Huge Increase in Coral Produces Third Year of Record Highs on the Great Barrier Reef

The Daily Skeptic ^ | August 9, 2024 | Chris Morrison

[Twotone]

Massive increases in coral across the Australian Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have been reported for 2023-24 making it the third record year in a row of heavy growth. Across almost all parts of the 1,500 mile long reef, from the warmer northern waters to the cooler conditions in the south, coral is now at its highest level since detailed observations began. The inconvenient news has been ignored in mainstream media which, curiously, have focused on a non-story in Nature that claimed “climate change” poses an “existential threat” to the GBR. “The science tells us that the GBR is in danger – and we should be guided by the science,” Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong told Victoria Gill of BBC News. The existential threat is “now realised” reported the Guardian.

Travelling back from the reality inhabited by the Guardian, it can be reported that last year’s gains were eye-catchingly large. On the Northern GBR, hard coral cover leapt from 35.8% to 39.5%, in the central area it rose from 30.7% to 34%, while in the south it went from 34% to 39.1%. The report is the result of monitoring of hard coral cover reefs from August 2023 to June 2024 by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The percentage of hard coral cover is a standard measurement of reef conditions used by scientists and is said to provide a simple and robust measure of reef health. Similar reports have been published by the AIMS over the last 38 years.

For the first two years of record coral growth, the narrative-driven mainstream media ignored the recovery story. But this year, the suspicious might contend, something had to be done to blunt the sensational news of the stonking rises. Help has come in the form of a paper just published in Nature which uses proxy temperature measurements and climate models to suggest temperatures around the vast reef area are the highest recorded in 400 years. This time period is the blink of an ecological eye-lid given that coral has been around for hundreds of millions of years during periods when temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide have been markedly different. Nevertheless, this is said to pose an existential threat despite it being known that sub-tropical corals thrive between 24°C-32°C, and in fact seem to grow faster in warmer waters.

Natural bleaching, when the coral expels algae and turns white, can occur with temporary local temperature changes, but evidence from many years of scientific observation suggests the corals often and quickly recover. Long term changes in water temperature – tiny compared to coral’s optimum conditions – pose no threat, but alarmists concentrate on the bleaching events to warn of possible ecological collapse. The Guardian noted a recent fifth mass bleaching in eight years across the reef, driven, it claimed, by “global heating”. So far, its readers are in the dark as to how this squares with the recent record growth.

A decade of mass bleaching, relentlessly catastrophised in the interests of Net Zero by activists in the media, academia and politics, does not appear to have done much harm to the recent growth in the Northern GBR.

Or the central area.

Or even in the south where the water temperatures are slightly cooler.

To read the latest AIMS report is to read the best possible spin on the story that the reef is heading for disaster. And, of course, it is all down to the unproven changes in climate that are said to be caused by human activity. It is claimed this will cause more frequent and long-lasting marine ‘heatwaves’, a product no doubt of a climate model. It is generally suggested that these heatwaves and mass bleaching were rare prior to the 1990s, although how anyone can know this is a mystery. Detailed GBR observations and temperature recordings barely stretch back a few decades.

As is often the case with publicly-funded operations, the political message is never far from the surface. Thus we learn that “enabling coral reefs to survive these stressful conditions requires a combination of a reduction in global greenhouse emissions to stabilise temperatures… and the development of interventions to help reefs adapt to and recover from the effects of climate change”. No doubt this last proposal requires large amounts of money from the taxpayer to cover the costs of such worthy work.

Not everyone goes along with the coral fear-mongering. The distinguished scientist Dr. Peter Ridd has studied the GBR for 40 years and notes that coral numbers have “exploded” in recent years. He says that all 3,000 reefs in the world’s largest system have excellent coral. “Not a single reef or even a single species of reef life has been lost since British settlement,” he reports. The impact of bleaching is “routinely exaggerated by the media and some scientific organisations”. In his view, 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,” he observes.

[Twotone]

Informational graphs at the site...

[Bob434]

But but but global warming was supposedly killing all the coral

[FlingWingFlyer]

Butt...butt....butt... what about glowball warming?

[FLT-bird]

But But But Global Warming............

[DevonD]

Lets see if I can spins this.

People dying from cones snails massively increases, caused by climate change.

Shark Attacks increase, caused by climate change. Increased corals means increased visitors means increased shark attacks.

[Sacajaweau]

We've given millions and millions to the folks who have done absolutely nothing to change mother nature's work. They introduce this and that...and any effect amounts to "0".

My favorite "save the world" story is watching them release a baby seal that they had rescued. The seal had a monitor on so they could track it. Less than a minute after the release...you heard a "munch" and the monitor went silent. Probably cost the taxpayers 50 thou...

[VTenigma]

Nope, un-possible the boiling oceans killed all the coral.

[Omnivore-Dan]

See? If you tax people to death, the climate will be perfect and there will be rainbows every evening. We can all run around naked, stomp grapes and pick fruit from the trees that will grow everywhere.

[butlerweave]

Wondered why they stopped talking about the Great Barrier Reef , LOL

[gundog]

Increased coral growth...proof that green policies have turned the tide. Time to double down on green policies. /greenie

[politicianslie]

But but but global warming was supposedly killing all the coral

In 1999, NASA showed that the 1930's were the hottest period in the US.

In 2019, NASA showed the same period of temperature data but they now showed temperatures in the 1990's exceeded the 1930's!!!!

Recent headlines have said that July was the hottest world temperature on record. The only problem is, except for the US (and some data in Europe and Australia), the CLIMATE ALARMISTS have no useful data. That means ALL of their gloom and doom stories are using computer generated data that shows it was cooler when CO2 was lower! In other words, these psycho liars have NOTHING to prove their headlines are correct. See REALCLIMATESCIENCE dot COM to see the data.

[FamiliarFace]

Yeah, I remember they were teaching my kids this in elementary school in the late 1990’s. They presented it as fact, instead of an opinion. I pretty much reamed that teacher.

[butlerweave]

They just make it up as they need it for all that FREE CASH

[CedarDave]

Another factor for the growth might be less ocean pollution. Although a decline from Chinese and other Asian industrial nations might not be occurring, ocean going shipping that previously discharged untreated waste directly to the ocean are required to have closed systems to enter US ports.

[Seruzawa]

Some years back there was an incident where some town nursed an injured dolphin to health. There was a big fanfare with a big crowd to watch the dolphin get released. A minute later.. MUNCH. A Great White ate it. Lol. Idiots.

[Seruzawa]

When I was on a destroyer in 69-71 we threw all trash off the fantail. There’s no place to keep it on a warship. Out into the Pacific it all went.

[Zathras]

I dove there in ‘95.
I saw NO evidence of “Coral Bleaching” or unhealthy reefs.

[subterfuge]

That old codger David Attenborough who narrates all those nature documentaries always brings up “climate change” and how the GBR and polar bears are being decimated. No facts presented of course.

[KSCITYBOY]

btt

[Mr. Blond]

Now we have a Global Coral Crisis.