CNN Pushes Coral Apocalypse As Great Barrier Reef Shows Record Growth

by H.S. Sterling, Aug 5, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch


A new report from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) shows the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) set new records for extent this year.

Sadly, in a story titled “Parts of Great Barrier Reef record highest amount of coral in 36 years,” CNN tried to turn this good news contained in the headline into a climate cautionary tale. [bold, links added]

According to the AIMS annual report, the northern and central regions of the 2,300 km GBR ecosystem have the most coral since the surveys began 36 years ago.

As CNN notes, an AIMS survey of 87 sections of the GBR found that between August 2021 and May 2022, average hard coral cover in the upper region and central areas of the reef increased by around one-third.

AIMS CEO Dr. Paul Hardisty told CNN that the report shows the GBR can “recover from mass bleaching and outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish that feed on coral.”

One could be forgiven for missing this good news since CNN spent just a few paragraphs discussing the GBR’s expansion.

More than two-thirds of CNN’s story talked about the threat posed to the GBR from recent bleaching events purportedly driven by climate change.

CNN’s story largely ignored the fact that most of the GBR’s coral colonies impacted by bleaching had recovered, as the AIMS report documents.

In a press release from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) commenting on the AIMS report its director, Benny Peiser, Ph.D., said, “This is just the latest example of empirical data making a mockery of the catastrophists. For how much longer do they think they can get away with it?”

The GWPF recently released a study discussing the positive health of coral reefs in general, by Peter Ridd, Ph.D., a long-time researcher on the GBR and coral reefs.

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The Great Barrier Reef Is Strong, So Stop The Scare Campaign

by  P.  Ridd, Aug 5, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch


The latest data on the coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef, produced by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, should be a cause for celebration.

Church bells should be ringing and children given a day off from school. AIMS says two of the three main regions of the reef are at record-breaking high levels. [bold, links added]

The other region is at record-equaling levels (once uncertainty margins are taken into account).

AIMS, which has been releasing data on the reef every year since 1985, does not give the aggregate of coral cover for the entire reef; it stopped doing that in 2017.

So I have done it for AIMS, and the reef as a whole is at record high levels.

This result is proof that many scientific institutions have been misleading the public about the state of the reef.

They claimed we had four devastating and unprecedented bleaching events since 2016.

So much bleaching, death, and destruction has supposedly never happened before and is because of climate change – and now we have a record-high coral cover.