Sadly, Tony Burke accepts what the reef alarmists have to say, and will act accordingly. The Barrier Reef waters will become the most underutilised fishery in the world.

I'm in my 50s and my earliest memory of television news is of a bulletin about how the crown of thorns would shortly destroy the reef. The reef's demise has been the staple of media stories ever since. As a result, my only thought about the reports on the survey dissected by this story was that the environmentalists were really ramping up the scare stories.

However, I did not realise the survey was not much more than green agit-prop, as shown by teh story in general and this quote from it in particular, cited in the story. "Global warming is also increasing rainfall variability resulting in more frequent intense drought-breaking floods that carry particularly high nutrient and sediment loads."

That's a change from what we were told before the floods. Brisbane got flooded in early 2011, just as it got flooded in 1974. Two back to back la ninas hit eastern Aus but this has happened before. There was no indication of any real difference. In any case, its directly contrary to what we were assured, on good greenhouse authority, would happen just before the floods - that the drought of the time would be ongoing, and we'd best build desalination plants; the dams had been built in the wrong places, and so on.

Nor have the global warmers learnt from this. the current, mild La Nina effect has given them an excuse to return to dark warnings about droughts. Time for another La Nina.

Reducing management is an excellent suggestion. Managers produce nothing, only consume resources and hinder those who do produce. See Donald Meyers' book on managerialism strangling universities like a plague of crown of thorns starfish. It's free on line at
http://www.australianuniversities.id.au/

Research should not be reduced but redirected to the basic fundamental research on which western civilisation rests. And only for those who are good at it.

The author is wrong about nitrate and phosphate being oxidised on the ground. Neither will oxidise except under extreme conditions not available from the environment.

Getting rid of the crown of thorns starfish is as simple as stopping the flow of phosphates and nitrates to the reef.
The crown of thorns starfish need fertilizer, in their embryo stage, to grow up into algae eating, reef destroying adults.
[Coral survives in a symbiotic coexistence with the alga, which gives them their various colours.]
We send trillions of tons of fertilizer out to sea every year!
Moreover, we currently import around 80% of our oil as Middle east sourced and twice refined petroleum products, which produces in total, four times as much carbon, as the light sweet crude locked up in the untouchable reef.
["Stupid is as stupid does"!]
Australian traditional sweet light crude, leaves the ground as virtually ready to use diesel, that only requires a little in situ chill filtering, to produce a superior sulphur free diesel.
And there are very reasonable prospects of finding enough in/near the reef, to earn us in excess of a trillion per, for at least the next 30-50 years.
Given there are the huge reserves indicated. It will only ever be a matter of time, before someone too big, rich and powerful moves in and acquires or takes these resources?
Well, beggars can't be choosers; and, we don't seem to want or need them, or the extreme wealth they could still produce for us in an energy starved world, even one struggling through the throes of yet another great depression?
We could stop the crown of thorns epidemic in its tracks, by simply starving them of start up nutrients!
We could do this by using any and all nutrient laden water to create algae based bio-diesel.
Algae use very little water, can even grow out in seawater, or other salt laden sources!
Algae absorb 2.5 times their bodyweight in carbon!
Under optimised conditions double that body weight and carbon absorbing capacity every 24 hours.
What are we waiting for and why?
All that's missing is the political will and or, the intellectual acumen, or both!?
Rhrosty.

Where do you get this rubbish Rhrosty, that old furphy was debunked years ago, just another greenie myth to try to attack farmers.

I have seen COT star fish on Willis island reef, half way between the Solomon Islands, & Cairns. Do you reckon our cane fertilizer gets out there? Lots of crays too. The eating is good at an isolated reef.

As with almost everyone else I do not have the technical expertise or competence to assess either the competence of the various scientists who have promoted this thesis, or of the authors criticism of it.

But that having been said this is exactly the kind of essay that Quadrant specializes in. Quadrant and all of the usual right-wing so called conservative suspects are of course completely commmitted to the paradigm that Rene Guenon pointed to and described in his book The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times.

They sometimes and even justify their world-view and applied politics by appeals to their self-serving tribalistic entirely cultic Judeo-Christian "God". Never mind that Jesus was never ever a Christian, or even a Jew for that matter.

How does a black duck perceive and respond to the Living Divine Reality?
How would a black duck thus describe Reality to a human being"?