SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia's Great Barrier Reef has only a 50 percent chance of survival if global CO2 emissions are not reduced at least 25 percent by 2020, a coalition of Australia's top reef and climate scientists said on Tuesday.

The 13 scientists said even deeper cuts of up to 90 percent by 2050 would necessary if the reef was to survive future coral bleaching and coral death caused by rising ocean temperatures.

"We've seen the evidence with our own eyes. Climate change is already impacting the Great Barrier Reef," Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, said in a briefing to Australian MPs on Tuesday.

Australia, one of the world's biggest CO2 emitters per capita, has only pledged to cut its emissions by five percent from 2000 levels by 2020.

It has said it would go further, with a 25 percent cut, if a tough international climate agreement is reached at U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen in December, but this is looking increasingly unlikely with legally binding targets now off the agenda.

More of the story,
click image