Professor John E.N. “Charlie” Veron is a world authority on coral (he has discovered and described about 1/3 of coral species), He is an marine researcher, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science and author with Dr Mary Stafford-Smith (also of Coral Reef Research) of “Corals of the World. Reef building corals worldwide” (see:
http://www.nhbs.com/corals_of_the_world_tefno_98887.html ).
Professor John E.N. "Charlie" Veron, “Is the Great Barrier Reef on Death Row?”, powerpoint lecture, joint event of the Royal Society with the Zoological Society of London and introduced by Sir David Attenborough FRS, 6 July 2009: “450 ppm [CO2] will bring on the demise of the GBR [Great Barrier Reef] …320-350 [ppm CO2 needed]” and
“CO2 in Summary.
320 ppm: occasional [coral] bleaching
345 ppm: sporadic mass bleaching
387 ppm: inevitable long-term decline
450 ppm: rapid decline, reefs cease to be biodiverse
600 ppm: acidification affecting all biota
800 ppm: mid-Eocene extinction comnditions
1000 ppm: reefs only geological structures. Sixth Mass Extinction.” [1].
Professor John Veron (Coral Reef Research), co-signatory to the statement by the technical working group on coral, The Royal Society on 6th July 2009: "The Earth’s atmospheric CO2 level must be returned to <350ppm to reverse this escalating ecological crisis and to 320ppm to ensure permanent planetary health. Actions to achieve this must be taken urgently. The commonly mooted best case target of 450ppm and a time frame reaching to 2050 will plunge the Earth into an environmental state that has not occurred in millions of years and from which there will be no recovery for coral reefs and for many other natural systems on which humanity depends. Working group signatories Professor John Veron (Coral Reef Research) Dr Mary Stafford-Smith (Coral Reef Research), Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (University of Queensland) ]and 20 other eminent scientists including Sir David Attenborough FRS (working group co-chair)]. [2].
[1]. Professor John E.N. "Charlie" Veron, “Is the Great Barrier Reef on Death Row?”, joint event of the Royal Society with the Zoological Society of London and introduced by Sir David Attenborough FRS, 06 July 2009, powerpoint lecture, 61 minutes: http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=3093# ; Coral Reef Crisis Meeting, 6th July 2009, with powerpoint lecture by Dr John "Charlie" Veron as introduced by Sir David Attenborough, Coral Reef Research: http://www.coralreefresearch.org/html/crr_rs.htm .
[2]. Output of the technical working group meeting, The Royal Society, London, 6th July, 2009, “The Coral Reef Crisis: scientific justification for critical CO2 threshold levels of <350ppm”: http://www.carbonequity.info/PDFs/The-Coral-Reef-Crisis.pdf .