The climate hysteria movement is replete with predictions of utter doom for various ecosystems on Earth owing to the scourge of man-made global warming, which has been re-branded “climate change.” But a new study shows that one of those ecosystems — Australia’s Great Barrier Reef — seems to be doing just fine despite dire warnings of its imminent demise.
The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system, stretching over 1,400 miles along Australia’s northeast coast off the state of Queensland. It encompasses an area over approximately 133,000 square miles of the Coral Sea in the South Pacific, and includes some 900 islands and more than 2,900 individual reefs.
For several years, climate alarmists have been claiming that the Great Barrier Reef, along with all the coral reef systems on the planet, is essentially doomed because of climate change.
The predictions have been apocalyptic for the reef. A 2020 story from CBS exclaimed that “half of the Great Barrier Reef’s corals have been killed by climate change.” A Sri Lankan source even announced in 2019 that the “Great Barrier Reef is dead,” a claim that was refuted by French news source AFP.
No less an authoritative source than the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2018 that 70-90 percent of corals would be lost across the globe if their arbitrary 1.5-degree Celsius increase in global temperature was breached. Should the global temperature increase reach 2 degrees Celsius, the IPCC predicted, 99 percent of Earth’s coral systems would be lost.
These ominous pronouncements have not come to pass, at least not yet, according to a study published earlier this month by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).
“In 2022, the GBR (Great Barrier Reef) continues to recover, registering the highest level of coral cover yet recorded in the Northern and Central regions over the past 36 years of monitoring,” the study’s summary stated. “While recovery continued on many Southern GBR reefs, regional coral cover declined slightly due to ongoing outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish in the Swain reefs.”
“In 2022, widespread recovery has led to the highest coral cover recorded by the [Long Term Monitoring Program] in the Northern and Central GBR, largely due to increases in the fast-growing Acropora corals, which are the dominant group of corals on the GBR and have been largely responsible [for] previous changes in hard coral cover,” the study stated.
Like any government funded study, though, the report determines that climate change could become a concern for the Great Barrier Reef in the future.
The study concludes: “The prognosis for the future disturbance regime suggests increasing and longer-lasting marine heatwaves, as well as the ongoing risk of outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish and tropical cyclones. Therefore, while the observed recovery offers good news for the overall state of the GBR, there is increasing concern for its ability to maintain this state.”
But what, exactly, is the Great Barrier Reef recovering from currently? Has so-called climate change already taken its pound of flesh from the delicate ecosystem?
While climate hysterics would have you believe that man’s CO2 emissions and flatulent dairy cows have been destroying the Great Barrier Reef, the reality is much more mundane — and far more reasonable.
According to Peter Ridd, an Australian marine geophysicist, the Great Barrier Reef is “one of the most fluctuating ecosystems on earth,” and is distinguished by boom or bust cycles that can last a decade or more. Ridd speculates that a prolonged El Niño pattern has bathed the GBR in relatively warm water since 2016, which causes bleaching of the reef system.
“You could tell that this year was going to be a really good year. Last year was a really good year. This year is just a bumper year for coral,” Ridd told National Review before adding a caveat: “You don’t get records every year.”
So, like the climate and the weather, coral reefs tend to trend upward and downward naturally.
Over the years the Great Barrier Reef has become a mascot for climate hysteria, similar to the polar bear. Climate alarmists have used the GBR’s bust cycles as proof that climate change is truly destroying the world.
But, just like the polar bears, the Great Barrier Reef keeps defying those doomsday pronouncements.
