<< Luddy you regularly go off about fossil fuels, but you have never given any logical reason. >>

Hells bells Hazza, you and I have been bumping heads over this issue for ages on this forum. How can you possibly say that I haven’t given a reason? C’mawwwn!

You surely know perfectly well what the core of my argument is.

Our staggeringly huge and ever-rapidly growing global demand for energy versus finite fossil fuel resources, which for oil at least; the supply capability is set to become a little precarious in the near future, compared to the demand, leading to escalating prices, which will stress out our economy and many peoples’ personal economics and quality of life long before there is an actual shortage of supply.

Think along those lines.

You agree that we should be limiting population. So does that mean you agree that we should be striving to stop the demand for energy from ever-increasing? Or do you have some other motive?

Luddy mate, I still don't get it.

Why the hell, if the supply is going to stop in a few years, causing immense hardship to many, would you want to bring it on earlier than necessary. Surely better to bring on the extra cost naturally, over a longer period, allowing the transition to methane clathrate, or what ever proves the most economical replacement.

Individual, surely you have seen, & smelt the accumulation of dead coral spore washed up on every leeward beach each year, after the spawning. It that little bit of oil was not removed naturally those same beaches would be covered with it.

I used to carry up to 750 tourists around the place, & rarely saw much sunscreen. Tourists spend most of their time in air conditioned boats or bars, rather than the big nasty ocean. Sunscreen is for around swimming pools.

Yes the reef is very slowly silting up. Nature changes the landscape. 10,000 years ago aboriginals were chasing kangaroos around the low hills where the reef is now awash. It might be a vegetable garden in another 10,000 years, & I'm not going to worry about that either. Life is too short to worry about minor things like the Great barrier Reef coming or going.

Walter Starck say's, "The GBR is in excellent condition and under no threat."
But where is scientific evidence of that general unscientific claim documented?

The GBR consists primarily of dead coral rising from the seabed and of course that mass of dead coral reef is in excellent condition.
As for living coral, how can live GBR coral be in excellent condition and under no threat when it is generally known COTS is killing coral?
It is known to science that increase in COTS larvae survival is linked to increase in available nutrients.

There is no mention in articles by Walter Starck about the total nutrient loading entering GBR waters from all sources, including from southern city and town sewage dumped daily, including any loading in part being transported northwards by the Australian east coast sediment dispersal system.
There is no scientific evidence dissolved nutrients bonded to fresher water sink down with heavy sand solid matter at Fraser Island, or that lighter solid nutrient matter sinks down with sand at Fraser Island.

At least some Australian east coast fresher nutrient loaded surface water from sewage continues northward into GBR waters, yet farmers are being blamed for the nutrients.
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2112/08-1120.1?journalCode=coas&

If the GBR was in excellent condition and under no threat, in these days it would be a unique situation in the whole world.
Walter Starck comes from Florida USA where coral cover on Florida reefs has declined 80 percent in the past three decades, according to a reputable source.
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/coastal/programs/coral/threats.htm

N.B "Large coastal infrastructure projects".

While I support sensible development including large infrastructure projects, there is writing on the wall that needs to be seen and not ignored.

There is also GBR ecosystem seagrass devastation impact on food for SW Pacific Ocean tuna stocks now reported at historically low levels and in steep decline.
Overall Queensland and NSW coast seagrass food web nursery devastation and impact needs to be seen.

Ignorance of nutrient pollution and consequences of collapse of sustainable free or low cost seafood protein for seafood dependent SW Pacific Islands indigenous people should be/is a crime.

that little bit of oil was not removed naturally those same beaches would be covered with it.
Hasbeen,
You've hit the nail on the head. I think the reef removes or rather absorbes the pollution before it gets to the shore hence some of the reefs lacking their usual pristine luster.

<< Why the hell, if the supply is going to stop in a few years, causing immense hardship to many, would you want to bring it on earlier than necessary. Surely better to bring on the extra cost naturally, over a longer period, allowing the transition to methane clathrate, or what ever proves the most economical replacement. >>

Haz, if the supply of oil is going to become problematic in a few years, it will indeed cause immense hardship. So we want to avoid this crunch point and smoothly transition to a new energy regime, if possible.

But in order to do this, we would need to make the lead-up to the potential crunch point more expensive in order to promote the R&D of other energy sources. A bit more pain now will hopefully allow us to avoid enormous pain in the near future.

It is certainly NOT better to let the cost increases just come along ‘naturally’ as the price of oil goes up due to ever-increasing costs of extraction, greater competition or shortage of supply. If we let costs just increase due to market forces as our energy becomes more expensive, we will almost definitely face rapid increases in prices, and consequent big upheavals in our economy and society. It won’t happen slowly over a long period.

But if we plan ahead, with an increase in prices now and more effort going into alternative energy sources, then future increases in prices will happen much more slowly and gently.

I see a strange mixture in what you have written, between planning for a new energy regime, and not planning for it and just letting it all happen only when we are forced into it.

In the early 1960's at Heron Island I met a scientist studying impact of oil on coral and he said there appeared to be no impact as oil floats on top of water and coral is underwater.

Evidence of substance indicates it's nutrient overload pollution that is causing the majority of damage to coral and especially to seagrass but the matter is not being duly discussed or disproved.

Ignore nutrient overload management and let damaging development go ahead for bigger bucks eh, instead of a little more expensive eco-friendly AND sustainable development, including commercially producing biofuel from algae proliferated by human waste?