Join Peter Ridd, Jo Nova, Walter Starck and Alan Moran for the Great Barrier Reef Webinar
Tuesday March 1: Sign up here: AEF Webinar: Is the Great Barrier Reef Dying or Thriving?
Photo: Wise Hok Wai Lum
One side of politics has just spent another billion dollars to “save the reef”. The other side of politics may spend even more. But how much is our national policy set by scientific data and how much is controlled by scenic-disaster-shots? Do Australian academics and media activists craft a false notion of a fantasy Reef-Nirvana where bleaching never occurred, where cyclones were gentle, and where corals are supposed to live in aquarium-like conditions with constant pH and temperature 24 hours a day? Is the reef really in worse condition now than thirty years ago when half of our man-made emissions had not been emitted?
Walter Starck wants to know why we have one the largest fishing zones per capita in the world but most families struggle to afford to eat Australian fish?
A STICKY POST. Details below.
Sign up here: AEF Webinar: Is the Great Barrier Reef Dying or Thriving?
Tuesday March 1: 7:30pm (NSW, Vic, Tas), 7PM (SA) 6:30pm (QLD), 6pm (NT), 4:30pm (WA)
Global Times: 9:30AM Central European Time, 8:30AM UK, 3:30 AM New York, 12:30 AM California, 11:30pm Anchorage (Monday) and 10:30pm Hawaii (Monday)
AEF Webinar: Is the Great Barrier Reef Dying or Thriving?
Our speakers will outline the latest scientific data on the state of the environment of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and what they imply for the reef’s long-term environmental health.
Against this background, they will proceed to a panel discussion of the serious challenges that may be mounted against the GBR environmental assessments conveyed to Australians, their governments and UN agencies by the scientific organisations that collect and use this data in their research on the reef. Their discussion will touch on the adverse economic and social impacts of the public policy measures that have relied upon these assessments.
The panel discussion will be moderated by Alan Moran. Alan is an economist with extensive experience in the economic assessment of environmental issues. He is also a Director of the AEF.
During the course of the Webinar, attendees may propose questions for one or more of the panel members via the Zoom Q&A feature. Alan Moran will select the questions to be submitted to the panel.
No doubt about the conclusion, the reef is actually fine !.
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Dave, the GBR is somewhere between “fine” and “in danger”.
No one commenting today ever visited it “in its full glory”. I did, a few times, but I’m turning 80. Any one who says it is as good as ever is either lying or ill informed.
The three [approx] crown of thorns infestations killed over 90% of the reef. No one would spend hours getting seasick on a launch to see soft coral, it is the hard stuff and the fish that cohabit they want to see. I once swam one of the Ribbon Reefs, north of Cooktown, and cried in my goggles. It was totally denuded of hard corals.
It is great that the GBR is coming back but with the official attitude that the COT is “natural and cyclic” it is NOT safe.
I agree that the money allocated is far more political than practical. QIT developed a drone that can identify and inject COT. AFAIK it has never been deployed. The sort of money we are talking about could have hundreds ready to be employed against any outbreak.
I’m too old now and there are no day trips to the reef anyway but my last trip on a commercial launch still showed large areas of “nothing” and one desultory turtle. I would only rate it 10%.
Peter Ridd, talk to me, I’m close to JCU. Jo can give you my email.
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I’m not quite your vintage Hanrahan but I too have ranged over much of the Reef – mostly off Bowen and Whitsundays. I recall the COT infestations of the 1970’s and large areas turned to rubble by TC’s, but in all of that I can say it is cyclic and that every zone or area is going to suffer setbacks at some time. Pristine is a word bandied around a lot these days but the word magnificent would apply to some of the sights on the outer reef on a “glass out” day.
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Killed over 90% of the reef! Really?
That’s the problem with B.S. Once you B.S. on one thing it trashes your credibility on everything.
Killed over 90% of the parts of the reef that were infested.
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The only reason the first and worst plague died out is the same reason plagues generally die out: Nothing left to feed on.
No reef was spared, top to bottom.
25
Sooo every single one of the 2,900 reefs, that make up the 2300km long Great Barrier reef system.
Was destroyed, top to bottom?
When you run out of B.S. … double down!
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Hanrahan I usually disagree with your comments but on this occasion I definitely agree as does Australian Associated Press.
https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/great-barrier-reef-record-coral-claim-is-all-at-sea/°
https://www.thecourier.com.au/story/7069344/see-it-before-its-gone-a-fact-check-on-the-decline-of-our-biggest-coral-reef/
https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/has-the-great-barrier-reefs-health-barely-changed-since-the-1980s/
https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/despite-2021-being-a-good-year-for-coral-health-coral-in-the-great-barrier-reef-has-declined-over-the-past-decade-and-is-threatened-by-climate-change-contrary-to-claims-by-peter-ridd/
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Ian, you do not agree with me. I don’t believe Climate Change™ has caused any loss of coral in the last decade. See my post #10
I accept bleaching as natural, unavoidable and necessary, not man made.
I have not said that the COT is a man-made Frankenstein monster either. It too is natural but it must be controlled if the world reefs are to thrive. We must “interfere” with nature in the same we we “interfere” to control a virus.
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Ian, the fact check article testing Peter Ridd’s statement are wrong.
Ridd’s comment was “The amount of coral, while fluctuating dramatically from year to year, is about the same today as when records began in the 1980s.”
Peter Ridd made the statement based on Surveys that were completed at various points in 2020 up to December when Peter Ridd made the comment. This was data he has access to ahead of the report released in April 2021.
The fact check article used the surveys on public record which were all completed as part of the previous AIMS reports. Not the surveys that had been completed right up to Ridd’s comment.
This is a gross failure of the fact checkers to publicly check a comment and publish the results but use a different data set. Additionally, the fact check discusses outlooks which are simply predictions and opinion based on data in the few years leading up to 2019. Opinions and predictions have no place in a fact check where data is the measure. The article also refers to Ridd’s dismissal from his job which has no relevance to the facts, but is designed to discredit him. The fact check is clearly biased and wrong.
As you can see by this post Ridd was correct. https://joannenova.com.au/2021/07/what-a-recovery-hottest-ever-year-causes-coral-reefs-to-grow/ Each chart, north, central, and south reef shows the current level at or above the level when the survey started in the 80’s.
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the hypocrisy is very bad https://balance10.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-hypocrisy-is-very-bad.html
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As a taxpayer, I want to know what happened to the $444 million that Emperor Turnbull gave to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation in 2018, an organisation that until then almost no one had heard of and who were even shocked themselves to hear they had received the money (they were never directly informed about it). At the time they had only six full time employees.
What of genuine value, if anything, have they produced with this vast amount of cash?
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As you know, this is a favorite complaint of mine. After a week, the little six person group came up with one certain fact. The cost of administration of the $444 million would be $134 Million. By my calculation, that’s $22 million each for wages alone, say over three years. Fair enough. Nothing more was said. Certainly nothing about the fate of the other $310 million.
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Where is this information about the cost of Administration or wages? Have you got any details?
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No, it was reported at the time. The Australian likely. And there were no details, just an amount.
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NoJennifer Marohasy?
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She was an obvious choice, of course, but not able to this time.
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Monckton would add gravitas.
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Is he still with us?
13
The reef is obviously in a bad shape….. Everywhere except on the posters promoting scuba diving.
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I’ll defer to Hanrahan above but I don’t think there was ever a time when it was uniformly like the posters from end to end. Just see Jennifer Maharosy’s pictures to see how unphotogenic most of the reef actually is.
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How can I object? My early trips were to Keeper Reef, the closest to Townsville. A small sample to be sure.
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True, most inner reef corals are a drab colour and this surprises many tourists. A mixture of green ,beige and creams seem to predominate.
30
Were you looking at soft coral? If so then I agree, I wouldn’t do the trip. ‘Tis the hard coral that is colourful, including black.
But it wasn’t always like that, you’ll have to trust me on that. Keeper was spectacular in the ’50s, early ’60s.
22
I read or heard somewhere years ago that the pretty bright colourful coral is typically unhealthy coral. That the drab green and brown is typically the healthy coral.
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The very idea that Australians are ‘custodians’ of the reef is absurd as the idea that aborigines were ‘custodians’ of Australia. They didn’t even know where they were. And most Australians were ignorant of the reef except as a bit of useless geography when children had to learn maps.
And the idea that somehow a 1.5C change in 150 years has caused massive damage to ‘our’ reef is nuts. The temperature variation from one end to the other of this massive 2300km long structure is much more. And the width of this tiny thing ranges from 60 km to 250km. Sure. It’s our fault.
There are two arguments, carbon dioxide causes very tiny warming which causes Climate Change which is killing everything and fertilizer used by Farmers is in sufficient concentrations when the water reaches the reef to cause damage.
A third story has resurfaced, the Crown of Thorns Starfish as quoted by Morrison. We know now this is debunked, a long term cycle which has been around for at least a thousand years and probably far longer. The starfish actually prunes the reef and improves it, like any garden. And creates the sand we enjoy.
But there are billions in cash to be won by claiming it is dying and nothing for saying there is no problem.
Firstly $444million given by Royal decree by Malcom Turnbull and for no apparent reason to Lucy Turnbull’s little committee, without even applying or a plan. It sure beats having to put in a proposal. Noblesse Oblige. The biggest Treasury robbery in Australian history and nothing is said.
Now Scott Morrison’s instant throwaway $1Billion in the middle of the pandemic. Allegedly to fight the deadly starfish, which is actually quite beneficial. You could give every starfish a $1000 to go home. Or put a bounty on their heads.
Like the ridiculous Nett Zero, no actual science was used in making these decisions. And the Chief Scientist and his staff and friends like the CSIRO, BOM do their best to say nothing. Like the fantasies of Climate Change and Ocean Acidification, everyone wants the money and the reef will be fine.
But I doubt that will please the UN committees run increasingly by the CCP which is waging a punitive war on Australia today. To teach us to know our place and not question President Xi.
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And Captain Cook is a prime example of how badly the British ran the place by hitting the reef with his flat bottomed ship Endeavour in 1770. I suppose we should pay compensation to the aborigines who were the previous holders of the title custodians of the reef and it’s an outstanding debt. But I presume Kevin Rudd covered this when he said ‘sorry’. It would have been in the full text of the speech, in the fine print.
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Yeah, well kinda.
Of course the Endeavour was not flat bottomed. And Cook didn’t claim possession until he effected repairs near what is now Cooktown and then sailed north of the reef and around the tip of Cape York to Possession Island. And the First Fleet didn’t arrive for nearly two decades later so the British could start running the place from a tiny colony a couple of thousand km south near Sydney.
But allowing for poetic licence I know what you mean 🙂
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“The Endeavour was originally a Whitby collier. As a coal carrier it had a shallow draught and a great deal of storage space – characteristics later endorsed by Cook, who wrote, ‘Little progress has been hitherto made in discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere. For all ships which attempted it before the Endeavour, were unfit for it.’
And the ship’s shape may have influenced selection of its captain, as Cook was familiar with Whitby colliers while most naval captains were not.
The vessel was bought for the voyage and then transformed from the Earl of Pembroke into the Endeavour.
A model of the ship can be seen here. Not much of a keel and almost a flat bottom. Certainly no racing sloop, it averaged 3 to 4 knots. 5.5 to 7.5km/hr. A brisk walk three times around Antartica and as far North as the Aleutians. You would not want to be in a hurry, but far safer if you run aground or hit a reef.
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I’m not suggesting the Endeavour had a winged keel but it is an exaggeration to describe it as flat bottomed.
By coincidence I did some consulting work for ASP Ships who managed the Bark Endeavour so my comments are based on that vessel.
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Very close as befits a collier for river work on the tidal British or French coast. Tides can be as much as 7 metres, say in the Thames and 14 metres in many other places.
The major resistance to being blown sideways and allowing the boat to make way was the projection of the keel beam below the hull with its 11′ draft and the long flat section at the back which worked like a keel.
It’s not much but at these speeds enough. And it was a heavy boat which provided more resistance. At a pinch I expect Cook could run it aground to effect repairs if the hull was holed.
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After jettisoning a bunch of stuff including anchors and cannons Cook did indeed run it aground on the banks of the Endeavour River.
But flat bottomed is still an exaggeration.
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Perhaps but it looks pretty flat in the link Although that is the cross section amidships. And it lacks a ‘front’ keel, so it could be run aground without burying itself. No one was coming to the rescue and there was no dry dock, so he planned this. And the ship would sit perfectly upright on the sand with access all round.
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And I was intrigued that most of the damage was to the ‘false keel’.
“The false keel was a timber, forming part of the hull of a wooden sailing ship. Typically 6 inches (15 cm) thick for a 74-gun ship in the 19th century, the false keel was constructed in several pieces, which were scarfed together, and attached to the underside of the keel by iron staples. The false keel was intended to protect the main keel from damage, and also protect the heads of the bolts holding the main keel together. The false keel could easily be replaced when it became damaged.”
So Cook’s false keel took most of the damage from the reef. This also provided a runner for running aground. Thick enough to protect the keel and allow easier dragging, a lot of lateral resistance when pointing into the wind but no so much as to appreciably increase the draft.
My original post was intended to be humorous, but Cook’s courage in sailing literally to the other side of the planet and the ends of the earth meant he had to be prepared. No help was coming. So many things about his voyages were extraordinary, particular his use of limes to avoid scurvy. Captains often lost a third of their crew on much shorter voyages, so he was prepared for that too. Amazing man.
And two other facts I found interesting. First he was six feet tall, a very tall man for 250 years ago. Second, like so many Englishmen, he was hopelessly seasick and threw up every morning. The decision to put to sea for world voyage in a slow bathtub was both sensible and absolutely awful. It must have rocked even on a lake. And now people are trying to cancel him. Cowards.
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TdeF.
What a Great Site – MODEL SHIPS, MODEL BOATS, MODEL YACHTS, and EXECUTIVE GIFTS and the HMS ENDEAVOUR model you referenced – excellent
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Agreed. I love the African Queen from the movie with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, 1951. What a great movie from a time when American actors had to act and women were not all professional kickboxers.
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Glad to see you back OldOzzie! It was a tough week for you last week.
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With regards to “custodians”, what about fishermen from PNG and surrounds, prior to European presence in Australia? I imagine the more intrepid amongst them went all over the place to see what they could catch.
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The concept of custodianship is a purely european one.
It is not even close to the right word to describe the relationship between native peoples and the natural world they lived in. They knew how to hunt and gather and follow the seasons and despite attempts at myth making that’s about it.
On the other hand they understood moiety which prevented them from inbreeding. That has more or less survived at least in Arnhem land where I did some legal work.
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“It is not even close to the right word to describe the relationship between native peoples and the natural world they lived in. They knew how to hunt and gather and follow the seasons and despite attempts at myth making that’s about it.”
The links below are to articles that refute your assertion
https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/land/aboriginal-land-care
https://www.integratesustainability.com.au/2019/08/07/australias-hidden-agricultural-legacy/
https://www.awe.gov.au/sites/default/files/sitecollectiondocuments/natural-resources/landcare/submissions/ilm-report.pdf
And before you write your usual comment “Don’t feed the trolls” perhaps you should see if the comment to which you are referring meets the definition of trolls and of trolling.
“A troll is Internet slang for a person who intentionally tries to instigate conflict, hostility, or arguments in an online social community. Platforms targeted by trolls can include the comment sections of YouTube, forums, or chat rooms.
‘Trolls often use inflammatory messages to provoke emotional responses out of people, disrupting otherwise civil discussion. Trolling can occur anywhere that has an open area where people can freely post their thoughts and opinions.”
The articles linked o above are not inflammator or hostile or disruptive of civil discussion or instigating conflict. They lare articles that dispute your assertion and provide the rationale for their argument.
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A little aside….
Why was Space Shuttle Endeavour spelled in the pommy manner, and what was that piece of wood doing aboard, mounted in a case in it’s cockpit?
Get googling!
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The orbiter is named after the British HMS Endeavour, the ship which took Captain James Cook on his first voyage of discovery (1768–1771).[6] This is why the name is spelled in the British English manner, rather than the American English (“Endeavor”). This has caused confusion, including when NASA itself misspelled a sign on the launch pad in 2007.[7] The Space Shuttle carried a piece of the original wood from Cook’s ship inside the cockpit.[8] The name also honored Endeavour, the command module of Apollo 15, which was also named for Cook’s ship.
On May 30, 2020, Dragon 2 capsule C206 was named Endeavour during the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission by astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken in honor of the shuttle, on which both astronauts took their first flights (STS-127 and STS-123 respectively).
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I don’t understand the obsession with the Crown of Thorns starfish.
They have even developed hunter-killer robots to destroy it.
How could it be an introduced species?
It’s eggs float on the ocean currents.
Even Wikipedia, which rarely fails to promote a Leftist agenda if there is one, says:
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Like most ecological issues the place of the crown of thorns is poorly understood. It wasn’t until about the 1960s that anybody even knew it was in Australian waters near Cairns. Whether it had been in Australia for a thousand years or it had arrived in the ballast of a ship is still a live issue.
The next discovery was that the damage it does spreads all the way up and down the reef in a sort of wave pattern. So it damages one area and then moves on leaving the damaged area to recover until the cycle begins again.
And to quote from wikipedia (groan) “Some ecologists suggest that the starfish has an important and active role in maintaining coral reef biodiversity, driving ecological succession. Before overpopulation became a significant issue, crown-of-thorns prevented fast-growing coral from overpowering the slower-growing coral varieties”
So there is a lot of worthwhile research to be done. The spectacle of volunteers going out in boats to kill them is just publicity to scare people into giving money. And the idea that interfering with pretty much the top predator may be a bad idea just doesn’t get a look in.
And as you say there is the small fortune in public money donated by Turnbull to his wife’s slush fund is as outrageous now as it was then. Logically leading to the question why nobody has ever sought to recover the money.
90
It could be a Russian plot to destroy the GBR. COT,s are the sort of thing those Russki’s would do to degrade our reef and subject Australia to UN involvement.
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When I layed on a day for 160 people from James Cook, Australian Institute of Marine Science, & the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority to our Hardy Reef facility it was the first time the chair person, of the GBRMPA, a history professor had seen the reef up close.
I had an “expert” from James Cook telling me that with in 18 months the crown of thorns would put us out of business.
When I told him we had only found 1 COT ever in the area, he suggested my skippers & dive masters were probably not well enough informed to know what they were looking at.
I was told later that day, this gentle man rarely went anywhere near the reef, rather spent his time playing with fish tanks in Townsville. Evidentially some of his peers didn’t think more of him than I did.
Judging by the Oohs & Ahhs when we took them coral viewing in the “sub” this was the first time many of them had been close to a real coral reef. That was a reasonable bit of reef, suitable for the operation of a 300 passenger boat & a 60 Ft coral viewing imitation submarine, not the best bit of coral in the area by far.
So much for our experts.
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See my post #1.1
I’ve never heard that claim. It is a pest worldwide.
That is, it is plankton.
Dr Robert Endean, prolly forgotten today, was fully aware that that while the animal is native and natural the plagues weren’t. His work was preliminary but he postulated that predation on the conch shell by native populations to sell into the tourist trade may have been a cause. He claimed the conch shell was a predator on the young COT. I remember he mentioned the painted shrimp as another predator but nothing else about it.
Sadly DR Robert died before he could develop his theories and no one else, it seems, has taken up where he left off. Neither JCU nor AIMS ever will.
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How many cone snails or conchs would have to be removed to stop them significantly predating the grown CoT?
As far as I know, it is also illegal to sell shells in Australia so there won’t be much tourist trade.
And many of those venomous snails are not edible either.
Plus a lot of different species eat the eggs.
It’s difficult to see how anything man has done would effect predation upon the CoT.
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We were taught at school that the ‘Crown of Thorns’ star fish arrived from Japan via ballast water in Japanese ships.
10
This QUT sub?
https://www.qut.edu.au/institute-for-future-environments/about/news?news-id=95437
Forget “Skynet”, this is “Seanet”.
It has been around for some years. A few years back, I spent several interesting ideas chatting to the inventors / developers.
Interesting technology.
00
A billion dollars to fight the natively occurring starfish is outrageous.
How do they even come up with these numbers without even a research proposal or proper costings?
Do they just make up these numbers?
Volunteers already kill the starfish. See https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-02/crown-of-thorns-starfish-killed-great-barrier-reef/9382378
The GBR is about 35 million hectares. One billion dollars is about 28 million dollars per hectare. Don’t you think individuals could be paid a lot less than that to patrol each hectare and just keep killing starfish? One hectare could probably be cleared and kept cleared, probably with much less than one day’s work per week. The labour cost would be minimal, compared to the funding of $28 million per hectare on offer.
The numbers involved and the amount of money on offer is utterly absurd.
The campaign to kill the starfish is as absurd and as futile as Chairman Mao’s campaign to rid China of the sparrow.
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I think you lost a few zeroes there David. Try $28 per hectare 🙂
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We have spent many billions trying to fight naturally occurring corona virus. Your logic for the reef is to do nothing to protect it. The same advice for the ‘rona?
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As you said the “custodians” for thousands of years didn’t know it existed.
How do you know the COT has been devastating the reef for thousands of years?
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When I was in Tahiti, the natives informed the researchers that the Crown of Thorns starfish was well know in song and legend. They had images of it and celebrated when it arrived. This is received knowledge and they had been in those waters for most of a thousand years.
And the Pacicic Peoples did not invent the starfish, so I assume it is older than when they discovered it.
Devastating is what it does not do. It prunes and the reef quickly recovers and is healthier than ever.
We humans have really only taken an interest in corals for entertainment since WWII, aqualungs, water sports, snorkeling and more. So it was really presumptuous to decide any animal was a threat to the reef and to wipe it out.
It pays to move gently, study, collect data and understand the natural cycles of prey and predator. And how this is part of the order of things. Or we could go out and k*ll all the sharks. It strikes me as odd that allegedly caring environmentalists want wholesale m*rder of any species based on no information at all.
The reef is ancient. In fact all the coral atolls are ancient as the mountains on which they grew have vanished, leaving 3-4km of solid coral. That was Charles Darwin’s speculation and he was right.
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Hmm. I remember learning, in my first year at Secondary School, how the voracious
Crown-of-Thorns starfish was busy killing Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The reef had only a short time left to live …
It’s either a very fast reef or a very slow starfixh. Or the two are involved in a ancient cyclic “dance” because that was in 1966
60
Yes and it all goes in cycles. If the Starfish killed all the reef, it would die too. And largely it does. It was just the usual predator prey cycle. But the reef comes back and the starfish comes back. But never in the history of the planet has anyone cared.
And because the reef is pretty, now that we have the means to visit, live locally and like to marvel at things, we want to kill everything. Typical.
The same Greens who want to save the sharks and crocodiles now want to kill all the starfish. Because they are ignorant unthinking interventionists. The same with CO2. Save the planet by stopping all life on earth. And the earth will be saved. For whom?
30
There are two fundamentals with modern environmentalist. 1 Hyperbole everything is a DISASTER. 2 Messiah complex everything must be ‘saved’
There are people who have made a life time career out of this.
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There has been NO change in the temperature on the reef in the last 150 years. I happen to have the ONLY reliable temperature data that proves it. Measured from bucket samples in 1871 on a scientific mission compared with satellite measurements in the present era:
https://1drv.ms/b/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNhEozIcfpIL-NB8RR
Anyone claiming there has been a rise in temperature on the Barrier Reef is making false claims. In fact. it is physically impossible to exceed 30C SST in open ocean water with the current atmospheric pressure. Basically surface sunlight disappears once the surface temperature exceeds 30C to limit rise above that temperature to short duration.
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Gotta keep scaring people to keep the money rolling in!
“we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have” -Steven Schneider- Editor of Climate Change Journal, DISCOVER OCTOBER 1989, Page 47
Expose of the Multi Billion dollar Environmental industry:
ENVIRONMENT INC – Special Series in the Sacramento Bee: journeytoforever.org/bflpics/EnvironmentInc.pdf
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I’ve made a practice of saving myself from those that want to save me.
They usually travel in blobs.
There’s a lot more of them nowadays.
So far I’ve remained out of custody.
Little bit of trouble with the wife.
My city has just delivered new big blue plastic recycling bins improved with convenient wheels, to replace the old yellow ones with a previous mayor’s name on them.
I know of no plan to recycle the now obsolete ones (I have two).
They are sitting in my back yard as they are no longer approved for use.
I’m thinking of driving them to the beach and throwing them in.
Just to save time.
I’m guessing they’ll show up at the GBR eventually.
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Return them to the council offices. Locate then neatly in the Mayor’s designated parking space.
20
Morrison wastes taxpayer money almost as profligately as the worst Big Spender Labor/Greens have on offer. He is also as anti-science as the worst of them.
It’s staggering that anyone could believe that that man who believes in nothing and fights for nothing and is a complete fence-sitter is a “conservative”.
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He is, of course, Turnbull’s pick and his replacement.
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And a very great disappointment to Turnbull as well, which cheers me up.
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David I may have asked this before but what is a conservative in today’s world?
I suspect that the term has lost all meaning.
20
If you need to ask, you aren’t one.
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Oh really? So you can’t be a conservative without knowing the current definition?
Wanna try that one again?
30
The definition for “conservative” does NOT include the word “current”.
40
What? So the definition is unchanging through the ages? And if I was one I’d already know the definition?
Soumds a bit like the freemasons.
20
That’s a bit rough. Is it a secret society? My definition follows.
30
Simple. Conservative is not being told what to think, weighing up the facts and making your own decision. In fact not having an ideology at all. In short, a Rational scientist. Which is why Climate Change is crap.
People on the left get all their answers from their favorite ideology. It saves thinking. BLM. AntiFA. Progressive. Socialist. Marxist. Fascist. Communist. Green. LGBTIQWTF. These are all ideologies. As are most religions.
One of the great strengths of the left is that they agree with each other, even if they cannot explain their beliefs. In their view, it is all self evidently right because they have consensus. It’s really a herd instinct or a hive mind. Like the ABC/BBC/CBC.
And they hate conservatives who dare disagree and use facts. So we have the new Post Modernist view that facts are whatever you want them to be as it is all about your lived experience. To a post modernist, there are no facts. You can be a chipmunk if you like. Or female.
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Dr. Jordan Petersen has an encylopaedic knowledge of philosophy and reads in an amazing scientific way, dissecting every sentence, straining for meaning. What scientists do with mathematics, Jordan does with words. Intense.
How he ever finished any book is a great puzzle, but his podcasts discuss the great philosphers and the great philosophies and Post Modernism is utter rubbish, made up stuff invented by posturing French intellectual charlatans with ‘physics envy’ who feel free to change the facts to suit their arguments, like Climate Change. Facts are fair game in the post modernist world of “The Science”. I would call it fake science but they call it a new philosophy.
There is not a shred of truth in nett zero, climate change, man made CO2 levels, and CO2 driven warming. At the same time the real drivers of climate are limited to two major forces, the sun from which all energy comes and the vast oceans which have stored millions of years of incident heat and control all our weather, as if that was not obvious.
And 98% of all CO2 is in the ocean because it is very soluble. Which is why no matter how hard we try, the amount of CO2 is set by surface temperature, nothing more. And our tiny amount of CO2 is insignificant and gets absorbed immediately.
230
I can highly recommend his podcasts on Spotify. It helps when walking the Cavoodles as they are nice happy dogs but not intellectuals.
90
Are you certain ?
I thought 97% was thr “go to” number in any climate discussion ! 🥴
30
It’s 98%. The difference would increase aerial CO2 by 50%. So a thinking person’s next question would be ‘what sets this percentage’, as it is allegedly critical. And a scientist would answer, Henry’s Law. Directly proportional to sea surface temperature as CO2 molecules both enter and leave the sea surface. (assuming constant pressure)
So a 50% increase in CO2 would be fully explained by quite trivial warming of the sea surface, say around the Great Barrier Reef. But we are told that CO2 causes the warming. How this happens is a mystery not explained by ‘The Science’.
120
Sorry TdeF…..that was an attempt at humour….
Remember. “97% of all Climate Scientists agree…..” ……
……i will get my coat !…..
120
You missed “submarine volcanism.”
There is a fair amount of energy warming some of the oceans from the bottom up. NZ has the Hikurangi Trench, which is part of the Western side of the main Pacific trench. The Tonga Trench splits off from the Pacific Trench somewhere about the Kermadec Islands.
Volcanic activity keeps the seas quite warm.
20
In addition, simple conduction also works. 4 metres down, the temperature is always 12C. The oceans are similar. All the effects we humans experience are from the very top of the soil and the bottom of the atmosphere. These heat and cool quickly, in desert areas from +40 to -20 say in day. In the UK heat pumps are being legislated to replace boilers and to extract heat from the ground.
Plus the fact that the average 3.4km ocean depth means this vast quantity of water cannot get rid of its heat by radiation or in storms. And it is the movement of this vast energy which controls our climates, not that of the thin air above which has only the weight of the top 10 metres of water. (1 atmosphere) and the heat capacity of only the top 3 metres of water.
So I find the vaunted climate models laughable. They are just modelling the tiny atmosphere. It would be far wiser to model the energy stores and inputs like submarine volcanoes.
All climate is about water, all storms and there would be no life on earth without rain. Except around inland freshwater lakes and that gets back to the story of Noah.
41
And a word of warning. Free thinking conservatives used to see themselves as Liberal. Liberal and conservative were close to the same thing in the 1940s and 50s under Bob Menzies or Winston Churchill. It seemed self evident. But the word has been stolen by the left and now means “progressive”. No more so than Woke Malcolm Turnbull and Justin Trudeau and even Boris Johnson. And Progressive now means extreme left ideologies, not progress at all but the total destruction of Western values to be replaced with nihilism.
And consensus Science, post modern science, fact free science and totalitarianism. Malcolm Turnbull, Trudeau. So today’s liberal parties have been hijacked by the left, leaving nowhere for free thinking people to go. One way to cancel elections is to own both sides. And the first step is to own the media because then you control the politicians.
There is no man made Climate Change. There is no man made destruction to the 2300 x 250 km Great Barrier Reef. It’s all an attack on Australia made out to be science based when there is only fact free consensus science. And in this new consensus science, all Australians are guilty and need to be condemned and punished.
So telling people there isn’t a man made long term problem with the GBR doesn’t work. Progressives only need to ‘feel’ there is a problem. And China wants to punish Australia for daring to ask who invented Wuhan Flu. And like all good Communists, taking over the committees works, like the IPCC, WHO and UNESCO. Nowhere is the herd mentality strong than in the public service. And the ABC/CSIRO/BOM/Chief Scientist/Universities just fall into line.
80
But Scott Morrison actually has them snookered, in a strange way, not by arguing it is not true.
Rather by wasting an amazing $1.444 Billion to pretend to fix a problem which does not exist and even if it did, we have not caused is really hard to criticize as a response. UNESCO cannot claim we under performing. That’s a lot of cash for nothing and no one knows what to do with it but an obvious form of self flagellation to show support for Woke UN science. A bit like the $400 million we gave to the South Pacific countries to help them cope with Climate Change. It’s lipstick on a pig time, blatant deceit. But hard for the Woke to criticise. And even harder to demand carbon credits.
But they can and will demand we stop farming in Queensland because farming causes Climate Change and farming must damage the reef. As do mining, manufacturing and even living. And then Xi and his men can come to Australia and show us how to mine and farm and live. And we can all move to Antarctica and pray for Global Warming.
And while Morrison is no conservative, his simple even nutty pragmatism snookers the left. China shills Turnbull, Rudd and Keating are flabbergasted.
50
I agree that the reef in general is in fine shape and does suffer cycles of attack form COT but always recovers.
Can someone explain to me why the reef is supposed be in danger if the sea temperature increases by 1 or 2 degrees C when on any given day the sea temp. at the northern tip of the reef is around 5 degrees warmer than the southern tip. Yet the coral is doing fine at both ends.
It seems to me that the coral is very good at adapting.
90
From the evidence it appears bleaching happens because of a momentary drop in sea level, leaving the coral exposed. The argument that warmer water is the culprit seems a little far fetched.
80
This must be so or reefs would grow to the sky.
A low tide on a clear, hot, still day would be the trigger. A nice wind blowing over the surface is probably all it needs to stay wet until the tide comes back in.
40
why do you think it is just one cause?
14
Admittedly there maybe other factors, but in the Western Pacific its definitely more to do with a drop in sea level and not warmer waters. Do you believe El Nino was only a secondary contributor?
‘The results were clear. Using a suite of climate models, we found that the significant warming of the Coral Sea region was likely caused by greenhouse gases from human activities. This warming was the primary cause of the extreme 2016 bleaching episode.
‘Our study showed that although the 2016 El Niño probably also contributed to the bleaching, this was a secondary contributor to the corals’ thermal stress. The major factor was the increase in temperatures because of climate change.’ (The Conversation)
13
Yes, so there are now two factors, one stronger than the other. Now one of the interesting facts about the GBR is that individual coral species are very sensitive to even small temperature changes . So you also have to consider the individual species when looking at sensitivity to bleaching. Also you have to consider that a majority of polyps are deep enough never to be exposed by low tides, yet they also are subject to bleaching.
Note: that one of the reasons why the GBR is considered important is that it has the largest variety in genera and species, unlike a lot of other locations
16
Further north in the coral triangle.
‘In Indonesia, first signs of bleaching were reported in April 2016. However, this El Niño has impacted Indonesian coral reefs since 2015 through a different process than temperature-induced bleaching.
In September 2015, Altimetry data shows that sea level was at its lowest in the past 12 years, affecting corals living in the bathymetric range exposed to unusual emersion. In March 2016, Bunaken Islan(North Sulawesi) displayed up to 85% mortality on reef flats dominated by Porites, Heliopora and Goniastrea corals with differential mortality rates by coral genus. Almost all reef flats showed evidence of mortality, representing 30% of Bunaken reefs.
For reef flat communities which were living at a depth close to the pre-El Niño mean low sea level, the fall induced substantial mortality likely by higher daily aerial exposure at least during low tide periods. Altimetry data was used to map sea level fall throughout Indonesia, suggesting that similar mortality could be widespread for shallow reef flat communities, which accounts for a vast percent of the total extent of coral reefs in Indonesia.
‘The altimetry historical records also suggest that such event was not unique in the past two decades, therefore rapid sea level fall could be more important in the dynamics and resilience of Indonesian reef flat communities than previously thought. The clear link between mortality and sea level fall also calls for a refinement of the hierarchy of El Niño impacts and their consequences on coral reefs.’ (Ampou et al. 2016)
10
Yep, reef flats are vulnerable- and that is a common for in the equatorial latitudes, less important in fringing reefs which are the majority of gbr
18
Ampou’s hypothesis is sound, the northern GBR was more effected than the southern sector.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/05/falling-sea-level-the-critical-factor-in-2016-great-barrier-reef-bleaching/
20
There was extensive bleaching in Sydney at the same time, but that may have been caused by the marine heatwave in the Tasman Sea.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-30/sydney-harbour-coral-showing-signs-of-recovery-after-bleaching/7799668
20
And there are reefs up around the Solomons and New Guinea.
20
I just noticed this sentence which I missed
If that is the question, I’m sure it is much better now than then. I just have a longer memory, is all. Twice that.
10
I work in the sugar industry. Queen chook is forking out millions to the Canegrowers Group, Sugar Research Aus (which the gov recently gutted) and Farmacist to do fertiliser management plans for cane farmers. These groups (whichever one the farmer choses to use) get paid $500 by the farmer and then $5000-6000 by the gov to basically do what the local fertiliser dealer does for under $200 with a soil test. The two main soil test programs used are Nutrient Advantage from IncitecPivot and a Bundaburg company called Hortus. Both their soil test programmes are based on the regulations put in place by the Bligh gov back in 2010 and get adapted as needed. And as my customers tell me when they go fishing (cane farmers love a good fish), the reef looks fantastic.
This classic waste of taxpayer money could have gone into hospitals or the ambulance.
Oh and thanks to Biden’s catastrophic agenda that has raised the cost of fuel, thus the price of fertiliser (& everything else), dealers are still waiting for accounts from Sept to be paid. Meanwhile, those groups get a guaranteed income from the gov!
80
It would be nice if someone mentioned how long the GBR has been in existence, and how it came to be. The evolution of corals over once coastal plain would be an interesting subject.
50
I’ll give you a hint, the modern reef, ie the one we have today owes its existence to the the end of the ice age. But don’t take my word for it, let your search engine loose on a phrase like “age of the Great Barrier Reef”
unless this is just a rhetorical question
08
Just looked up some into on the GBR, 20,000 years ago the sea level was 120 meters lower than today, the beach was 70km east of where Townsville is today, so the reef is not static, it is constantly adjusting itself for seal level changes,, there is also a fossilised reef inland from the QLD coast on a hillside.
70
Kevin, corals cannot populate deep water, they need light. The ocean floor around the GBR is approx. 50 m, too deep for coral.
Another fact, the GBR proper is often 70 km from the coast. Not much further and you hit the edge of the continental shelf where the sea bed plunges to 1,000 mts.
My logic says that the GBR would have started as a fringing reef at the edge of the continental shelf when the sea was rising after the Ice Age. As sea levels rose the coral grew on the rubble of dead corals to always stay in the surface zone where the light and nutrients were. In a sense they grew to the sky.
It would appear that they did not all continue. Fishermen with the help of their sounders are still finding outcrops of rubble in the middle of a mud bottom.
Read your geological time scale to see when the sea was 50m lower than today and that might be when the GBR first formed.
This is simply an idea I have formed with no scientific input. If you think I am wrong I am happy to read your views.
10
The GBR has experienced five near death experiences over the past 30,000 years.
‘There were two widespread death events (at about 30,000 years and 22,000 years ago) caused by exposure of the reef to air, known as subaerial exposure. During this period, the reef moved seaward to try to keep pace with the falling sea levels.
‘During the deglaciation period after the Last Glacial Maximum, there were a further two reef-death events at about 17,000 and 13,000 years ago caused by rapid sea level rise. These were accompanied by the reef moving landward, trying to keep pace with rising seas.’ (Sydney Uni. 2018)
20
Coral bombies can no more move than the Apostles off the Great Ocean Road can.
What you describe is new reefs forming not old ones moving.
I still contend new reefs can only form in shallow water as “fringing” reefs, and will survive and grow upward whenever the sea level rise doesn’t “swamp” the coral in water too deep for it to survive, or secede and leave it stranded. The geologic time scale you speak of does allow for old reefs in deep water to die while new fringing reefs can form in the shallows, maybe 50 kms away. A mature coral reef cannot “creep” to the shore or the sea depending on sea level. ‘If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain’ The mountain didn’t move, nor can a massive coral reef.
20
OK, try “recede” 🙂
10
That’s right H, in fact some old reefs are still in their original spots, just not alive anymore, there are two deepwater reefs off Moreton/Stradbroke island, well known to serious fishers, the deepest at 42 fathoms, so it was a long time since they were in shallow water.
30
So it seems that we agree that, in geologic time the reef will be just fine.
I’m in favour of helping it on a human time scale, but NOT the way our alarmist friends would have us try.
30
The alarmists are falling on their swords.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/26/one-new-coral-reef-study-wipes-out-four-climate-alarm-narratives-in-one-fell-swoop/
10
Ronin, can I run another idea past you? Why do lagoons form?
Maybe the outer reefs are constantly pounded by waves from the open ocean which allows coral to push the limits above low water [before bleaching] because the waves and spray keep it wet until the next incoming tide, meanwhile the coral in calmer water does indeed bleach at low tide. The result is that the living coral expands, broken coral and sand carried on the currents fills in the base to allow it to expand. These lagoons got large and deep.
Ulithi Atoll was big enough to house the invasion fleet for the attack on the Japanese Home Islands. Fortunately it sailed East, not West.
How long does it take for a reef to grow THAT big?
10
The only factoid I have known is that Coral reefs (on a worldwide scale ) have existed for over 200 million years. Corals and shellfish evolved with atmospheric CO2 levels more than 10X higher than now.
00
Come back when you understand evolution.
03
That is evolution. It means that corals have withstood much greater natural forces than most animal life on earth has encountered. Including multiple ice ages, warming periods, volcanic eruptions and huge changes in atmospheric conditions. Which means that corals are highly resilient and things like tropical cyclones, El Nino/ La Nina events, slight changes in ocean temps, COT infestations etc have only transient effects.
20
I don’t think you understand. What happened 200million years ago is irrelevant. Just think of what our ancestors were doing back then that would kill us if we tried to do today.
But we withstood it!
02
Understand perfectly. The corals have evolved to the point today that they easily withstand things like bleaching events and El Nino/ La ninas etc. In fact, they are just minor irritations compared to all they have experienced in 200m years.
10
THE STAMPEDE OF THE GREEN LEMMINGS
No country on Earth relies entirely on wind/solar energy, but Australian politicians aim to achieve this miracle.
They are leaders in the Stampede of the Green Lemmings.
Solar energy has a huge problem. Even on sunny days almost nothing is generated to meet the demand peaks around breakfast time and dinner time – the solar energy union only works a six-hour day, goes on strike with little warning, and takes quite a few sickies.
So, for at least 18 hours of every day, electricity must come from somewhere else. Then around noon, the millions of solar panels pour out far more electricity than is needed, causing electrical and financial chaos in the electricity grid.
Naturally our green “engineers” see wind power as filling the solar energy gaps. But wind power has a union too and they take lots of sickies when there is no wind over large areas of the continent. And they down tool in storms, gales or cyclones in case their whirling toys are damaged.
So the green planners claim that batteries can solve these intermittent problems of the green energy twins.
They will need to be humungous batteries.
Batteries are just a crutch for a crippled generation system. And with fierce lithium battery fires reported regularly, who wants a humungous fire-prone battery over the back fence or in the basement?
A battery is not a generator of electricity – every battery (including Snowy 2) is a net consumer of electricity. Batteries are very expensive, most lose capacity as they age, and every conversion between DC storage and AC transmission triggers energy losses.
To collect, back up and re-distribute green electricity will require a continent-spanning spider-web of transmission lines with all the costs and energy losses that network entails.
Still nights, and calm cloudy days, are what really expose the problems of wind-solar-plus-batteries.
Suppose electricity consumers require 100 units of electricity every day. A well designed coal, nuclear or gas power station can do that, 24/7, day after day, whatever the weather.
But to insure a wind/solar system against, say, 7 days of calm/cloudy weather would require a battery capable of storing 700 units of electricity. To re-charge this huge battery while still supplying consumers will require much larger wind/solar generating capacity.
However if several weeks of windy/sunny weather then occur, this big battery will sit idle, connected to a bloated expensive generation system that is capable of delivering far more power than is needed.
Sunny/windy weather brings a deluge of green energy, causing power prices to plunge at irregular intervals, and forcing reliable generators to stop producing and lose money.
Eventually they will close. Once all coal-gas generators are all gone, every (inevitable) green energy drought will awaken the spectre of extensive blackouts.
On top of all these practical problems of green energy, we have the massive carbon credits scam, where speculators sell green fairy stories to greedy bankers, and real producers are forced to buy these fictitious “products”, passing the costs onto real industry and consumers.
Australia is following the green energy lemmings of Europe.
40
The beginning of the Australia seafood supply shortages and increase in imported seafood was around 1990 after the Keating Labor Government signed UN Agenda 21 – Sustainability.
From memory the first State Government to legislate to hand over public lands including State Forests set aside for sustainable logging was the Carr Labor NSW Government, National Parks registered with the UN, National Parks & Wildlife established to manage National Parks which are all State or Territory responsibility. When Tony Abbott was PM he was asked when the Federal Government he led would create more National Parks and he replied that Australia already had more National Parks land area than was affordable.
Marine National Parks were also created inshore and offshore and the later involves Federal Government. Commercial fishing licences were cancelled and compensation was paid for them resulting in many fishing trawlers and fishing cooperatives no longer operating resulting in a shortage of local seafood availability.
90
How’s this for a “no fishing zone”?
60
Holy-Mackeroli that’s a big zone.
40
Many years ago when GBRMPA was deliberating on the fishing zones on the GBR itself they consulted with Sunfish, Qld. or maybe its predecessor.
SUNFISH QLD was formed in 1993 out of the Queensland Sport and Recreational Fishing Council (QSRFC) which had been operational for some 20 years.
When they saw the final proposal they felt they had been shafted. They were locked out of the grounds they wanted to keep.
I’m sanguine about fishing zones and regs. The fishery is fragile but I wish I could buy moderately priced local fish.
30
All our seafood will come from Vietnam, Mekong Catfish, eewww.
20
All our SUPERMARKET seafood will come from Vietnam, Mekong Catfish, eewww.
I don’t want any of these.
On second thoughts they are prolly healthier than most fish on offer but I doubt they have the taste and texture of barra or spanish mackerel.
10
Worth reading too:
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/02/14/sea-temperatures-at-the-great-barrier-reef-havent-warmed-in-150-years-newly-uncovered-data-show/
20
From the research I have done, the GBR is 12,000-14,000 years old, and certainly less that 20,000 years old. This is a very short time span in the general scheme of things. I have spend a lot of time around reefs in Papua/NG mainly in Wewak in the 1960’s. At certain times the water clarity allowed us to see corals 100 metres down as we approached land, and the 2000 Fathom Line was only 6 nm or so from Wewak. My point is – the Great Barrier Reef and it’s Corals could still be evolving….
20
The origin of the GBR goes back at least 600,000 years and, at the last Glacial Maximum around 20,000 years ago, there was cross fertilisation of coral from PNG to GBR. There is a paucity of data on PNG, but I found this,
http://www.reefbase.org/global_database/dbr2,60,PNG,4.aspx
10
Looking up various opinions on the age of the GBR, I find 500,000 years but an explosion in growth since the end of the last ice age. So the reality is that coral thrives in warmer water. What doesn’t? Isn’t that self evident truth and the complete opposite of what we are being told that warming is killing the reef (and that it’s our fault)? I would lean towards changes in (average) water level to explain bleaching much more simply/
Coral needs to be as close to the surface as possible, but not out of the water. A tricky balance and the only way Charles Darwin could explain mountains of coral miles thick is that the mountains on which they were growing had sunk over time. He was right.
But it would make sense not to measure average water level as such, but look for large perhaps local tidal swings or sea surges, that would explain widespread bleaching. Not predators, not climate change but perhaps vertical oscillations in the bathtub we call the Pacific ocean. The notion that the water level is constant in a huge area of coral area 2300km x 260km is likely nonsense. Water levels must be controlled by the mountains of coral. It may be a phenomenon we are missing.
If you have had the pleasure of being on a large ship with a swimming pool in the middle of a storm, it is fascinating to see the crashing water behaviour. Measuring averaged levels at a few points does not paint the picture. I am sure that happens in the oceans too. But the current view of scientists is that it is all about averages and averages do not change. Of course they do. Even water paths in and out of the mountain range of corals would change, like river paths in a flood plain.
First work out how long would it take for an exposed reef to be severely damaged, bleached, in direct sunlight out of the water. And then look for such events. And then explain them. It will be an ocean oscillation, or a rare combination of currents which lifts or drops the oceans in areas. Given the risky life of corals trying to keep close to the surface, it is likely the answer. Regular bleaching may be a direct and unavoidable consequence of the sheer size of the reef combined with clashing ocean currents.
The idea that everything is someone’s fault would be close to idiocy if it were not all about the politics of the UN.
30
With Philip’s following comment about the reef being white, if people could accurately list which parts went white and when, there would be some hope of correlating bleaching with ocean events, tides, phases of the moon, tsunamis. If people want to fix the problem, assuming that is even possible, they first have to establish what causes bleaching. And how frequent and regular and local it is. And no one has.
My expectation is that the $1.444billion will be spent making individuals rich, nothing more. Beer and boats and endless coral study tours to the Bahamas and Dubai. Although Tim Flannery now complains that he has not made enough money and has now become an ‘activist’. What happened to real scientists?
20
The frog.
Apparently there is a particular stage in warming water, beyond which the frog ceases to thrive and finds itself unable to leap out.
00
Signed up. Never used Zoom before so cant say Im confident Ill make it.
Last time I saw the reef was 30 years ago and a lot of it was white.
40
On a whiteness scale it would be far better now, that coral skeleton would now not be visible on the seabed.
30
All anecdotal of course. I was young and had never seen the reef before and just went on a dive trip. There were definitely large white areas I remember, but I have no idea as to the overall extent. “a lot” is pretty loose wording I should avoid.
20
That is one of Prof Ridd’s major points. Quantification.
When you consider the sheer size and complexity of this water restricting structure, you need objectivity.
It’s like observing the delta of the great rivers like the Nile at Alexandria, the Danube, Okavango, the Volga at Astrakhan. There are so many channels and so many internal waterways a single man’s opinion from a single trip at a single time cannot be generalized to health or disaster. And what Prof Ridd said is that if you rotate the camera few degrees, you find healthy reef.
As for the idea that it is our fault somehow, or anyone’s fault or that there is a fault, that is convenient conjecture. Researchers want money. UNESCO wants to please China.
And suddenly we are at fault Nationally for something which is perfectly natural until proven otherwise. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were told bleaching was exercise of White Privilege and systemic racism.
40
There is always a lot of bleaching during El Nino.
‘If we consider mean monthly sea levels at Darwin (as recorded by the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level based in the UK) they were exceptionally low in 1997/1998 and then again in 2015/2016. There were falling sea levels across the western Pacific.’ (Jennifer Marohasy)
30
And that is the key. The idea that one side of the Pacific is higher than the other is not intuitive. Water seeks its own level. But it is of course almost never true. The tides alone, moon driven, see to that. And then the induced currents from so much water sloshing about in every direction. Given that the coral can be substantially lifted out of the water for a long period, of course bleaching will occur. In fact it would be surprising if it were not true.
And of course large adjacent areas. And then you get the currents and tide pools inside the gigantic structure which can have multiple levels.
What is certain though is that the reef has been around for a very long time and the world’s oceans were much lower at the end of the last ice age 11,000 years ago, so the bleaching/growing patterns must be long established, long before the industrial revolution and Climate Change which seem to be the official explanation for bleaching although that makes no sense to me.
But someone has blamed humans for what is perfectly natural. And the UN has decided to punish Australia financially for questioning the origin of the military virus which was obviously created in the laboratory in Wuhan. That is the only problem.
30
Since we know that there is no ‘pollution’ but an obvious return of everything that exists on Earth, how to define the ‘fallout’?
Tomorrow, will he ask himself the question of ‘How do volcanoes exist and do to distribute everything that is in their bowels?’ Or ‘Why does our planet rotate and what are its purposes?’
11
If the reef is in danger then how come our PM is not suing China for building hundreds of coal fired power stations instead of allowing our pathetic few coal fired power stations to be closed down one by one? Whose interests is he protecting anyway? Australia’s interests or China’s? It appears to be the latter. Given the truth of the matter is the reef is fine and emissions reductions is a scam, it’s about time both major parties were given the flick – that is if anyone gives a damn about our nation. I suppose we will find out at the coming federal election.
40
There is a process to bring about sanity, firstly the electorate has to be reeducated through the MSM and then everything you desire will follow accordingly. We have to find a chink in their armour, such as the GBR, then everything they say will be criticised.
10
Unfortunately that re-education can’t happen and you know it because of the politicians in power. That’s why our only recourse is to stop voting for the clowns in both major parties who keep harping on the need to reduce our emissions to zero. If clowns are still in power at the next election still pushing the same agenda then so be it. The sleeping voters will just have to learn things the hard way. Then the re-education will follow.
30
If no independent politician is running on our platform, then there is nobody to vote for. Reeducation will come about when we get the MSM on side.
11
“When we get the msm on side.”
I’m holding my breath, I’m holding my breath, I’m holding my breath…………………….>
20
With so much taxpayer monies being spent saving the GBR we should hope that some imaginative journalist will write a ripper, explaining how the sun bleaches exposed coral during El Nino.
It would require the support of the editor.
20
You know that coral bleaching is not whitening like bleaching clothes?
06
Yep, according to NOAA its a different process.
‘Sometimes when corals become physically stressed, the polyps expel their algal cells and the colony takes on a stark white appearance. This is commonly described as “coral bleaching”. If the polyps go for too long without zooxanthellae, coral bleaching can result in the coral’s death.’
00
They bail out because their homes are suddenly above the waterline and they are exposed to the sun, that can be very stressful.
From further reading, over 80% of bailed-out polyps survive, of which half regenerated normal polyp morphology within 5 days, including a polarized polyp body, extended tentacles, and a distinguishable oral disk.’
The remaining polyps degenerate into tissue ball-like structures that resemble multicellular aggregates. ‘In morphologically recovered polyps, transcriptomic analysis showed that ∼87% of genes altered during bail-out induction recovered from stress status, suggesting resumption of metabolism, cell division, and immunity, while in degenerated polyps, only ∼71% of genes recovered.’
10
So now you know that the sun doesn’t bleach coral like how it fades your curtains during daylight savings.
02
The polyps secrete calcium carbonate to provide a home.
When they leave, their home is white because it is chalk or limestone.
The polyps build the coral but they are not chalk. The chalk holes are where they live. When they leave it is called bleaching for obvious reasons.
And frankly if I was a fragile thin skinned liquid water based lifeform exposed to direct sunlight and hot air, I would leave too. Bleaching is likely caused by any prolonged time out of the water in direct tropical sunlight.
10
This is the essence of the EU, UK and USA angst over Australia’s lack of climate ambition. According to the climate worriers, Australia is enabling Climate Destruction. Australia is one of the largest exporters of coal, feeding carbon to global manufacturers. Australia could have a significant impact on carbon usage if all coal exports were stopped. It would be in line with Biden stopping oil exploitation in North America.
Rather than trying to subsidise fairy fart extractors into existence it is easier to price carbon out of existence by preventing access to resources. It appears to be working for gasoline in the USA.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/gasoline
Even better in California:
https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/california-gasoline-prices-hit-record-high-as-crude-oil-soars
All Trump’s work so easily undone – just in a year. Image what can be achieved in 4 years.
The 4 tonne V8 ICE crew-cab ute looks less attractive when fuel is at $10/gallon and it takes $300 to fuel it up. The Swiss are already paying USD7/gallon. Hybrids are now on the shopping list.
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Id suggest Australia stops exporting one lump of coal for 12 months. That will show them the very real negative effects, reality bites and they will come begging for it. All these people live in fantasy land, theory and ideology leading their thinking. A dose of reality is all they need. But nothing else will work on them.
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Rebuilding the reef is labour intensive. but a worthwhile venture.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-24/reef-coral-nurseries-replanting-fragments/100856382
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Way off topic, but has anyone had a look at the SEQ online water grid data recently? At https://www.seqwater.com.au/dam-levels?
The individual dams shown are almost all way over 100% capacity and spilling, including the biggies (Wivenhoe and Somerset), but the total grid capacity is still show as <100% (97.5 at time of writing).
When I added up the individual rated capacities and current levels, I got 2,574,175ML and 3,523,330ML respectively, which is around 137% capacity rather than 97%. It looks like they've found a way to vindicate Tim Flannery, as no matter how much rain falls, it seems the system will never actually fill again 🙂
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What prompted me to examine the numbers for the Wivenhoe dam was when it was reported at over 160% full? What? By the time the plugs burst and saved Brisbane from extermination, it was over 190%. How?
It is an earthworks dam, a heaped earth dam with a concrete outer skin. If it overflows, the whole thing washes away and collapses, three Sydney harbours into the Brisbane valley and it was very close. So you have two numbers for full with different meaning. 100% which is the maximum volume before disaster and 50% which is legal limit by law, so 100% of legal capacity. So I think someone is playing games as you suggest. Just redefine when a dam is full.
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Yes, I looked at the figures. Wivenhoe is again shown as 165.1% full. Which is a very odd number for a dam. The flood mitigation has worked. Let that water out!
But the excess over 100% is considered “flood storage” which is shown logically as 41.9%, the balance before the dam collapses. (although the late fitted plugs which saved Brisbane last time blew.)
And part of the reason for this is in areas of tropical rainfall, half the storage can turn up in a single night, so fast that even fully open sluice gates could not prevent disaster with the collapse of the dam. I would suggest Wivenhoe is again tempting fate and using flood capacity as storage.
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And as you suggest, this is still the thinking of science fiction writer Tim Flannery.
His theory, which is his, is that everything is ‘average’ and if an extreme event occurs, that is someone’s fault, pollution, climate change.
Which makes it fine because you have blamed someone.
So a 1 in 20 year event like the massive floods in Germany last year also turned up 20 years before. And everyone ignored the event, no one fled, because it is also the lifetime of people in the top jobs. Besides, it was Climate Change this time.
And 1 in a 100 year require massive carbon taxes or cede control of the coastline of Australia to China, who are exempt from all rules of Climate Change.
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Wivenhoe’s “full supply volume” is about half(?) of its total capacity. The idea is that in normal circumstances the operators are to let water out if the water goes above “full supply volume” so that there is spare capacity to take up water that would otherwise cause floods. It seems to be a tricky system, because it depends heavily on accurate rainfall forecasts. They certainly got it all very wrong ‘last time’. With the heavy rains right now, they appear to be letting the extra capacity – the “flood storage compartment” – fill up.
This link doesn’t explain it all, but shows current data: https://www.seqwater.com.au/dam-levels
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It’s beginning to look like a runaway train right now, when Palletchook said they were doing modelling, I said ok, here we go again.
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The dam level actually goes all the way up to 200%, which is when the flood compartment is full, which is on top of the drinking water storage, so when it is at 100%, it is in reality half full.
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50% of level where overflow occurs is legally full, what we would call 100% of legal capacity.
When it was built the limits were enshrined in legislation because an overflow is too horrific to imagine.
The rest is flood mitigation, risk management as it can completely fill and overflow in one night from 100% and destroy the dam completely and most of Brisbane.
They seem to have forgotten everything! Once again the plugs will blow and once again the river valley will flood, assuming they do not get a real dump and the whole thing collapses, sending 3 Sydney Harbors into the Brisbane river, destroying Brisbane.
Surely they cannot risk this again? Idiots. There will be no Brisbane. Who is in charge? Spongbob Squarepants?
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Latest:
“Management of the city’s flood shield, Wivenhoe Dam – disastrously at fault in 2011 – is again in the firing line after the operator conceded it had been prevented from making pre-emptive releases by its own rule book.
This means huge volumes of stored water will be dumped into a swollen Brisbane River in the coming days to protect the structure, potentially compounding the flood.”
Reliving 2011. And Climate Change will be blamed for this 11 year event, as it was in Germany for their 20 year event. That lets all the people responsible off the hook. After all, they only followed rules and did nothing.
20
Has anyone asked the question what is so good about the
reedreef anyway ? I don’t really care if it died tomorrow to be honest. Are there serious ecological consequences ? Possibly, Im asking the question. Like Koala Bears, I dont care if they go extinct, and I know for a fact that will make zero difference to anything. But I also know there is zero chance of them going extinct (apart from some disease wiping them out).20
*reef not reed.
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I see your most pragmatic point. We didn’t build it. We couldn’t. It’s been there since at least neolithic times. We didn’t care about it until the 1970s. And it’s really nothing to do with us and there is absolutely no evidence that we have done anything to harm it given the sheer scale of the thing.
However the real question is whether the Greens would agree to bolting windmills all the way down the 2300 km. To save the reef.
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It is only since we had time and money on our hands that people started to fret about it, it will look after itself, it always has done, it always will.
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Koalas should exist in koala habitats, they’re too stupid to live in the real world, I’ve only seen one in the wild.
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They do and they are very hard to see. The numbers of koalas in a forest can differ greatly from estimates. And bushfires are nothing new. And less devastating since Europeans came as we put them out. And the Aborigines are not allowed light them.
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Ive seen quite a few. I live around one of the most robust colonies in NSW. Logging has existed there for near 150 years I guess and teh Koalas are still there. That bush is never going to disappear, logging has long existed, Koalas are thriving there, so how are they going to go extinct ? Beats me. Makes good headlines though.
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I was intrigued by the comments of one professional koala surveyor that the actual number is far higher than you can see. If you see even one, there are usually a lot more you cannot see. In that way the actual numbers of koalas is very much higher. So his other point was that if you can see a lot of koalas, there is likely a dangerous overpopulation.
20
Koala’s = gum trees. Gum trees = fire. Koalas must be adapted to fire. An old bushie said they can breed like rabbits. And new growth sure looks yummier than old growth. The fire authorities never seem to do any fuel reduction in the middle of national parks, of state forests. Bit’s and pieces around the edges, but has anyone ever seen fuel reduction burning well inside a national park?
Experts from around the world have just released a report screaming that the world is going to burn down. I cant disagree, with the spurt in vegetation growth from higher CO2 there’s more fuel to burn. You better get to it guys, fuel reduction burning might be helpful!
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What’s so good about Tasmania?
00
So many young people today in the United States are losing the way.
https://balance10.blogspot.com/2022/02/so-many-young-people-today-in-united.html
21
I have been living, fishing and diving on the Barrier Reef since since 1977. I have been along the reef from the bottom of the Swains to east of Port Douglas,I still visit reefs east of Innisfail. One thing that is incredibly obvious is that the reef changes completely even over short distances. The outer Swains are completely different from the inner Swains. The Hard Line and the T Line are unique and scary places with tidal rips that run up to 15 knots. Further North around Hook and Hardy it changes again. North of Cairns it reinvents itself again. The truth is the reef was created by Climate Change, if the water warms, warm water corals and other species will migrate and establish themselves further south. What’s the panic?
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“The truth is the reef was created by Climate Change, if the water warms, warm water corals and other species will migrate and establish themselves further south. What’s the panic?”
This is the most sensible thing I’ve seen written about the reef, it likes warm water, that’s why it isn’t near Sydney, Melbourne or Hobart, it also adjusts itself for water temperature and depth.
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In the days before woke funding for research I was fortunate to spend much of my uni and post-uni time involved with various research projects on various islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Most of these projects involved my providing research logistics and assistance. I also had some time to do my own research projects. The reef was a paradise then and being involved was a great lifestyle. Research, whilst rigorous, was still fun and rewarding intelectually. On one stint, despite cold war politics, a Russian marine research vessel parked in the roadstead of one of the islands to do research on corals. Research was king, resources and results were shared because politics didn’t figure. New friendships were made, new networks established. Some of us exchanged our diving watches. Nowadays, unfortunately, research is woke funded for a political outcomes. The reef is in danger but not from coral bleaching. The reef has been dangerously ruined for legitimate research by becoming a woke marketing tool for ‘Green Blob’ political science.
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Basically, if the entire concern is coral bleaching, how bad is the problem and what causes it?
And did it happen long before we took any notice?
It cannot be water temperature as the reef is basically North South and stretches 2300km and as wide as 250km. Water temperature varies a lot over this huge area. It is most likely water level and low water is likely very injurious in the tropical sun. Going up is likely not a problem. And water levels do oscillate, not least with the tides but possibly also with changes in the reef structure.
As for this being connected with farming or a 1.5C change in 150 years, both seems extremely far fetched given only the size and age of the reef. And neither actually explains the bleaching.
Then if it’s the start of thorns infestation and that is perfectly natural and cyclic if unpredictable, why intervene? Is it? And is the long term result good or bad? Received opinion from the Polynesians is that it is a very good thing for the health of the reef and the life around the reef and these people lived solely on fishing.
After all the reef did not turn up for our entertainment once we discovered swimming, snorkels, aqualungs, glass bottomed boats. If we are to become a dedicated nation of reef caretakers for international visitors that is a reasonable goal, but eternal custodians and unpaid gardeners, no. We would have to charge for maintenance and who would pay?
Before anyone spends more billions of our money, Australian taxpayer money on trying to fix a problem, it would be nice to know that there was a non natural problem and that it was fixable. Otherwise it is a political game by the activist Green parties with no upside for the Australian taxpayer. You may as well demand the Russians maintain Siberia or the Libyans maintain the Sahara or the Chileans maintain the Andes.
40
The Latest IPCC report says the opposite
17
Will scientists with contrary views be invited to the webinar ?.
20
They would know.
00
The latest IPCC report says climate change is causing more frequent marine heatwaves worldwide, which is impacting coral reefs. This is clearly not true.
10
What the IPCC fail to see is that marine heatwaves are a global cooling signal, but obviously its not in the script.
“Our new index of extreme marine heat shows the global ocean crossed a critical barrier in 2014 and it’s now normal. It’s arrived, it’s here,” says Van Houtan.
‘While the oceans as a whole crossed the threshold of 50 per cent only recently, some oceans hit it much earlier. The South Atlantic passed the milestone in 1998. “That was a long time ago. I think that’s really jarring,” says Van Houtan.’ (New Scientist)
10
Mate, you have misread the statement There is no cooling signal in ocean warming
05
In your reading of the IPCC report you quote, was there any explanation as to why the water was warming? The air isn’t.
And you do not get the high temperatures with water and so no IR reflection. So why did the water warm up so suddenly?
Is CO2 responsible? If so, how?
20
Would you consider that CO2 might not be responsible for every temperature related event on the planet?
10
Of course not.
00
Its counter-intuitive.
Marine heatwaves appear as novel, because our new technologies have given us the precision to see for the first time, but in fact it has happened throughout millennia.
Paleo history might give us a glimpse of earlier events, I might take a little while. In the meantime could you tell me what are the mechanisms causing marine heatwaves?
00
A study was done on Southeast Indian Ocean and they came up with ‘a robust 215-year (1795–2010) geochemical coral proxy sea surface temperature (SST) record.
‘We show that marine heatwaves affecting the SEIO are linked to the behaviour of the Western Pacific Warm Pool on decadal to centennial timescales, and are most pronounced when an anomalously strong zonal SST gradient between the western and central Pacific co-occurs with strong La Niña’s. This SST gradient forces large-scale changes in heat flux that exacerbate SEIO heatwaves.’ (Zinke 2015)
00
I follow the twitter feed from the CSIRO. Here’s today’s contribution – “We’ve contributed to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (@IPCC_CH) report on the toll taken by climate change and the actions we can take today to reduce impacts and adapt”. So, the input or data provided into the IPCC report by Australia is made by the same organisations that will benefit from any research funds provided by government as a result of that report. It’s a never ending symbiotic loop with huge conflicts of interest. Seems like the same for the GBR. Those organisations benefitting from research funds are the same mobs collecting the data. So, of course we can really trust those same organisations to be impartial cant we? Then, you throw in another step in that whole loop. Politics. When politicians harvest votes from the electorate by giving funds to those same organisations because, you know, that money is saving the reef of course. So, then those same organisations in an attempt to further their funding from the politicians keep providing data to support doomsday proposals. Wash, rinse, repeat.
40
Good find there Ross.
00
Consider that the combined $1Bn from Morrison, $444Million from Malcolm Turnbull and $400 Million from Julie Bishop to ‘fix’ climate problems is most of $2Billion, four times the budget of the CSIRO. Clearly there is much more money in Climate Change than say improvements in sheep and livestock management or paint durability or water loss in arid areas or helping manufacturing with research.
What senior CSIRO manager would not be fighting to get a share of the gigantic Climate pie? And as Malcolm Turnbull so amply demonstrated, giving the money to people who didn’t ask for it and didn’t have any sort of plan was preferable to giving it to the CSIRO. In fact the total is as much as the SBS/ABC/CSIRO/BOM together! Then you get the $6Billion in carbon taxes for windmills and solar panels. A river of climate money.
In fact I think I can see a solution to decarbonizing the planet. I will need $500Million to try it, or even to write the proposal. Administrative costs will be $200 Million of course. And the word processing of the proposal will take about three years, by which time more money will be needed.
But billionaire Twiggy Forrest has already asked for public money for his hydrogen dream.
Ether way there are thousands of Green jobs after all! We Australians can have thousands and thousands of people all saving the planet and the Great Barrier Reef. As long as we make sure no one goes near it.
30
Just watched the Webinar.
I asked Peter Ridd if Coral Bleaching is due to warmer water or whether it is due to coral exposed to the air at very low tides?
He said that the El Nino does indeed drop the water level by 30cm at the reef and may have caused some bleaching, but, that in his view, most bleaching is associated with warmer water. I am not sure how he comes to that view.
10