Guest essay by Eric Worrall
It is tough for scientists to maintain the fiction that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is broken, when the government minister responsible for the reef goes and has a look for herself.
Great Barrier Reef is better than expected: Ley
GRAHAM LLOYD
The Great Barrier Reef is not dead, is not dying and is not even on life support, federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley has declared after her first official visit to the World Heritage-listed site.…
“Today we saw coral that was struggling but we also saw coral that was coming back, that was growing, that was vibrant,” Ms Ley said.
…
“I was expecting to see dead areas with a few patches of life,” Ms Ley said.
“I saw the exact opposite to that.”
…
Marine scientist Peter Ridd has begun a speaking tour in Queensland calling for a new body to check the quality of reef research.
…
Ms Ley was also accompanied on the visit by the government’s reef and recycling envoy and local member, Warren Entsch.
He said it was important Ms Ley had not taken the word of scientists or tourism operators but had “put on the gear and gone under the water to see for herself”.
…
In relation to bleaching and climate change, he said it was not a new phenomenon: “It has been happening for millennia.”
…
Read more (paywalled): https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/great-barrier-reef-is-better-than-expected-ley/news-story/6eef71906c6553453cde8575a6cca0ad
I’m sure in the near future we shall read public apologies from all the reef scientists who declared the fake climate emergency.
For a change, here is an Environment Minister who is not a gullible fool. Sussan Ley is prepared to actually go on site and examine the evidence for herself. There should be more of this.
Right – ignore scientists that have been studying it for decades and go and have a look over the side of a boat in a few places and make your decision based on that. Sounds like a plan.
Have you ever dived on the Great Barrier Reef ?
I get the feeling wattsupwiththat doesn’t seem to get the glaring problem of going from fossil carbon storage to much less stable carbon containment media. Smarter than a grade 5er? Not those guys.
I get the feeling you have no clue what you are talking about, but love you some soundbites.
So you do know that reefs and Corals require Carbon Dioxide in the water to grow right.
Reefs are some greatest storage source of Carbon on the planet.
Reefs are mainly composed of Calcium Carbonate. The most visible storage of carbon are the Calciu Carbonate cliffs of Dover.
Alan uses his own specious strawman and pretends it has relevance to the article or the comments.
Uh, no.
You are mistaking reefs for diatoms, copepods, and other life that build shells to live within.
e.g. Cliffs of Dover, marble and limestone quarries are not primarily from dead reefs, they are from benthic invertebrates.
WRT public apologies for fake climate emergencies…if you didn’t forget to add the apropos “SARC” tag on your final sentiment, then I strongly recommend you not hold your breath
Yes I actually did, and it was magic. As we speak we are cruising in Alaska; also subject of alarmism. Fanatastic nature and the people here don’t mind it is a bit warmer and drier than usual, believe me.
Well a strong arctic cold front/upper trof is about to take over AK’s weather for the next 10days. Hope they enjoyed it while it lasted.
Husband and wife Canadians 2007 had a great time on the reef.
I did, but it was 20+ years ago. It was beautiful and vibrant then. But haven’t seen it since.
Living in the UK and in my 70s, I will not get to see the GBR for myself. However, I believe the scientists such as Peter Ridd because when I look for evidence of the damage I see none. It would give the lie to the sceptics if images and vidoes were posted anywhere showing the extensive damage. I feel that if such damage existed it would have been gleefully made available.
The same is true for the London Barrier. We have been told it has been closed to prevent London being flooded many, many times and yet not one picture, among thousands, shows this. Of course the Barrier is not a flood barrier at all and has always had quite a different purpose which it does well.
There are other cases like this. Evidence is not there. I know this not scientific evidence but it is pretty compelling.
Alan August 17, 2019 at 7:00 am
We already had this discussion. Seems you didn’t get this glaring:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/16/more-government-regulation-wont-save-the-great-barrier-reef-from-scientists-or-politicians-oink/
Well john, Feynman made it clear, ” if the theory does not agree with the observations then the theory is wrong”.
Too many scientists seem to have adopted the theory CO2 induced climate change/global warming is killing off the coral. A quick actual look, an “observation” shows that hypothesis to be wrong.
The fact a government minister does the looking is a good sign. It suggests there is growing scepticism of scientists, particularly those in the condition of coral field.
That field trip also suggests, science is reestablishing its rightful place in society and in the general scheme of things, i.e. the sceptical members of society including scientists are given the right to be sceptical.
I actually caught a climate scientist saying on a website that the theory was so obviously correct that any contrary data could be ignored.Comment was later deleted. Feynman clearly didn’t know what he was talking about when it comes to climate “science”.
Our battle is Humanist hubris, Jim. Speaking of Feynman, I recall when Freeman Dyson came out against AGW. If ever there was a big picture guy, there he was.
Such comments should never be deleted, but underlined and the person making them attached to those comments forevermore.
Yea…. we are burning a 100 million barrels of oil a day, this produces the equivalent of 250 million barrels of greenhouse gases in liquid form so times that by 500 plus times…. have you heard of carbonic acid?
And a stupid politician going oh…no loss of reef…… reminds me of the other stupid people going…… oh… it’s cold today,….. so no climate change.
Must be a grade school weekend project; sign onto skeptic websites and spout foolishness.
Consider Leon, the number you cite,beside being entirely dependent on estimates upon estimates. Still, the numbers you cite are only 4% of CO₂ emissions.
Some claim the number is 15%, but are unable to prove the number.
There are satellites in orbit to track CO₂ emissions. Except Nature overwhelms mankind causing NOAA to use modeled numbers rather than the satellite’s.
?w=1023&ssl=1
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/04/finally-visualized-oco2-satellite-data-showing-global-carbon-dioxide-concentrations/
You poor booby.
If you had bothered to learn the facts, you would see that the ocean has ALWAYS absorbed CO2, and that the resulting ocean H2CO3 is a highly buffered system that NEVER made the oceans acidic.
Every goddamn animal in the ocean incorporates it for their skeletons!
Regarding corals, they have gone nearly extinct five times over the past several hundred million years, and have always bounced back. They are very hardy critters. If you think a degree of warming is a threat to their existence you need to explain how and why they survived far greater changes in the past.
Finally, you have assumed WITHOUT EVIDENCE that CO2, which has existed in much higher levels in the atmosphere, is now suddenly killing coral in the oceans,
So jeering at first-hand observations based on your ill-informed speculations just doesn’t cut it here.
Carbonic acid is formed in small amounts by only a small portion of dissolved carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide’s solubility reduces as water warms; carbonic acid also decreases as temperatures warm.
“oh… it’s cold today,….. so no climate change”; is a comment that ignores reality.
Climate changes.
Just as it has for 4 billion years, minimum.
Which brings us back to that silly “oh… it’s cold today” ; the alleged basis for claiming Anthropogenic Global Warming” is tracking a global anomaly calculated from a global average.
With an alleged warming anomaly that is impossible to calculate reliably or accurately.
With the claimed warming over the twentieth century to today is so small most people and wildlife are unable to detect it.
The entire pantheon of climate dooms and disasters are based on ignorance. Which explains why climate dooms and predictions have utterly failed to occur over the last thirty years.
Put that in your third grade bubble pipe, and swallow soap.
Now do the math on the tera-tons of carbon-starved terrestrial and marine biomass still recovering from the last ice age and desperate to reclaim this modern desert Earth back to the lush pole-to-pole tropical paradise they once enjoyed.
Leon
To validate your claim to possess a sentient brain, can you please explain for us how it was that multiple phyla of marine calcified organisms, both free living and sessile, evolved, thrived and spread around the world during the Cambrian era when the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 20 (that’s twenty) times higher than it is now?
Why didn’t all that “carbonic acid” dissolve all marine calcified organisms? How is it that we find fossils of them from that time? Far from being dissolved by CO2 levels 20 times higher than today, they laid down so much on their tissues that it survived till today, more than half a billion years.
No scientist on the face of this planet…has ever been funded….to study nothing is happening here
…and saying it’s dying is the easiest way to be funded to study almost anything
There’s reason all these studies are inconclusive
I was going to say this in a reply to an earlier ‘wokey’ above. The bloated global warming industry certainly isn’t going to say “There now, my work is done.”
The deparure from even a pretense of science and into hysteria and threats is hard to read as other than a swan song or the final phrenetic acrobatics of a chicken with its head cut off.
I recall a couple of years ago when the Aussie Gov chopped funding for CSIRO climateering division on the basis of the reseachers insisting the science is settled! Since cataclysmic climate change was debunked by temperature predictions proving to be 300% higher than ultimate observations, eventhough every curve bending method known to climate wroughters was employed to shore up natures’s stingy contribution, plus a 2-decade Pause that followed the 2-decade warming that had energized the wroughters so much.
Could I refer you to the work of Dr. Peter Ridd?
Dr G: Oh yeah. Didn’t Dr. Ridd get some kind of award from his climateering colleagues for criticizing their devious work?
You can ignore BS artists when you do what a scientist would have done.
Rule No 1 in science, correlation does NOT equal causation! That’s a fundamental mistake made by many a scientist in the past & probably still goes on & always will do, on top of which, warming waters merely suggest a warming world, but shed no light whatsoever upon the causes of such events! BTW, how’s that big shiney ball thing up in the sky doing, has it started to settle into a Grand Solar Minimum yet? Wow, that’s gonna be one hell of an experiment, one in which 7 Billion people around the World will participate in, whether (weather?) they like it or not! AtB
Although this rule is true, if this is Rule #1 in science then there are many Rule #1s. If the observable has shape (e.g. rises for ten years then goes flat for five years, then drops for 5 years) then correlation can be a helpful hint at where cause and effect might lie. Similarly, lack of correlation can in some cases be a useful indicator that there is no causation.
Only studying it for a few decades? Perhaps the Minister is on top of her brief and has the bigger picture John- https://dailygalaxy.com//?s=great+barrier+reef
She didn’t come down in the last shower eh?
Falsifiability (per Popper) is really just common-sense and easily understood by a sharp enough lay-person – or even by a government minister.
But Falsifiability is a real bummer if you are a very-ordinary scientist who wants/needs to make sweeping extraordinary claims to feed their funding habit.
Well apparently those “scientists” aren’t very good at their job, so yeah.
Dr Peter Ridd is one of the scientists who has studied the reef for many years, but he came to fifferent conclusions …so instead of taking him on with facts and evidence. the university just sacked him.
This is how it is in these ‘post-normal science ‘ times.
Since when is it genuine scientific process to declare a consensus…science closed…and scientists dissenting from the consensus sacked.
And how is it acceptable and legitimate in any way to conduct phony inquiries led by people who have huge vested interests in the CAGW hypothesis prevailing…and no interest in discovering the truth ….as have been conducted in the UK re the hiding and/or ‘losing’ of raw data and other massive questions re peer review etc raised by the Climategate emails?
You would think the huge issue for which warmists demand some countries commit economic suicide would be important enough to allow all scientists’ conclusions to be respectfully examined and discussed.
Appeals to authority, especially corrupt self interested authority, always win the day. Always.
Right. Yesterday the experts told me it was dry here with no rain, yet I went outside and got rained on. Obviously, I was wrong, because the experts said it was dry.
Argument from authority, logical failure, ignore all future posts from John Hutton.
Oh yes, believe the guys who occupations, funding and belief systems are dependent upon shrilling Great Barrier Reef doom.
Plus there are a lot of scientists who did go visit the alleged dead areas of the GBR and found the same thing that Ms. Lay found.
Life!
Isn’t it amazing that creatures who have survived many millions of years, easily survive weather events on the GBR.
I would like to think that if only we had done better 40-50 years ago that so much extinction would not have needed to happen. We are mere stewards of this planet. We should be able to accept our responsibility for our wrongs and practise due diligence. Had we done there would be no need for alarmism now. Of course the planet has gone through several mass extinctions not caused by mankind. You’ll also note that those took a much longer period of time to complete. We have effectively sped up the processes of this coming mass extinction by no telling how many hundreds of thousands of years by worshipping coal, petrol, diesel, plastics, money, and the list goes on. I’m more than a little ashamed about what archaeologists will find hundreds of years from now. Ours will be called the Plasticene Age from all the layers of plastics everywhere. Not to mention Tupperware bowls from 1980 which still look brand new in 2500! Just another opinion…and we all have one.
Most species go extinct and few of them so far have left any trace, as I recall the evidence supporting the idea of a faster rate of extinction presently has been debated here and debunked.
Not sure why anyone would look at a 1980s Tupperware bowl any different in 2500 to how I regarded a beautiful Spanish-Roman glass jug in AD 2000: just as perfect as the day it was made – and a tiny insight into the production methods of the civilizations that made them.
You seem to be placing a subjective value judgement onto coal, petrol, diesel, plastic and money, are you suggesting we do without them? History says that sort of life is brutish, hard and short. You are free to make that choice, but if you try and impose it on me, I will fight you with every fiber of my being!
I respect your opinion and you are free to voice it. But if you want to impose your opinion on others, you need to take your opinion to the ballot box where it will gain the attention it deserves. I wish more climate scientists would enter politics properly rather than sniping from the safe sidelines of their academic tenure.
It is my opinion, that humans will get ever better at minimizing damaging impacts on our planet, but only if we ensure we have access to cheap reliable energy.
Is that an ASSumption on your part John?
Or people who claim it’s dead based on an article in the Australian MSM while sitting in their arm chairs and have never actually been to the reef, any part of it.
And Professor Peter Ridd, he has only been studying for the reef for 35 years. Why would you listen to his assessment?. Maybe because he is an expert without any ulterior motives for exaggeration.
Peter Ridd is a scientist who has been studying it for decades, who concluded the reef is doing fine and got fired for saying so.
You mean like Peter Ridd? Or just the ones screaming emotional panic stricken alarm?
It looks like your Alarmist scientists may never have seen the GBR quite so close up as Ms.Ley. And she didn’t just look over the side of the boat, like you state.
”He said it was important Ms Ley had not taken the word of scientists or tourism operators but had “put on the gear and gone under the water to see for herself”.
Wouldn’t it be a better plan for you, John to ignore those renegade scientists who have been studying the reef for decades and don’t see an imminent catastrophe?
Scientists haven’t been studying the GBR – they’ve been studying their models of the GCR. They are quite right: according to GBR models, the GBR is dead.
It has to be irritating that someone insists on looking at the Great Barrier Reef and conflating it with the model. The world is evolving, and VR is much more where we’re going than reality.
The GBR is for tourists. The GBR model is for scientists. Ms. Ley clearly isn’t a scientist, and her observations should not be construed as those of a scientist.
Just the same as the thousands of Pacific islands disappearing.
You mean the islands that are not disappearing?
Many/most of them are growing instead.
As long as it agrees with your opinion already, its suddenly credible science. Without any real investigation as to whether this article is a load of bollocks. She might not be a gullible fool, but I know someone who is. His iinitials are N.T.
What a load of shit. How can she even know if she has nothing to compare it to.
When you have tourism companies and scientists measuring changes over decades but she thinks it’s wrong because she enjoyed her first scuba dive. What a bullshit written article
**What a load of shit. How can she even know if she has nothing to compare it to.**
No need to compare when you do not see extensive areas of dead reef.
Most of those tourism companies are thrilled the reef isn’t dead. Their customers come to see live reefs along the GBR.
It’s alway the mark of activists.
They use some version of a false strawman;
e.g. 1: “she has nothing to compare it to”.
e.g. 2: “she enjoyed her first scuba dive”
They demean their opposition, and frequently throw in a bunch of curse words.
By the way Scott child, Dr. Peter Ridd has been measuring the GBR for decades and they dumped him because the research he criticized was false and based upon not visiting the reef.
And, he is not even close to alone.
Breathless articles claiming 90% of the GBR was dead, if that were true the common person would be able to tell the reef was dying. No scientific credentials needed.
Fun fact – Sussane Ley changed her name from Susan due to a belief in Numerology (Wiki). I think that alone qualifies her to speak on global warming issues. (Note to global warming deniers that the previous sentence was a joke – just in case you didn’t get it like you don’t get global warming)
Even funner fact – there is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about weather or climate now, nothing. People who make such ridiculous claims should go and read how hot it really was around the turn of the century, then again in the thirties. Sea level rising as it has since the last ice age, polar ice- doing fine thank you, weather extremes nope, ooh that’s inconvenient. Go paddle around the ice free Arctic in your skin on wood frame kayak and get back to us.
Well said, Al
Well, before we start handing out compliments let’s see them do something about taxpayer funding of alarmists and let’s see them hold people to account.
And absolutely nothing to do with attempting to rubbish the science so that her government can continue to mine & burn coal like there’s no tomorrow.
Oh!?
Joe demands people destroy economies and force other people to use the ever unreliable alleged renewables?
Keeping in mind, that those allegedly renewable energy sources kill bats and birds by the multitudes and have reversed populations recovery of large raptors and carrion birds.
Never mind, that the activists and climate religious advocates have never, to this day, proven any part of their carbon dioxide claims.
Which is one of the reasons, the alarmists keep changing the name and terms surrounding their climate cabal claims;
global warming,anthropogenic global warming,catastrophic anthropogenic global warming,climate disruption,climate emergency,climate urgency, climate change; N.B. the last uses a description that has been valid for most of Earth’s history.Plus, all of those wind/solar renewable energy systems are 100% dependent upon fossil fueled mining, smelting, refining, casting, machining, transportation, assembly, transportation, installation and ongoing maintenance.
100 % dependent!
Likely for eternity since wind and solar are by their natures extremely variable.
Which brings up the fact that most of any civilization is utterly reliant upon fossil fuels for housing, warmth, cooling, transportation, food, clothing, equipment, etc. etc.
Unless you harvest your own wool, cotton, yucca, hemp, silk and spin your own thread and yarns then weave your own fabric?
You’ll also need to learn to tan hides and make your own shoes; or walk everywhere barefoot.
People who whine about mining and burning coal should immediately divest themselves of everything made from or by fossil fuels.
All synthetic fibers, plastics, metals, glass, phones, computers, TVs, screens, etc. etc.
Except, those children who are immaturely hung-up about other people using coal and fossil fuels never seem to give up all of civilization’s benefits themselves.
Hypocritically, they whine and carp about other people.
Brilliantly said.
will be asking me in the future what I did to avert the meltdown of the planet.
But I really have a hard time tolerating the “head in the sand” views of those who refuse to accept the mass consensus among scientists that global warming is real and we need to do everything we can to slow it down.
I have tried to be tolerant of other views but I am sorry this issue is too important to be “nice” and the world is running out of time.
If you are so stupid to think vast majority of scientists who devote their life’s work to finding the truth are not to be trusted but the executives of major oil companies and the corrupted scientists they employ don’t just care about the next dollar then you are a fool and I hope you live long enough to feel the shame you deserve.
Just a follow up. Today Sus(+s)an Ley announced the reef was in much worse condition. A total reversal.
Huh! Maybe she actually did pull her head out of the sand.
Good for her!!
Reality trumps models… and hyperventilating falsehoods.
May God bless Aussie Environment Minister Sussan Ley, for her forthright declaration of observed facts.
You reality is that a minister can go on a little fishing expedition and work out what’s happening? She isn’t observing facts. She is making up her own. Similar to what happens at this site. You guys have been doing what you accuse “the other side” of doing. Thoughtless confirmation bias.
John (Donkey) Hutton,
The GBR has been “dying” since 1949 that I know of.
And you know what?
It does not look any different to 1949.
The Maldives have been sinking since the mid 30s and guess what?
Nothing has changed.
Sydney Harbour sea level has supposedly been rising at a few mm per year for the past 150 years and guess what?
Nothing has changed.
Interesting approach. Broadbeach in Queensland has been called that for quite a while now. But it is no longer broad.
Old pictures of 90 Mile Beach in NZ show quite a few images of wide open sand at low tide. You don’t see that wide expanse of sand at low tide any more.
Plenty of people from Miami mention the loss of 20 metres of beach lost to rising sea levels in the last 30 years.
Plenty of evidence that the sea levels are rising.
There is excellent data on sea level rise from tide gauges. Using beach erosion to judge sea level rise is a poor method. Loss or accumulation of sand on a beach is only affected very slightly by the small amount of sea level rise over the last 30 years, but mostly a factor of changes in currents, local structures, sea walls, storms, dams, etc. It is a far more complicated process than just saying the sea came up a few inches over the last 30 years (verified by tide gauges) and ignore the much more significant natural processes that build and erode beaches.
Oh c’mon now Philip. I can’t speak on NZ, but Broadbeach? Really? Nothing to do with development? The Southport area has traditionally been one where the Nerang River breaks through the shoreline around Southport every so often and then the Spit gradually elongates north again with deposited sand until the river breaks through again. Every time there’s a decent storm, Broadbeach sand is carried north and then built up over time again from the south. But now we have development, canals, sand pumps and every other modern convenience to remove the temporary nature of the Gold Coast sand and you focus on global warming? Surely you can do better than that.
Oh yeah? Then why aren’t the levels rising EVERYWHERE??? Can you explain how sea levels magically rise in one place and not others?
I’ll tell you why: some areas are undergoing subsidence, which means that the land SINKS.
Why do you assume that an inch of sea level rise somehow equates to “20 meters of beach”, whatever the eff that means?
Storms aggregate sand onto beaches.
Storms remove sand from beaches.
Storms even eliminate beaches and sometimes create barrier islands.
John Hutton,
You are a glaring example of the irrational elitist. Without any substantiation, you both ‘declare’ what my reality is and you ‘declare’ what facts Aussie Environment Minister Sussan Ley observed, illustrating that you are just making things up to suit your irrational world view while casting aspersions on anyone that doesn’t participate in your fantasies. Irrational denial of reality.
John Hutton,
So you are saying that the minister should not believe her lying eyes? And pay no attention to that Ridd guy.
“I was expecting to see dead areas with a few patches of life,” Ms Ley said.
“I saw the exact opposite to that.”
When what you are being told is opposite to your observations, most competent people will conclude, Something is Rotten in Denmark.
John, you keep complaining, about the topic, but YOU never provide WHY we should ignore the Environment Minister.
Pony up or stop complaining.
“I’m sure in the near future we shall read public apologies from all the reef scientists who declared the fake climate emergency.” Gosh, you’re an optimist Eric. Or was that a missing /sarc?
Anyway, some good news from the politicians for a change. Maybe the Ridd case has had an effect in Aussie after all.
this appears to be damage control. in order to get elected, leftists sold the death of the barrier reef as a dire consequence of global warming, and as a result tourism stagnated. now they have to let people know that the barrier reef is “open for business”. it’s an attempt to untangle the web they have woven.
Minister: “So the reef really isn’t dying and it’s all been a lie?”
Sir Humphrey: “(Sigh) Yes, Minister.”
Here is the article without paywall : https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/great-barrier-reef-is-better-than-expected-ley/news-story/6eef71906c6553453cde8575a6cca0ad
I get the pay wall following that link.
Sorry, I still have it on my screen, it has opened earlier immediately, without messages – but now, when I tried again, with the same URL,I’ve got the same paywall meassage that you. Sorry.
pdf copy of Graham Lloyd’s article
https://tinyurl.com/y65txvms
Search for the article title in google (not any other search engine). Then click on the link and it opens.
And sugar, banana and cattle farmers in Queensland are just about to get even more draconian fertilizer & ag chemicals usage laws foisted upon them, by the state Labor (left aligned) government! Laws that Prof Peter Ridd said could decimate coastal towns up and down the state!
Sussan Ley has done it again.
One to watch, she faced off the live sheep exporter that was responsible for the carnage on a ship headed over the hot Indian Ocean to the Middle East.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/26/sussan-ley-stands-firm-against-live-sheep-trade-despite-turnbull-rebuke
She surely has the guts to call it as it is.
More power to her, may her tribe increase.
Its long overdue that our so called “”Representatives”” left their comfortable officers in Canberra, and actually went and had a look at the Real World out there.
Now to wait for a response from the Labour opposition. Might even have a representative of the Media ask them a question about it.
May we see a lot more of it.
MJE VK5ELL
The real world, as you call it, is a sick and dangerous place. I’m not sure many of the Reps will want to step out of their meeting rooms. Plus the donuts are fresher.
But she obviously didn’t dive in the right places!
Sarc off
There are other commenters saying basically the same thing in this thread. hard to tell what’s sarcasm these days.
Funny. This story is not to be found in the ultra-alarmist Sydney Morning Herald. And I doubt it even rates a mention in the Australian version of the Grauniad.
And enormous kudos to Dr. Peter Ridd whose battle over his wrongful termination from James Cook University is not over.
The University may yet appeal Ridd’s win in the Federal Circuit Court.
His fight for the truth over the health of the Reef and the need to fact check research papers has been epic.
If it comes to another trial, perhaps his lawyers could request that the judge, the bar and the jury follow the minister’s example and take a look in situ themselves. If they reject that idea the press could have some fun challenging them.
How long will she keep her job if she insists on seeing the truth for herself?
I went and snorkelled at the Great Barrier Reef (Moore Reef) off Cairns a few weeks ago.
According to the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the most recent (2017-18) survey of Moore reef showed 0-5% coral cover, compared with about 20% in the 1980’s.
http://apps.aims.gov.au/reef-monitoring/reef/16071S
I don’t know their methodology, and I may have been in a different section, but where I looked it was more like 100% coral cover. I guess they just see what they want to see.
They use precise transect locations from one year to another and video along it with a set FOV then classify species and percent cover in the lab after field season (summer) is over. The fact is a reef really can recover that fast. The greater the damage the more impressive the % cover and species diversity during the recovery, after 2 to 3 years from damage (depending on water temp).
What you saw sounds about right, the reef is a very dynamic system where phenomenal changes are commonplace.
Nooooooooooooo………….!
“You just can’t get a reliable canary these days.”
If one strangles it first all looks good.
Hasn’t the reef been destroyed by the Crown of Thorns starfish plague? That was the story a few decades back.
theyre still there but decades of volunteers killing them has helped, now they have some? a couple? of robotic lil devices that cruise around autonomously and inject them with something to kill em in situ.
if there ever was a problem for the reef they really were a biggie
Humans removed the apex predator, Great Triton Conch, for its pretty shells and COT got out of control, unsurprisingly. TBF Aussie Govt. now breeding GTC.
The GBR is vast, manual destruction is an impossibility. I believe it is done on Green Is off Cairns but that is a hot tourist spot.
snikdad, don’t be smart about the COT damage. I swam the ribbons [north of Cooktown] in the ’70s and I did not see any hard coral. I cried in my goggles. There have been two outbreaks since and absolutely no reason to believe it can’t happen again, apart from the fact that there may not be enough hard coral to maintain an outbreak.
The QUT developed a killer drone years ago but there seems to be a lack of enthusiasm and money to deploy them.
https://www.scubadiving.com/killer-underwater-drone-takes-on-crown-thorns-starfish#page-2
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-31/crown-of-thorns-starfish-killing-robot-great-barrier-reef-qld/10183072
I have it on good authority CoT death was highly correlated with Y2k and the 70s Ice Age dooming but check that with the climate changers as they’re really big on this stuff. What are you like with the Commodore 64 or DOS? I got sidetracked at the time modelling the economy with punch cards and a DEC10 so I’m not up with all the finer nuances of deep science.
Steve,
Sorry, I still have it on my screen, it has opened earlier immediately, without messages – but now, when I tried again, with the same URL,I’ve got the same paywall meassage that you. Sorry.
Ms Ley was also accompanied on the visit by the government’s reef and recycling envoy and local member, Warren Entsch.
I’m sure climate cult scientists will say that she saw only what was cherry picked for her to see, and Warren Entsch will be investigated and his name thoroughly dragged through the mud
They’re saying that in this thread, in fact.
This article is reefist.
You might be right.
All along I thought is was reefaphobic but now I see the distinction.
Most Australian alarmists believe the reef is dead, all of it and the death is due to coal, CO2 etc etc. It’s a myth of course. It’s good to see a responsible minister actually going and have a look first hand. However, she is an LNP minister of the Morrison Govn’t and all Aussie alarmists will dismiss her findings as being in the pay of “big coal”. Shame that none of these alarmists have done what she is doing, actually going to have a look! I am happy for her to use my tax dollars to disprove the alarm.
Sussan Ley
Member for Farrer
Sussan Ley’s career path has been wonderfully varied, working odd jobs on the way to a pilot’s license – with roles as an air traffic controller, stock-mustering pilot and occasional shearer’s cook following.
While raising three children on a family farm, ten years study led to a senior position at the Australian Taxation Office before entering federal politics in 2001.
…
https://nsw.liberal.org.au/SussanLey
Please go back to the previous scenario where the reef is dying, and only a government carbon tax can save it. Remember the government needs your carbon tax credit money. (sarc)
If the Great Barrier Reef could survive the previous interglacial period, the Eemian, which was warmer than this one then it sure can survive this one.
One of the comments reported in The Australian is
‘Hardistan says disturbances such as bleaching, cyclones and crown of thorn outbreaks are occurring more often, are longer and more severe’
There is a lot in this statement.
It may be necessary to examine data.
‘Cyclones…are occurring more often?
Are they? I thought that rise in CO2 should warm the poles and reduce cyclones.
The IPCC does not expect this outcome.
What is the data?
Over what time period?
‘
Bleaching events …are occurring more often’
More often than when?
In the last 30 years? Since the LIA? in the last 13,000 years?
Were the last such events partially caused by low tide at 12 noon at the height of Summer?
If so, what is the chance of increase, bearing in mind coral reefs thrive as water warms,
hence the faster reef recovery of the northern hotter part of the GBR since two devastating cyclones.
How is the above statement validated?
Crown of Thorns Starfish.
How much do we actually know about their biology, reproduction and ‘epidemiology’?
Is our constant killing of them by injection of bile with diving teams, actually changing the balance of the reef?
Are we creating the problem of overpopulation of crown of thorn starfish by our own activity, or is it all caused by China and India burning coal?
If it is local activity, such as farming activity, has the data been validated?
If ‘nutrients [from run off] may be enhanced above natural levels’, does this mean, from a scientific point of view, we actually know the answer to the word ‘may’.
Do nutrients benefit the reef over time and allow robust growth and maturity over time?
Is run off any different now to when the river catchments were burned by lightning strike, firestick or accident release of flame over the last 60,000 years?
Do nutrient dumps on living coral mean they all die, or does this allow the recolonisation of the appropriate symbiots to enhance the reef.
Some data show it may be life giving.
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_222710_en.html
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/10/hong-kong-coral-reef-thrives-pollution-151007112117433.html
Coral cover.
Do slow and incremental rising of the sea, assist coral reefs to recover as they recolonise dead platforms
left high and drier after the last ice age?
There is no correlation found between rising sea levels, with no acceleration of rate, and CO2 levels which are accelerating.
Despite this observed data, if one believes that CO2 causes sea level rise, isn’t that good for the GBR?
No doubt, with a keen eye and oversight we may have some answers.
“What is the data?
Over what time period?”
Well here’s some lowdown on coral bleaching from Peter Ridd-
http://joannenova.com.au/2016/12/prof-peter-ridd-bleaching-is-not-new-like-coral-spawning-we-just-discovered-it-the-1980s/
Welcome to the coral dooming since the 1980s vs some past doomings-
https://dailygalaxy.com//?s=great+barrier+reef
As you can see dooming is a personal thing for each of us and you must contextualise your own dooming although probably dooming is more relevant to the corals but I can’t speak for them.
Interesting series of questions Lewis. I have some lay observations:
What causes bleaching? I assume heat, but not that of water ever so slightly warmer but sunbaked heat. The lowest of low tides happen after midday. If this coincides with a clear windless day with no cooling water washing over the coral, the polyps cook.
Cyclones. There have been far less cyclones on the east coast in the last 50 years.
COT A real and ever present danger. I doubt there could be another outbreak like the first in the ’60s, ’70s because there is not enough hard coral to maintain the outbreak. You can’t have a locust plague if there is no vegetation.
Rising sea levels. How the Great Barrier Reef was formed – Twenty thousand years ago
20,000 years ago, the world was starting to emerge from the most recent ice age. The sea level around the Australian coast was then about 120 meters lower than it is today.
The coastal mountain ranges we see today in north-eastern Australia were further inland. A coastal plain, dotted with hills, separated these mountains from the sea.
[according to AIMS]
That means it was a once a fringing reef at the edge of the continental shelf which grew to the sun as the ice melted. This would explain why there are reefs reaching the surface [bommies] surrounded by deep water. So it’s hard to believe continued rises would be a problem.
Nutrient runoff. Fertiliser is expensive and farmers’ sons are better educated. Hopefully this can be limited. I suspect graziers are a bigger problem. When I was a boy there were swimming holes where you could catch barra in the Burdekin. The sand is now over the old road and rail bridges.
Note. Just the observations of an old phart who has lived here more than three score and ten.
More good news…
“The world’s first solar road has turned out to be a colossal failure that’s falling apart and doesn’t generate enough energy, according to a report”
https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-first-solar-road-turned-out-colossal-failure-2019-8?fbclid=IwAR0SQanXaWiQSljj5iWL-bqxeVwDWgYX3s6xOd7fIQO0innta_je12oPzwo
You mean the morons went forward with that stupid idea. God help us I find it had to accept that our so called educated betters are truly that stupid. I hope the stupidity is a small bump in the road or God help my grandsons.
All of the solar road projects have been an abject failures not just the first, but all of them. The US, France and Holland, every single one of them. You should google a guy who runs the blog EEVBlog, an electrical engineer who has thoroughly debunked this idea!
I like this woman!!
Australian govt. should take a leaf from the IPCC’s playbook. If they offer grant money to researchers to find evidence that the GBR is doing fine, then odds are that that is exactly what they will find.
Initial it is hard to see what Reefs and Polar bears have in common , their are very different situations in completely different parts of the world .
But they do share one thing , that research in these two areas has a dominant narrative that makes or breaks careers , and were funding and political support can be plentiful if the ‘right results ‘ are seen .
Until the advent of ‘climate doom’ the reality was there was little interest in them outside their own areas . So the irony is that for all the ‘end of world ‘ claims the whole ‘climate doom ‘ game has been very beneficial indeed for some areas , where careers and funding that otherwise could only been dreamed about are now possible without the hassle involved doing hard quality scientific work . So can you really blame those that understand this and wish to keep it that way and facts be damned.
Whilst I have not dived on the GBR, I have on the coral reef at Madang in New Guinea. Now Madang is almost on the Equater, so the water is nice and warm, far warmer than most of the water on the GBR, and
the Corals are beautiful, so no problem with a few degrees warmer.
The idea that a warmer world would affect the Coral is nonsense, what about the coral at the Red Sea.
Not giving the funds to the likes of the JCU may well have happened over the Peter Rudd matter, serves them right.
MJE VK5ELL
Good for her. Now time to look at the scientists who have said it was going away and ask explain.
“I’m sure in the near future we shall read public apologies from all the reef scientists who declared the fake climate emergency.”
Oh look. Is that a flock of Gloucester Old Spot* overhead?
* A breed of pig. 🙂
The entire Great Barrier Reef WILL die, though, as it always does during the next glacial period when sea levels drop and the reef is baking in the tropical sun tens of meters above sea level. The Great Barrier Reef is ephemeral.
It’s “Climate catastrophe” now, sheesh. Stick with the narrative.
As they told us in 1989, by next year, Europe will be uninhabitable.
Sadly, this seems to have been an overeager prediction.
Scientists- “Let’s carefully collect data in multiple locations over a time period, donut multiple times and confer with other scientists who have done it to make sure we accurately measure the overall flourishing or degradation of the Great Barrier Reef.”
Politician- “they’re lying! I seen’t it! Looks great!
Stupid citizenry- “yeah! She seen’t it! Stupid scientists with your ‘accuracy’.”
Oh for Pete’s sake! Can people be that stupid.
Let me give you a metaphor to put this in perspective just how ludicrous this is…
On a viait to a 100-acre apple farm, an ignorant person may look over the fence and see one random tree with a nice-looking apple on it and declare “See look, there’s apples growing here and everything’s fine. The apple industry is doing well. Nothing to worry about at all.”
But nevermind the fact that the farmer, who knows his orchard, and has spent the last 10 years watching all the trees on his farm, and has tracked and counted a large percentage of them dying off… can tell you the measured truth of the situation that all is not good.
But, no no no, one lay person takes a quick look at one small reef… er, I mean apple tree… and all the ludicrously naive commenter come out with “job well done” and “gee, she really knows her stuff” and “thankfully she went and checked it out for herself and we can believe her because of that.”
Oh please!
Paul C August 17, 2019 at 3:16 pm
Oh for Pete’s sake! Can people be that stupid.
In your case yes, think about what you just said.
Using your apple tree fable the odds are one in a hundred of setting eyes on the one good apple tree. Also you would see the other trees.
Same way with the GBR. If much of the reef is dying it is unlikely that they would find the one spot that was doing well.
Oh, It is an orchardist that tends a orchard. Try to get the job titles correct.
michael
Another person winging a false strawman, only they call it a “metaphor”.
They also demean Ms. Ley and claim absurdities; “one lay person takes a quick look at one small reef”.
Thus proving this sill person never bothered to read the full account of Ms. Ley visiting the GBR.
I am a climate change sceptic and I firmly do not believe that climate change is going to kill the Great Barrier Reef (or for that matter any of the other doomsday scenarios the alarmists put out).
I’ve made over 300 dives on the reefs off Cairns, both the close in reefs and those further North off Lizard Island.
During those dives I’ve seen both healthy reefs and reefs heavily affected by bleaching following the last major El Nino event.
For Sussan Ley to declare the entire reef is fine on the basis of a single dive is a ludicrous as the claims made in 2016-17 that the entire reef was dying. The basis on which Sussan has made her claim is a joke and as bad as some of the claims we see passed off as science for AGW. The truth is somewhere in between and is not clearly known as the majority of science is being funded by those with an alarmist agenda.
The reefs to the North of Lizard Island got very heavily hit by the last bleaching event as a result of a strong El Nino. If Sussan Ley dived any of those reefs she would likely have had an entirely different experience. The reefs closer to Cairns showed stress after the bleaching event but when I dived them last year there was plenty of healthy coral. I suspect bleaching impacts further South were even less.
My observations are that coral will regrow very quickly where ever favorable conditions exist. To see the reality of this examine the wreck of the Yongala, sitting an an expanse of barren sandy bottom, now festooned with the most amazing array of coral and marine life.
Bleaching events will continue to occur and impact sections of the reef but the entire reef stretches 2,300km and will always recover from such events. Hence environment minister Sussan Ley will always be able to find single sections of reef that seem to be in otherwise healthy condition.
Oh as a footnote, the actions by JCU against Professor Peter Ridd were a disgrace and I was happy to contribute to his defence fund to fight their actions.
So…why don’t you come out and say that the theory that the GBR is dying because of AGW is false?
Why don’t you state specifically that the bleaching is due to El Ninos?
Why the pussyfooting?
‘I am a climate change sceptic and I firmly do not believe that climate change is going to kill the Great Barrier Reef’
It helps to read the first sentence.
HAHAHAHAHA!
James Cook University summarily fired one Peter Ridd for doing just what you suggest “Scientists” are doing in that quote.
Meanwhile, JCU and the University of New South Wales, along with others were sounding the alarm of Catastrophe on the whole of the GBR. They were even going so far as to declare that 90% of the reef was Dead! This went on for a couple of years, with each report even more apocalyptic than the previous. None of this was by accident.
Pushback finally happened when the Tourist Industry got clobbered because of all the bad news about the reefs. Clearly, the tourists wanted to see the reefs in all their glory, and stayed away in droves because of what they had all heard. The tour operators were helpless, as they could, and would go out to the reefs every day and saw that the reefs were doing just fine. But nobody would listen to them.
So the Environment Minister goes to see for herself. – Hilarity Ensues. Interesting that the Environment Minister may be in a position to cut some funding to the institutions which created the scare. Now maybe it would be all scientific “fun and games” if it was just an academic question. But, it is not. These research institutions used public money to create a scare which had a devastating impact on an important industry. There might be an accounting for that.
I red that Susan Ley actually got into the full diving gear over three days of different locations on the GB R .
She is judging by her life story a “”Doing”” sort of a person. Wish other Ministers were more like her. No mention of it on our Left Wing ABC broadcaster or the Fairfax papers.
Remember its the “”Cause”” not mere facts that matter. Don’t expect any mention by the Labour opposition, such matters are best forgotten.
I get the impression that the Morrison government is slowly moving
aw ay from renewables and more towards the use of cheap coal. The pleas from the Pacific Islanders which were ignored was a ndication of that.
MJE VK5ELL
You wont read any apologies. Carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid in water which dissolves calcium carbonate aka many forms of coral and mollusks. Common sense. You lack it. Unfortunate. Sad people listen to what you say crazy conspiracists.
Ever walked the beach on an idyllic tropical island? The white sands they speak of are calcium, not silica, or at least a high percentage .
There are untold tons of broken coral and marine skeletons, more than enough to buffer the weak carbonic acid.
Just wait for the CAGW lobby to claim that Minister Ley didn’t visit the correct parts of the GBR and cherry picked those locations where the die off was only just starting.
Of course they will fail to indicate the locations of the vast tracts of dying reef that should have been visited
What a steaming pile of horseshit. It has taken marine biologists decades of painstaking research, observation and recording to CONCLUDE that global warming is leading to acidification of our oceans which in turn is causing coral bleaching. This website is utter drivel, you should he ashamed of yourself for believing these obvious mistruths.
Steve
Leon
To validate your claim that CO2 is threatening corals with carbonic dissolution, can you please explain for us how it was that multiple phyla of marine calcified organisms, both free living and sessile, evolved, thrived and spread around the world during the Cambrian era when the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 20 times higher than it is now?
Why didn’t all that “carbonic acid” dissolve all marine calcified organisms? How is it that we find fossils of them from that time? Far from being dissolved by CO2 levels 20 times higher than today, they laid down so much mineral in their tissues that it survived till today, more than half a billion years.
No amount of infantile bad language will conceal the fact that the whole global warming CO2 scare is built on laughably flawed pseudoscience that is utterly refuted by geology and palaeo climate data.
“To validate your claim that CO2 is threatening corals with carbonic dissolution, . . . ”
It is not ‘his claim’.
” It has taken marine biologists decades of painstaking research, observation and recording to CONCLUDE that global warming is leading to acidification of our oceans which in turn is causing coral bleaching.”
The latest surveys show the GBR to be as healthy and abundant as in the 1970’s:
https://notrickszone.com/2019/08/19/new-gbr-study-400-coral-recovery-since-2014-with-2017-growth-rates-comparable-to-the-1970s/
They guessed, its their opinion about a future they coudln’t prove and didn’t happen, because their guesses about a natural ;evel of CO2 in the ocans wer presumtpive and wrong. How much change in alkaline ph was there again?
Climate scientists deny the reality of the natural world we measure to prove a Malthusian presumption of imminent disaster that simply doesn’t happen, and hasn’t happened durng similar changes in the past(clue there) – because they are paid to in their cosy academic lives in Departments of (pseudo) Climate SCience we p are made to pay for. They need to be put to real work, mining coal, perhaps?
If society is to progress and support 11 Billion people in a decent modern lifestyle we cannot allow overtly wrong beliefs to trump measured reality and proven physical relationships in our decisions, and must prefer to believe what actually happened or is happening. Something climate scientists have rarely troubled themselves with in their constant search for Malthusian disasters that aren’t happening and whose technical bases are often a status quo that never exists as we progress in sophistication and beliefs that are not evidence based, that a Mann filter is applied to to make the data support events that then don’t happen. Surprise. Predictions that don’t match observations are wrong, whoever makes them. This guy said that, as well as this… wish he was here now to dismantle the pseudo science drivel of well funded cynical climate scientists and their prediction consensus being preferred to evidence based science. in serious societal decisions … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWr39Q9vBgo
Don’t trust any politician when it comes to GBR. It’s the ultimate virtue signaling ploy to to guliable voters. The reef salvation industry is a multi million $ conglomerate of vested interests particularly at the academic end.
As in the words of one of my admired philosophers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCmuATH2yzo
James Bull
I am one of a small and dwindling band of people who have observed the GBR [intermittently] for >60 years. I saw it in it’s full glory before the crown of thorns scourges. The COT still has the capacity to devastate the reef as it has done before.
Ms Ley is too young to score the health of the reef because she cannot know what a 10 score is like. Very few do. It is not thriving, nor is it at death’s door.
Now let’s talk about the coral reefs in the Red Sea for a moment.
The Red Sea is in the northern hemisphere, so the amount of CO2 in the air is probably slightly more than the GBR area.
And the Red Sea water temperatures are higher (probably considerably higher).
Yet I have not heard a single complaint about bleached coral etc. on Red Sea reefs.
Rave reviews all round.
JCalvertn(UK)
Well observed.
Actually, despite pollution and other human activity, there is evidence that corals in the Gulf of Akaba
(part of the Red Sea for those who flunked geography) are thriving. Of course they may be different families of corals from those that are dying on the GBR but it does prove that corrals can survive “climate change”.
Climate change is racist might have some legs, here in California at least.
Sussan Ley should recruit more members of her staff to regularly dive on the GBR. She should drag the media along too. The more the merrier. Break the monopoly of the alarmists.
Need more research!