Coral Growth at the Great Barrier Reef has "Exploded" in Recent Years

Coral numbers on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have “exploded” in recent years despite highly publicised episodes of bleaching, according to a recently published report from the distinguished scientist Dr. Peter Ridd. Almost constant scares are raised by activist scientists and journalists about bleaching events including a nonsense story recently published by the Daily Mail and Reuters that suggested the GBR was in danger of disappearing. Ridd notes that the impact of bleaching is “routinely exaggerated by the media and some science organisations”. He goes on to state that all 3,000 individual reefs in the world’s largest reef system have excellent coral. “Not a single reef or even a single species of reef life has been lost since British settlement,” he adds.

Coral loss on the GBR and elsewhere is one of the great poster scares used by climate alarmists to promote the collectivist Net Zero agenda. Every bleaching event, when corals expel algae in response to natural and localised spikes in water temperatures, is used to forecast catastrophe. Peter Ridd has been studying coral at the GBR for 40 years and is almost a lone voice in calling out what is a major scientific scandal. “The public is being deceived about the reef. How this occurred is a serious issue for the reef-science community which has embraced emotion, ideology and raw self-interest to maintain funding.”

Ridd goes on to note that Australia spends $500 million each year to “save the reef”, but this money could be much better spent on genuine environmental problems such as control of invasive weeds and feral animals, or restoring indigenous fire practices into forests and range land. The GBR is observed to be “one of the most pristine ecosystems in Australia”. It has no feral animals or invasive plants, “unlike virtually any other Australian ecosystem”.

Mainstream attempts to catastrophise natural events at the GBR have suffered a few setbacks of late with record levels of coral being declared in the last two years. Coral alarmism was understandably dropped from the headlines for a short while but the hysterics have been out in force recently with another outbreak of bleaching reported. The graph below compiled by Ridd shows the recent sensational coral growth at the GBR with a note of recent bleaching events that are, needless to say, often portrayed in Armageddon terms.

Despite the GBR experiencing four supposedly devastating bleaching events between 2016 and 2022, there has never been more coral in the modern record than in 2022-23, Ridd points out. Quite how the Daily Mail and Reuters can publish their drivel about the GBR being on the “cusp of the worst bleaching event in history” is a mystery, unless, perhaps, they define history as starting sometime around lunchtime last Tuesday.

Ridd goes back a little further in his GBR researches, stating that there has been no decline in the rate of growth of coral going back to 1570. Alas, there is no publicly available information taken from coral growth rings since 2005, “despite this being the period of most interest”, and he suggests this is scandalous. Interestingly, there had been no slowing of growth between 1860 and 1960 when agricultural production and pesticide use started. It is a common eco scare to suggest the GBR is being badly affected by the run off from fertiliser and pesticides, but Ridd finds that agricultural pesticides are generally in such low concentrations “that they cannot be measured even with the most sensitive of instruments”. Much of the GBR is a long way from land and there is massive flushing of water from the Pacific Ocean. Sediment and run-off from farms are said to have “negligible impact” on the GBR.

Ridd also considers claims that coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrass meadows and freshwater wetlands are seriously degraded, degradation said to negatively impact the GBR. “There is limited evidence that that these linkages are significant,” states Ridd. “In addition we should note that of these ecosystems, mangroves are in excellent condition, and seagrass meadows are still widespread and generally healthy despite fluctuating greatly due to cyclones and floods,” he adds.

Dr. Peter Ridd is a man on a mission to bring sanity to the science and debate over corals, and the GBR in particular. He was fired from his professorial post at Queensland-based James Cook University in 2018 for “uncollegiate” behaviour. As the Guardian has observed, Ridd was sacked “for breaches of the university’s code of conduct relating to public commentary about the GBR”. In other words, he was punished for rocking the boat on the ‘settled’ narrative surrounding the doomed ‘send more money immediately’ reef. He is only too keen to test his work in public, and he throws down the gauntlet to the controlling scientific elite. Rather than ignoring the data and hoping nobody will notice, “I challenge them to a public science duel – any time any place,” he says.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.