Healthy Great Barrier Reef, healthy environmental scandal

What this graph shows is that from around 2016 coral cover was at levels not unusual for the recorded history of the reef, and that from 2017 they were mostly well-above it.

Acute readers will realise this recovery coincides with the election of Tony Abbott as Prime Minister, and was accelerating while Malcolm Turnbull was Prime Minister. Yet it didn’t stop Turnbull dedicating $444 billion to saving the reef.

But then, it’s never been about the reef. When Labor is in power, the Greenies and Internationalist Malthusians go quiet. This is their side in power and they hope to get what they want through stealth and negotiation.

When the Coalition is in power, all hell breaks loose, even when, as we can see, reality contradicts the narrative.

The really stunning thing about this graph is that the reef saved itself before any of the loony god-complex schemes hatched by environmentalists have had any chance to be implemented. Ideas like shading the Great Barrier Reef, or pumping cold water onto it so it doesn’t suffer from bleaching, or transplanting bleach-resistant corals.

It turns out that nature and evolution, or perhaps even God theirself, is more than up to the job without personkind’s intervention.

And all this while Adani has started up its operations and we are shipping more coal and gas through the reef than ever before, and sugar production is on an uptrend. It’s clear that the industries fitted-up with the ‘demise’ of the reef can’t be blamed for anything.

Source Queensland Government Statisticians Office

Of course, the entrenched academic and ideological interests are determined that good news is really bad news. So we are told that while the cover may have rebounded, it is the wrong sorts of corals, and that things could easily reverse.

It may also be the case that the measurement of the reef is tainted by ideology and confirmation bias. The reef is surveyed by using a Manta tow to drag a snorkeller behind a slow-moving boat. That swimmer – probably a junior scientist or intern – makes an estimate of the amount of coral cover. I’ve queried Peter Ridd about this subjective method and he estimates that it may have a +/- 10 per cent measurement error (which doesn’t stop AIMS expressing cover to one decimal point, a rookie statistics error).