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.

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