Once again, all you nitwits out there, including the author, are all ignoring the elephant in the room. If we don't do something about getting the burgeoning population under control, we are all doomed, regardless of what form our agriculture takes.

David

Rhrosty the reef is fine, it really is.

It has developed with & lived with huge loads of silt coming down our major rivers, from long before any white men even new the continent existed, let alone affected the place.

It is even probable it needs the nutrients provided by floods for it's fauna to flourish. I could also take you to hundreds of places in the islands, with very few people, where you can't see your feet in knee deep water. Natural does not necessarily mean clear.

If you study the location of the various reefs you can see the distance off shore is governed by river outlets. I have sailed in places where the coastline was still dotted on the charts. By studying the river outlets I could find gaps in the reefs, where I could get through to the shore. You have to appreciate that freshwater is as toxic to coral as any silt.

There was a time when I was worried about fertiliser run off. There was a time of the phosphate bounty, when we were very careless with the use of most fertilisers, but economics have largely fixed that. The stuff is just too expensive today, & agriculture so much less profitable, that such excesses rarely happen today.

I was very vocal about cane farmers when looking at areas where inshore reefs were badly affected by seaweed growth, probably promoted by fertiliser runoff.

That started to diminish even in the 70s, & accelerated into the 90s. The fish & the coral were beating the weed.

There are none so blind as those who cannot see, but that could be surpassed by those who don't want to see.

Regular commentators on this site have been provided insight to daily dumped sewage nutrient pollution flowing northwards from Australian east coast cities into GBR waters, yet comments still follow ABC 'news' media spin blaming farmers.

"Massive" runoff?
I thought Australia was an arid country, so where is this massive runoff coming from?

It is the daily dumped massive and concentrated nutrient loading from sewage that is the major source of nutrients that form the total nutrient loading that is proliferating algae, some of which is devastating GBR coral.

Silt hardly ever reaches the GBR because it is too far offshore.

Unfortunately, this is typical output from someone who has never actually held a real job, but has spent their entire life as an overgrown student in a sheltered-workshop government department or agency, paid for by, but not answerable to, the taxpayer.

And the saddest thing is that it is so easy, to tell other people how they should live, without actually having the moral courage or intellectual rigour to work out what would actually happen, if all their nostrums were applied to our daily life.

>>I visited China in late October 2014. I was full of hope that China would do the right thing by supporting its ancient rural culture<<

Never mind, that half a billion people now have something that resembles a life, having been elevated from the abject poverty that was China's "ancient rural culture".

What overweening, blind arrogance.

Got a lot of experience of the reef have you JF Aus? Lots of experience of our & other countries reefs I suppose. You talk as if you have some idea, but what you say proves you have none.

Talking from a know nothing ideology is a total waste of your time, when you have no actual knowledge.

when the warmist clowns stop flying around the globe and trade in their cars for push bikes we will know they really believe their own rhetoric. Until then we know its just grandstanding.

'Cancer is killing one in two men and one in three women. Cancer and neurological diseases are striking children at alarming rates '

Life expectancy was still rising the last time I looked. People are living longer and their quality of life has improved. Just check out any cruise ship and you will see thousands in their 70's 80's and nineties flourishing