Rememberwhen they accused Scott Morrison of being responsible for the problems of theG.B.R., being so badly cared for and he was able to publish a document fromUnited Nations saying it was the best year for many years!
CLIMATEFEAR-MONGERING FAIL: GREAT BARRIER REEF SEES THIRD RECORD YEAR OF CORAL GROWTH
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August11, 2024
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Massiveincreases in coral across the Australian Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have beenreported for 2023-24 making it the third record year in a row of heavy growth. Acrossalmost all parts of the 1,500 mile long reef, from the warmer northern watersto the cooler conditions in the south, coral is now at its highest level sincedetailed observations began. The inconvenient news has been ignored inmainstream media which, curiously, have focused on a non-story in Nature thatclaimed “climate change” poses an “existential threat” to the GBR. “The sciencetells us that the GBR is in danger – and we should be guided by the science,”Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong told VictoriaGill of BBC News. The existential threat is “now realised” reported the Guardian.
Travellingback from the reality inhabited by the Guardian, it can be reportedthat last year’s gains were eye-catchingly large. On the Northern GBR, hardcoral cover leapt from 35.8% to 39.5%, in the central area it rose from 30.7%to 34%, while in the south it went from 34% to 39.1%. The report is the resultof monitoring of hard coral cover reefs from August 2023 to June 2024 by theAustralian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The percentage of hard coralcover is a standard measurement of reef conditions used by scientists and issaid to provide a simple and robust measure of reef health. Similar reportshave been published by the AIMS over the last 38 years.
Forthe first two years of record coral growth, the narrative-driven mainstreammedia ignored the recovery story. But this year, the suspicious might contend,something had to be done to blunt the sensational news of the stonking rises.Help has come in the form of a paper just published in Nature whichuses proxy temperature measurements and climate models to suggest temperaturesaround the vast reef area are the highest recorded in 400 years.(Nobody washere to record any of this for at least 300 years and it has only been in thelast 50 or so years that much notice was given to the reef. So highestrecorded in 400 years is a lie).
Thistime period is the blink of an ecological eye-lid given that coral has beenaround for hundreds of millions of years during periods when temperatures andatmospheric carbon dioxide have been markedly different. Nevertheless, this issaid to pose an existential threat despite it being known that sub-tropicalcorals thrive between 24°C-32°C, and in fact seem to grow faster in warmerwaters.
Naturalbleaching, when the coral expels algae and turns white, can occur withtemporary local temperature changes, but evidence from many years of scientificobservation suggests the corals often and quickly recover. Long term changes inwater temperature – tiny compared to coral’s optimum conditions – pose nothreat, but alarmists concentrate on the bleaching events to warn of possibleecological collapse. The Guardian noted a recent fifth massbleaching in eight years across the reef, driven, it claimed, by “globalheating”. So far, its readers are in the dark as to how this squares with therecent record growth.
Adecade of mass bleaching, relentlessly catastrophised in the interests of NetZero by activists in the media, academia and politics, does not appear to havedone much harm to the recent growth in the Northern GBR.
Orthe central area.
Oreven in the south where the water temperatures are slightly cooler.
Toread the latest AIMS report is to read the best possible spin on the story thatthe reef is heading for disaster. And, of course, it is all down to theunproven changes in climate that are said to be caused by human activity. It isclaimed this will cause more frequent and long-lasting marine ‘heatwaves’, aproduct no doubt of a climate model. It is generally suggested that theseheatwaves and mass bleaching were rare prior to the 1990s, although how anyonecan know this is a mystery. Detailed GBR observations and temperaturerecordings barely stretch back a few decades.
Asis often the case with publicly-funded operations, the political message isnever far from the surface. Thus we learn that “enabling coral reefs to survivethese stressful conditions requires a combination of a reduction in globalgreenhouse emissions to stabilise temperatures… and the development ofinterventions to help reefs adapt to and recover from the effects of climatechange”. No doubt this last proposal requires large amounts of money from thetaxpayer to cover the costs of such worthy work.
Noteveryone goes along with the coral fear-mongering. The distinguished scientistDr. Peter Ridd has studied the GBR for 40 years and notes that coral numbershave “exploded” in recent years. He says that all 3,000 reefs inthe world’s largest system have excellent coral. “Not a single reef oreven a single species of reef life has been lost since British settlement,” hereports. The impact of bleaching is “routinely exaggerated by the media andsome scientific organisations”. In his view, the public is being deceived aboutthe reef. “How this occurred is a serious issue for the reef-science communitywhich has embraced emotion, ideology and raw self-interest to maintainfunding,” he observes.
Thisarticle was first published at TheDaily Sceptic.
