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.
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!