Meg1, I agree with you on almost all of that. I think it is most important that we those like Jenifer doing real research on real topics. Even more important is the publishing of all findings, not just those that suit an ideology.

A while back I was taking almost 50,000 people a year out to the reef. Due to having a fixed instillation, & the nature of tides, this meant that I had about 1000 a month walking on an area of drying reef, less than 60 Meters by 150 meters.

We all hated this, not because of any damage we could detect, but because of the amount of blood spilled by the tourists on these walking days. Coral is sharp, even if it is only really rubble.

I offered the use of our transport & facilities to all three Townsville organisations with reef interests. This offer was only taken up by some James Cook students, particularly PhD students, as they needed as much free help as they could get.

I do believe that the people who told me that most researchers rarely went out to the reef, preferring to use on shore tanks, due to a dislike of sea sickness, were only partially joking.

We were most disappointed when one of these students, after a month out there found no detectable difference between the area walked by our tourists, & the other 40 miles of drying reef of that lagoon.

We had been hoping for a damning finding of damage. We would have loved to be able to get walking on the reef banned, if only for the large savings we could have had, by not using so much Mercurochrome, the best stuff to prevent infection from coral cuts.

It is kind of funny that walking on the reef is still OK, but Mercurochrome is now banned.

Bugsy,

My suggestion is not a review which might look at both sides of the argument. It is to look for what is wrong (ONLY) with the case suggesting that the GBR is in trouble. The idea is to act like a defence lawyer in a court case. Our legal system relies on having a defence lawyer whose sole responsibility is to knock over the prosecution argument. We need something similar in science.

The farmers would have nothing to lose from this.

Peter Ridd JCU

Congratulations Jennifer again, the so called science is exposed for what it really is, corruption to support green labor planning and control polices with no foundation except bias to keep these publicly funded incompetent in a job,

I am more pessimistic than Peter Ridd. He wants a critical scientific analysis of the current publications so as to make the situation clearer. Nice idea of course, but The Tully WQIP that I referred to in an earlier post was clear - and by reputable scientists. The fact that they showed that the pesticide movements to the GBR were miles short of dangerous was totally ignored by all, especially politicians.
I see the biggest issue being that it does not matter what science is done that shows there are few problems, the religious Reefers will not take the slightest notice. This issue is hardly about science/facts anymore. We are talking a faith, a cult.
As was remarked about my earlier post, I have trouble doing arithmetic. The Diuron level was not, as I stated, 11% of the Quality Objective. It was only 1.1%. Sorry.

Peter Ridd is right, farmers would have nothing to fear from his suggested option. They would welcome the opportunity to have the truth about what they are doing see the light of day.
Dallas sums up the situation and the agenda pretty well, I'd say.
Unfortunately the so-called 'peak' primary industry bodies are too beholden to putting govt policy in place rather than representing their farmer's interests and arguing the case effectively.
It is left to individual farmers and the non-aligned farming groups to argue the case - against the tide of media, govt and those academics driven by a 'cash cow' mentality. The same mentality that has produced the 'Y2K' frenzy is now driving the 'global warming/climate change' agenda which is feeding off the alarmist modelling produced in the GBR debate.
As Kathleen Noonan (Courier Mail) reported some years ago, a Canegrowers official stated that publicly they (Canegrowers) must appear to oppose deregulation, while privately they would work to implement it...any subject, it seems has the same agenda.

Too bad farmers are paying them for effective representation.

In defence of farmers there are some questions:

Q. 1.
If Diuron has not caused the alleged damage, what is causing that damage?

Q.2.
On what scientific basis is the relevant nutrient load in GBR waters being sourced to come from farms, when the nutrient load from other sources such as southern city sewage has not been measured and sourced?

Silence can amount to a continuing litany of false claims.

Q.3.
To date on this thread there has been silence from scientists about southern city and town sewage nutrient pollution. Does anyone possess any evidence establishing city and town sewage nutrient pollution has not been feeding invasive algae that has been smothering or briefly inundating coral and seagrass in GBR and waters?

False claims are causing delay to solutions including for seafood protein deficiency malnutrition amongst indigenious Pacific Islands people. GBR waters are part of the SW Pacific Ocean ecosystem. Ocean ecosystem damage and fish stock devastation can no longer be denied or ignored or twisted out of context by further false claims.
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/common/ecg/1000505/en/stocks.pdf

While science grapple and perhaps take years with the science, there is dire urgent immediate need for immediate real aid for impacted islanders.