Excellent article Graham

The roots of the problem, I reckon, are that scientific researchers (be they at universities, other non-profit, or CSIRO etc) compete for scarce reseach funds.

This encourages researchers to say:

1. We have detected a big problem that will effect alot of people and risk embarrassing the Government,

2. Thus we need big research dollars to study "our" discovered problem in depth, and

3. Research money, sent to us, will ultimately solve the problem.

The reef and "global warming" tick all these boxes.

Pete

We've always had some mining runoff. Farm runoff has been largely amilorated by ponded pasture and other practises which has served to keep most farm runoff on the farm.

Mining runoff often becomes the norm when mines are played out and the mining towns reduced to ghost towns. Even so, we're going to need even more mines, given the new era of electric cars soon to ply our roads, with their lithium/cobalt batteries.

Even so, I expect Australian miners to take all reasonable precautions, to as much as is humanly possible, prevent or restrict runoff.

If research isn't great, then neither is the essential funding that supports it!

Even so, that research would seem to indicate that the tourists stay away in droves from bleached and dead reefs all around the world.

Killed by hordes of reef loving tourists, who as they've invariably done elsewhere, too damned reliant on the tourist dollar! Destroyed the very thing they've travelled half a world away to see. Dramatically pushing up both local real estate price and sewage outfalls in the process.

Sewage outfalls being one of the principal causes of destroyed reef systems around the world!

What's to be done? Well the lunacy that makes folk dependant of hordes of humans visiting fragile areas! Needs to be replaced by a completely resuscitated manufacturing sector!

And we're never ever going to see that without significant common sense returned to a, for once, purely pragmatic energy policy!

Which as an enormous economic and environmental benefit, would be carbon free and relieve the reef of some of the effects of measured and reported, ocean acidification and warming.

And cheap enough to allow treated effluent, all of it, to be diverted to a tinder dry inland!
Alan B.

I think you've been rolled by the Australian. The Australian that champions the installation of shark nets, in order to protect beach users against shark attack.
Shark nets are a discredited technology, causing environmental damage outside their catch-range of targeted species, and are universally condemned as ineffective and destructive.

The latest “Australian” scam, discrediting expert coral researchers conclusions on the slow death of the GBR, uses non coral experts to support the argument that the experts are wrong, and the reef is in top shape. It pushes the lie for what reason?

The three experts quoted as the authority on the condition of the GBR are: Peter Ridd, a sedimentologist, (not a coral biologist), Judith Curry a climatologist, and Jim Steele – a bird enthusiast who works in the Sierra Nevada.

The Australian chose these unlikely three outcasts, at a time when Australian coral biologists, are attending the International Coral Reef Symposium in Hawaii.

And it gets worse. Ridds’ research is mostly funded by work on construction of fossil fuel facilities along the Queensland coast, and close to the GBR. He fails the witness test!
Not hard to figure from this point on, the lack of credibility attached to the Australian newspaper.

I offer you my example of how to deal with ideological bias. Don't buy the Australian newspaper, a saving of a grand a year. Throw out your television, and turn off the ABC radio.

It's a pleasant and much more enlightened world in which to live; one without the brainwashing anxieties, that come from following the sheep herders!

The Guardian recently had an article about how contrarian scientists articles when tried to be replicated were found to be wrong.

Written by a scientist with hyperlinks to the research and a supplement which displayed how they arrived at their conclusions:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/aug/25/heres-what-happens-when-you-try-to-replicate-climate-contrarian-papers

Quote:

" The idea is that accurate scientific research should be replicable, and through replication we can also identify any methodological flaws in that research. The study also seeks to answer the question, why do these contrarian papers come to a different conclusion than 97% of the climate science literature?"

Media Watch completed a fact check on whether the Great Barier Reef is being impacted.

Quote:

"Almost every single member of the conference of 2500 people stood up saying that they felt that bleaching and climate change pose a significant threat to the existence of coral reefs. There’s really no discussion about whether or not it’s serious. It is very serious. There is no debate about it.

— Professor Ruth Gates, President, International Coral Reef Symposium, 30 June, 2016 "

Professor Ridd found himself in trouble at his University for travelling promoting an IPA book on climate change. The IPA is a political Agency which denies anthropogenic climate change.

Anyone who continues to grovel to the thoroughly discredited "97% of scientists" scam deserves to be ignored.

Diver: mostly right on the money. Except where you labeled Aunty among the sheepherders, when in fact they're the ones herding cats or trying to?

The last time I looked they weren't part of the Murdoch empire, nor do they suck up to that financial genius, 6 times bankrupt Trump!

Ant: Hear, hear and well said!

Heard this morning that New York was colder than Mars, and even as Sydney was setting new records for the hottest day since 39?

Now one could explain New york if the sun were in a normal cyclical waning phase and it is, and the planet was consequently well into an ice age and the planet over!

Whereas the Sydney phenomenal temperatures could be logically explained by a sun well into a waxing phase! And also explain heat related coral bleaching, but not simultaneously, ever!

However, climate change and consequent increased global convection would explain both events! Moreover, the only explanation that does!

More griddle scones? Cooked them myself on a Sydney pavement! Cream, Jam?

Lovely party isn't it? More iced tea anyone, Donald, Boris, Tony?

Delivered in a thermos direct from New York, by air this morning, while it was still ice! Not usual when it turns to ice midstream, as hot tea is poured, is it?

Nothing happening here! Situation normal. Shovel that coal and see how much profit there is selling the kid's inheritance to the highest bidding foreigners! Got to get the priorities right!

I'm all right Jack, you lot can go visit the nearest taxidermist.
Alan B.