Three-quarters of sampled Australian green voters believe the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is doing worse than usual, with 44% stating the coral is at a record low. Overall only 3% of all Australian voters knew that the coral was at a “record high” – the correct answer following two years of record growth that has broken all previous records. These findings are not a surprise, since the true picture on the reef has been downplayed, even hidden, by mainstream interested parties in the media and in science.
The results come from a survey carried out by the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF) and is the work of coral authority Dr. Peter Ridd and science journalist Jo Nova. They note that the poor scores reflect badly on media coverage that reports every local coral bleaching event, but rarely the rapid recovery. “It’s almost as if Australians have been subject to years of misinformation,” they say. The silence on the health of the corals is “deafening”. Jo Nova has an idea why the media work so closely with the science establishment to suppress the real story: “Corals are thriving but Australians are spending half a billion dollars to save them.” As atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen says, the climate narrative is absurd, but trillions of dollars say it is not absurd.
It can be argued that few scientific propositions are more absurd than the suggestion that the recent gentle warming spell is leading to the destruction of coral reefs around the world. In a recent report, Dr. Ridd noted that the IPCC said in 2018 “with high confidence” that corals would decline worldwide by 70-90% if temperatures rose just 0.4°C. Data on coral in many parts of the world are less reliable than for the GBR, but Ridd said it seemed that across the globe there has not been a major drop in coral cover to date.
Corals grow in waters between 24°C and 32°C, and in fact often grow quicker in higher temperatures. But they dislike sudden changes in local water temperature caused by natural weather events such as El Niño oscillations. As a result they often bleach, but the evidence suggests they rapidly return to health as natural conditions become more stable. On the GBR, conditions have been testing until recently with powerful El Niños causing rapid temperatures changes, and cyclones smashing the shallow corals. For decades, scientists and their media messengers have hyped up the temporary loss of coral to secure grants and promote political causes surrounding climate Armageddon.
It obviously worked – and is still working.
As can be seen, only 3% of Australians know the true state of the coral. Barely 10% knew coral cover was above average, while 80% thought erroneously that the situation was average or worse. Ridd and Niva note that ten years after coral cover hit a record low, half the country still doesn’t realise the reef has recovered. The “phenomenal health” of the GBR is said to be virtually unknown, yet the public are paying half a billion dollars in taxes to save it. In addition the country is “being misled into thinking that expensive low carbon policies and Net Zero targets will help protect the reef, when there is no correlation between CO2 levels and coral cover”.
The authors point some fingers at those responsible for the ignorance about the current condition of the reef among the general population. Four years ago, the State of the Climate report from the national science agency CSIRO and the national weather service the BoM noted that 30% of all coral cover across the entire GBR was lost. “This year, they told us ‘more frequent and severe coral bleaching events are likely’, but did not even mention the excellent health of the reef.” How is that reasonable, they ask. Where are the media, they also ask. “Journalists are supposed to grill professors to make sure they are providing value for taxpayers, not sensationalist, self-serving hyperbole.”
It is often found that those on the Left are more inclined to accept the ‘settled’ climate science narrative, promoting as it does the collectivist Net Zero agenda. A major recent survey in the U.S. found higher levels of belief in the suggested dominant role played by humans in altering the climate among Democrats than Republicans. Nevertheless, the proposition that humans cause all or most global warming has seen general support fall in the U.S. from 60% to 49% in just the last five years. Of course there is lack of sceptical enquiry and there is ignorance, and echo chamber greens seem to score high on both counts.
Record ignorance levels of the true state of the GBR were found among green voters. The populist right of centre One Nation voters recorded much better levels of awareness. Voters for the Liberal party seem to be marginally better informed than Labour.
The AEF results were compiled by a polling company asking 1,004 Australians about the current state of coral coverage on the GBR. The full question and suggested answers are shown in the first graph above. The poll was conducted soon after the news came out of last year’s record high coverage. The authors note that the results largely confirm an earlier similar survey of 1,007 of people in 2022. In that survey, only 7% of voters correctly said that coral cover on the GBR was “well above average”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Thank you very much for this.
Climate Change is big business, can’t be letting inconvenient facts get in the way of the gravy train now can we!
The MSM are selective with the truth. No shortage of stories linking the performance of El Niño with human behaviour, e.g. However, there was an almost ironic item on the Beeb “world service” that said part of the increase in sea temperature was caused by the reduced amount of sulpher in marine fuel oil, as it appears to have increased the capability of the sea to capture solar input, and warm it up!
And climate change is responsible for more home runs in rounders, sorry, baseball!
Perhaps we can get the twerp Attenborough to educate them. Perhaps… but no.
Attencrap: ‘The Coral is ‘evolving’ by shit happens, it is expanding, but turning into….shell fish…ergo due to plant food and natural selection the coral growth is actually a decline and a transmogrification that proves globaloneywarming impacts evolution and our evolving world….heretofore, must, could, should, maybe, probably, we believe, experts state, models prove, studies show….’
Proving that Australia is populated by a mass of ignorance and indifference, a people who happily followed the Rona fascism and fought to keep it, extend it, and undoubtedly many wanted it made permanent. Why would they know about coral coverage? They imbibe the fake news as gospel.
Report of recent paper showing that the ocean’s heat content has been progressively rising since 1960.
Over the past 15 years, the Earth’s accumulated heat has increased by 50%, with most of the extra going into the oceans.
This month, the global sea surface hit a new record high temperature. It has never warmed this much, this quickly.
That’s it then – the boiling frog explained.
Can point to where the paper says that the Earth’s accumulated heat has increased by 50% please?
The paper is linked above.
Yes and I have looked through it but cannot see your quote.
If you had gone through the paper you would have seen the substance of the quote confirmed (‘accumulated heat’ being the heat absorbed by the oceans since the 1960 baseline). The quote comes from the linked report of the paper.
I have. I can see the words “evaluation”, “estimation” and “ad hoc method” but not the 50% increase in the Earth’s accumulated heat.
Again:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65339934?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA
That 8 people should downtick my simple and entirely truthful reply says a lot.
Because we do not trust the catastrophists who appear to have another agenda – that’s why.
Interestingly Steven, the BBC article gives a clue to what might be happening. The world appears to warm in steps after each El Nino event. Joe Bastardi at Weather Bell has covered this often in his weekly videos.
You only hear about CO2 in the media, but why would warming be driven by periodic oceanic cycles? The people who tell us that the science is settled do not understand these phenomena.
So what?
BBC, lol surely time for another booster.
Last night the BBC reported on a project converting written testimony of historic weather events into likely accurate weather data. They concluded that a 1903 (I think) storm was one of the largest on record. Makes a change for BBC to highlight data that does not show today’s weather is hotter, colder, stormier etc. than ever before, it does not fit their usual narrative.
The average person busy with work and family life will stare at you as if are from Mars if you tell them something they have not seen or heard on mainstream news. Propaganda is a very powerful tool, which is why government and its bought and paid for media use it. They know that most people are way too busy raising families and working or enjoying themselves to investigate every issue. They think Investigative journalists are doing that for them ——–Sadly, NO. They are doing the opposite.
We grew up in a world where journalists took governments and corporations to task. They would undertake in depth investigations to get the dirt, but that stopped a long time ago. Some of our friends have not yet caught up.
I am grateful to the Great Barrier Reef for opening my sceptic eyes. It was when they said a couple of years ago that it would all be gone that I thought hang on, I was told that on Newsround as a child in the 80s. I just hope future generations realise the propaganda merry-go-round.