Andrew Bolt: Great Barrier Reef proof climate warmists are wrong

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, the reef is a favourite hostage of warming alarmists, who for two decades have claimed we’d better cut our emissions or the reef will die.

Global warming has been blamed for everything from shrinking sheep to pimples. it makes more sense to blame it for last weekend’s lockdown protests.

Many protesters clearly don’t believe what “the experts” say about the virus and vaccines, but why should they after what “the experts” have said about global warming – and especially the Great Barrier Reef.

The reef is the favourite hostage of warming alarmists, who for two decades have claimed we’d better cut our emissions or the reef will die.

In 2000, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of Queensland University claimed warming was already causing the reefs to bleach and “the overall damage is irreparable”. In 2006, he warned “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef could die within a month”, and in 2014 said it was “game over”.

The Great Barrier Reef is the favourite hostage of warming alarmists. Photo by Sarah Lai / AFP

If the reef wasn’t dead already, last year should have finished it off.

The ABC announced in April the coral had “bleached from north to south for first time“, and in October wailed: “Great Barrier Reef coral halved by bleaching.” ABC videos for schools claimed it was becoming a “ghost reef”.

But guess what? The Australian Institute of Marine Science has finished its latest survey of the reef and – whoops – admits “over the 35 years of monitoring” of a reef that’s supposedly been dying for decades, scientists have instead found it has “shown an ability to recover“.

What’s more, “surveys in 2021 recorded low coral mortality from the 2020 bleaching event” – the bleaching the ABC claimed had destroyed half the reef.

In fact, this AIMS survey shows the northern part of the reef is almost back to normal levels of coral cover, and the southern part is above average. The central part that most tourists visit now has almost record levels of coral cover.

I say it again, you cannot trust the ABC on global warming. You cannot trust our politicians, almost none of whom dare admit the reef is fine. And you should ignore the many “ experts” who’ve earned millions in grants by screaming for decades that your beloved reef is dying or already dead.

This scaremongering has not just destroyed faith in warming “experts”. I fear it’s now destroying faith in virus experts, too, – and not just the alarmists in that field.