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.
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These eco nutter would crucify a polar bear if it served their purpose of destroying the market economy. Delingpole was entirely correct in watermelons about these folk, he may have lost the plot in some ways but that book stands the test of time.
Apparently polar bears are very good to eat. The crucifixion idea of the eco nutters may be to enhance the animal’s palatibility…….
‘According to one guest, the bear meat there is boiled for six hours and fried another two, to kill parasites.’
‘Modern Inuit and Inupiat value the flavor nuances of different bears or parts of a bear. Some prefer den polar bears, instead of bears caught in the open, because they taste better.
The Cree consider the front and back paws (tukiq) the best eating.
For many Inupiat, polar bear meat remains a favorite meal and a prestigious gift.’
‘The Norwegian restaurateur André Grytbakk, manager of the upscale Huset in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, occasionally dishes out polar bear steaks with potatoes or a slice of roast in red wine sauce.
He also offers a bear meat snack with lingonberry pickle. As it’s “a rough kind of meat,” the chef recommends a heavy wine with it, such as full-bodied Bordeaux, from the Huset’s 1,200-bottle cave.’
Anchorage Daily News Feb. 2017
Would I serve Polar Bears with potatoes or chips?
Roast potatoes.
Bear fat apparently has excellent roasting properties.
If I may, a 2019 Ch. Angludet?
Probably also worth getting in a few bottles of Nyetimber for opening in due course:
https://www.steynonline.com/documents/14131.pdf
I like a bit of Branston with my bear and Marrow fat peas, but my life doesn’t like those so I am happy with garden peas.
I have tried brown bear in a Bucharest restaurant; not great. No Branston or marrow far peas (or Ch. Angludet 2019) were available so that may have been why.
My excuse is that it seemed by far and away the best choice from a menu whose English translation included such delights as ‘Peasant’s Cock Soup’ and ‘Fried Crap’.
The 2019 is still a bit young? There was little 2018 and no 2017 so maybe go back 10-15 years?
Or, out of left field, a flanders red beer, or maybe a kriek?
I would watch that “fried crap” if I were you
Sound advice. There is seems to be a great deal of it about, particularly in Whitehall/Westminster……
Too fatty for me in the summer months. Anyway I’ve been reliably informed that there’s only one skinny one left on an ice flow somewhere.
I want to eat a polar bear now.
Actually the Polar bear is going to eat you and wash you all down with a refreshing coke
OK so on this website we are questioning things. After all in science, if that is what is meant to be about scepticism is the highest calling and blind faith the one unpardonable sin. —–Dear BBC, SKY NEWS Guardian Independent etc etc etc. ——Blind faith has no place in science. The fact that you never question any aspect of “climate crisis” claims or the energy solutions that are allegedly going to fix it means you are not indulging in science, you are indulging in advocacy. ——-But the activist media don’t question any of it because they know what they are going to find. —-A smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency with no evidence and all for political purposes.
So…..minor increases in temperature appear to be beneficial to the Great Barrier Reef.
I wonder if there are other, global, benefits to those minor increases in temparature?
Oh!
‘We have also seen that assuming a warmer world is more dangerous than a cooler world is highly questionable, after all the baseline temperature used is from the end of the Little Ice Age, the coldest and most miserable period in the past 12,000 years.’
You mean?
‘….all the benefits of warming and additional CO2 have not been considered in any of the AR6 reports, so how can they equate greenhouse gas emissions with dangerous warming? They can’t. Thus, without establishing a need to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, the IPCC produced a 2,000-page report on how to do it.’
Oops!
‘In every volume we see that the selection of papers cited, model input, and models chosen was guided not by a desire to uncover the truth, but by how best to reach their pre-determined conclusions. The three volumes, total 7,519 pages and most of content is made useless by obvious reporting and confirmation bias. In summary, we see that the hundreds, maybe thousands of authors were given the answer, and told to find the data and analysis to support it.
What a useless waste of time and money.‘
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/03/13/climate-model-bias-7-wgiii/
The wheels really are coming off……….
Over the decades there have been so many hyped up scare stories about the GBR I’ve lost count: first it was global cooling, now global warming/boiling; sea level rises/falls, pollution & plastic islands, tourism, etc etc. None of them seem to have cottoned on to the fact that the GBR seems to be highly resilient and self-regenerative over periods of more than a couple of random weeks in June. But that wouldn’t fit The Narrative™, would it?
It’s only been around for millions of years in warm times and cool times, so what would it “know” about survival?
What hope is there that this Net Zero and climate fraud tyranny can be halted when on a sceptical website like this there are only 14 comments on article like this? ———The UK Population are giving these phony planet savers such an easy ride, and as result we are going to deserve all the impoverishment coming our way
No, they are going to deserve all the impoverishment coming our way. We know what to expect, they don’t…I hope I’m not around to see their pathetic faces when the penny drops.
This is really good news. I wouldn’t want to GBR to disappear for any reason, and the fact it has recovered so strongly when the doomsters were predicting otherwise is excellent.
The old bloke who was running the Darwin aquarium back in 2018 told me the reason their coral reef was healthy whereas there were problems with the GBR was due to a lack of agricultural runoff.
I saw an eco-twerp being interviewed about 12 months ago on the (good?) news of the resurgence of the GBR. Surely he was happy? Oh no, it was the ‘wrong type’ of coral….
I like the cut of his jib, an honest outspoken scientist who still believes in Science.
The downticker strikes again in the comments. Pathetic!