Andrew Bolt: Great Barrier Reef comeback exposes global warming lies

How could so many experts be so wrong about the health of the Great Barrier Reef for so long unless there were incentives to beat the global warming drum?

How much longer will Australians let themselves be fooled by the oldest scare of our global warming alarmists?

For more than two decades we’ve been told the Great Barrier Reef is dying, if not dead already, and we must cut our emissions.

How humiliating if you were gullible enough to believe these scares, only to be told this week – oops – record coral cover instead.

But there’s no “sorry” from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, which now admits two of the three sections of the reef have record cover, and the third – the southern region – has the highest in more than 25 years.

But the institute even now can’t let go of the scare that’s had governments lavish money on it to show they care.

I read: “Two cyclones over summer and a lengthy marine heatwave – leading to a record spread of coral bleaching – points to the extremely fragile nature of the reef, scientists said.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Excuse me scoffing, but for a quarter of a century I’ve warned that the experts and the media can’t be trusted, given how often the reef proves their doom-talk wrong.

Images of the health of the Great Barrier Reef, coinciding with the release of the 2024 Reef Long-Term Monitoring Program. Australian Institute of Marine Science

Let me list just some of the many dud predictions I’ve exposed, and ask yourself: How could so many experts be so wrong for so long, unless there were incentives to beat the global warming drum?

In 2000, Queensland University’s Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg claimed the reef could be dead within 50 years: “We now have more evidence that corals cannot fully recover from bleaching episodes”.

The ABC, captured by the Left, was predictably hooked.

In 2002, ABC host Kerry O’Brien moaned that our “once-spectacular” reef was “threatened by global warming” and “up to 10 per cent of the reef has been lost to bleaching since 1998”.

In 2006, Hoegh-Guldberg warned “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Great Barrier Reef could die within a month”.

In 2007, Labor leader Kevin Rudd exploited the scare in his successful campaign to become prime minister: “Climate change is a challenge for the nation … and it’s a challenge for the Great Barrier Reef.”

In 2014, Hoegh-Guldberg claimed climate trends showed it was “game over” for the reef.

In 2021, climate crusader David Attenborough claimed “we’re heading for a future where the Reef is a coral graveyard”.

Have many more times will you let yourself be fooled until you see through the global warming scaremongers?

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Great Barrier Reef comeback exposes global warming lies