From Andrew Bolt at Australia’s Herald Sun below, some sharp evidence in a new paper that the “coral bleaching” scare of the Great Barrier Reef is unfounded and mostly made up.

This study indicates that at the scale of the whole GBR there was no net decline in live hard coral cover between 1995 and 2009.

I can hear Dr. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (who rudely and selfishly disrupted my talk with David Archibald and Bob Carter last year in Brisbane) screaming all the way here in Washington DC as I post this. Since he’ll read this when he gets the linkback, maybe he’ll take time to read the funding acknowledgments (like your buddy Monbiot did) in Soon’s 2003, 2005, and 2007 papers and realize he’s just playing “follow the leader”. Ove, you’ve been bad and been had. – Anthony

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Latest research: no, the Reef isn’t being killed by warming

Julia Gillard claims global warming is already killing the Great Barrier Reef:

Australian natural wonders such as the Great Barrier Reef are already being damaged, and the risk of coastal flooding could double by the end of the century.

Warmist alarmist Sir Nicholas Stern made the same claim:

The snows on Kilimanjaro are virtually gone, the Barrier Reef is probably going…

The ABC was already hypeing up the destruction of the reef by global warming in 2002:

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says up to 10 per cent of the reef has been lost to bleaching since 1998.

ABC host Kerry O’Brien back then treated the death of the reef as imminent:

It’s not just Australia’s farmlands which are threatened by global warming, the greenhouse effect could also spell disaster for coral reefs around the world, including our own natural wonder, the Great Barrier Reef. As Australia prepares for another hot summer, one man is on a mission to capture as many corals as possible on high-definition camera before even more stretches of once-spectacular reef are bleached bone-white.

And remember the alarmism of prominent warmist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg?

In 1998, he warned that the reef was under pressure from global warming, and much had turned white. He later admitted the reef had made a “surprising” recovery. In 1999 he claimed global warming would cause mass bleaching of the reef every two years from 2010. He yesterday admitted it hadn’t. In 2006, he warned high temperatures meant “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef could die within a month”. He later admitted this bleaching had a “minimal impact”.

All that alarmism, relentlessly pushed by this desperately dishonest government, is now blown out of the water by the latest research by Townsville’s Australian Institute of Marine Science:

Monitoring data collected annually from fixed sites at 47 reefs across 1300 km of the GBR indicate that overall regional coral cover was stable (averaging 29% and ranging from 23% to 33% cover across years) with no net decline between 1995 and 2009…. Crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) outbreaks and storm damage were responsible for more coral loss during this period than either bleaching or disease despite two mass bleaching events and an increase in the incidence of coral disease. While the limited data for the GBR prior to the 1980’s suggests that coral cover was higher than in our survey, we found no evidence of consistent, system-wide decline in coral cover since 1995. Instead, fluctuations in coral cover at subregional scales (10–100 km), driven mostly by changes in fast-growing Acroporidae, occurred as a result of localized disturbance events and subsequent recovery.

You have been deceived again and again and again.

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Here’s the paper: (link to PDF)

Disturbance and the Dynamics of Coral Cover on the Great Barrier Reef (1995–2009)

Kate Osborne,* Andrew M. Dolman,¤a Scott C. Burgess,¤b and Kerryn A. Johns

Abstract

Coral reef ecosystems worldwide are under pressure from chronic and acute stressors that threaten their continued existence. Most obvious among changes to reefs is loss of hard coral cover, but a precise multi-scale estimate of coral cover dynamics for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is currently lacking. Monitoring data collected annually from fixed sites at 47 reefs across 1300 km of the GBR indicate that overall regional coral cover was stable (averaging 29% and ranging from 23% to 33% cover across years) with no net decline between 1995 and 2009. Subregional trends (10–100 km) in hard coral were diverse with some being very dynamic and others changing little. Coral cover increased in six subregions and decreased in seven subregions. Persistent decline of corals occurred in one subregion for hard coral and Acroporidae and in four subregions in non-Acroporidae families. Change in Acroporidae accounted for 68% of change in hard coral. Crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) outbreaks and storm damage were responsible for more coral loss during this period than either bleaching or disease despite two mass bleaching events and an increase in the incidence of coral disease. While the limited data for the GBR prior to the 1980’s suggests that coral cover was higher than in our survey, we found no evidence of consistent, system-wide decline in coral cover since 1995. Instead, fluctuations in coral cover at subregional scales (10–100 km), driven mostly by changes in fast-growing Acroporidae, occurred as a result of localized disturbance events and subsequent recovery.

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