Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Despite record high emissions of carbon dioxide, and hottest ever temperatures, the Great Barrier Reef was again enjoying one of its best years yet. In the 40 years that AIMS has been studying it, the last four years are great results.
The biggest and best studied reef in the world is looking good
Despite record high emissions of carbon dioxide, and hottest ever temperatures, the Great Barrier Reef was again enjoying one of its best years yet. In the 40 years that AIMS has been studying it, the last four years are great results.
Judging by the data, corals are coping fine with today’s heat and CO2. But the more money we spend finding a climate crisis, the worse our science institutions get. One-sided money and monopoly science can turn any institute into a tax-grabbing-machine, that serves the Blob, not the people. Thus, is it so.
So Peter Ridd took the same data and did the graph that AIMS, with $90 million in taxpayer dollars, couldn’t do, so we can all appreciate the full disaster. And here it is:
AIMS also tells us that the “reef is more volatile”, and has suffered the tragedy of declining from record highs all the way back to “near long term average trends”, which sounds awful, I mean, “normal”. Like regression to the mean. Though it doesn’t look very “average” in the long term graph that AIMS don’t want you to see.
The Blob Media promptly took the one-sided, politically-convenient AIMS press release, investigated no claims, asked no hard questions and churned out the worst possible interpretation of a good result. Which is apparently exactly what AIMS expected, because they didn’t complain.
The ABC, with a billion-dollar budget, could have done the graph Peter Ridd did. They could have asked AIMS for it. Heck, they could have just phoned Peter, he would have given it to them, and with a smile. Instead they pressed the “Climate Alarm: Give us Your Money” button.
It’s clear that The Australian Institute of Marine Science’s (AIMS) is not even trying to give Australians the most meaningful information they can on the reef. When the media exaggerates the crisis, the experts are happy. AIMS don’t ring up the journalists and correct them. They don’t explain the bigger perspective.
Corals got bleached way back in 1862, before the first coal plant, and long before the Ford Model T. Most likely corals have been bleached on and off for millions of years, it’s just that there were not many scuba divers around to take a photo or collect an ARC grant in 2 million BC.
After millions of years of asteroids, volcanoes, wild temperature changes and dramatic shifts in atmospheric gases, (plus sea level swings of 125m) it would be a shock if corals did not have a full toolkit to cope with a bit of climate change.
Massive increases in coral across the Australian Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have been reported for 2023-24 making it the third record year in a row of heavy growth. Across almost all parts of the 1,500 mile long reef, from the warmer northern waters to the cooler conditions in the south, coral is now at its highest level since detailed observations began. The inconvenient news has been ignored in mainstream media which, curiously, have focused on a non-story in Nature that claimed “climate change” poses an “existential threat” to the GBR. “The science tells us that the GBR is in danger – and we should be guided by the science,” Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong told Victoria Gill of BBC News. The existential threat is “now realised” reported the Guardian.
Massive increases in coral across the Australian Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have been reported for 2023-24 making it the third record year in a row of heavy growth. Across almost all parts of the 1,500 mile long reef, from the warmer northern waters to the cooler conditions in the south, coral is now at its highest level since detailed observations began. The inconvenient news has been ignored in mainstream media which, curiously, have focused on a non-story in Nature that claimed “climate change” poses an “existential threat” to the GBR. “The science tells us that the GBR is in danger – and we should be guided by the science,” Professor Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong told Victoria Gill of BBC News. The existential threat is “now realised” reported the Guardian.
Travelling back from the reality inhabited by the Guardian, it can be reported that last year’s gains were eye-catchingly large. On the Northern GBR, hard coral cover leapt from 35.8% to 39.5%, in the central area it rose from 30.7% to 34%, while in the south it went from 34% to 39.1%. The report is the result of monitoring of hard coral cover reefs from August 2023 to June 2024 by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The percentage of hard coral cover is a standard measurement of reef conditions used by scientists and is said to provide a simple and robust measure of reef health. Similar reports have been published by the AIMS over the last 38 years.
For the first two years of record coral growth, the narrative-driven mainstream media ignored the recovery story. But this year, the suspicious might contend, something had to be done to blunt the sensational news of the stonking rises. Help has come in the form of a paper just published in Nature which uses proxy temperature measurements and climate models to suggest temperatures around the vast reef area are the highest recorded in 400 years. This time period is the blink of an ecological eye-lid given that coral has been around for hundreds of millions of years during periods when temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide have been markedly different. Nevertheless, this is said to pose an existential threat despite it being known that sub-tropical corals thrive between 24°C-32°C, and in fact seem to grow faster in warmer waters.
Natural bleaching, when the coral expels algae and turns white, can occur with temporary local temperature changes, but evidence from many years of scientific observation suggests the corals often and quickly recover. Long term changes in water temperature – tiny compared to coral’s optimum conditions – pose no threat, but alarmists concentrate on the bleaching events to warn of possible ecological collapse. The Guardian noted a recent fifth mass bleaching in eight years across the reef, driven, it claimed, by “global heating”. So far, its readers are in the dark as to how this squares with the recent record growth.
A decade of mass bleaching, relentlessly catastrophised in the interests of Net Zero by activists in the media, academia and politics, does not appear to have done much harm to the recent growth in the Northern GBR.
Or the central area.
Or even in the south where the water temperatures are slightly cooler.
To read the latest AIMS report is to read the best possible spin on the story that the reef is heading for disaster. And, of course, it is all down to the unproven changes in climate that are said to be caused by human activity. It is claimed this will cause more frequent and long-lasting marine ‘heatwaves’, a product no doubt of a climate model. It is generally suggested that these heatwaves and mass bleaching were rare prior to the 1990s, although how anyone can know this is a mystery. Detailed GBR observations and temperature recordings barely stretch back a few decades.
As is often the case with publicly-funded operations, the political message is never far from the surface. Thus we learn that “enabling coral reefs to survive these stressful conditions requires a combination of a reduction in global greenhouse emissions to stabilise temperatures… and the development of interventions to help reefs adapt to and recover from the effects of climate change”. No doubt this last proposal requires large amounts of money from the taxpayer to cover the costs of such worthy work.
Not everyone goes along with the coral fear-mongering. The distinguished scientist Dr. Peter Ridd has studied the GBR for 40 years and notes that coral numbers have “exploded” in recent years. He says that all 3,000 reefs in the world’s largest system have excellent coral. “Not a single reef or even a single species of reef life has been lost since British settlement,” he reports. The impact of bleaching is “routinely exaggerated by the media and some scientific organisations”. In his view, the public is being deceived about the reef. “How this occurred is a serious issue for the reef-science community which has embraced emotion, ideology and raw self-interest to maintain funding,” he observes.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’sEnvironment Editor.
PHD student Sanam Mahoozi asks whether we should all follow Mexico’s example and elect scientist leaders like former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to guide us through the climate crisis.
PHD student Sanam Mahoozi asks whether we should all follow Mexico’s example and elect scientist leaders like former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to guide us through the climate crisis.
Can Scientist Leaders Help Countries Fight Climate Change More Effectively?
Sanam Mahoozi Contributor Jun 29, 2024,01:33pm EDT Updated Jun 30, 2024, 02:21am EDT
In early June, Mexico made history by electing its first-ever female president, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, a scientist with a background in physics and advanced degrees in energy engineering.
Her victory has since sparked a discussion about whether leaders with scientific expertise can have a positive impact on pushing forward climate policies worldwide.
In the past, the combination has been a boon for environmental causes.
For example, Margaret Thatcher, the former UK Prime Minister, was a trained chemist who raised awareness about global warming in a powerful speech at the United Nations in 1989 back when a lot of people weren’t taking the issue that seriously.
Then there is Angela Merkel, the former Chancellor of Germany, who with a doctorate in quantum chemistry, played a significant role in advocating for the 2015 Paris Agreement.
…
Let’s see what Rachel Kyte, professor of practice in climate policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford said about this topic in an interview with Forbes via email.
For women, “we can look at a number of leaders who have a science background, if not climate science, who have been able to lead their countries into ambition on climate action.”
“Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel come immediately to mind. They were able to ask questions of the scientists and understand its implications for action, unrelated to the ideological position of their parties,” whether conservative, religious or liberal.
…
Let’s see what Dr. Peter Gleick, member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, co-founder and Senior Fellow of the Pacific Institute said about this topic in an interview with Forbes via email.
Scientific knowledge isn’t an automatic guarantee of political competence. The disastrous mishandling of the Peter Ridd academic freedom case demonstrates that groups of scientists are just as prone to making bad decisions as anyone else.
Angela Merkel was also a political incompetent, in my opinion. She might have been a motivated advocate of green policies, but her green policies were largely responsible for Germany’s energy crisis. Merkel’s 2011 decision to shut down Germany’s nuclear reactors increased Germany’s dependence on Russia.
here was plenty of warning Russia was an unreliable energy partner. President Trump tried to warn Germany about the consequences of its reckless energy policy in 2018, when Merkel was still in charge. The German diplomats laughed in Trump’s face.
Margaret Thatcher is an interesting case. While it is true Thatcher had a big hand in promoting the climate issue in the early days, in her 2002 memoir, Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World (New York: HarperCollins), she expressed dismay at how concern about climate change had been used as an excuse to promote global tyranny, and criticised exaggerated claims of scientific certainty. It is truly sad that greens who cite Thatcher as a right wing green leader consistently fail to provide a more complete picture of her views.
… The doomsters’ favorite subject today is climate change. This has a number of attractions for them. First, the science is extremely obscure so they cannot easily be proved wrong. Second, we all have ideas about the weather: traditionally, the English on first acquaintance talk of little else.
Third, since clearly no plan to alter climate could be considered on anything but a global scale, it provides a marvelous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism. All this suggests a degree of calculation. Yet perhaps that is to miss half the point. Rather, as it was said of Hamlet that there was method in his madness, so one feels that in the case of some of the gloomier alarmists there is a large amount of madness in their method.
Indeed, the lack of any sense of proportion is what characterizes many pronouncements on the matter by otherwise sensible people. Thus President Clinton on a visit to China, which poses a serious strategic challenge to the US, confided to his host, President Jiang Zemin, that his greatest concern was the prospect that “your people may get rich like our people, and instead of riding bicycles, they will drive automobiles, and the increase in greenhouse gases will make the planet more dangerous for all.”
It would, though, be difficult to beat for apocalyptic hyperbole former Vice President Gore. Mr Gore believes: ‘The cleavage in the modern world between mind and body, man and nature, has created a new kind of addiction: I believe that our civilisation is, in effect, addicted to the consumption of the earth itself.’
And he warns: “Unless we find a way to dramatically change our civilisation and our way of thinking about the relationship between humankind and the earth, our children will inherit a wasteland.”
But why pick on the Americans? Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, has observed: “There is no greater national duty than the defense of our shoreline. But the most immediate threat to it today is the encroaching sea.” Britain has found, it seems, a worthy successor to King Canute.
The fact that seasoned politicians can say such ridiculous things – and get away with it – illustrates the degree to which the new dogma about climate change has swept through the left-of-centre governing classes….Read more:
In the original leak, Gleick did not clearly differentiate the fake “anonymous source” document from the real documents he stole from Heartland.
Unbelievably, Gleick is still a member of the US National Academy of Sciences – which in my opinion begs the question of what level of immorality or depravity is required to get someone ejected from that organisation.
I don’t know what kind of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo will make. But having a background as a scientist offers no reassurance that she will be a competent leader. The signs in my opinion are ominous – in 2019, while serving as leader of Mexico City, Claudia introduced a raft of radical green policies. If Claudia turns out to be another green policy obsessive like Angela Merkel, Mexico could be about to experience some German style energy price pain.
Great Barrier Reef specialist Peter Ridd has just published an excellent video about my work and the way I’ve been treated by the scientific community just for pointing out that polar bear populations have failed to respond as predicted to the recent decline in Arctic sea ice.
Great Barrier Reef specialist Peter Ridd has just published an excellent video about my work and the way I’ve been treated by the scientific community just for pointing out that polar bear populations have failed to respond as predicted to the recent decline in Arctic sea ice.
In other words, the polar bear catastrophe we were promised never happened. In case you missed it, I wrote a book about that. Polar bears across the Arctic are thriving: not just because their numbers have increased overall but because the field data collected from bears in regions that have had the most dramatic declines in summer sea ice, including the Barents Sea and the Chukchi Sea, show the bears are healthy and reproducing well.
18 months ago the coral on John Brewer Reef was dead according to The Guardian, but Jennifer Marohasy, Peter Ridd and Rowan Dean took the risk of going back to the same dead reef to make a short documentary on it and found the same coral, 80 kilometers offshore and it, and the whole area around it, is flourishing.
According to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park authority, the area was surveyed in April 2022 and the damage was classed as “severe”. According to them, 60-90% of the reef was bleached. It was so bad that when the Sydney Morning Herald wrote about “500 kilometers of severe bleaching” it was John Brewer Reef that they picked for the feature photo.
Scientists, apparently, were dreading the damage to come (of the reef that recovered):
If the John Brewer reef was sick, most of the Great Barrier Reef was bound to be sick too, said Graham Readfearn:
“This is one of the healthiest reefs off Townsville and one of the best reefs on the whole Great Barrier Reef. So for these corals to be stressed and damaged … well, it’s likely it’s the same at other reefs down here.”
But here in the real world, the formerly bleached coral now is a normal “cafe latte” brown color, showing it has recovered from the bleaching. The growing tips are always white, apparently, so it’s all good. Jennifer wrote all the details up on her blog.
The coral threw out the zooxanthellae last year, but this year it has new ones…
The John Brewer reef, right now, is full of colorful fish and very alive corals.
As Jennifer Marohasy says, it was a risk to return to the “The centre of the sixth mass coral bleaching”. The 15 minute video of the trip to John Brewer Reef is below.
But some official agencies that diagnose the doomed reefs do it from a plane. Here’s an example of the same reef from 120 meters above sea level. For some reason nearly everything deeper than 2 meters is hard to see, and vertical walls of coral are, invisible.
The Australian government gave $1 billion dollars to save the reef in January 2022. Perhaps it worked? You’d think The Guardian might want to tell the world, but they don’t seem to want to give a healthy reef the same attention they gave to a momentarily bleached one.
Though alarmists are losing the head, John Brewer reef is anything but dead, With its colourful coral, Spread like bouquets floral, Where parrot fish swim and are fed.
I was back at John Brewer Reef yesterday looking for the same coral that was reported as badly bleached in March 2022. Do you think I could find it?
Some journalists have a tendency to extrapolate from the specific to the general. For example, Graham Readfearn, writing in The Guardian on March 22, 2022, extrapolated from the condition of one coral at one reef to the entire Great Barrier Reef. Quoting marine biologist Adam Smith he wrote 18 months ago:
We’ve definitely just seen corals that are stressed and white… This is one of the healthiest reefs off Townsville and one of the best reefs on the whole Great Barrier Reef. So for these corals to be stressed and damaged… well, it’s likely it’s the same at other reefs…
The online clickbait was a photograph of Smith looking at a branching Acropora with some bleaching, growing from the centre of a plate Acropora that showed no bleaching at all.
“The Great Barrier Reef has been hit with a sixth mass coral bleaching event, the marine park’s authority has confirmed, with aerial surveys showing almost no reefs across a 1,200km stretch escaping the heat.
The Guardian understands a United Nations mission currently under way to check the health and management of the reef will be briefed on the initial findings of the surveys as early as Friday in Townsville …
Government scientists said the confirmation showed the urgency of cutting greenhouse gas emissions that were driving the repeated mass bleachings. [end quote]
The story went around the world, accompanied mostly by stock images of bleached coral or aerial footage from so high in the sky it was impossible to see individual corals. There was a map to make it even more official.
This map was available on the AIMS and GBRMPA through 2022 but has since been removed.
The government scientists had spoken and almost everyone believed them – that this represented a sixth mass coral bleaching, and the Great Barrier Reef was ruin.
After the bleaching in 2016, leading marine biologists claimed 65 percent of the world’s coral reefs had been destroyed. Yet I’ve been unable to find even one reef that hasn’t recovered.
In short, it is my experience that leading marine biologists and government scientists just make stuff up. In my opinion many of them should be in jail for fraud.
Anyway, I organised a trip to John Brewer reef. I was there just a few weeks after the headlines in The Guardian, on April 10, 2022, with underwater macro photographer, Leonard Lim, and on April 12, 2022, with underwater cinematographer Stuart Ireland who filmed transects. We have the beginnings of a documentary that you can watch here.
On those two visits and on every visit since, I have gone looking for that same coral that featured in The Guardian; that was shown as evidence that,
One of the Great Barrier Reef’s healthiest coral reefs [John Brewer Reef] has succumbed to bleaching.”
My daughter and that same coral, at John Brewer reef in July 2022.
I photographed that same coral in July, with my daughter holding a colour chart in front of it. You can see with reference to the university colour chart that the corals that were bleached in March were a good beige colour by July corresponding to a healthy E4 on the colour chart. The University of Queensland Coral Watch chart explains, “Avoid measuring growing tips of branching and plate corals since they are naturally white.” .. below the white tip they are more usually shades of beige.
Back in July 2022, I did not extrapolate from the condition of the corals at John Brewer Reef to any other reef. I was content to just report my findings for this reef, and particularly this one coral for that moment in time.
The article that I posted explained:
Just as a team from the United Nations were flying into Australia at the behest of James Cook University Professor Terry Hughes – seeking to have the Great Barrier Reef’s world heritage status downgraded – Adjunct Associate Professor Adam Smith was posing for photographs at John Brewer Reef for The Guardian newspaper. At that time, back on 20 March (2022), the mild bleaching and fluorescing at John Brewer reef was being described by Professor Smith as part of a fourth mass bleaching event and in an article for The Conversation, Professor Smith suggested it could take the corals 12 years to recover.
My daughter and I were back at John Brewer reef on Sunday 10th July, the coral that was featured in The Guardian on 22 March as severely bleached is now a healthy beige. It appears to have made a full recovery in less than three months.
Most of the corals at the reef crest at John Brewer are now various shades of beige to chocolate brown, and so the reef is looking exceptionally healthy.
Facebook subsequently attached a ‘warning’, indicating that my article had been ‘Fact Checked’ and found to be ‘misleading’.
This is a serious accusation.
Only because Scott Hargreaves, Executive Director at the IPA, was prepared to check the detail of the RMIT University FactLab allegation, my article was not simply removed from the IPA website. Scott saw through the hypocrisy. He encouraged me to submit an appeal, which I did on August 2, 2022. That appeal was dismissed on August 5 with reference to an unrelated blog post as evidence I inappropriately extrapolate from the specific to the general this time with reference to the speed of recovery from the bleaching.
In April 2022, when John Brewer reef was reported as bleached white, it was actually unusually pink. This is the colour of the florescent proteins in many of the plate corals at John Brewer Reef.
Many of the large brown plate corals had kicked out their symbiotic algae and so the natural pink pigmentation in the corals at this reef could be seen. The pink colour is from florescent proteins in the coral’s polps that is often masked by the zooxanthellae, which are the corals symbiotic algae more usually a brown or green colour. There were some corals at John Brewer Reef in April 2022 that had bleached white, but relatively few, perhaps 10 percent. More had bleached pink, and some had not bleached at all.
I went looking for the exact same coral that The Guardian had featured as a symbol of catastrophe in April 2022, and then again when I visited with my daughter in July 2022, and I have looked for it every visit since.
I was at John Brewer Reef on October 20, 2022, and again yesterday on October 1, 2023. I found that same coral, again. It has grown some, and it is looking so healthy.
That same coral. I found it just yesterday and photographed it, again.
Everyday we are confronted with misinformation from government scientists paid by Australian taxpayers. More concerned about job security than the truth, they claim the reef is sick, when the reef is healthy.
And so, children around the world have been led to believe that the Great Barrier Reef, one of the seven wonders of the world, is dying. When it is not.
There are children who lie awake at night fretting, when they could be told the story of the branching Acropora coral at John Brewer Reef that bleached a little in March 2022, but was all recovered by July that same year. That it went a bit white, after stressing unnecessarily, and kicking out some of its zooxanthellae.
They could be assured that it is still there. That it has grown bigger.
It is still there. When I looked really carefully at it, which I did yesterday with a magnifying glass and a flash light, I could see it even has florescent tips.
The same coral colony that was featured in The Guardian in March 2022 as dying, photographed just yesterday with a flashlight and zoom lens. Up close you can see the coral is healthy and with a florescent white tip. The brown plate coral below it has florescent blue tips. Can you see them?
I went out to the reef yesterday on one of the regular charters with Adrenalin Snorkel and Dive. It was just me, the crew, and a bunch of regular tourists. Later this week I am returning with some celebrities including Peter Ridd.
From the water, looking back to the boat … with so many tourists enjoying the day in the Sun at John Brewer Reef. So much thanks to Nick and the rest of the crew from Adrenalin Snorkel and Dive.
Evidence of the corruption of the once sacrosanct scientific process grows daily with scientific bodies falling victim to wokeness, unscientific findings and pseudo-scientific romantic mythology. The latest report on the future of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) by the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) is another sad reflection of this depressing trend. According to long-time Reef expert Dr. Peter Ridd, the report demonstrates that the AAS, Australia’s principal science body, is not just unscientific, but anti-science. Writing recently in Spectator Australia, he also noted it had become “astonishingly woke”.
Evidence of the corruption of the once sacrosanct scientific process grows daily with scientific bodies falling victim to wokeness, unscientific findings and pseudo-scientific romantic mythology. The latest report on the future of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) by the Australian Academy of Science (AAS) is another sad reflection of this depressing trend. According to long-time Reef expert Dr. Peter Ridd, the report demonstrates that the AAS, Australia’s principal science body, is not just unscientific, but anti-science. Writing recently in Spectator Australia, he also noted it had become “astonishingly woke”.
The AAS observed that the Reef could already be “irreversibly damaged”. This propagandised opinion flies in the face of the fact that coral on the Reef is at a 37-year record high, despite a challenging past decade of cyclones, natural localised warming spikes and starfish attacks. Coral is now double that recorded in 2012. Nowhere in the report, including the executive summary, introduction and conclusion, is any of this mentioned. Also considered unworthy of note is the fact that UNESCO recently declared the GBR was not endangered.
What we get is a parade of wokeness and half-baked possible solutions to combat the mortal danger the doomed GBR is supposed to be in. Much play is made of the involvement of aboriginal people in the roundtable process that helped compile the report. Having a ‘traditional knowledge co-chair’ in each roundtable “allows for different sources of knowledge to be shared”. This provides a “holistic” understanding of the GBR, encompassing “customary activities, song-lines, stories, totems and spirituality”.
The original settlers in Australia were immensely practical people learning to survive in a hostile environment. But Dr. Ridd suggests that selecting people on the basis of their ethnicity, rather than their scientific experience, is a “fundamentally anti-scientific approach”. He did however feel that people “deeply practical” about the Reef could have helped in pointing out the absurdity of some future actions proposed by the AAS. Deeply practical people know that you cannot bolt the Reef, the size of Germany, to the sea floor. Under “rubble stabilisation”, the AAS seems to suggest coral rocks can be glued back together. Even if by some “climate magic” the Reef is broken up, are they seriously suggesting we can wire it back together, asks Ridd.
Folk more practical than the experts at the AAS might also have a problem with “solar radiation management”, a daft idea, unsparing of other people’s money, that could see the entire Reef shaded from the sun with artificial fog and clouds. Of course, since this is an Australian Government-bound report, nothing as vulgar as costings are supplied. “How are you going to make a cloud as big as Germany and keep it anchored over the Reef for the whole summer over the next few hundred years?” asks Dr. Ridd. In addition, he continues, you will have to stop hot water flowing from the Coral Sea, and this would necessitate building a dam 2,000 kilometres long and 100 metres deep.
While a simple calculation is all that is required to reveal the absurdity of such ideas, “modern science is full of people who are almost completely non-quantitative and, as such, impractical and virtually useless as scientists”, concludes Ridd.
The recent coral recovery on the GBR has been a major embarrassment to many climate alarmists, not least those found in the mainstream media. The story has disappeared from the headlines, leading to the obvious charge that the MSM are now lying about the spectacular recovery by omission. In a recent report, Dr. Ridd, who was cancelled in 2018 from his post as a physics professor at James Cook University for questioning the institutional narrative around the GBR, said recent events “raised serious questions about integrity in science institutions and in the media”. Coral has never been in better shape, he reported. “An uncharitable observer might conclude that periodic mass coral mortality events, which are largely completely natural, are exploited by some organisations with an ideological agenda and a financial interest.”
The AAS holds itself out as providing “independent, authoritative and influential advice“ to Government. It appears to be somewhat ruthless in protecting its trade. Last year it called for broadcast news and the internet to censor what it called “climate denialism misinformation”, as well as “disinformation” about the GBR, Covid vaccines and other issues that result in “societal harm”. It went on to call for all social media platforms to proactively promote “trusted information” to “inoculate” people against misinformation. Platforms should be held accountable for content that challenges the official narrative on any of these issues.
At the time, the Australian climate writer Jo Nova quoted the atmospheric physicist Professor Garth Paltridge, who said: “I just cannot understand how any science academy that is supposed to operate through rational debate can behave like this – that is, to use pure political brute force to prevent one side of the argument from putting its case”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily ScepticI‘sEnvironment Editor.
In a recent article titled “The astonishingly woke Australian Academy of Science” published in the Spectator, Peter Ridd sheds light on the current state of the Australian Academy of Science (AAS). The article raises concerns about the AAS’s approach to scientific research, particularly in relation to the Great Barrier Reef.
“The Australian Academy of Science (AAS) recently released a report Reef Futures Roundtable, which is ostensibly about the doomed Great Barrier Reef. However, the report only demonstrates that the AAS, Australia’s peak science body, has become not just unscientific, but anti-scientific. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has also become astonishingly Woke.”
This statement sets the tone for the entire article, suggesting that the AAS has shifted its focus from genuine scientific research to a more politically-driven agenda.
The Great Barrier Reef: A Case in Point
Ridd points out that the AAS report concluded that the Great Barrier Reef could already be ‘irreversibly’ damaged. However, he highlights some glaring omissions:
“The fact that UNESCO has just declared it not endangered did not rate a mention, and neither did the latest two years of statistics showing the reef is at record high coral levels. Remarkably, the report does not contain a single fact or figure to support any of its claims about the reef – except the area of the reef is 340,000 square kilometres.”
Such omissions raise questions about the credibility of the report and the motivations behind its conclusions.
Impractical Solutions
Ridd goes on to critique the ‘interventions’ recommended by the AAS to address the perceived issues with the reef. He finds them to be not just impractical but bordering on the absurd:
“For example, it suggests ‘solar radiation management’ – shading the reef from the sun with man-made fog and clouds to prevent the water heating up and causing coral bleaching… How are you going to make a cloud as big as Germany and keep it anchored over the reef for the whole summer over the next few hundred years?”
Such suggestions, Ridd argues, demonstrate a lack of quantitative analysis and a departure from genuine scientific inquiry.
Wokeness Over Science
One of the most striking critiques Ridd offers is the apparent shift in the AAS’s priorities. He suggests that the AAS places more importance on issues of gender and race than on genuine scientific facts:
“The AAS ascribes such importance to facts and figures on gender and race, but not to scientific facts. This demonstrates it is anti-science. Science is about evidence and logic. It does not matter whether one is male or female or whatever else, it is still impossible to make clouds as big as Germany for the next hundred years.”
Conclusion: A Once-Esteemed Organisation’s Fall from Grace
Ridd concludes his article with a somber reflection on the state of the AAS:
“I have been saying for some time that many of our science institutions have become totally untrustworthy. By its wilful abandonment of quantitative analysis, the AAS has destroyed its reputation as a source of useful scientific advice… The Australian Academy of Science is now a joke.”
This article serves as a stark reminder of the importance of maintaining the integrity of scientific institutions and how far they’ve fallen. When political agendas overshadow genuine scientific inquiry, it not only undermines the credibility of the institution but also has broader implications for public trust in science.
In an era where trust in institutions is already waning, it’s crucial for scientific bodies like the AAS to return to upholding the principles of genuine scientific research. The Great Barrier Reef, one of the world’s most treasured natural wonders, deserves nothing less.
It has been a cold start to winter here in Yeppoon, just across from Great Keppel Island that is part of the southern Great Barrier Reef. And it has also been very cold in Sydney if you believe the readings from the automatic weather stations – and the complaining.
It has been a cold start to winter here in Yeppoon, just across from Great Keppel Island that is part of the southern Great Barrier Reef. And it has also been very cold in Sydney if you believe the readings from the automatic weather stations – and the complaining.
Before they deleted the minimum temperature as recorded at the air force base in Richmond (western Sydney), it got down to minus 6.4 C on 19th June, which would have been a new record cold day. But. Alas. The officials here in Australia do not want to know about cold days. As a nation we have already officially committed to overheating.
Long continuous temperature records for anywhere along the East Coast of Australia – unadjusted/unhomogenised, that is before remodelling – tend to show a cooling trend from about 1920 through to about 1950 (though there were every hot summers from 1938 through 1941) – but overall the trend is cooling and then warming. Until the last few years. At places like Gympie, about halfway down the East Coast of Australia, annual average maximum temperatures were about as hot a few years ago, back in 2018, as they were back in 1919, but over the last few years they have been falling – again.
I recently attended a conference in Gympie – in the Mary Valley, a catchment at the very southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef. The conference was organised in part to draw attention to the real environmental damage caused by massive new pumped hydro, and wind and solar installations.
These billion-dollar investments are ostensibly to save us from the (non-existent) overheating.
Certainly, government coffers are being emptied, someone is being paid. I gather much of the money is going to rich people in Europe. To show for all of this, here in Queensland, we have much scaring of the landscape – not just a bit, but terribly and if they continue to have their way it will get a lot worse.
At the conference in Gympie, I heard lawyer Tom Marland explained the extent of the investment in what is being called the necessary energy transition, with reference to new developments in central Queensland: 10,000 hectares used to be a large solar installation, now they are planning for 100,000; and the wind farms are ten times larger than before, with ridge lines excavated to fit 300 turbines.
It seems extraordinary to me, that the first time a majority of Australians voted for climate change was at the federal election last year, and yet the investments in this necessary energy transition have already been approved.
And the European companies making the installations are apparently exempt from local development approvals because as a nation we are overheating to such an extent – so the propaganda goes – that this is an emergency.
Apparently, what is happening in my home state of Queensland, that runs the length of the Great Barrier Reef and some, is typical of what is happening round the world. And the elites are being rewarded with fantastic profits at huge cost to local communities, not just in the Mary Valley.
I was recently scanning the 2021 report by Bank of America, a multinational investment bank and financial services holding company, that explains the crusade against climate change is going to cost $150 trillion over 30 years with nearly $5 trillion in annual investments. That is a lot of money, that could be spent on other things. (But the new kings are not investing in things like schools or hospitals, they are invested in the necessary energy transition – I will get to explaining this.)
As I understand it, the Queensland government is paying European companies billions of dollars from coal royalties to infill hillsides the length and breadth of Queensland with concrete by way of bases for wind turbines, and infill valleys with silicon – by way of solar panels. That is what the Europeans are being paid to do, with money earned from the profits from coal mining.
If ever it was a case of killing the goose that laid the golden egg, it is in full swing here in Queensland.
To be clear, it is all on the pretext that we have a climate emergency because of overheating – while everyone dons an extra cardigan.
An extraordinary effort has actually gone into recording temperatures across Australia over the last 100 years, and while there are problems with the detail of the methodology – certainly the Bureau should be retracting the many record hot days it has announced over recent years because these are almost certainly spurious because they were not numerically averaging, something they are going to do going forward, apparently – more information here – but the data is good enough to conclude there has never been a recent unprecedented uptick in temperatures as we have been falsely lead to believe.
To be clear, the Bureau of Meteorology, and everyone else who claims Australia is overheating is speaking nonsense, and probably unintentionally – like Jordan Shanks, except he should know better.
Queensland, where I live, runs the length of the iconic Great Barrier Reef and a bit more. Anyone who visits the reef regularly, like Stuart Ireland who produces the Reef Today series, will tell you that the coral is looking exceptionally good at the moment – and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) official surveys support this contention documenting record high coral cover.
But according to popular YouTuber Jordan Shanks this must be nonsense. A video that he posted last week ridiculing Peter Ridd quickly received more than 100K likes and there were more than 500 comments in the thread when I attempted to post some rebuttal. Each of my attempts failed, with my comments and links being removed within the minute.
The YouTube video now has more than 160K likes and over 600 comments, but I am still unable to successfully post a single comment in the thread.
Yesterday, my comment began:
“On the topic of 500-year-old corals, well I went out looking for them in November 2020 all the way to Myrmidon Reef. I made a 23-minute documentary about it, that you can watch here:
“… it has been reported that they are all dead because the reef is stuffed. You know the story, the popular narrative as per this video that you have made, focused on The Riddler – Peter Ridd.
“To be clear, the Porites are the massive, ancient bolder corals, some as big as minibuses, that have growth rings like tree rings faithfully recording the climate history of the oceans. Well, they used to. As the story goes.
“I wanted to go all the way out to Myrmidon Reef, because that is where the scientists used to go on really big ships to core the really, really old Porites. To my surprise I found whole gardens of these corals, and so healthy. [end quote]
No sooner had I posted these few words, and taken a screen shot, and it was gone. Deleted. Scrubbed from YouTube.
I can only conclude that Jordon Shanks diligently deletes relevant facts and information, while leaving comments that incite actual physical violence against Peter Ridd, because he really doesn’t care about the truth – not one bit. I can only conclude that Peter Ridd and the Great Barrier Reef are simply content, that he successfully uses to generate followers and income and thus power. This is also the history of the European royal families.
I am currently reading Shelley Pukak’s The Dark Queens, a gripping tale of power, ambition and murderous rivalry in early medieval France.
In between the reading, I emailed Jordan Shanks, that was a week ago. You can read the note I sent as a recent blog post. I invite this popular faux champion of all that is true and fair to actually visit the Great Barrier Reef and see for himself.
Of course, at the very same time that John Brewer Reef was being reported around the world as dead and dying – bleached stark white from global warming – I visited and found an unusually colourful reef. Remember, Stuart Ireland and I made a film about it, funded by the Institute of Public Affairs. https://vimeo.com/775205373
To be clear, the Great Barrier Reef doesn’t need saving. The mainstream media uncritically report propaganda from aerial surveys/from flybys by faux scientists who have also bought into the popular narrative.
And John Brewer reef was reported by Graham Readfearn in The Guardian as the worst of the worst bleached, and then there were the official aerial surveys that also reported on the bleaching.
Last year, there was even the United Nation’s UNESCO people who visited – but not John Brewer Reef. They said it was all dead and dying.
But guess what: the assessment team never actually visited any of the reefs that were reported as bleached/dead and dying. The experts relied for their stories about the bleaching from the flybys that score the state of the corals out an aeroplane window from an altitude of 150 metres.
I’ve tried that. You can’t see much. To know the state of the corals you need to get in and under-the-water.
John Brewer Reef is just off Townsville, a large port that is now receiving so many wind turbines.
To be sure, the wind turbines necessary to solve the faux climate emergency are so many, and so large, that now they are having to be redirected from the port of Gladstone to Townsville.
I’m wondering, where are they being made. Who is being paid for them?
Is it Denmark, with Vestas the largest producer of wind turbines in the world?
I know it was the Danish King Cnut, who was also at one time the King of England and Norway, that once tried to hold back the sea tides.
That was a long time ago, about 1,000 years ago.
The Kings and Queens of Europe have been ruling over us for even longer than that – demanding things like ‘energy transitions’ though in the past they have had other names. Crusading, but not climate crusading. All of them, they have been at great inconvenience to ordinary souls, while at the same time distracting us, and of course causing much fear and loathing.
Go to the website of Danish company Vestas and you can read that: ‘Vestas is the energy industry’s global partner on sustainable energy solutions. We design, manufacture, install, and service wind turbines across the globe, and with +166 GW of wind turbines in 88 countries, we have installed more wind power than anyone else.’
Denmark, is of course, the home of Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark, Countess of Monpezat, R.E. She is married to Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, the heir apparent to the Danish throne. It is not a secret that she met Frederik at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Frederick was there with his cousin (albeit distant cousin) Willem-Alexander from Holland, the son of Queens Beatrix of Holland, including to discuss long term plans for how they would save the Great Barrier Reef. It is not so well understood that many of the plans and regulations that have come into effect here in Queensland over recent years have their origins in what was discussed over cocktails in Sydney twenty years ago.
Imogen Zethoven was flown from Brisbane to Sydney at the time of the Sydney Olympics specifically to meet Willem-Alexander the grandson of the actual founding President of WWF. Known as the ‘Flying Prince of Conservation’, HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands held that position from 1962 to 1976.
Imogen had previously been the co-ordinator for all the conservation groups in Queensland and she subsequently delivered them, on a platter so to speak to WWF – that is variously controlled from Geneva, New York, and London.
That was the end of proper meaningful, locally driven conservation here in Queensland. That was when the transition occurred from conservation being about local things to conservation being run by global multi-national corporations who as it turns out, are quite greedy. Apparently there is quite a lot of money to be made our of carbon credits, not to mention contracts for wind turbines and so it goes on, and on.
I know all of this because at the time I was Environment Manager for the Queensland sugar cane farmers, and like Imogen I was living in Brisbane.
I remember being explained some of this at a function at Queensland Parliament House, where we were served wine and cheese. I remember that there were no chairs.
We stood, sipped, and listened to then Queensland Environment Minister, who was at the time Rod Welford, announce yet another new environmental initiative. We clapped.
Imogen told me money, tens of millions of dollars from rich people in the United States (even from Hollywood), that they wanted to donate to save the Great Barrier Reef. That she would be discussing the roll out of the program, that would inevitably result in better laws and regulations, with Prince Willem-Alexander of Holland.
Dean Wells, a lawyer, was appointed Queensland Environment Minister in 2001, and he began the process of legislative change – especially to our environment and planning laws.
Annastacia Palaszczuk was a member of his staff back then, and she also liaised with Imogen, who liaised with Willem-Alexander who is now the King of Holland.
I once got to fly on the government jet with some of them, all the way from Mackay to Brisbane – that is not very far. They were doing me a favour because my commercial flight had been cancelled, and Annastacia didn’t want me stuck in Mackay overnight – so, she said they could find a seat for me, on the government jet. We travelled together.
This is the same woman who is now the Premier of Queensland. And over the last few years she has been organising for her government to own the $19 billion of pumped hydro, wind, solar and battery projects. That is a lot of money. This is wealth that will be transferred mostly, I suspect, to rich people that Annastacia still feels comfortable traveling with on the government jet.
It is about twenty years since I have travelled on a government jet with Annastacia.
How this time has passed, and so quickly.
I image Willem-Alexander has been ticking the boxes, in terms of what they hopped to achieve back in Sydney when they all meet to watch the Olympics back in 2000.
No doubt he has been proudly relaying how much has actually been achieved, when he gets to meet his cousin (albeit a distant cousin), who is now the King of England. I can’t image they discuss the earnings. They would count it all for the environment. How we kid ourselves, even King Canute, all those 1,000 years ago.
That was also when they had crusades, but not climate crusades.
*** The feature image is King Willem-Alexander sporting a WWF-branded cardigan, of sorts.
A versions of this text has just been sent to the inbox of my few friends who have subscribed for irregular updates. Be a friend, and subscribe.
Too many Australians, whether young or old, voting Labor, Greens, Liberal or Teal, are mostly abrogating their capacity for reason in favour of being fashionable. It doesn’t have to be this way. It could be different, especially if the Jordan Shanks amongst us took a little bit of time to check their facts first. Nobody much does that anymore.
I don’t think he has ever been there – not once. But he has an opinion about the Great Barrier Reef. Last time I looked more than 111K of his followers (after just a few hours of it being being posted) were regurgitating the nonsense message that, of course, the Great Barrier Reef is stuffed, and, of course, Peter Ridd is a stooge of the sugar cane farmers — and also big tobacco. There are hundreds of congratulatory comments, following this short YouTube, confirming, what I already knew, that most of us here in Australia have become useful idiots. In political jargon, a useful idiot is a term used to reference a person perceived as propagandising for a cause—particularly a bad cause.
Too many Australians, whether young or old, voting Labor, Greens, Liberal or Teal, are mostly abrogating their capacity for reason in favour of being fashionable. It doesn’t have to be this way. It could be different, especially if the Jordan Shanks amongst us took a little bit of time to check their facts first. Nobody much does that anymore.
I sent Jordan Shanks the following short note by email yesterday.
I’ve just watched your episode about the Riddler and the Reef. I was hoping to see you in the water with some corals.
[I should have written with some sharks.]
What about you come see, with me? We could visit the epicentre of the most recent mass coral bleaching, John Brewer Reef. We could go snorkelling together, over the reef crest. You could see for yourself, the state it is in.
It was reported by Graham Readfearn in The Guardian as the worst of the worst bleached, and then there were the official aerial surveys that also reported on the bleaching. Last year, there was even the United Nation’s UNESCO people who visited – but not John Brewer Reef. They said it was all dead and dying.
This map was being promoted through March and April 2022 as showing the Great Barrier Reef suffering from mass coral bleaching with the impression that most of the coral was going to die.
But guess what: the assessment team never actually visited any of the reefs that were reported as bleached/dead and dying. The experts relied for their stories about the bleaching from the flybys that score the state of the corals out an aeroplane window from an altitude of 150 metres.
But, of course, it is never the same as seeing with your own eyes.
The corals at John Brewer Reef as filmed, underwater and from a drone at 5, 10,20,40 and 120 metres altitude in early April 2022 – when this reef was being reported as the epicentre of the sixth mass coral bleaching. Contrary to the media headlines, there was good coral cover and the coral was colourful and healthy at John Brewer Reef.
Friendly Jordie, if you come see with me, I can also show you the remains of the corals that have been wilfully destroyed – by the fishes. The hungry fishes that eat all the best corals.
You probably didn’t know that one Humphead parrot fish will eat about six tonnes of coral in a year. Out at John Brewer reef they prefer the corals that have been newly replanted with all the government monies. So, those fishes, they are costing the Australian taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars each year, eating the corals that you and I have paid to have replanted. There is another and bigger story in all of that, for sure.
You mentioned the old corals, the 500-year-old corals, in your Riddler Ridd episode.
It was during the lockdowns in November 2020 that my dear friend, the late Rob McCulloch – phoned me, crying into his beer. He was devastated as he had a charter to pay that he had secured for Marlin fishermen and for ET (Andrew Ettiingshause) who has that TV show. But ET couldn’t get across the border into Queensland because of the lockdowns.
I suggested instead, that Rob take me out for a week looking for Porites – those 500 year old corals that are reported to all be dead because the reef is stuffed. You know the story, the popular narrative.
To be clear, the Porites are the massive, ancient bolder corals, some as big as minibuses, that have growth rings like tree rings faithfully recording the climate history of the oceans.
Well they used to. As the story goes.
I wanted to go all the way out to Myrmidon Reef, because that is where the scientists used to go on really big ships to core the really, really old Porites.
We went for a week. Dennis, Wizzy, Shaun, Stuart, me and the Skipper – Rob. [You can see us here, on the back of the Marlin fishing boat, Kiama.]
I am grateful for that experience. The adventure was funded by the B.Macfie Family Foundation through the Institute of Public Affairs after I put a phone call through to John Roskam. He took a risk, and believed in me when I said this was the opportunity of a lifetime.
I made a film about that adventure, and it even includes Riddles Ridd — as you call him.
We found a whole garden of Porites, under-the-water. It was the white-tipped reef shark that showed us the way. In the end.
You should come visit us here in Queensland, at the Great Barrier Reef and see some corals and the coral munching fishes and I’ve been trying for some years now to get the experts at the Australian Institute of Marine Science to sit down in front of a camera and answer some questions about the flybys and the bleaching. I have been wanting to ask them how they reconcile the extraordinary beauty and resilience of John Brewer Reef with their nonsense maps — devoid of evidence or even photographs. How they reconcile their claims of mass coral bleaching with all the colourful fishes and corals that I can see under-the-water.
Maybe, if you, Jordan Shanks, come, they will come, we can all go. Together. Even with Riddles Ridd. To John Brewer Reef, the epicentre of the most recent much acclaimed sixth mass coral bleaching.
We could maybe flyby and then, the next day, go under-the-water, or at least snorkel over the reef crest.
Cheers, Friendly Jennie
Drs Jennifer Marohasy (aka Friendly Jennie) with Peter Ridd (aka The Riddler) having walked across a mudflat just to the south of the town of Bowen. The other side of that mudflat you will find beautiful corals, on a low tide you don’t need to even get into the water. Come see.
*** The feature image is by Toby, and shows a school of Humphead parrot fish. These are coraliferous fish; with each Humphead eating about 6 tonnes of coral each year — a school of them (typically they hang around in groups of 30) eat about as much coral as all the coral that is replanted at great expense each year to Australian taxpayers.
You must be logged in to post a comment.