claim: a new study by scientists at the Australian Research Council finds that the ongoing bleaching event is mainly due to human-caused global warming, and that if global warming proceeds as currently expected, “large parts” of the Great Barrier Reef could die by the mid-2030s.
evidence: In March 2017, the journal Nature published a paper showing that huge sections of an 800-kilometre ( 500 mi ) stretch in the northern part of the reef had died in the course of 2016 due to high water temperatures, an event that the authors put down to the effects of global climate change.