Product Description

Like many coral specialists fifteen years ago, J. E. N. Veron thought Australia's Great Barrier Reef was impervious to climate change. "Owned by a prosperous country and accorded the protection it deserves, it would surely not go the way of the Amazon rain forest or the parklands of Africa, but would endure forever. That is what I thought once, but I think it no longer." This book is Veron's Silent Spring for the world's coral reefs.

Veron presents the geological history of the reef, the biology of coral reef ecosystems, and a primer on what we know about climate change. He concludes that the Great Barrier Reef and, indeed, most coral reefs will be dead from mass bleaching and irreversible acidification within the coming century unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed. If we don't have the political will to confront the plight of the world's reefs, he argues, current processes already in motion will become unstoppable, bringing on a mass extinction the world has not seen for 65 million years.

Our species has cracked its own genetic code and sent representatives of its kind to the moon--we can certainly save the world's reefs if we want to. But to achieve this goal, we must devote scientific expertise and political muscle to the development of green technologies that will dramatically reduce greenhouse emissions and reverse acidification of the oceans.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #583614 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Veron (Corals of the World) once thought Australia's Great Barrier Reef would endure forever, but after witnessing the devastation inflicted on corals by elevated sea temperatures, he now knows this is false. In his impassioned book, the former chief scientist with the Australian Institute of Marine Science highlights reefs as indicators of climate change's effects on marine and other ecosystems. Time from a reef's perspective, rather than a human perspective, is one of the book's central themes. Past mass extinctions have occurred within the lengthy frames of geological time that allowed reefs to renew themselves. Today, as reefs succumb to mass bleaching (caused by high light and elevated temperatures) and ocean acidification, they are undergoing an extinction event in the significantly shorter frame of human planetary influence. Coral health affects all marine life. According to Veron's detailed analysis, corals will be incapable of relying on genetic adaptation to recover because the time frame for such evolutionary changes is too short. Complex scientific material serves Veron's straightforward message: climate change will soon reach the point of no return—possibly within a decade—and cause disaster for not only corals but many, if not all, marine food webs. Color illus. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
Veron once thought Australia's Great Barrier Reef would endure forever, but after witnessing the devastation inflicted on corals by elevated sea temperatures, he now knows this is false. In his impassioned book, the former chief scientist with the Australian Institute of Marine Science highlights reefs as indicators of climate change's effects on marine and other ecosystems...Coral health affects all marine life. According to Veron's detailed analysis, corals will be incapable of relying on genetic adaptation to recover because the time frame for such evolutionary changes is too short. Complex scientific material serves Veron's straightforward message: climate change will soon reach the point of no return--possibly within a decade--and cause disaster for not only corals but many, if not all, marine food webs. (Publishers Weekly 20080228)

Decades of study of coral reefs inform J. E. N. Veron's big-picture account of the reef's past and future. It is an urgent, rigorous yet accessible tour de force of the geology, evolution, biology and chemistry of the reef presented through the prism of climate change...By looking at past "extinction events," like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, Veron offers an alarming glimpse into a similar future.
--Fiona Capp (The Age 20080607)

A historical, geological and biological study of the largest coral reef. The chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science uses the Great Barrier Reef as an alarming case study on the future of coral reefs. Although it is a hypothetical tale, it is a worrying look at how the Earth is in danger of suffering the worst case of mass extinction seen for 65 million years. (Times Higher Education Supplement 20080401)

Not a chronicle of the life of coral reefs, but an anticipation of their death. It is a work grounded in science, but which departed from the careful jargon of probability and possibility to become an impassioned, anguished eulogy delivered by a dear friend of the imminently deceased...[Veron‘s] book travels back through the fossil record to the remote past, reflecting on the five great extinction events that wiped out much of life on earth and finding a thread of commonality.
--Jo Chandler (The Age 20080401)

This is not a book for the fainthearted...Indeed, Veron believes we are on the brink of the sixth mass extinction of the planet. He makes his case in this book and paints a vivid picture of what we will be losing if we do not stop spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere...The book is easy to read with well-placed illustrations to explain complex concepts. It presents its argument in a logical and increasingly disturbing sequence that reaches a bleak end. It is a plea for urgent action written by a man who is passionate about the Great Barrier Reef. It should be read widely by anyone who cares about our planet.
--Louise Goggin (Australian Marine Science Association Bulletin 20080801)

Time is running out for the Great Barrier Reef, and no one knows it better than J. E. N. Veron...A Reef in Time is fascinating in that it puts climate change in context of the history of the earth, by concentrating on one element of it. It's bleak—but not as bleak as the outlook for the reef—and is backed up by extensive data and scientific research and analysis. It is the whole, and last, word on the Great Barrier Reef and climate change.
--Jodie Davis and Margaret Ambrose (Habitat Australia 20090306)

This impressive volume covers a large topic and does so very well. Though it is ostensibly centered on the Great Barrier Reef, the book treats the general nature of and environmental controls on coral reefs, and their history over geologic time since the Silurian Period...The book is highly readable and well produced.
--N. Caine (Choice )

[A Reef in Time] provides a compelling and highly readable account of the formation of the reef, as well as a description of its role as a functioning part of the ocean's ecosystem. Despite its grandeur and the appearance of permanence, the Great Barrier Reef has not always existed, nor is its future secure...Veron's account of the threats that face the Great Barrier Reef make bleak reading...Just as the Great Barrier Reef was built through countless millions of small actions by the organisms within it, so it is being threatened by the accumulation of small activities in each of our lives, events that are individually trivial but, added together, impose a huge burden on ecological communities. Veron asks why we should care. His book makes it impossible not to, and reinforces the growing call for a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. The bigger question--one that is left hanging--is how to bring this about.
--Anne Magurran (Times Literary Supplement )

About the Author
J. E. N. Veron is former Chief Scientist with the Australian Institute of Marine Science. The recipient of the 2004 Darwin Medal of the International Society for Reef Studies, he is also the author of the three-volume Corals of the World.

Customer Reviews

An instructive read on a depressing topic
Excellent overview of the Great Barrier Reef's history. The text flows, is extremely easy to read, and the chapters and headings are set out logically. Much of the background involves controversial theories (e.g. reasons for major extinctions), and these, among others, are discussed thoroughly and with sufficient maps, given the relatively short length and overall scope of the book. The important points (carbon dioxide and ocean acidification) are drilled home repeatedly without a loss of their impact.

It is clear that the target audience for this book is for newcomers to the fields of coral research or paleontology. The only major flaw I see in the book are the many identical diagrams and photographs from previous publications by Dr. Veron, but, for those who pick up this book with no prior knowledge, this same information must be novel and informative. Even for those who have a background in the above fields, there is enough new information in this book to satisfy, and a few veritable gems of insight and observation.

This book has a few ideas which people may or may not agree with Dr. Veron, but it is well-researched and well-argued. The overriding message presented in the final chapters is certainly the focus of the book, and in the end, the other details which may or may not be correct rightly take a back seat.

Overall a recommended read.

Interesting, Touching, but Terrifying
This book was awesome and proved very informative and I would highly recommend it, however the last couple of pages are where the author gives you their personal opinion (I do believe they earned their right to do so)and it is a bit of downer. Their personal outlook on the future of the coral reefs is rather bleak and suggests that within my generation's lifetime if not their own the reefs will disappear for the extension of the human race's existence. This however, arguably, makes the book of greater importance, because if people don't know then they will never be able to care.

An Unfortunate Reality
In "A Reef in Time: The Great Barrier Reef from Beginning to End" the highly respected coral reef expert J. E. N. Veron describes both the history of reefs in general and the Great Barrier Reef in particular. Certainly this book is not exactly uplifting because it outlines the future end of the reef, not in space, but in time. This end is to a large part premature and almost certainly to be brought on by human activity.

As Veron notes reefs have come and gone throughout the history of the earth, appearing in the Devonian, Permian and Triassic, only to be destroyed in mass extinction events. New and different reefs returned, but not until after hundreds of thousands to millions of years. On both sides of the Rio Grande Valley, where I now live, are immense remains of middle Permian reefs, all of which disappeared in that mother of all extinction events which marks the Permian-Triassic boundary. The reefs now stand over 4000 feet above sea level, a monument to impermanence. Such would eventually be the fate of the monumental Great Barrier Reef, but in tens of thousands of years at least. The activities of humans (in causing global warming, direct damage to reefs and acidification of the oceans) may now cause the same destruction in hundreds of years or less.

What is to be done? Venon thinks that there is some cause for hope, but I am unsure that that such hope is warranted. In this I would like to be wrong. However I see no political will on the part of either governments or populations to curb their activities in time before tipping points are reached that commit us to a major disruption of the planet. In essence we in the United States have wasted nearly eight years that we really did not have because of an administration that preferred wishful thinking to reality. Still I cannot just blame the United States as even the European Union will not reach its own goals and China and India, among others, are hurrying to reach the same levels of greenhouse gas emissions as the developed world.

Venon has written a thoughtful and well documented book that will certainly educate the reader in the current knowledge of reefs and the likely result of our current predicament. I recommend it, but be aware that you may find it depressing, despite Venon's attempts to be upbeat.