The media’s Great Barrier Reef hoax is bigger than the reef



The coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef is as expansive now as it has ever been recorded, with coverage nearing 40%. In fact, the coral cover has nearly tripled in the past dozen years. Despite this record expanse of coral off the coast of Australia, the climate community and mainstream media outlets unrelentingly push the narrative that the Great Barrier Reef is dying.

For example, CBS News ran one of its periodic pieces on the reef a few months ago with this terrifying headline: “Parts of Great Barrier Reef dying at record rate, alarmed researchers say; ‘worst fears’ confirmed.”

Reports of the Great Barrier Reef dying or being in peril are false, dishonest, and deliberately misleading.

The Guardian has been relentless in its apocalyptic coverage of the reef’s supposed imminent demise. More than a decade ago, the outlet essentially delivered the reef’s last rites, insisting that only a drastic reduction in carbon emissions could save it. A 2014 article, headlined “Great Barrier Reef damage ‘irreversible’ unless radical action taken,” warned: “The Great Barrier Reef will suffer irreversible damage by 2030 unless radical action is taken to lower carbon emissions.” Since that article was published, global carbon dioxide emissions have risen roughly 30%.

A coral apocalypse?

Despite the Great Barrier Reef doubling in size since then, the Guardian has doubled down on its doomsday narrative. Since the coral has not died as predicted, “coral bleaching” has emerged as the new man-made catastrophe in its reporting. These stories get distributed throughout the climate community and widely disseminated throughout its advocacy networks.

In January, the Guardian published this headline: “Catastrophic: Great Barrier Reef hit by its most widespread coral bleaching, study finds.” Just a few days ago, it followed up with, “Ningaloo and Great Barrier Reef hit by ‘profoundly distressing’ simultaneous coral bleaching events.”

From these headlines, one might assume the reef is dying. However, bleaching does not equate to death. Coral bleaching does not create a chunk of white, dead coral sold at a beach town shell shop. Instead, it occurs when the coral has lost the algae living on it, often due to a variety of stressors, including fluctuations in light or changes in water temperature. This process causes the living coral to turn white but does not necessarily kill it.

Misleading statistics

With record-high coral cover, it is mathematically probable that there will be more instances of bleaching simply because there is more coral overall. If a farmer triples the size of his apple orchard from 100 to 300 trees, and the number of trees suffering from blight triples from five to 15, that does not indicate a catastrophic increase in blight. Blaming climate change for an expected proportional increase in blight would be misleading. Yet, when it comes to coral, the media and climate activists ignore this logical correlation.

It is worth noting that when “the imminent death of the Great Barrier Reef” became a major climate story a dozen years ago, the reef had indeed shrunk dramatically. Some areas saw up to 85% of the coral cover disappear — not due to overheated ocean waters or excessive CO2, but rather due to a natural occurrence: a tropical cyclone.

A Queensland, Australia, map shows that the Great Barrier Reef runs parallel to the northeast coast. In 2009, Tropical Cyclone Hamish took a path parallel to the coastline. Instead of crossing the reef perpendicularly, it churned directly over it, causing immense damage. A few months after Hamish, the Australian Institute of Marine Sciencepublished research on the extent of the damage:

Damage ranged from "exfoliation," where the reef matrix was removed along with all that grew on it, leaving bare limestone, to "scouring" that essentially stripped all living tissue from living corals, to coral breakage in which massive coral heads as well as more delicate branching corals broke off.

Nature’s recovery

That 2009 analysis stated that it could take up to 15 years for the Great Barrier Reef to regrow to its pre-Hamish level of cover. The climate community dishonestly blamed the loss of coral cover following the cyclone on global warming, predicting a continued decline and an inevitable death. Fortunately, the reef has avoided any significant cyclone damage since 2009 and has not only returned to its prior coverage level but has continued to grow.

Reports of the Great Barrier Reef dying or being in peril are false, dishonest, and deliberately misleading.

‘That’s just the data’: Scientist obliterates Bill Maher’s climate change narrative



Bill Maher may commonly find himself as the voice of reason among his fellow liberals — but on a recent segment of “Real Time with Bill Maher,” one of his guests took that position instead.

While Maher repeated media talking points regarding the death of the Great Barrier Reef, his guest, Bjørn Lomborg, dismantled his argument with ease.

“What will the ocean look like? I mean, I’m not talking about oceans rising, I’m talking about oceans dying — and the world can’t live with dead oceans. And it seems like they’re in bad shape, between all the plastic in them, they’re overfished,” Maher tells Lomborg.

“Coral reefs, I know you’ve talked about, ‘Oh, that’s exaggerated.’ Tell me about why you think the coral reef problem is exaggerated,” he added.

Despite Maher’s confidence in his lead-up, Lomborg was ready for it.

“That’s just the data,” he retorted. “Remember, by the end of the century, the U.N. estimates the average person on the planet will be 450% as rich as he or she is today. So that means instead of being 450% as rich, we will feel like we’re only 435% as rich.”

“Yes, that’s a problem, no, it’s not the end of the world,” he continued, before making his point about the coral reef. “The guys who do the data every year on the coral reef since 1986 have been assessing what is the total outcome of how good does the coral reef look.”

“In 2009 to 2012, we thought it was terrible. It was really dramatic. The Guardian wrote the obituary for the Great Barrier Reef. And the point I’ve just been making is the last three years, they’ve been at the highest level, the most coral reef we’ve ever seen in those areas,” Lomborg explained.

“Most of the challenge comes from overfishing, from industrial pollution, from sea runoff, and those are the things we should fix. But we’re not being well-informed if we’re being told this is because of climate change, so we’ve got to change our entire infrastructure on our global economy in order to save the oceans, when it’s not actually what’s going to happen,” he finished.

Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” is on the same page.

“If you don’t give AOC the power to fix the climate, that’s one of the things that they would love to cancel everybody for and keep liberals in a constant state of hysteria,” Rubin says.


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Two-thirds of Great Barrier Reef boast highest coral cover ever recorded despite previous reports of looming extinction of Australia's natural wonder



Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is flourishing despite previous reports sounding the alarm about the looming extinction of Australia's natural wonder.

According to new findings reported on Thursday, a majority of the thriving Great Barrier Reef boasted the highest coral cover ever recorded. Two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef had the largest amount of coral cover in the 36 years that it has been monitored.

The northern and central areas of the Great Barrier reef experienced growth, according to surveys conducted between August 2021 and May 2022 by the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences. The northern section soared from an all-time low of 13% coral coverage in 2017 to 36% in the most recent report. The central region jumped from a low of 12% in 2019 to 33% coverage in the latest AIMS annual report.

The coral coverage in the southern section fell by 4% – from 38% in the previous year to 34% in the latest report. The environmental experts believe the decrease stems from outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish.

AIMS considers a hard coral cover of more than 30% as "high value."

AIMS CEO Paul Hardisty downplayed the positive news in a statement: "This shows how vulnerable the Reef is to the continued acute and severe disturbances that are occurring more often and are longer-lasting."

“Every summer the Reef is at risk of temperature stress, bleaching and potentially mortality and our understanding of how the ecosystem responds to that is still developing," Hardisty said.

"What we're seeing is that the Great Barrier Reef is still a resilient system. It still maintains that ability to recover from disturbances," AIMS Long-Term Monitoring Program leader Mike Emslie told Reuters, but he cautioned, "But the worrying thing is that the frequency of these disturbance events are increasing, particularly the mass coral bleaching events."

For nearly 40 years, AIMS has examined the status of the Great Barrier Reef through its Long-Term Monitoring Program – which claims to have conducted the "most comprehensive and extensive record of coral status on any reef ecosystem in the world." Each year, marine scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences survey between 80 and 130 reefs on the GBR.

Despite the promising report from the respected environmental organization, it wasn't long ago that there were experts claiming that the Great Barrier Reef could soon die off completely.

The New York Times has published several articles foretelling doomsday scenarios for the Great Barrier Reef.

In December 2016, the Times ran an article titled: "The Great and Dying Barrier Reef."

In March 2017, the outlet said, "Large Sections of Australia's Great Reef Are Now Dead."

In April 2018, the New York Times published an article titled: "Damage to Great Barrier Reef From Global Warming Is Irreversible, Scientists Say."

The Washington Post also claimed that climate change was killing the Great Barrier Reef, and it "might never recover."

In April 2019, the paper declared, "The Great Barrier Reef is being battered by climate change, it might only get worse."

In October 2020, the Washington Post published an article titled: "Half of the Great Barrier Reef's coral is gone. It might never recover."

Just in March, the Washington Post reported, "Climate warming deals yet another blow to the Great Barrier."

PBS News Hour featured a segment in March 2017 titled: "Climate change is killing the Great Barrier Reef."

In November 2020, Business Insider asserted, "Experts say the time to take action is now, and if nothing is done, this world wonder as we know it today could be gone by 2050."

The website Outside wrote an obituary for the Great Barrier Reef in October 2016.

In March, UNESCO considered labeling the Reef as "in danger" after the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority reported "low to moderate bleaching" of the natural wonder. UNESCO confirmed that two scientists would examine the Reef for 10 days, according to The Guardian.

A World Heritage Committee meeting on determining the status of the Great Barrier Reef was scheduled to happen in June in Russia, but it was postponed after the invasion of Ukraine.

The Great Barrier Reef was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1981.

Continued coral recovery leads to 36-year highs across two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef www.youtube.com