“All the climate models suggest that extreme heat waves will become annual events by mid- to late-century on most reefs in the world,” Van Oppen told me. “Rates of recovery are not going to be fast enough to cope with that. So I do think we need to intervene and help them. “Hopefully the world will come to its senses soon and actually start to reduce greenhouse gases,” she went on. “Or maybe there will be some wonderful technological invention that will solve the problem. Who knows what’s going to happen? But we need to buy time. So I see assisted evolution as filling that gap, being a bridge
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