The near vertiginous rise in the growth of coral over the last five years across Australia’s Great Barrier Reef should put the tin hat on the ubiquitous Armageddon predictions of the imminent collapse of the reef – at least for the time being. According to the latest survey by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AMS), coral cover rose by 27% in the northern reef. Massive growth of 26% and 39% were recorded in the central and southern areas respectively.
As late as October 2020, the BBC was telling stories about the Reef losing half its coral and citing a study that said it was due to “warmer seas driven by climate change”. No doubt the recent heartening news of recovery will delight Extinction Rebellion supporter and Guardian activist George Monbiot. He was one of the first to start the coral doomsday ball rolling by telling his readers in 1999 that the “imminent total destruction of the world’s coral reefs is not a scare story”. Forecasting that most of the coral in the Indian Ocean will die by 2000, he suggested that one of the world’s great ecosystems “is now on the point of total collapse”.
Tropical coral thrives in waters between 24°C and 32°C. It is highly adaptable but seems to dislike sudden changes in temperature, often caused by natural weather oscillations such as El Niño events. Under such conditions it can die back and bleach, but as recent evidence shows, it quickly recovers when normal localised conditions return. Global warming started to run out of steam a couple of decades ago and there has been a standstill for at least seven years. However, minor long term temperature changes are unlikely to cause many problems for highly resilient coral. The resilience is clearly shown below in the latest AMS figures for the northern Reef.
The recovery was just as dramatic in the central part of the reef.
AMS data for the northern and central Reef, where water temperature is higher, show that there were very rapid increases in the coral cover. This was helped by few ‘disturbances’, of which the most significant was a recent absence of crown-of-thorns starfish attacks. It is also noted that most of the recent increase is due to the fast-growing Acropora coral – which of course accounts for a lot of the routine die backs when conditions turn less benign. All of this looks like natural processes, although the AMS is still wedded to the notion that human-caused climate change is a major culprit. The Reef remains exposed to “the predicted consequences of climate change”. The observed recovery “can be reversed in a short amount of time”, it says.
Significant research into the Reef only got going in the mid 1970s. Before that, the area was largely unobserved and few records about bleaching and temperature changes were made. Last Monday, the Daily Sceptic reported that a treasure trove of 1871 sea temperatures taken on board a scientific mission travelling the length of the Great Barrier Reef had recently been compared to current measurements logged at the same areas. No differences were found by research scientist Dr. Bill Johnson, leading him to conclude that: “Alarming claims that the East Australian Current have warmed due to global warming are therefore without foundation”.
The dataset has been know about for a few months but largely ignored, presumably because the findings disturb the current political agenda. A common dismissive trope was that the measurements were likely to be inaccurate. However, it seems unlikely that a group of scientists in 1871, on a scientific mission travelling to view a total solar eclipse off Cape York, were unable to correctly use a thermometer. The readings may have flaws and be open to other interpretations, but they undoubtedly offer an interesting insight into the history of the Reef. Certainly, such rare data should not be dismissed out of hand.
The lack of vintage temperature data is a big problem in the climate world. The main surface temperature database used by the IPCC and scientists around the world is HadCRUT, run by the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. A recent PhD student John McLean found that the database was started in 1850, but after five years just three stations were reporting data from the whole of the southern hemisphere. It wasn’t until 1950 that 50% of the area was covered.
Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see if the Reef’s dramatic recent recovery affects the huge funds and grants that have poured into the area over the last 25 years. Biologist and long time observer of Reef politics, Jennifer Marohasy has documented the growth of the finance involved since 1998. This was when the World Wildlife Fund launched its campaign focused on the Reef, and saw its Federal Government grant increase seven-fold over four years to A$3.5 million. She notes that Reef temperatures are now monitored by the AMS at 80 sites, “and do not show a long term warming trend”. Furthermore, says Marohasy, there are no studies showing either a deterioration in coral cover or water quality. But still the headlines suggest a problem, she reports.
In January this year, the Australian Government announced A$1 billion to save the Reef. In Marohasy’s view, “This is really protection money to be paid to the Reef Mafia; not really to protect the Reef”. There will be a rush to get the money, she continued, “and then it will be taken out into the pockets of the many who will continue the myth of the dying Great Barrier Reef”.
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It’s like they have some vested interest in lying to us.
They do; just one project in their attempt to force the globalists plan for absolute control over us.
Looking at the graph, it pretty clearly suggests that there was a substantial decrease in ‘coral cover’, which has been mitigated by an equally substantial and dramatic increase, particularly in Northern GBR… has anyone attempted to explain it? Are the graphs wrong, or is there a ‘hockey stick’ explanation?
There does seem to be some correlation of the NBR coverage to the the El Nino events which peaked in 2017 and 2020 (two events).
I was reading an interesting article that seemed to have evidence that the Australian Govt grants annual licences for the harvesting of 100’s of tonnes of coral from the GB reef each year? It seems a rum situation if a dying reef is being butchered by Government licensees? One of the comments to the article summed it up well, ‘it’s like the world only has 10 pigs/sheep/cows left and in order to protect them only allows the slaughter of 9.”
The payments for those annual licences to destroy the reef are required to pay the US$1billion grants to protect the reef… such is the level of competence in our leaders, nobody can see the disconnect here.
I doubt the Moonbat will be writing anything positive about this. If he did, it wouldn’t get past the Grauniad’s editors. Maybe the BBC will cover it?
My 1970s schoolboy book of dinosaurs taught that as the environment changes those lifeforms that are better suited to the new conditions will thrive and evolve to take even more advantage of them while those plants and animals more suited to the old ways will wither and die off.
Some you win George, some you lose.
Case in point. Crown-of-thorns starfish mount an attack when the population grows out of control, eats all the choice coral, then dies off as it’s exhausts it’s source of nutrients.
Low numbers of crown-of-thorns starfish, the reef grows over years, as does the crown-of-thorns starfish which at a critical point, mounts another over population attack.
Circle of life………
Question: Would the worlds oceans be over populated with corals were it not for crown-of-thorns starfish attacks and regular bleaching events?
Answer: Perhaps, there are corals around UK shores.
This approach is routine for climate alarmists: choose a population that fluctuates, and then only report the declines, never the increases. They did it with bees, too.
When the data is going the wrong way for the argument, the right and noble thing to do is to fudge the data. In this case, it’s a big reef so this isn’t going to be easy. But I think I have an idea, and my guess is that it will have the whole-hearted support of the Australian population, who are well noted for their perspicacity and informed insight into such matters. My idea is to blow up the entire fricking reef. With dynamite. Don’t be squeamish, hear me out. We blow the thing out of the water, lock, stock and starfish, and then. Then what, I lost my train. Oh yes, then we can say that we blew it up to save it, because of climate change and carbon, and the reason we had to do it was because of Trump. No, wait, he’s gone. Because of white supremacists. Yes, that’s it. And there are others; they aren’t the only ones, you know who they are, you’ve spent years hating them. Anyway, where was I again, oh yes, Trump destroyed the Great Barrier Reef because he’s an awful person and also because someone said something mean about Jacinda Adern and also because Novak Jkokovic refused to take the vaccine, because he’s a coward and washed up and probably wouldn’t have won anyway and was taking the easy way out. Yeah, I blame Margaret Court also, because she had a tennis stadium named after her but refused to budge on her Christian beliefs so it’s her fault. Yeah, so blow it up, and blame the enemy. Take your vaccine and isn’t that Ash Barty lovely bet she took the vaccine.
Amazing!
All the logic, articulation and sense of the average climate protester captured in a few short paragraphs
It’s enough to turn yer coral browne.
I’ve.been following this climate change garbage for a number of years. Brought to us by the same ‘production team’ that have presented us with covid! The same template with a full catalogue of failed‘scientific models, abject lack of empirical data, emotional messaging and so on. Fake problem / fake solution!
And with no open debate with real experts
if global warming doesn’t happen my faith in the government will be ruined forever.
Trouble is, if it doesn’t happen, we won’t hear the end of the green loonies crowing about their success in stopping it………
‘We have the lockdowns to thank. This is how nature recovers when people stop flying. My best mate who is a climate scientologist told me there’ll be a climate lockdown in September if this promising trend doesn’t continue and he’s been to Uni and everything.’
If he’s been to Uni, he must be right, therefore it is imperative that every industrialised nation except maybe China ban all fossil fuels by 2025. Yours sincerely XR.
Tony Heller ( youtube, censored ) has exposed all these increasingly ludicrous predictions going back many decades. As we all know it’s a gigantic fraud much like coldvid.
Much like pretty much everything we’ve been told for decades.
Putin now laughing like a drain at the west’s hysteria over military exercises.
His website “Real Climate Science” is worth subscribing too…
“Saving” the Great Barrier Reef…..like “Saving Lives” from Convid. Sounds like the Great Barrier Reef is in real trouble because their version of saving lives is poisoning murdering and maiming people with a genetic graphene bioweapon so when they say theyre going to save the Great Barrier Reef, we must assume that means poisoning it and destroying it.
Even St David (Attenborough) seems to be singing from the same hymn sheet. From YouTube: Sir David Attenborough On The Devastating Truth About Coral Reefs
9,691 views Jun 8, 2021
Unfortunately he’s just another in the line of scum who’ve sold their souls to the highest bidder.
He’s spoken of scathingly in Dr Patrick Moore’s book ”Fake Invisible Catastrophes”.
The lies published in support of the Great Global Warming Scam are simply amazing. Good that this one has been discredited but many more are still regarded as true by too many people.
Read Dr Patrick Moore’s very readable book ”Fake Invisible Catastrophes And Threats Of Doom” for an excellent refutation of the tripe talked about the Barrier Reef. And lots of other things (including the ”demise” of the polar bears, etc.)
Yep, read that. Saint Attenborough of the Blue Planet has a lot to answer for
I’m pretty sure they’ve been saying the Great Barrier Reef is dead or dying for about 40 years, but it seems to have enjoyed more comebacks than Frank Sinatra.
It’s a billion pound fraud… steal off the taxpayers to fund a non existent crisis. When the ‘crisis’ is over, kudos to the ‘scientists’ that fixed it