Let the caterwauling commence.
The property recorded the highest level of hard coral cover in the northern and central regions in
https://whc.unesco.org/archive/2023/whc23-45com-7B.Add-en.pdf#page26
36 years of monitoring; a new target of 43% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 has
been agreed [irrelevant nonsense ~cr]; funding has been made available to scale up work on coastal restoration to achieve water quality improvements; participation of Traditional Owners in the management of the property has been increased; fisheries management has been improved; and new techniques to restore coral reef habitat have been developed.
The UNESCO World Heritage Centre’s recent report on the Great Barrier Reef’s conservation status seems to have missed the mark for some, igniting a dramatic outcry from the usual quarters of Climate Change activism. Despite improvements in the Reef’s condition since 2019, activists seem more interested in stirring up alarmist rhetoric than acknowledging the practical steps that have been taken.
According to the report, the Australian government’s efforts in improving fishery management, conserving critical habitats, reducing pollution, and committing significant funding to the Reef’s long-term sustainability, have started to pay off. What’s more, the report applauds the concrete and effective work that has been done so far – a fact that critics seem all too ready to dismiss.
Additional water quality investments have been committed that, along with existing investments,
https://whc.unesco.org/archive/2023/whc23-45com-7B.Add-en.pdf#page26
provide funding certainty until 2030 to scale up land restoration and water quality improvements.
These include, among others, an AUS$253 million budget uplift for the property’s lead
management agency, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority; AUS$ 262.5 million for land
acquisitions and capital work to improve vegetation management; and a minimum of AUS$ 100
million for reef protection and restoration with Traditional Owners;
Nevertheless, the outcry from Climate Change activists has been predictably vocal, with many interpreting the report through a doom-and-gloom lens that favors cataclysmic conclusions over an appreciation for pragmatic progress.
One such critic, Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, suggests that UNESCO merely “kicked the can down the road” by delaying the next assessment on listing the Reef as “in danger”. His perspective seems to place more emphasis on climate calamity rather than acknowledging the tangible efforts in fishery management, a crucial component of ecosystem conservation that the UNESCO report clearly acknowledges.
Similarly, David Booth, professor of Marine Ecology at UTS and president of the Australian Coral Reef Society, points to an apparent contradiction between the government’s stated efforts to protect the reef and its approval for new fossil fuel projects. He goes on to demand that the Federal Government should “stop all coal and gas production and export”. Unfortunately, his view is a typically simplistic take on a complex problem, and seems to ignore the fact that transitioning away from fossil fuels is not as simple as flicking a switch or how disastrous such an effort would be.
Jodie Rummer, a professor of Marine Biology at James Cook University, added her voice to the chorus, claiming that the “in danger” listing was “irrelevant”. Interestingly, there is some truth to her statement, but not the way she intends. What’s more important are the pragmatic actions being taken to protect the Reef, not the listing of it. However, her plea to phase out fossil fuels this decade is as ridiculous as it is irrelevant.
It’s easy to get caught up in the histrionics of activists who make a living from predicting the worst, but we must not overlook the substantial progress made. From 2019, the reef has shown signs of recovery. Fishery management has improved, pollution has been reduced, and substantial funding has been dedicated to its preservation.
So rather than indulging the unhinged alarmist narratives, let’s applaud the tangible and functional steps being taken. The small victories add up, and perfection, as the saying goes, is the enemy of the good. The Great Barrier Reef may be an ecosystem under pressure, but it’s far from the end of days that some activists would have us believe. Let’s focus on the progress made and keep working towards sustainable, realistic solutions.
H/T steveg
For more information on Coral Reefs go to the corals page on EverythingClimate.com
Or consider viewing a lecture on the subject by Peter Ridd on our ClimateTV page
Here in South Florida, the biggest danger to our precious coral reef is water quality, not global warming. So UNESCO says the same for GBR. Finally UN got something right, to alarmist dismay.
UN chief said ‘Oceans boiling.’ I just checked again. Not in Fort Lauderdale.
Not in Fort Lauderdale. Surely in Geneva and New York.
Extra high salinity helps?
Unprecedented extreme high salinity?…
It’s funny how they pour cold water over what would be regarded as good news. You can tell just how bad they want a terrible weather disaster to occur just to try and prove their rhetoric.
Fat chance of that: in 2022 mineral fuels, oils, and distillation products accounted for 43% of Australia’s export income (Trading Economics), the current government may be idiots but it is not suicidal.
Importers of Australian coal and gas would easily find other eager suppliers.
If the good professor is so convinced fossil fuels are destroying the GBR he would be better demanding for instance that China stop burning coal wherever it comes from although I doubt he will have much success there either.
Yes, just because he’s a Professor doesn’t mean he’s not stupid.
I wouldn’t describe him as a “good professor “, merely an ignorant and lazy charlatan with his grubby paws out for more I’ll gotten taxpayer funding.
Just to remind ourselves about the scale and enormity of the GBR –
composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres (133,000 sq mi).
The reef is located in the Coral Sea off the coast of Queensland, Australia, separated from the coast by a channel 160 kilometres (100 mi) wide in places and over 61 metres (200 ft) deep.
Now, I believe that Peter Ridd has made the point a number of times that sporadic seasonal runoff from agricultural and/or mining activities on the Qld mainland have bugger-all chance of affecting the ocean water quality out at the GBR proper, particularly the outer (eastern, Coral Sea) fringes.
Much of the “studies” undertaken by visiting students of the James Cook University and their teachers are done on the more readily-accessible inner fringe reefs.
These are studied to death, year after year.
To my point above about the sheer scale & enormity of the GBR system –
patches of such a vast living body will inevitably be affected from time to time by parasites and sunburn.
Would we rush an elephant off to the vet for intensive care because it had some fleas or scaly skin patches, or corral a humpback whale to teat an “outbreak” of barnacles?
So why do some think that the GBR needs intensive care from humans for stuff it has successfully dealt with all by itself for hundreds of thousands of years (well, maybe ~ 20k years in its current form)?
I have just 2 words for GBR fretters – Bikini Atoll.
That reminds me. I must remember not to pee in the Pacific Ocean.
Ultimately we all pee in the oceans.
And every drop of water we drink has passed through some form of animal life at some point, exiting by the usual channels….?
You’ve consumed water that passed through Caesar’s kidneys! (As well as dinosaur kidney-analogs as well.)
Earth recycles everything, eventually.
G’Day Forrest,
“technicolor yawns” are also frowned upon.
(From a Barry Humphries song)
A University of Queensland professor, lamenting the UN decision, said yesterday…. ”But co2 is a deadly molecule!”
In the words of Black Adder…
So somebody slipped up and allowed a relevant fact to find its way into the UNESCO report “The property recorded the highest level of hard coral cover in the northern and central regions in 36 years of monitoring”
I wonder how that happened? How did the level of hard coral come to be recorded at a high? And how did THAT find its way into the UNESCO report?
At any rate there’s nothing to fear because “participation of Traditional Owners in the management of the property has been increased”
And that will make a tangible difference to the coral coverage … hang on somebody remind me how that encourages coral growth again!
What utter twaddle.
I think they have recorded a higher level “because they went and looked”.
GBR dying was all about models and misinterpretation of pictures and thin data.
“I wonder how that happened? How did the level of hard coral come to be recorded at a high?”
“Whats Up With That” played a role here.
A few years ago the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) stopped combining their hard coral cover data for the 11 GBR regions for political reasons. It was a bit revealing, apparently.
Just for the record, I spent a couple of days weighting and combining these regions and posted the result at WUWT.
I notified Peter Ridd and he subsequently had my graph published in the Australian newspaper.
The rest is history and it has now found its way into this UNESCO report.
The original post is below.
Great Barrier Reef Not In Danger • Watts Up With That?
As noted before, if the Australian government believed, truly believed that the GBR was in danger from co2 emissions they wouldn’t just “Stop oil now”, they would shut down the tourism industry completely.
How can you say it’s in danger while accepting millions flying in to see it?
Instead they are just like our canadian twats in Whistler or Victoria or Calgary/Banff who declare climate emergencies while bragging of how many people visited their city/attraction last year, and how much money they are spending to attract even more this year.
I have nothing but contempt for such people, they deserve every name we can think of.
“they deserve every name we can think of”…..or a 5.56fmj postcard delivered “First class”
And what does this mean?
“participation of Traditional Owners in the management of the property has been increased”?
Aborigines? Did they own the reef? What will they do differently?
Tinkering along the edges of the Great Barrier reef is not ”management”.
To my knowledge, no past Aboriginal group had any means or ability to access the main, proper, large barrier part of the Great Barrier Reef. Some might have been washed offshore on logs to die after cyclones. Some might have made small, primitive boats to reach the occasional island with reef that was close to shore
It follows logically that no current aborigine has anything to contribute to the wellbeing of the GBR more or less than any other person.
We are dealing with token favouritism of a minor racial or mostly part-racial group. But strictly, all here are of one race, the human race. Geoff S
It is all about the dream space. Reality is too hard.
Maybe I’m over-cynical, but somehow I doubt that the vast government expenditure re the Great Barrier Reef has made any difference to the reef’s condition. The series ‘Utopia’ (recommended) dealt with it recently, with the bureaucrats thrilled with all the extra fast boats and state-of-the-art equipment that they now had, but no they hadn’t actually used it to do anything to help the reef (but we can get out there a lot faster now).
”Maybe I’m over-cynical, but somehow I doubt that the vast government expenditure re the Great Barrier Reef has made any difference to the reef’s condition.”
You aren’t over-cynical. You are realistic. There are lots of rooms with elephants and unclothed emperors out there.
Mike, at the risk of sounding repetitive:
There exists a myth that you can create jobs. Well, this is what it looks like, when you ‘create jobs’; you have a workforce paying extra taxes so the government can give it away as grants to the otherwise unemployable scions of well-off people who pay others to raise their kids.
It is a way to move money upwards, that’s all.
> “Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University”
Never have so many words been misused in one phrase. Recall the travesty of Peter Ridd to understand Coral studies at Cook University is neither science nor civil.
This is all sophistry. The sun is what bleaches the coral reefs. Low tide, few clouds, bleached coral. There is a Nature Show on Saturday AMs that reviewed the coral issue and how activist are transplanting the coral to bleached area to revive the coral. They don’t seem to grasp that if CO2 was the cause, transplanting coral wouldn’t work. CO2 would be like salting a field, nothing should grow, but the transplanted coral thrives in the same CO2 rich water.
Bleached coral isn’t dead, anyway. It very often recovers on its own.
Alarmists just love the image because when initially bleached it looks dead and lifeless like white skeletons. Even if the coral dies, it is quickly colonized by algae and usually new coral makes its way back.
Replacing coral is an easy job with few real demands but plenty of money.
The best thing is to let nature sort these things for itself.
The worst thing to happen is humans “helping”
The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
I thought corals increases the carbon dioxide in the sea and if there is an excess the carbon dioxide in the air. Corals also increase the pH of the adjacent seawater. Corals are primarily calcium carbonate. The calcium carbonate comes from the calcium bicarbonate in the seawater through the following reaction:
Ca(HCO3)2 ——-CaCO3 + H2O+CO2
It is estimated that almost 2 megatons of C or something like 7 megatons of carbon dioxide per year.
It is the algae and other photosynthetic organism living in symbiosis with the coral that removes the carbon dioxide.
There was nothing wrong with the GBR to begin with, the only thing wrong was a lazy scientist with a big budget who thought it proper to measure the extent of the reef from hundreds of metres up in the air.
Reducing CO2 emissions by crippling humanity, as a cure for the imagined GBR problems is like burning women who wore funny hats, as a cure for solar eclipses.
Hughes, Booth & Rummer have been caught out telling barefaced lies to scare the gullible and to advance their cult. And to line their pockets, of course.
Priority No.1 is to hold them to account, preferably in a law court, if an honest one can be found.
I wonder if they know that coral reefs require CO2 dissolved in water to survive, both for algae photosynthesis, and calcium carbonate to build the reef.
Coral are major sequestering agents that almost completely depleted our atmospheric CO2 and put the whole ecosystem at risk. They consume CO2 so greedily there are entire mountain ranges made of the stuff, like the Dolomites in Europe, the South China Karsts.
All the limestone and marble. Massive “sinks” of carbon.
I would recommend Dr Jennifer Marohasy’s blog with relevant underwater photos of the reef for those who are interested. Dr Jennifer Marohasy is Australia’s best-known proponent of evidence-based science and her blog is the most popular environmental one in the country.
The Great Barrier Reef is doing well.
I see what’s going on here, you are hiding the calamitous decline in the south, east, west and outskirts!!! You people are upsetting Mother Gay-ia, causing fluctuations in everything, and all this extra coral may perhaps contribute to a possible increase or decrease in plankton polymorphism at the turbulence barrier between the postulated biocline layers of the pelagic.
Oh, for things to return to the Golden Age, when everything was settled and nothing changed and I was a prince of Atlantis, surrounded by Charlise Theron lookalikes working my vineyards… Life was so good before you people came and fu
Nevermind that much of the “bleached” coral is actually healthy live coral. Most coral is a plain beige sandy color. Flying or floating over it won;t tell you its condition, you have to get in the water to get a close look.
Ahhh . . . how well I remember numerous, past alarming reports in the MSM that CO2-induced ocean “acidification”—totally attributable to humans burning fossil fuels, of course—would cause global destruction of coral reefs in our lifetime.
Seems like the MSM today is too involved with other matters than to have headline reports on the record-setting levels of hard coral in the northern and central regions of the GBR.
What . . . somebody found a way to mitigate ocean acidification and didn’t tell us?