New Report Finds One of Earth’s Most Precious Ecosystems Has Already Crossed a Scary Climate Tipping Point

At a conference in 2019, marine biologist and coral reef conservationist Melanie McField was caught off guard by a question from another attendee: How does it feel to have dedicated your life to studying an ecosystem that will be the first one wiped off the planet?

“I’m rarely dumbfounded,” McField, who now serves as director of the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People initiative, told Gizmodo. Though she was well aware of the dire state the world’s coral reefs were in, the idea that these…