One might expect the Annual Summary Report of Coral Reef Condition 2021/2022 to be widely reported in the mainstream media as a good news story, given that its main conclusion is that “Continued coral recovery leads to 36-year highs across two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef”. One might expect that, but one would be wrong.

Both the BBC and the Guardian have reported on this news with what seems to be the inevitable heavy caveat we have come to expect. In the case of the BBC the relevant article is headed “Great Barrier Reef sees record coral cover, but it is highly vulnerable”. Meanwhile the Guardian report is headed “Record coral cover on parts of Great Barrier Reef, but global heating could jeopardise recovery”.

In fairness, although you have to read beyond the report summary and trouble yourself with the detail of the report itself to find any caveats, they are indeed there to be found if you look. That said, the overwhelming message from the annual survey is good news, and it is my belief that the media headlines (just like the headline to the Report itself) really should have reflected that. After all, the bullet points from the survey summary (save the final one) are pretty much relentlessly positive:

Over the past 36 years of monitoring by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), coral reefs in the GBR have shown an ability to begin recovery after disturbances.

In 2022, widespread recovery has led to the highest coral cover recorded by the LTMP in the Northern and Central GBR, largely due to increases in the fast-growing Acroporacorals, which are the dominant group of corals on the GBR and have been largely responsible [for] previous changes in hard coral cover.

Above-average water temperatures led to a mass coral bleaching event over the austral summer of 2021/22, the fourth event since 2016 and the first recorded during a La Niña year. The peak of this bleaching event was in March, and accumulated heat stress measured as Degree Heating Weeks (DHW) for most of the GBR reached levels expected to result in widespread bleaching but not extensive mortality.

Survey reefs experienced low levels of other acute stress over the past 12 months, with no severe cyclones impacting the Marine Park. The number of crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks on survey reefs has generally decreased; however, there remain ongoing outbreaks on some reefs in the Southern GBR.

The combination of few acute stresses and lower accumulated heat stress in 2020 and 2022 compared to 2016 and 2017 has resulted in low coral mortality and has allowed coral cover to continue to increase in the Northern and Central GBR.

Nearly half of the surveyed reefs (39 out of 87) had hard coral cover levels between 10% and 30%, while almost a third of the surveyed reefs (28 out of 87) had hard coral cover levels between 30% and 50%.

On the Central and Northern GBR, region-wide hard coral cover reached 33% and 36%, respectively; the highest level recorded in the past 36 years of monitoring.

Region-wide hard coral cover on reefs in the Southern GBR was 34% and had decreased from 38% in 2021, largely due to ongoing crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks.

In periods free from intense acute disturbances, most GBR coral reefs demonstrate resilience through the ability to begin recovery. However, the reefs of the GBR continue to be exposed to cumulative stressors. The prognosis for the future disturbance regime suggests increasing and longer-lasting marine heatwaves, as well as the ongoing risk of outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish and tropical cyclones. Therefore, while the observed recovery offers good news for the overall state of the GBR, there is increasing concern for its ability to maintain this state.

Meanwhile, the first two paragraphs of the BBC report faithfully record the good news (recovery; highest amount of cover in the 36 years of surveying) before devoting the rest of the article to doom and gloom about the Great Barrier Reef’s prospects, and almost inevitably concluding:

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which manages the reef, says the outlook for the icon is “very poor” due to climate change.

Unesco, the UN’s scientific and cultural body, says not enough is being done to protect the reef.

The Guardian, not to be outdone, managed only one positive half sentence before launching into the doom narrative:

…but warned any recovery could be quickly overturned by global heating.

The Australian Institute of Marine Science’s annual long-term monitoring report says the fast-growing corals that have driven coral cover upwards are also those most at risk from marine heatwaves, storms and the voracious crown-of-thorns (COTS) starfish.

Global heating is accepted by scientists as the reef’s biggest long-term threat.

Earlier this year, unusually hot ocean temperatures caused the first ever mass bleaching during a La Nina year – a natural climate phase that should have given corals a respite.

The first ever mass bleaching on the reef was recorded in 1998, but since then corals were hit in 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020 and again earlier this year.

The prognosis for the reef’s future under climate change, the report said, was one of increasingly frequent and longer-lasting marine heatwaves, with the ongoing risk of COTS outbreaks and tropical cyclones.

“Mitigation of these climatic threats requires immediate global action on climate change,” the report said.

The irony of the fact that the part of the Reef that has recovered most slowly is in the colder southern waters seems to have been completely overlooked.

Alternative Narrative

I shall leave the last words to Peter Ridd, who has rapidly produced for the GWPF a rebuttal (headed “The Good News on Coral Reefs”). As his Report reminds us:

Peter Ridd is a physicist. He has researched the Great Barrier Reef since 1984, and has published over 100 scientific publications. A former head of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, Townsville, Australia, he was fired in 2018 for pointing out quality assurance deficiencies in reef-science institutions.

His Report is relatively short, readily accessible and well worth a read. I will simply end with his upbeat conclusion, expressed in his own Final Comment:

The latest data on the GBR indicates it is in good shape. It happens to have a great deal of coral in 2022 because there have been few major mortality events over the last five to ten years. The three or four bleaching events since 2016, which have been widely reported in the media, could not have killed much coral, otherwise the 2022 statistics would not be so good. The data since 1986 shows that every region, every sector and most reefs have had occasionally had [sic] periods of very low coral cover for one reason or another. This is entirely natural. The media makes much of occasional setbacks to coral cover, but a measure of the health of an ecosystem is the ability to recover from a major stress. Frail systems will not recover, robust systems recover well, just as healthy people recover quickly from disease. The GBR has proven to be a vibrant and healthy ecosystem. This should not be a surprise; there are few human pressures on the reef, and it is well protected. It is also unreasonable to expect that the small temperature rise over the last century (1°C) will have caused much impact, especially as it is well known that most corals grow faster in warmer water. The data collected by AIMS shows that the GBR is a robust system with rapidly fluctuating coral cover. We must expect that, sometime in the future, a sequence of events will cause the coral cover to fall sharply, as it did in 2011. We must then remember that this is almost certainly natural, and not allow the merchants of doom to depress the children.

Not allowing the merchants of doom to depress the children is good advice indeed.

36 Comments

  2. Thanks Mark.

    Like you I was not very impressed by the BBC headline. I might write something about this if I have a mo.

    Like

  3. The idea that coral, a species that only exists in warm waters, would be extremely threatened by a slight warming was always a stupid idea to push. You do wonder at the wisdom of some of the global warming alarmists. Did they not notice coral living in areas far warmer than Australia?

    Polar bears makes sense. Corals do not.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. A small observation on the negative BBC article. For some reason the BBC often leads with one heading on the main or science & environment page of its website, and the heading then changes to something else if you click on it to read the article. At the moment, the clickbait headline is “Warning follows Great Barrier Reef record coral cover”. CLick on it, and the heading becomes “Great Barrier Reef sees record coral cover, but it is highly vulnerable”.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. saw this on BBC news, it was just a quick sound bit.

    quick BBC search – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-57938858

    “Why is the Great Barrier Reef in trouble? A simple guide Published 23 July 2021”
    snippet –
    “Climate change also causes ocean acidification and reef erosion.
    If cooler waters return, it is possible for reefs to make a comeback. Recovery takes at least 10-15 years.
    But scientists warn the Great Barrier Reef is on the brink of breaking down.
    A study found that following bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, there weren’t enough adult corals left to regenerate the worst-hit areas properly.
    In 2019, Australia downgraded the reef’s long-term outlook to “very poor”.
    The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has said climate change remains the greatest threat.”

    when the story suits the agenda they push hard, when the data/facts change,a quick sound bit.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. The Spectator (Ross Clark) is on it too now:

    “How did climate doomsters get the Great Barrier Reef so wrong?
    A few decades of data can only tell us so much”

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-did-climate-doomsters-get-the-great-barrier-reef-so-wrong-

    “…The speed of the recovery of the coral is remarkable; in 2016 the entire reef was declared dead in an obituary published in the environmental magazine Outside. But, like the stories of people saved from cremation by a slight twitch at the eleventh hour, its death seems to have been exaggerated.

    Not, of course, that the environmental movement can quite bring itself to celebrate the result of the latest survey. The Guardian’s coverage of the report is an object lesson in how environmental news is driven only by misery. ‘The world heritage site still has some capacity for recovery,’ it reports, ‘but the window is closing fast as the climate continues to warm’. A more appropriate sub-headline, surely, would have been: ‘Great Barrier Reef defies reports of its death as scientists under-estimate its capacity to recover from bleaching events.’ It shouldn’t really come as a surprise that the response of the reef to warmer seas is not fully understood. When you have comprehensive data going back only 36 years it is pretty difficult to understand long-term trends….”.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Mark – Ross starts his piece with

    “we are, of course, in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’ and the ‘sixth mass extinction’ of life on Earth. It is just that one of the iconic victims doesn’t seem to be playing ball just at the moment.”

    so he can cover his ass (maybe)

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  9. dfhunter. Ross Clark does put the words “climate emergency” inside inverted commas, so I live in hope that he was being facetious. If not, it seems to me to be a shame that someone who so often sees things very clearly appears to be going along with the alarmist mantra, despite his criticism of an aspect of it in his article.

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  12. I see that article in the Nonversation was written in 2011. I wonder if a correction will now follow?

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  13. I honestly don’t think that the Conversation will see the need for a correction. The scientist concerned was trying to say that recoveries are to be expected but this doesn’t alter the long-term prognosis because that is determined by cumulative heat stresses, i.e. there will come a time when the frequency and severity of bleaching events will become overwhelming. He may be right but, in the meantime, it is an argument that I would say has yet to find support in the data, so he shouldn’t be so righteously indignant in the face of scepticism.

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  14. As is usual for this type of discussion where global heating is deemed the culprit for unpleasant happenings, there is no measurement given of the heating involved. Not uncommonly a global average is used (obtained from some variety of mathematical shenanigans) but it’s relevance to the area in question goes unmentioned. There are large areas of the Earth where the average temperature has not changed one jot and possibly some where it may have got colder.

    When discussing a feature as lengthy as the Great Barrier Reef, there is considerable variation in temperatures such that warm episodes in the south possibly match average temperatures further north. Again Ove Hoegh-Guldberg ignores this in his diatribe against critical journalists.

    Liked by 2 people

  15. Good news must be minimised and never allowed to last:

    “Record heat over Great Barrier Reef raises fears of second summer of coral bleaching
    ‘This does not bode well,’ reef scientist says, as highest November temperatures reached since 1985”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/25/record-heat-over-great-barrier-reef-raises-fears-of-second-summer-of-coral-bleaching

    Mostly devoted to alarm, though tucked away, if you persist, you will read the occasional thing like this:

    Corals can recover from bleaching if temperatures are not severe. Scientists have seen a rise in the amount of coral over the reef in recent years – a recovery driven by fast-growing corals that experts say are also the most susceptible to bleaching.

    And this:

    “Right now, it is too early to say what this summer will mean for the reef, though the current La Niña event is expected to increase rainfall along the east and north-eastern coast.”

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  16. “Great Barrier Reef should be placed on world heritage ‘in danger’ list, UN-backed report says
    Experts from Unesco and IUCN find climate change threatens reef’s values and work to improve water quality is too slow”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/28/great-barrier-reef-should-be-placed-on-world-heritage-in-danger-list-un-backed-report-says

    There seems to be a big push to use climate change as the angle here, but in reality it seems to be about water quality:

    Progress to cut pollution running into the reef’s waters from farming and grazing was too slow and more investment was needed to meet water quality targets, the report from the mission said.

    The Guardian doesn’t provide a link to the report, nor do any of the other media websites I’ve looked at that have the story. I can’t even find it on the UNESCO website!

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  17. Mark – weird that we can’t find a link to “10-day mission to the reef last March by officials from UNESCO and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.”

    good old WWF give a link/post on the problem from 26 Oct 2018
    https://www.wwf.org.au/news/news/2018/agriculture-run-off-polluting-the-great-barrier-reef

    partial quote –
    “These are the dramatic before and after pictures that drive home the sediment and farm chemical problem plaguing the Great Barrier Reef.
    Following the widespread destruction of trees for intensive agriculture, streams that once remained clear following rain now carry sediment and fertiliser pollution out to Reef waters.”

    Liked by 1 person

  19. Mark – thanks for Ridd link – not read it in total yet,

    but liked this bit in Conclusion –
    “It is easy to find reports in the media, based on peer reviewed articles produced by science institutions, of a reducution in GBR coral cover of 50% between 1995 and 2020.51 The data shows that coral reefs are very dynamic systems, often losing vast amounts of coral due to natural events, but recovering over a decade or so. It is apparent that science institutions are very vocal when there is a coral loss, but much quieter as recovery takes place. This inconsistent behaviour fuels a suspicion that they have a major integrity problem”

    Liked by 1 person

  20. There’s more on thriving coral reefs here:

    “Sunshine Coast coral reefs thriving as COVID dive project uncovers ‘enormous amount of coral'”

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-07/coral-reefs-thriving-off-mudjimba-mooloolaba-beaches/101938708

    Researchers have uncovered an abundance of healthy, thriving coral along a heavily developed coastline — far beyond what the team expected when they first pitched the project.

    University of Queensland researchers and dive club volunteers wanted a project to focus on as COVID restrictions took hold and limited their ability to work and travel.

    A pitch was made to re-examine 11 reefs off Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, particularly around Mudjimba Island and the popular tourist destination of Mooloolaba.

    Associate Professor Chris Roelfsema brought together researchers and 50 volunteers from the UQ dive club to help.

    Dr Roelfsema said what they found was incredible.

    “We looked at so many different sites — every time we put our heads underwater, the volunteers went down and they did surveys,” he said.

    “And they saw coral, and every time it was a significant amount of coral, and we didn’t expect it.

    “We noticed that there was an enormous amount of coral there that we didn’t realise was there — and not in a couple of spots but in the 11 spots we visited.

    “And that’s a big deal that there’s so much coral so close to a major urban area.”

    He estimated the coral cover was 54 per cent beyond what was expected….

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  21. “Just 3% of Australians Are Aware That the Great Barrier Reef is at a Record High, Survey Finds”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2023/04/25/just-3-of-australians-are-aware-that-the-great-barrier-reef-is-at-a-record-high-survey-finds/

    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…

    Liked by 1 person

  22. “Coral at the Great Barrier Reef Holds on to Recent Record Gains, Defying All Doomsday Predictions”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2023/08/10/coral-at-the-great-barrier-reef-holds-on-to-recent-record-gains-defying-all-doomsday-predictions/

    Coral at the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) faces another year of exile from the climate scare headlines with news that the record levels reported in 2021-22 have been sustained in the latest annual period to May 2023. A small drop in the three main areas of the reef was well within margin of error territory, with the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) reporting that regional average hard coral cover in 2022-2023 was similar to last year at 35.7%. Most reefs underwent little change during the year.

    Coral at the reef has been bouncing back sharply for a number of years, with a record 36-year high reported in 2022. But the news of this spectacular recovery has been largely ignored in most media since it had previously been a go-to poster scare story for collectivist Net Zero promoters. But connecting the fate of tropical corals to global warming was always a difficult ask since they grow in waters between 24-32°C. Short boosts in local temperatures can cause temporary bleaching, but it is scientifically impossible to pin it on human-caused climate change, although pseudoscientific ‘attribution’ computer models try very hard.

    In the latest year, there was a short local temperature rise, but little bleaching was reported during the 2023 summer. No cyclones hit the reef and crown-of thorns starfish attacks were limited. Nevertheless, natural stresses will always affect the eco-system and AIMS states that these paused the growth of hard coral on some of the reefs.

    Like most state-funded scientific bodies, AIMS is fully signed up to climate extremism and delivering politically correct messages to promote the Net Zero solution. Despite reporting what is now a substantial multi-year recovery, it notes that the future is predicted to bring more frequent, intense and enduring marine heatwaves, alongside the persistent threat of crown-of thorns starfish outbreaks and tropical cyclones. More frequent mass coral bleaching is a sign that the GBR is experiencing the consequences of climate change, it claims. However, in a different part of its latest report, AIMS accepts that the recent substantial recovery occurred despite two mass coral bleaching events in 2020 and 2022. There is an acceptance that this underlines that “widespread coral bleaching does not necessarily lead to extensive coral mortality”.

    But pockets of extremist catastrophism remain in the mainstream media, notably in the Guardian, fighting to keep the coral destruction story going. A year ago, the newspaper reported that the GBR still had “some capacity” for recovery, but the window was closing fast as the climate continued to warm. Of course the Guardian has form as long as your arm on this score. Back in 1999, George Monbiot told its readers that the “imminent total destruction of the world’s coral reefs is not a scare story but a fact”….

    Like

  23. “The astonishingly woke Australian Academy of Science
    Peter Ridd”

    https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/the-astonishingly-woke-australian-academy-of-science/

    …The AAS report predictably concluded that the Great Barrier Reef could already be ‘irreversibly’ damaged. The fact that UNESCO has just declared it not endangered did not rate a mention, and neither did the latest two years of statistics showing the reef is at record high coral levels. Remarkably, the report does not contain a single fact or figure to support any of its claims about the reef – except the area of the reef is 340,000 square kilometres. There are no figures, no percentages. Nowhere does it mention that coral grows 30 per cent faster for every degree increase in water temperatures. Or that there is 100 per cent more coral on the reef today than in 2012. Or that just 1 per cent of the reef has the potential to be impacted by farm sediment, fertiliser or pesticides, even in the slightest way. Or that the sea level has fallen by 1 metre in the last 5,000 years….

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  24. “The Corruption of Climate Science in Australia”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2023/09/14/the-corruption-of-climate-science-in-australia/

    Evidence of the corruption of the once sacrosanct scientific process grows daily with scientific bodies falling victim to wokeness, unscientific findings and pseudo-scientific romantic mythology. The latest report on the future of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) by the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) is another sad reflection of this depressing trend. According to long-time Reef expert Dr. Peter Ridd, the report demonstrates that the AAS, Australia’s principal science body, is not just unscientific, but anti-science. Writing recently in Spectator Australia, he also noted it had become “astonishingly woke”.

    The AAS observed that the Reef could already be “irreversibly damaged”. This propagandised opinion flies in the face of the fact that coral on the Reef is at a 37-year record high, despite a challenging past decade of cyclones, natural localised warming spikes and starfish attacks. Coral is now double that recorded in 2012. Nowhere in the report, including the executive summary, introduction and conclusion, is any of this mentioned. Also considered unworthy of note is the fact that UNESCO recently declared the GBR was not endangered….

    …Folk more practical than the experts at the AAS might also have a problem with “solar radiation management”, a daft idea, unsparing of other people’s money, that could see the entire Reef shaded from the sun with artificial fog and clouds. Of course, since this is an Australian Government-bound report, nothing as vulgar as costings are supplied. “How are you going to make a cloud as big as Germany and keep it anchored over the Reef for the whole summer over the next few hundred years?” asks Dr. Ridd. In addition, he continues, you will have to stop hot water flowing from the Coral Sea, and this would necessitate building a dam 2,000 kilometres long and 100 metres deep.

    While a simple calculation is all that is required to reveal the absurdity of such ideas, “modern science is full of people who are almost completely non-quantitative and, as such, impractical and virtually useless as scientists”, concludes Ridd.

    The recent coral recovery on the GBR has been a major embarrassment to many climate alarmists, not least those found in the mainstream media. The story has disappeared from the headlines, leading to the obvious charge that the MSM are now lying about the spectacular recovery by omission….

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  25. “Great Barrier Reef annual coral spawning begins east of Cairns”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/03/great-barrier-reef-annual-coral-spawning-begins-east-of-cairns-moore-reef-footage

    An interesting short article that contains this rather good news (no mention of climate change here!):

    …Marine biologist Stuart Ireland has filmed the spawning event at Moore Reef every year for the past decade.

    “The coral cover and diversity is very high at Moore Reef after the past six years of strong growth and the 2023 spawning reflects this,” he said. “As in previous years we watched the soft corals start the spawning process and spent a few hours observing the bundles of sperm and eggs being released.

    “We will dive on Moore Reef again after the sun goes down tonight and expect to see the even more spectacular phenomenon of the hard corals starting the process of regeneration on the Great Barrier Reef.”…

    Like

  26. “‘Unprecedented mass coral bleaching’ expected in 2024, says expert
    2023 is first year of potential pair of El Niño years and since 1997, every instance of these pairs has led to mass coral mortality”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/07/unprecedented-mass-coral-bleaching-expected-2024-professor-ove-hoegh-guldberg

    Record-breaking land and sea temperatures, driven by climate breakdown, will probably cause “unprecedented mass coral bleaching and mortality” throughout 2024, according to a pioneering coral scientist.

    The impact of climate change on coral reefs has reached “uncharted territory”, said Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, from the University of Queensland, Australia, leading to concerns that we could be at a “tipping point”….

    …Crucially, 2023 is the first year of a potential pair of El Niño years, with the warmest average global surface sea temperature from February to July on record. Since 1997, every instance of these El Niño pairs has led to a global mass coral bleaching event.

    Hoegh-Guldberg, whose work has helped to shape the world’s understanding of the risks to the ocean’s richest ecosystems, said: “The probability is that somewhere in the next 12 to 24 months, we are going see El Niño combine with warming sea temperatures and have a really big impact.

    “We are literally in uncharted territory, which we know very little about and don’t know how to respond to and I think we’re dangerously exposed.”

    “We don’t know the implications of such a spike in temperature,” said the scientist, speaking from Dubai, where he is attending the Cop28 climate summit. “We may see storms that are even larger than the ones we’ve been seeing. These are the warmest temperatures ever on land and sea.”…

    And much more in similar vein. Lots of speculation (in fairness, I would be criticising if the article claimed certainty regarding an unknown). No reference whatsoever to previous bleachings followed by substantial recovery. Not a mention of the the Annual Summary Report of Coral Reef Condition 2021/2022 with its main conclusion is that “Continued coral recovery leads to 36-year highs across two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef”.

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  28. Pouring cold water on coral reefs won’t help much. Reefs bleach due to stress itself caused by whatever: heat, cold, freshwater influx or predators. I believe the pigments and zoothanthellae are released in search of a better set that are more suited to the changed conditions. So out with the old, even before the new arrives.

    Liked by 1 person

  29. “Some of Australia’s strategically important coral islands at great risk of vanishing, study finds
    Fate of more than a dozen islands ‘hangs in the balance’ because of climate crisis, with vexed questions about maritime jurisdiction”

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/16/some-of-australias-strategically-important-coral-islands-at-great-risk-of-vanishing-study-finds

    …Fellowes said sea level rise was “probably the most notable threat” facing many of the islands, which are in places where sea levels are rising faster than the global average.

    The risk assessments were based on current conditions, but Fellowes said it was clear that factors such as marine heatwaves, rising oceans and storms were likely to worsen due to climate change.

    No time frames were put on when areas could disappear, but this is a focus of future work….

    Perhaps this is an example of a circular economy and green jobs. More research is always needed.

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  30. What utter rubbish! it seems that knowledge about modern coral reefs has deteriorated recently.

    I was given to understand that during the earlier Holocene, sea-level rose faster than today and reefs grew rapidly keeping up. Many no longer have any growing room and so would relish any sea-level rise (can reefs really relish?)

    Also sea-level rises are slower than modern coral growth rates. So it would take something else curtailing coral growth to drown reefs.

    Liked by 1 person

  31. I would have thought that water turbidity coupled with sea-level rises might be a cause of recent coral reef demise, but then I recall snorkelling over a turbid river delta where you could not see anything in the water but silt, but there were flourishing reefs on the bottom. How those reefs survived I do not know.

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  32. There’s a battle currently going on in environmental research/science – it’s being fought between the scientists promoting doom, gloom and the extinction of species (and their mouthpieces in the main stream press) and the species themselves. We might characterise it as ‘the survival of the thickest vs. the survival of the fittest.’

    Liked by 1 person

  33. “Coral Growth at the Great Barrier Reef has “Exploded” in Recent Years”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/15/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…”

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  34. “After a trillion tons of CO2, the Great Barrier Reef hits record coral cover third year in a row”

    https://joannenova.com.au/2024/06/after-a-trillion-tons-of-co2-the-great-barrier-reef-hits-record-coral-cover-third-year-in-a-row/

    Ten years after our corals hit a record low, our survey showed that half the country didn’t realize the reef has recovered. Only 3% knew the corals were at a record high, and nearly half the Green voters were as wrong as they possibly could be — they thought coral cover was at a record low.

    The full AIMS report will be released in August. There have been some bleaching events both before and after the survey, and as is normal, we won’t know for months whether any corals actually died or whether it  was just the normal home renovation that corals go through when they get stressed. It’s common for corals to throw out the zooanthellae as temperatures change and let in newer house-guests that are better acclimatized. Since sea levels near Queensland were 1 -2 meters higher 6,000 years ago, and the world was a lot warmer, corals can clearly look after themselves.

    As Peter Ridd says the biggest threats to the reef are cyclones and crown-of-thorns starfish plagues, neither of which appear to be any worse now than they were years ago.

    Like

  35. “Race is on to produce a super-coral to survive world’s warming seas”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/15/race-is-on-to-produce-a-super-coral-to-survive-worlds-warming-seas

    Perhaps some historical context is in order:

    https://www.bgs.ac.uk/discovering-geology/fossils-and-geological-time/corals/

    ...The oldest known corals lived during the Cambrian, more than 500 million years ago, and are still found living today.…

    …Tabulate and rugose corals built mounds and thickets during the Palaeozoic, contributing to reef building, and fossils are commonly seen in Silurian to Carboniferous rocks of Britain. On a worldwide scale, they seem to have lived in equatorial latitudes, similar to modern forms. Since the Triassic, scleractinian corals have become reef builders.…

    …Rugose and tabulate corals were common in the Palaeozoic. However, a mass extinction event took place at the end of the Permian, when over 90 per cent of all invertebrates became extinct, including all tabulate and rugose corals. The reason seems to have been due to the formation of the supercontinent Pangaea and the disappearance of environmental niches….

    This was also a time of increased aridity, with changes in ocean currents, more competition for less space on the continental shelf, widespread occurrence of evaporite deposits, intense volcanicity and changes in sea level. Scleractinian corals, which evolved during the Triassic, replaced the extinct groups…

    …When corals are examined under a microscope, their outer surface can be seen to be made up of hundreds of ridges (about 200 per centimetre). Each ridge was formed in a single day as the coral grew. Modern corals, such as Manicina and Lophelia, have about 360 growth ridges per year on average (it varies a little as they do not grow during breeding or bad environmental conditions), but Devonian corals like Heliophyllum and Eridophyllum grew 400 ridges each year on average. This is because the Earth’s rotation has slowed down so that there are 35–40 fewer days in the year now compared to Devonian times.

    And we humans think we can control it all….

    Liked by 1 person

  36. Here’s a classic case of alarmists (in tis case, the BBC) looking for bad news in good news:

    “World’s largest coral found in the Pacific”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c629ddqg9v6o

    The largest coral ever recorded has been found by scientists in the southwest Pacific Ocean.

    The mega coral – which is a collection of many connected, tiny creatures that together form one organism rather than a reef – could be more than 300 years old.

    It is bigger than a blue whale, the team say….

    ...This specimen was found in deeper waters than some coral reefs, which may have protected it from higher temperatures at the sea surface.

    The discovery was announced at the same time as the UN climate talks COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan that are trying to make progress in tackling climate change.

    Mr Trevor Manemahaga, climate minister for the Solomon Islands at the summit, told BBC News that his nation would be proud of the newly-found coral.

    “We want the world to know that this is a special place and it needs to be protected,” he said.

    “We rely mostly on marine resources for economic survival so coral is very, very important […] And it’s very crucial and critical for our economy to make sure our coral is not exploited,” he said.

    Small island nations like the Solomon Islands are extremely vulnerable to climate change.

    Mr Manemahaga said he’s seen first-hand the effects of global warming on his nation, as it causes more powerful cyclones and erodes the coastline causing homes to fall into the water…..

    That’s completely gratuitous additional comment. The BBC is no longer simply an organisation that reports the news – it is a campaigning organisation, outwith the mandate under which it was established.

    Liked by 1 person

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