scientific consensus, form the backbone of the NYT narrative that corals are incapable of surviving the modest warming projected this century.

But both history and peer-reviewed science show otherwise. Corals are among the most ancient and resilient organisms on Earth. As explained in Climate at a Glance: Coral Reefs, coral thrive in warm water, not cold water and have existed continuously for the past 60 million years, surviving temperatures and carbon dioxide levels significantly higher than what is occurring today. They have survived mass extinctions, ice ages, and periods far hotter than today.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/09/23/corals-wont-disappear-contrary-to-what-the-new-york-times-claims/

[rangerrebew]

Contrary to NYT Claims, Corals Are Thriving And Far from Doomed
Historical and modern evidence shows corals survive warmer seas, bleaching, and rising sea levels, defying media doomsday predictions.
by Anthony Watts  September 23, 2025, 9:04 AM

In a recent The New York Times’ article, “Corals Won’t Survive a Warmer Planet, a New Study Finds,” Sachi Kitajima Mulkey reports that nearly all Atlantic corals will cease growing by the end of this century due to projected rising temperatures. [emphasis, links added]


The article claims that over 70 percent of reefs will begin dying by 2040, and that 99 percent could vanish if global warming exceeds 2°C. This is false.

The piece frames corals as doomed victims of climate change, unable to adapt to increased temperature, but paleoclimate data and peer-reviewed research refute the NYT’s assertions.

From an interview, the NYT article quotes University of Exeter geoscientist Chris Perry, one of the authors of a new study on coral, which was published recently in the journal Nature.

https://climatechangedispatch.com/corals-thriving-nyt-claims/

[rangerrebew]

The NY Slimes glooming and dooming again, or is it still?

[Smokin Joe]

Having personally collected fossil corals from rocks 500,000,000 years old, I'm pretty sure they are tougher than the NYT thinks. They survived, when entire classes of critters did not (Trilobites, Ammonites, non avian dinosaurs, etc.).