My views on this subject have evolved over the years and will probably change again. That said, here's what I believe and we can make a correlation to our tanks.
I believe the world is naturally going through a warming cycle. History shows this to be true. I also believe we aren't contributing much in terms of temperature change; however, we are having a great impact on CO2 and ocean acidification. I believe we are irresponsible with polluting the ocean with waste and agricultural runoff and we're careless with where we put ports and shipping lanes.
So, what do we know about our tanks? We know our inhabitants can survive pretty large temperature swings and even sustained extreme temperatures for a short time. We know our inhabitants can survive a low ph environment. Hell, we all suffer from tank acidification in our homes. We also know our inhabitants can survive slightly dirty/polluted water. However, we know if we start mixing more than one of these issues it's lights out for our inhabitants.
Now, compare what we know with what's happening in the world. I'd bet any one of those single issues would not impact the reefs too much. Yet, that's not what's happening. They are being hit on all fronts. High temperatures, lower ph and pollution. It's just too much and overwhelming the reefs.
It's my belief there's one area we can have a very quick impact on saving the reefs and that is pollution. If we can stop the pollution now, this will help remove one of the dominos in the line and buy us time to get our CO2 emissions under control through smarter choices and better technology without hurting humans.
That has always been my problem with our current government's approach. They don't care about pollution, they want to hurt humans by taxing carbon emissions to reduce CO2 output. It's not right and no one is going to stand for it. The plan will never happen.
I will also add we have a very big problem with corporate capitalism that does not care one bit about the environment, instead they only answer to shareholders. This form of capitalism is killing the Earth and needs to change. Next time you're at a store, just look at all the stupid mundane, useless products that are being produced and will likely end up in a landfill in short time. It's just nuts.
Here's a good article on the subject from Forbes.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhan...sm-will-starve-humanity-by-2050/#5eb770354a36