Thank the Lord that we haven't had another visit from Obama. He always was, and is now more so, in worse nick than the Great Battier Reef is.

WTF?

The AIMS survey was World’s biggest coral survey. So I'll take more note of it rather than the author's manta board experience back in the 1970s.

The Aerial surveys showed three quarters of 1,080 reefs assessed had some bleaching. On 40% of these reefs, more than half the corals were white.

Mentions of Obama and US elections thrown into the discussion reeks of a "shell game" misdirection.

The author states: "There should be no coral at all if those reports were true." Well his assessments are clearly wrong and he clearly has trouble interpreting AIMS results. The fact that author is wrong does not make AIMS wrong.

The AIMS report clearly states "The worst damage lined up with the highest levels of heat stress." Well there have been 6 bleaching events since 2017. There had only been 2 going back to 1986.

The same thing is happening in WA. An AIMS report on that area states: "There has been little reprieve this time for any of our northwest reefs. Areas which had given us hope because they’d rarely or not bleached before like the Rowley Shoals, north Kimberley and Ningaloo have been hit hard this time."

The author's observations in the 1970s have little to contribute when stacked up against the data supplied in AIMS reports.

John Mikkelsen, your argument rests on a straw man and cherry-picked statistics.

No scientist said the Reef would be “dead by now.” The warnings have always been about increasing frequency and severity of bleaching and long-term decline, not instant disappearance. “It’s still here” is not a rebuttal.

1. Coral cover is not the same as reef health. AIMS notes the Reef is “volatile” - big gains can be wiped out in one heatwave or cyclone. Recent high cover is dominated by fast-growing acropora, which is also the most vulnerable and already bleaching again.

2. Short-term rebounds are not proof of safety. Before climate change, the Reef had decades to recover between events. Now mass bleaching hits every 4–6 years, too soon for full recovery.

3. Peter Ridd’s claims are fringe. His dismissal was not for “wrongthink” but repeated breaches of conduct, and his GBR arguments are criticised for selective use of data and ignoring biodiversity loss, species shifts, and structural decline.

4. Personal snorkelling anecdotes prove nothing. Parts of the Reef can look spectacular while other regions are in severe decline - that’s exactly why systematic monitoring exists.

The reef may not be gone, but it’s less resilient than ever, and pretending short-term recovery means all is well is like claiming a patient’s fine because their fever went down for a day.

I find it just so pointless bringing up the ill-health of the reef yet ignoring the destructive impact of "recreational" fishing & mass tourism.

Gee isn't it amazing that some of the usual lefty sycophants completely ignore the informed comments by very experienced reef scientist Dr Peter Ridd and resort to the usual ad hominem attacks. The proof is in the pudding so to speak and the GBR will still be thriving long after they've flown the (chicken) coop. (PS check the science - coral bleaching does not necessarily equate to coral death, Reefs survived and thrived when temperatures were much higher and CO2 levels were 10 times more than today's historically low (in geological terms) of a mere 0.04 percent.

Mikko2,

Nobody “ignored” Ridd. his views were addressed directly, including why they’re criticised within marine science for selective use of data and focusing on short-term rebounds while downplaying long-term resilience loss. That’s not an ad hominem, that’s evaluating credibility and methodology.

And why anyone would supposedly need to "resort" to ad hominems when all the evidence points one way is beyond me.

Bleaching doesn’t always equal death, true, but mass bleaching events are now so frequent that recovery windows are too short for full regrowth, and the 2025 AIMS report explicitly warns the Reef is “volatile” with record coral losses in both north and south.

As for “reefs survived in hotter, high-CO2 eras” - those changes happened over thousands of years, giving ecosystems time to adapt or shift geographically. The current problem is the rate of change: ocean temperatures and acidity are shifting faster than corals can keep up, which is why bleaching frequency has exploded since the 1980s.

Pointing to geological timescales to dismiss current impacts is like saying a human can survive 45-degree heat because our ancestors evolved in Africa - it ignores the difference between adaptation over millennia and rapid stress over decades.

Here’s a different perspective—
Our contribution to global emissions is only 1.3% and any problem with the Reef from emissions must be caused by the major emitters. Stop the mistruths! It is absurd to suggest or imply that our modest contribution to global emissions can be causing any significant bleaching of the Reef. Lift your eyes from local politics and take a broader look. You’ll soon see who the culprits are.
Yes, China, India, Russia etc al. Further, I have been reading about decline of the Reef for most of my life, and if all the pessimism over the years was true it would be gone or dead by now. It isn’t. It has always recovered.

The GBR is affected by the effects of pollution from the whole planet. The local causes are recreational fishing, gold mining, mass tourism (Sunscreen lotions) & Military !
Bureaucracy is focussed on blaming farming which really has hardly any impact. Run-off from townships is a hundred times worse than that from farming.

How refreshing to see some common sense from Lytton among the usual troll hype. Peter Ridd, who is more highly qualified and experienced than any of the detractors, has pointed out " the type of coral that has exploded over the past few years is acropora, which is the most
susceptible to hot-water bleaching. How can we have record amounts of the type of coral that
should have been killed, again and again, from bleaching? The acropora takes five to 10
years to regrow if it is killed..."
Just another inconvenient truth that climate alarmists and fund seeking group-think scientists have no answer for.
Like Lytton, I've been hearing about threats to the GBR for most of my life but as Ridd says, it's doing fine.

Mikko2,

Record amounts of acropora aren’t the gotcha you think they are. They’re exactly what scientists expect after disturbances.

Acropora is fast-growing and can dominate after die-offs, but it’s also fragile and easily wiped out by the next bleaching, cyclone, or crown-of-thorns outbreak. That’s why AIMS calls the current high cover “volatile.”

It’s a temporary rebound, not evidence the Reef is “fine.”

The difference now isn’t whether coral can regrow at all, it’s that bleaching events now strike every 4-6 years - too soon for the reef to regain full resilience. That’s why long-term biodiversity and structural complexity are declining even when total cover looks healthy in some years.

Calling scientists “fund seeking” or “group-think” while ignoring peer-reviewed research doesn’t make Ridd’s interpretation more credible, it just sidesteps the fact that his conclusions are not supported by the broader marine science community.

WTF?

Mikko2 wants us to listen to the experts so let's have a look.

There are as many as 150 species of coral in the genus Acropora and as AIMS states: "the conditions that promoted recovery in different species of coral varied across the species."
Also "... larval connectivity by ocean currents and juvenile coral density were prominent drivers of recovery for some coral and not others. Other things like algae, parrotfish and wave effects had different effects depending on the coral."

"...the time need for coral to recover is specific to the habitat and the species.

“That means what is present or absent on a given reef system needs to be catalogued and incorporated into planning for its management under climate change."

There is no analysis of which of the 150 species of Acropora that Mikko2's expert is referring to or the effects on the other 450 or so species of coral.

If Mikko2's expert needs to be more specific if he wants us to think that he can seriously challenge AIMS findings.

Well if WTF and John D were half right maybe good 'ol slow-talkin' Obama better hurry up and get back to see the Reef before it disappears for good. Meanwhile they might like to troll the four or five other sites where the article has been published and add some of their "knowledge" to the debate which without exception generally has been in agreement including this in one North Queensland based site:
"Good story John, and yes the GBR is just one of the targets of climate alarmists whose regular predictions of impending doom due to CO2 emissions never eventuate so they just move the goal posts out a few more years. Geological records show sea levels in past eons were both much higher (marine fossils in Central Australia, limestone caves in former coral reefs hundreds of metres above current sea levels) and also much lower – down to the edge of the Continental Shelf off the current coastline....but hey, let’s scare the kiddies and the gullible while throwing $$ billions at futile attempts to solve a non-problem."

WTF?

So when Mikko2 is confronted with facts he resorts to the following:
1) The Obama shell game misdirection

2) Consensus Gentium: if many in population in my sphere agree with me I must be right. The contributors to forums are not experts as you yourself said. Agreeing with the opinions of non-experts without using factual information doesn't make you right. Using your own argument you would dismiss Ridd's claims as they are out of step with the majority of marine researchers.

3) Giving extra consideration to a site because it is in FNQ. An opinion site based in FNQ is not, by that nature, superior.

4) Padding out his opinion with quotes about sea-levels at different geological times. Marine Scientist know about this oh too well and they are presenting scientific data about what is happening right now.

Present some factual information from experts that can be checked not the ramblings of echo chamber dwellers.

One good thing about WTF - his moniker is very apt for his posts. Keep it up with old mate John D , but don't hold your collective breath if you think anything you say or Bowen and Albanese do will affect climate or the Great Barrier Reef.

WTF?

Mikko2 states: WTF - his moniker is very apt for his posts.

Where's The Fridge? I don't get the connection.

So no facts then? Just throwing in a couple of extra names as if that has any bearing on the topic?

WTF’s nailed the rhetorical games here.

I’ll just add that the “record acropora” line isn’t proof the Reef is thriving, it’s a textbook case of short-term rebound after disturbance. Acropora grows fast, but it’s also the most vulnerable and gets wiped out quickly in the next bleaching, cyclone, or crown-of-thorns outbreak.

AIMS calls that “volatile” for a reason.

And as for sea levels and CO2 millions of years ago, yes, the planet was different then. But those shifts happened over thousands of years, not within a human lifetime. The problem now is the rate of change: bleaching events that used to be once in a generation now come every 4-6 years. That’s too soon for full resilience to return, which is why biodiversity and structural complexity are trending down despite occasional spikes in cover.

If we stick to current data and actual recovery rates instead of nostalgia, political tangents, or geological trivia, the picture is clear: the Reef’s not gone, but it’s under sustained stress unlike anything in recorded history.

John Daysh,
How often do you visit the GBR ?

I just want to record a visit I made last year to Heron Island with a bunch of UQ alumni.
The director of the research station told us how the provision of pure, uncontaminated water for researchers to experiment with was fundamental to the stations survival. So when I asked about the dreaded effluent from the pesky farmers he said ‘we test the water and have yet to find any trace of contamination.' Yet we are told endlessly, as we are told the reef is dying, that the farmer’s run off is destroying the reef etc etc. Heron is I think 75km from shore, so the main reef, which is a further 75 km east of Heron must be even cleaner?

I was tickled to find that the old WWI -WWII Aus naval ship used as a break water, was built in Newcastle on Tyne in the 19th century, at the bottom of the street I grew up on.

I dived deeper—

“ Post-Ice Age (~6,000–8,000 years ago)
• As the last glacial period ended, glaciers melted and sea levels rose.
• Around 8,000 years ago, sea levels stabilized enough for coral polyps to begin colonizing the submerged shelf again.
• This is when the modern Great Barrier Reef began forming on top of the older reef structures.”

This means things change and life goes on, including on the moveable Reef!
Critics back to Geology 1, please.

Indyvidual,

I’ll save you the time… http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal
___

Lytton,

Yes, the Reef has existed in various forms for thousands of years, and corals have recolonised areas after natural changes in sea level and temperature. None of that makes today’s rapid, human-driven warming harmless or “business as usual.”

By that logic, because forests have regrown after ice ages and volcanic eruptions, we shouldn’t worry about clear-felling or deforestation today.

The issue isn’t whether the Reef can recover over geological timescales, it’s whether it can survive and thrive on human timescales, supporting the biodiversity, tourism, and fishing industries that rely on it now.

Speed matters.

If warming, bleaching, and acidification outpace the Reef’s ability to adapt or regrow, we end up with a degraded ecosystem for centuries. That’s not “critics needing Geology 1,” that’s recognising the difference between slow natural shifts and unprecedented disruption in a human lifetime.

Deniers back to Geology 1, Marine Biology 1, Oceanography 1, Ecology 1, Environmental Chemistry 1, Geomorphology 1, Microbiology 1, and Fisheries Science 1.

Please.

John Daysh,
I suppose you had to use Grammarly to post that link seeing that you rely on others to do the thinking for you !
Don't you have any experiences you can draw on to provide factual rather than hypothetical statements copied from others ?
FYI, I dive quite a lot on the Ribbon Reefs & let me tell you, there's more life to be found in the gutters in Cairns than out there ! Recreational fishing is doing the most harm to the ecology but nobody including you wants to admit it.

John Daysh
Too much subjectivity there to be convincing. Who measures what speed? What degrees of interdependence? New theories of relativity, I guess,
Anyway, return to my first post. We don’t have a silo or atmospheric tent over the Reef.
Off you go to China, India, et al and sell them your belief of reducing global emissions to ‘save’ the Reef.
Don’t think you will get far. But please face up to the challenge.

Indyvidual,

Insults and “you must dive it yourself” are still just appeals to personal experience, they don’t replace data.

The condition of the GBR isn’t determined by how it looks to one diver in one spot, it’s measured by systematic surveys covering hundreds of sites, multiple depths, and many coral species.

If your own dives show “more life in Cairns gutters,” that’s anecdotal, and the fact that it feels to you like it differs from AIMS findings doesn’t mean their data is wrong. It means your observations are one tiny, non-representative sample of a 2,300km reef system.

Yes, recreational fishing can have localised ecological impacts, but large-scale coral bleaching is driven by heat stress from marine heatwaves. It’s not hypothetical, it’s documented in AIMS’ long-term monitoring and in peer-reviewed studies.

If you have data from credible sources to contradict those findings, present it. Otherwise, all we have here is your experience versus decades of systematic science.
___

Lytton,

It’s measured directly by tracking bleaching frequency, marine heatwave intensity, and recovery intervals in AIMS long-term datasets.

//Too much subjectivity there to be convincing.//

Time and growth rates aren't subjective.

//Who measures what speed?//

AIMS and other scientific bodies measure it. Again, the data show mass bleaching events now occur every 4-6 years instead of once or twice a generation.

//What degrees of interdependence?//

Coral species vary in recovery rates and vulnerability, but the ecosystem relies on a diversity of species. Fast-growing acropora can rebound quickly, but it’s fragile and gets hit hardest in the next stress event.

//New theories of relativity, I guess,//

http://ibb.co/0p0WD1nB

//We don’t have a silo or atmospheric tent over the Reef.//

Local action doesn’t “seal” the Reef, but it reduces our contribution to the problem and boosts credibility when pressing larger emitters.

//Off you go to China, India, et al and sell them your belief...//

It’s not “belief,” it’s data. And I don’t need to because they're adopting renewables faster than the rest of the world combined.

Thanks to John D for a good morning laugh before breakfast with his:
"Local action doesn’t “seal” the Reef, but it reduces our contribution to the problem and boosts credibility when pressing larger emitters.

//Off you go to China, India, et al and sell them your belief...//

It’s not “belief,” it’s data. And I don’t need to because they're adopting renewables faster than the rest of the world combined."

The reality:
AI Overview
China is currently permitting new coal-fired power plants at a rate of approximately two per week, according to reports from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. This rate is based on the large number of new coal power approvals in 2022, which were equivalent to two new plants per week, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. While China has pledged to peak emissions by 2030, the continued development of coal power plants raises concerns about achieving this goal.

And: A “resurgence” in construction of new coal-fired power plants in China is “undermining the country’s clean-energy progress”, says a new joint report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM).

The country began building 94.5 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-power capacity and resumed 3.3GW of suspended projects in 2024, the highest level of construction in the past 10 years, according to the two thinktanks.

The accelerated buildout, fuelled by investment from the coal-mining sector, “raises critical concerns” about China’s ability to transition away from the fossil fuel, the report warns
(It currently has 1,195 operational coal plants. Australia has just 18 according to Statista)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-power-plants-by-country/

Mikko 2
Some factual clarity about data there.
China may be active on renewables but coal power still dwarfs that.
And…there is no steady state equilibrium for coral reefs, as their history shows.

Ah yes, Mikko2.

The tiresome old “China builds coal plants, so nothing we do matters” routine. Cute, but incomplete.

Yes, China’s building coal. They’re also adding renewables faster than the rest of the world combined. Over half of all new global solar and wind capacity last year was in China. They’re doing both at once, which is why serious analysts look at the whole picture, not just the coal stat that sounds good in a gotcha post.

And here’s the inconvenient detail you left out:

Many of those new coal plants are flexible backup stations - meaning they’re designed to run part-time, stabilising the grid when wind and solar output dips. They’re more efficient, often run at about 50% capacity, and can ramp up or down quickly. That’s still an emissions problem, but it’s not the “permanent coal surge” fantasy that climate deniers like to picture.

So no, “China coal” isn’t the magic excuse for us to keep polluting.

On a per-capita basis, Australia is one of the worst emitters on the planet. If we want to lecture anyone else, maybe don’t turn “but they’re worse!” into our national climate policy.

That would be a tu quoque fallacy.

they don’t replace data.
John Daysh,
Data is irrelevant when it is produced by self-serving science, seeing the conditions for yourself offers the doubt the science deserves.
Scientists always & only seem to monitor & comment on the Coral, I'm observing marine life & that's where the difference lies among the lies !
You're conveniently ignoring marine life & the interruption of its breeding cycles. Coral growth does not suffer as the reef ecology does from overfishing. Of course recreational fishers vehemently denounce claims of overfishing as it isn't in their selfish DNA to admit. I see lots of regenerating coral since the last cyclone however, the number of fish seen is drastically down since the early 80's. Yes, the live trout & other fishers still bring back handsome hauls but only because they go into protected areas at night.
Recreational fishers are opportunists & it's time they're made to pay for fish stock to be released to restore the breeding cycles.

Predictably our resident expert John D refers to CO2 emissions on a "per capita" basis which is totally irrelevant to the amount actually going into the atmosphere which at just over 1% is negligible even if anthropogenic emissions were actually driving climate change. That was even admitted by former Chief Scientist Allan Finkel during a Senate hearing several years ago. (He said cutting emissions immediately would have negligible effect on world climate).
The huge and growing amount emitted by China won't be sucked up like a sponge by unreliable intermittent "renewables" which are largely built using Uyghur slave labour (a fact ignored by Bowen and Albanese) and which use more energy in mining and construction than they will ever save during their limited lifetime.
But on the bright side, in 15 or 20 years, China will be able to build a new shining Great Wall made of glass, aluminium, copper, silver, silicon from redundant solar panels and concrete and toxic crumbling wind turbines releasing microplastics and lethal BPA into the environment.

John Daysh
I liked this part of your comment—
“ Many of those new coal plants are flexible backup stations - meaning they’re designed to run part-time, stabilising the grid when wind and solar output dips. They’re more efficient, often run at about 50% capacity, and can ramp up or down quickly. That’s still an emissions problem, but it’s not the “permanent coal surge” fantasy that climate deniers like to picture.”

Now this is what I would like to see here in Australia. Perhaps just 2 or 3 in the NEM.
Given your enthusiasm for this model, could I rely on your support to push this option with AEMO and Min Bowen?
I think I’ll quote it elsewhere.
Thank you, glad your views are showing flexibility. Very heartening.

it’s not me who’s predictable here, Mikko2.

Yes, the “per capita is irrelevant” routine - because if you ignore the fairest way to compare national responsibility, you can pretend one of the world’s highest emitters per person has no obligation to act.

Neat trick.

Finkel’s “negligible effect” line (which climate deniers love to quote) is the same mathematical reality for every country in isolation - including China. The point, which he also made, is that climate change is solved by cumulative action, not by each country waiting for the others to go first.

Back to China, yes, they’re still building coal. And, once again, they’re also adding renewables faster than the rest of the world combined.

Those new coal plants?

Again, many are flexible backup stations that run part-time to stabilise the grid. That’s not a free pass, but it’s a more complex picture than your “permanent coal surge” fantasy.

The Uyghur slave labour conspiracy and “toxic wind turbine” imagery?

That’s just dressing up an old anti-renewables talking point in sensational language. If you want to talk supply chains, fine, but fossil fuels don’t exactly come wrapped in ethically-sourced brown paper either.

So no, none of this changes the basic point: hiding behind China’s emissions to excuse
___

Let’s not get carried away, Lytton.

Describing China’s “flexible backup” plants isn’t the same as endorsing building new coal here. That wasn't the self-own you thought it was.

China’s energy mix and grid stability challenges are totally different to ours. In the NEM, the cheapest, fastest, and cleanest firming capacity comes from batteries, pumped hydro, and demand management - not locking in decades of new fossil fuel infrastructure.

Those Chinese plants were built in the context of an already huge coal fleet, with flexibility added to smooth the transition. Here, building brand-new coal - even “flexible” - would still be expensive, high-emission, and out of step with market trends.

If you’re quoting me, make sure it’s in the context I gave it: as an explanation of what China’s doing, not an argument for Australia to copy it.

JohnD if you think comparing Australia's tiny CO2 emissions to China's and claiming theirs in isolation would also have a negligible effect on climate maybe you are also actually acknowledging that these are not the main driver of climate change - as many notable international scientists not reliant on government subsidies have clearly stated.
There is no denying facts as stated earlier regardless of whether some of these plants are intended as "back-ups".
"China began building 94.5 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-power capacity and resumed 3.3GW of suspended projects in 2024, the highest level of construction in the past 10 years..."
The atmosphere can't tell the difference between CO2 from full time or part time power stations or the huge volumes of CO2 and other gases including water vapour (a much more effective greenhouse gas) emitted by volcanos above and below sea level.
And I don't think any of our coal miners are engaged as slave labour like China's persecuted Uyghurs.

John D
I can’t see why the same logic re clever flexible use of coal power shouldn’t apply here.
You’ve convinced me it’s a commendable idea.
Always good to see new flexible thinking.
Very rare with green activists of the angry left but you’ve broken the mould.
I’ll certainly use this in future.
Bravo!

Mikko,

No, acknowledging that China’s emissions in isolation would also have a negligible global effect doesn’t mean CO2 isn’t a main driver - it means climate change is a cumulative problem.

The same maths applies to every country, which is exactly why “we’re small so it doesn’t matter” is the same excuse every other nation could use to do nothing.

Regarding coal, yes, 94.5 GW is a big number - but context matters. Many of those plants are flexible backup stations, and China is also adding renewables faster than the rest of the world combined. Pretending one fact cancels out the other is cherry-picking.

And volcanoes? You're slow on this one - human activity emits over 60 times more CO2 annually than all volcanoes combined. And water vapour? It responds to warming, it doesn’t drive it. Remove CO2 and the atmosphere holds less water vapour.

So no, the atmosphere can’t “tell the difference” between full-time and part-time CO2 - but the grid operator can, and so can policymakers deciding how to replace coal with low-carbon firming. That’s why the detail matters, even if it ruins the simplicity of a denialist talking point.
___

Nice try, Lytton.

Explaining what China’s doing isn’t the same as saying we should do it here. Their grid mix, existing coal fleet, and demand profile are completely different to ours.

In the NEM, the cheapest and cleanest firming options are batteries, pumped hydro, and demand management. Building brand-new coal - even “flexible” - would still be slower, more expensive, and more polluting than those alternatives, and would lock in decades of unnecessary emissions.

China’s backup coal plants are a transitional patch for a system that’s already coal-heavy. Australia’s challenge is replacing coal, not adding to it.

Again, if you’re quoting me, make sure it’s in the context I gave it: describing another country’s energy strategy, not recommending it for ours.

For too long we've had experts mishandle everything & now they call themselves flexible thinkers ? Just start to think, that's all that's needed !

Well John D's latest shows his claims on anything can't be taken seriously. He obviously knows very little about volcanoes - Some real facts:
"Volcanoes can impact climate change. During major explosive eruptions huge amounts of volcanic gas, aerosol droplets, and ash are injected into the stratosphere. ... volcanic gases like sulfur dioxide can cause global cooling, while volcanic carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, has the potential to promote global warming..."

Check out just one - Hunga Tonga - NASA :

"When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, 2022, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. The sheer amount of water vapor could be enough to temporarily affect Earth’s global average temperature.

The [eruption] not only injected ash into the stratosphere but also large amounts of water vapor, breaking all records for direct injection of water vapor, by a volcano or otherwise, in the satellite era. …The excess water vapor injected by the Tonga volcano … could remain in the stratosphere for several years. This extra water vapor could influence atmospheric chemistry, boosting certain chemical reactions that could temporarily worsen depletion of the ozone layer. It could also influence surface temperatures … since water vapor traps heat.

“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. It was so powerful it even affected space. From a March 2022 preprint (14 authors):

But even those record-shattering calculations were only early estimates. Over the next year, data showed NASA badly underestimated the full amount of water Hunga Tonga had vaporized into the atmosphere. Current estimates are three times higher than initially thought: scientists now believe it was closer to 150,000 metric tons, or approximately 40 trillion gallons of superheated water instantly injected into the atmosphere....

(And John D's worried about modern coal fired power stations)

Mikko2,

Yes, volcanic eruptions can cause short-term climate effects - mostly cooling from sulfur aerosols. Hunga Tonga’s water vapour injection was indeed unprecedented in the satellite era, but it’s still a temporary anomaly. It will dissipate in a few years, just as past volcanic perturbations have.

That’s exactly the difference between a transient natural event and human CO2 emissions: volcanoes are episodic; we’re adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere every day. USGS data shows annual human CO2 emissions are over 60 times greater than the total from all volcanic activity - and that’s in a quiet year without a Hunga Tonga.

So yes, “we’ve never seen anything like it,” but it doesn’t erase the physics of long-term warming, any more than one freak cold snap disproves global temperature records. Comparing an occasional eruption to continuous fossil fuel burning is apples to anvils.

Try again.

More on Hunga Tonga and its huge lingering effects but JD worries about our few coal fired power stations:

"Even though Hunga injected 146 million metric tons of water vapor into the stratosphere —an unprecedented amount, roughly 10% of the total stratospheric load— Wikipedia’s editors would have you believe the effect was negligible...

... More significantly, it appears that Hunga Tonga not only filled the atmosphere with unprecedented amounts of extra water —what goes up must eventually come down— it also knocked the oceans off kilter. It sent a boiling tsunami around the entire world. It shot a global sonic wave around the planet twice. The explosion was more powerful than Russia’s biggest nuclear bomb, Tsar Bomba...
The blast delivered an extraordinary vertical impulse —akin to a megaton-class hammer strike— directly above a complex subduction zone sitting right at the edge of the Pacific Plate. The imaginable geologic knock-on effects are potentially staggering. Earthquakes. Secondary eruptions. Tsunamis. And so on...

What causes boiling-hot, deep-ocean vents? Volcanic activity. Magma from the Earth’s core is heating up the water, which is venting out, raising ocean temperatures and putting even more water vapor into the atmosphere, which heats the air through greenhouse effects.
Needless to say, activity inside the Earth’s core has nothing to do with manmade carbon dioxide.
Hysterical corporate media articles about global warming ignore all these facts.

In conclusion, Hunga Tonga is the prime suspect for all the recent weird weather and bizarre oceanic activity. Geoengineering isn’t off the hook for causing flash floods— cloud seeding when the skies are oversaturated with record water vapor levels might not be such a terrific idea. But climate science is a bad joke when it ignores the flaming mountain in the room— the biggest potential driver of everything we’ve been seeing." (- Jeff Childers)

Mikko2,

Nobody’s denying Hunga Tonga was an extraordinary eruption. Yes, it injected an unprecedented amount of water vapour into the stratosphere, but that effect will fade within a few years. That’s not speculation, either, it’s what’s been observed after every major eruption in recorded history.

That’s why scientists distinguish between short-lived forcings like volcanic aerosols or water vapour pulses, and long-lived forcings like CO2. The latter stays in the atmosphere for centuries, continually trapping heat. Even if Hunga Tonga were the “prime suspect” for recent anomalies, it can’t explain the steady multi-decade rise in global temperatures, ocean heat content, and bleaching frequency documented well before 2022.

Jumping from “Hunga Tonga was big” to “it’s the main driver of everything” is exactly the kind of post hoc fallacy conspiracy blogs love. Science accounts for volcanic impacts - it doesn’t need to ignore them to recognise the dominant role of human-driven greenhouse gases in long-term warming.

In short, we have denialist blogs and volcano conspiracies on the one hand, and on the other... science.

and on the other... science.
John Daysh,
There are several sciences, proven, the guessed, the blatantly off, the convenient & the fund procuring !
The last is the most popular-among scientists that is !

p.s. You still haven't come forward with your view on the impact & harm to the ecology of the GBR from "recreational" fishing.

Indyvidual,

The climate science on the GBR is based on decades of peer-reviewed research and open data, not guesswork or blog speculation. Dismissing it as “fund procuring” without evidence is just an unsubstantiated smear.

As for recreational fishing, I already addressed that: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=23598#399753

Repeating the same question after it’s been answered is just sealioning.

If you want to reduce fishing pressure, great - I'm with you - but that’s not an argument for ignoring the main stressor affecting the entire 2,300km system.

John Daysh,
The whole 2300km are hammered by recreational fishing !
p.s. Peer review means that all other than academic is ignored !

That's a mere assertion, Indyvidual:

//The whole 2300km are hammered by recreational fishing !//

If you have system-wide survey data showing that, present it. AIMS’ long-term monitoring does measure fish abundance and biodiversity, and their reports identify overfishing as a localised stressor.

The system-wide stressor is marine heatwaves. That’s why bleaching events correlate directly with temperature spikes, not fishing trips.

//Peer review means that all other than academic is ignored !//

No, it means findings are tested, replicated, and checked against evidence before being published - usually anonymously, too.

Anecdotes and personal impressions aren’t ignored because they’re non-academic, they’re insufficient because they can’t stand in for systematic, reproducible data.

If you want to argue fishing is the dominant factor, bring the science that shows it. Otherwise, it’s just your gut feeling against decades of published research.

Repeating assertions without data doesn’t make them true, it just makes the gap between evidence and opinion more obvious.

John Daysh,
You sound eerily like the Foxy of previous times by constantly referring to agenda complying "Data" by Uni created career guessers with an interest in continued funding.
Do you have any idea at all or whatsoever how far out "recreational" fishers nowadays roam ?
Since the road has been sealed into Portland Roads it's not uncommon to see 20+ boats on long weekends there & 20+ boats out of restoration Point plus a professional fishing charter. The whole extent of the Cape York Coast is being relentlessly assaulted from Karumba to Cooktown.
Apart from recreational fishing there's the professional fishing of Cray, prawn, Trout, Trepang, Trochus etc etc. Then there is the "traditional" fishing including the taking of turtle & dugong.
These activities did not impact much years ago but since the access of the area by better, far more efficient rigs things have taken a dive so to speak. No matter how much Fisheries police they can't check everywhere in the creeks where "recreational" fishers camp with portable freezers to be towed back south when loaded up.
If you have access to that data I'd appreciate it if you could provide at least some of it.

Individual, may as well give up trying to convince JD of pretty much anything that goes against the great "climate consensus" CO2 scam. He'll come up with the same old "peer reviewed" BS when we all know much of the time that equates to mates backing mates, like the kids play "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" - there is no consensus, there are many eminent scientists who know CO2 emissions are not the main driver of climate change, geologists know that the current historically low levels of CO2 are nothing compared with past levels 10 times higher, reefs still thrived, the records show that climate always changes at variable rates, what we are seeing now is nothing out of the ordinary and it won't kill the Great Barrier Reef.
The puny efforts of Bowen, Albanese and their acolytes pushing unreliable intermittent renewables are costing billions, destroying vast areas of natural forest, productive farmland, wildlife and marine habitat. "Just hit koalas on the back of the head" was advice given if installing wind or solar short-life projects which won't change the climate but will keep pushing up power prices and force our few remaining industries off shore to countries with sensible, affordable energy policies.
They should be careful what they wish for. While NASA confirms the current moderate levels of CO2 of about 420 parts per million are greening the planet and boosting crop yields, if they drop to below 200, most life on Earth would cease to exist.

Indyvidual,

Calling long-term monitoring “agenda-complying uni-funded guesswork” may earn a tinfoil hat, but it’s not an argument. AIMS and other research bodies track reef health in ways you don’t (e.g. standardised methods, multiple data points, and repeat observations.)

Your reports of crowds of boats and remote fishing setups are vivid, but still anecdotal.

The question isn’t whether more people fish Cape York, it’s whether that causes system-wide reef decline. That’s what long-term surveys are designed to assess. Have those surveys found a correlation between booming recreational activity and region-wide coral bleaching or species decline? If you’ve seen credible studies confirming this, please share them.

Your concerns are valid, but you’d need data across multiple years and sites to show that recreational or traditional fishing is significantly altering reef-wide health across 2,300 km. Until such evidence is presented, your observations remain compelling anecdotes, not proof.

Here are some links…

AIMS Data Catalogue
http://www.aims.gov.au/data
Central access point for all downloadable GBR datasets (coral, fish, bleaching, temperature, etc).

LTMP Overview & Methodology
http://www.aims.gov.au/research-topics/monitoring-and-discovery/monitoring-great-barrier-reef
Long-term coral and fish monitoring surveys.

Annual GBR Condition Report (2024–25)
http://www.aims.gov.au/monitoring-great-barrier-reef/gbr-condition-summary-2024-25
Summary of coral cover, bleaching, and reef condition across all regions.

Reef Reports Hub / Dashboard
http://www.aims.gov.au/research-topics/monitoring-and-discovery/monitoring-great-barrier-reef/reef-reports-hub
Interactive dashboard with coral, fish, bleaching, and temperature trends.

AIMS LTMP Fish Visual Census Data
http://researchdata.edu.au/aims-long-term-barrier-reef/677369
Survey dataset of fish abundance, biodiversity, and size from 70 reefs.

Impact of GBR Rezoning Study (No-take Zones)
http://www.aims.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-06/AIMSBH24185_Impact_GBR_Rezone_Anniversary.pdf
Shows how protected “no-take” zones improved coral trout biomass and reef resilience.

Mikko2,

You’ve basically recycled the entire denialist bingo card: “no consensus,” “CO2 is too low to matter,” “reefs thrived with higher CO2,” “peer review is mates rates,” and “renewables kill koalas.” It’s a lot of noise, but none of it answers the simple, measurable facts.

Let's clarify a few points:

- Every national science academy on Earth accepts that CO2 is the main driver of modern warming. That’s not “mates backing mates,” that’s independent institutions converging on the same evidence.

- Yes, CO2 was higher millions of years ago, when continents, oceans, and ecosystems were totally different. The point isn’t whether reefs ever lived under higher CO2, it’s that today’s reefs are bleaching and dying under the rapid pace of change documented since the 1980s.

- Volcanic pulses, solar wobbles, and El Ninos all come and go. CO2 accumulates. That’s why the long-term warming trend matches greenhouse gas rise, not “Hunga Tonga” or “the Earth’s core.”

- Renewables “killing koalas” is tabloid nonsense. The actual, documented cause of mass habitat loss for koalas is land clearing and climate-driven bushfires. Nice try flipping the script.

You can sneer about “fund-procuring guessers” all you like, but the alternative you’re offering is blog posts and gut feelings. If you want to argue the science is wrong, bring peer-reviewed studies that overturn the data. Otherwise, this isn’t contrarian thinking - it’s reheated denial.

Mikko2,
You're of course right. What John Daysh & funding chasing mates don't like to be reminded of is that the changes nature dishes out take hundreds if not thousands of years to regulate themselves. JD et al can't figure out why they don't see environmental changes starting & finishing within 15 years, the average duration of a Uni Student to learn how to apply for funding.
He describes my real-life observations as wild because he doesn't understand them. Imagine if he could understand & accept the reality ?

Nailed it again Indyvidual but he just keeps churning out the same hype and tries to downplay the actual huge environmental harm that "renewable energy" projects are responsible for.
Meanwhile the US Department of Energy has just released a report by five top scientists NOT dependent on government funding which downplays the whole "climate emergency" scenario and which as expected has upset the group-think consensus mob and their media backers:
https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-issues-report-evaluating-impact-greenhouse-gasses-us-climate-invites

Indyvidual,

You just illustrated my point perfectly. I gave you multiple links to long-term survey data from AIMS, GBRMPA, CSIRO, and peer-reviewed coral studies. Instead of engaging with any of it, you waved it all away as “funding chasing” and went back to your anecdotes.

You’re not interested in evidence, only protecting a worldview and an identity.

The difference is this: your “real life observations” are a handful of fishing trips; the AIMS Long Term Monitoring Program is 30+ years of systematic surveys across hundreds of reef sites. If you want to claim the entire 2300km reef is being “hammered” primarily by recreational fishing, then the burden is on you to show data that scales beyond personal impressions.

Until you do, it’s anecdotes versus decades of measured evidence.
___

Mikko2,

Your “DOE report” isn’t the smoking gun you think it is. Within days of release, climate scientists - including some cited in it - accused the authors of misrepresenting their work and recycling claims that have already been debunked.

The US National Academies of Science are now preparing a formal rebuttal, because the report was so politically skewed it’s sparked emergency review.
That’s the difference between cherry-picked contrarian documents and the actual scientific consensus: the latter emerges from thousands of peer-reviewed studies across independent teams worldwide.

That’s why the world’s major academies and agencies - from NASA and NOAA to CSIRO and GBRMPA - line up on the same conclusion: rising greenhouse gases are the main driver of recent warming, and marine heatwaves are the primary stressor behind mass bleaching.
Renewables aren’t perfect, but pretending they’re worse than fossil fuels for ecosystems is fantasy.

Coral doesn’t bleach from solar panels, it bleaches when the ocean hits 30°C for weeks at a time.

Here we go again - from John D after he waves off the latest climate report from five highly experienced scientists not reliant on government funding, he adds: "Coral doesn’t bleach from solar panels, it bleaches when the ocean hits 30°C for weeks at a time."
But he neglects to add that they frequently recover or that higher water temperatures are more likely caused by deep sea vents and under sea volcanoes than from temperatures above the sea.
(Just try heating your winter bath water from a wall mounted radiant heater and keep the deodorant handy. It won't happen).
As for scientific studies, here is the actual detailed report as referenced in my original article from the very experienced Dr Peter Ridd, who has more than 100 published documents to his credit.
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2023/09/Ridd-State-of-Coral-Reefs.pdf#:~:text=About%20the%20author,over%20100%20scientific%20publications.
And yes, it's "peer reviewed"

That’s not a peer-reviewed paper, Mikko2.

“Peer review” doesn’t mean “a few mates had a look and agreed with me.” It means a manuscript is submitted to a scholarly journal, handled by an editor, and assessed by independent, anonymous experts who can demand revisions or reject it outright. The end result carries a journal name, volume/issue, DOI, and documented methods/data so others can replicate or test the claims.

Ridd’s State of the Coral Reefs ticks none of those boxes.

It was published by the GWPF - a political lobby group. They like to boast their reports are “peer reviewed,” but what they really mean is in-house approval by sympathetic reviewers. That’s editorial endorsement, not scientific scrutiny. No editor, no referee reports, no DOI, no indexing in Scopus or Web of Science, no obligation to meet disciplinary standards.

Waving around “100 publications” doesn’t turn a think-tank pamphlet into peer-reviewed science. Past credentials don’t launder the fact that this particular piece was never subjected to the checks that separate science from advocacy. That’s an argument from authority, not evidence.

If you still insist it’s peer-reviewed, then produce the five basics every real paper has:

1. Journal name and publisher
2. Volume/issue/pages (or “in press” status)
3. DOI
4. Date of acceptance after peer review
5. Data/methods supplement

If you can’t, then it isn’t peer-reviewed. Full stop.

And while we’re at it... deep-sea vents? They exist, but they don’t explain the sustained rise in ocean heat content measured globally. Thousands of Argo floats and satellites show basin-wide warming. Volcanoes are local and episodic; they don’t drive a planetary trend. Hand-waving them as the “real” cause is about as serious as your bath-heater analogy.

So yes, by all means, treat the GWPF report as an opinion essay. But presenting it as peer-reviewed marine science is like presenting a party pamphlet as a PhD thesis. The difference isn’t semantic. It’s what separates science from spin.

How can you be writing entire articles on scientific matters and not know what peer review is?

JD I slipped "peer review in" to bait you and you took it hook line and sinker! You pontificate about peer review as being an absolute guarantee of authenticity when it can so easily be faked as an infamous piece on the sex life of dogs illustrated:
AI Overview
A hoax involving fabricated academic papers, including one on dog sex life, was successfully published in several journals. These papers, submitted by a group of academics, were accepted and published after passing through the peer-review process. The "New Real Peer Review" Twitter account highlighted the absurdity of the research, leading to media scrutiny and the eventual suspension of the project. The incident exposed weaknesses in the peer-review system and prompted criticism of journal editors and peer reviewers. One paper, for example, questioned whether dog humping could be considered rape, acknowledging the author's limitations in understanding canine behavior.
I'll back Peter Ridd's experience and knowledge of the GBR any day but enjoy your own delusions.

Well, it didn’t work very well then, Mikko2:

//JD I slipped "peer review in" to bait you...//

You've just admitted the report isn’t peer-reviewed, dodged the substance, and tried to spin it as a “gotcha.” That’s not debate, that’s bad faith.

No hook, no line, no sinker.

Hoax papers slipping through weak journals don’t erase the difference between science and a lobby pamphlet. They get exposed precisely because peer review leaves a paper trail. By your logic, because counterfeit money exists, we should treat Monopoly notes as legal tender.

And once again you retreat to Ridd’s “experience.” But science isn’t a priesthood where past credentials sanctify new claims. If his ideas hold up, he can publish them like everyone else. The fact that he doesn’t tells you more than his CV ever could.

All your “bait” did was confirm what I've said from the start.

JD, you've swallowed the woke bait and Ridd's article clearly explains the reality that climate catastrophists will never accept about the Great Barrier Reef's resilience and the clear fact it is not dying.
Some more reality:
. There is no climate emergency, as numerous independent scientists have frequently explained;
. We are not having the very warm winter which "experts" predicted before consistent heavy snow falls even as far north as the Granite Belt in recent weeks;
. We could do with some "global warming" to save on exorbitant power bills thanks to Labor's destructive, inefficient energy policies;
. If CO2 really was responsible for warming, we could also do with some more modern, efficient coal fired power stations such as China and India are constructing at a great rate;
. But of course we realise that the "experts" changed the name from global warming to "climate change" to cover all odds - too hot, too cold, too dry, too wet; too windy, no wind, naturally it's all down to "climate change" (for the gullible and those with their hands out for more $ billions in government funding).

Short-life unreliable "renewables" will help control climate and protect the Reef about as much as King Canute's sword stopped the tide when he commanded it not to rise. He actually realised that was not possible too and he did it to convince sycophant followers that he was just a man, not a god.
'Bye. Fire up the heaters.

Thanks for the Gish Gallop, Mikko2.

But let’s be clear: you’ve just sprinted away from the actual point. This started with your claim that Ridd’s GWPF report was peer-reviewed. You admitted it wasn’t. Everything since has been noise and deflection.

“The Reef is fine.”
That’s exactly why Ridd’s ideas don’t survive peer review. The peer-reviewed literature documents repeated mass bleaching, major declines in coral cover, and stress from rising seas. Resilience isn’t immunity.

“No climate emergency.”
Tell that to insurers, defence planners, or the Bureau of Meteorology. None of them are “woke,” but all are reacting to escalating risks and costs.

“Cold winter, so no warming.”
You're confusing weather and climate. A Granite Belt cold snap doesn’t erase global heat records, just like one rainy day doesn’t mean droughts don’t exist.

“CO2 isn’t the cause, more coal please.”
Every national science academy says otherwise. And while you point to China and India’s coal, you omit that they’re also leading in renewables - inconvenient for your “reality” list.

“They changed global warming to climate change.”
False. Both terms have been used for decades: global warming for the long-term heat trend, climate change for the broader shifts. Not a conspiracy, just scope.

King Canute. He showed his followers humans can’t command nature. Which makes it ironic when you argue we can pump out endless emissions with no consequences.

So here’s the real bait-and-switch: you started with a false claim about peer review, got caught, and are now burying the thread in talking points hoping no one notices. But the record’s clear: the report wasn’t peer-reviewed.

No pile of weather anecdotes or Canute stories changes that.

“The Reef is fine.”
John daysh,
Wrong analogy. The reef could be fine if recreational fishing was curbed ! As for rising sea levels, do you really think a few millimetres are catastrophic ? If you believe that then you should be advocating for the many billions of tonnes of shipping that pushes sea level up by millimetres to be removed. Also, you should be advocating for frivolous & non sensical activities that contribute to pollution.
Also, you should propose to Greta !

Ah well Indiyidual he's posted enough woke propaganda to keep me amused for a while but I'll just leave him to his delusions about peer review, climate change, the state of the Reef and just about everything else. He has nothing to say about the "experts" who told us we were in for a hot dry winter (yeah right that's just "weather"). Just about as accurate as any catastrophe predicted by climate "experts" since the '70s, none of which have eventuated. Besides the likes of Al Gore and international scientists who told us the poles were melting and we'd never see snow again, sea levels would rise by 6 metres blah blah, we have our own extreme example with the Climate Council's Tim Flannery who predicted that our rivers would run dry and "even the rain that falls will never fill our dams" back in 2007.
Gee he really nailed that, just like climate alarmists have been making similar dud predictions that only the gullible and indoctrinated terrified kids could believe.

Mikko2,

Thanks for confirming - yet again - that you’ve got nothing left on the peer review point. You said Ridd’s GWPF report was peer-reviewed. It wasn’t. End of story. Everything since has been a smokescreen.

On your two fallback lines:

- “The experts are always wrong.”
Wrong. The BoM, CSIRO, NASA, NOAA, and the UK Met Office have all tracked the long-term warming trend, sea level rise, and more extreme events with remarkable accuracy. Seasonal forecasts aren’t guarantees; they’re probabilities. Pretending a missed winter outlook erases decades of climate data is like saying doctors can’t diagnose cancer because sometimes they misread a flu.

- “Predictions didn’t happen.”
Cherry-picking Gore or Flannery isn’t science. Neither man is the scientific community. The peer-reviewed record shows glaciers retreating, seas rising, bleaching intensifying, and records breaking faster than expected. The big picture matches what the science warned, not the personalities you prefer to attack.

So the record still stands: peer review separates evidence from pamphlets, and your “experts are always wrong” mantra collapses the moment we look at actual data instead of activists or politicians.

John Daysh,
How much has the Sea level risen in say Sydney since recordings began ?

I'm glad you asked, Indyvidual.

Sydney’s sea level has risen by about 8 cm since 1914, according to Bureau of Meteorology records from Fort Denison:
http://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/no-sydney-average-sea-level-is-not-6cm-lower-than-1914

The long-term trend shows a rise of about 0.84 mm per year from 1886 through early 2025:
http://www.sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=Sydney

Globally, seas rose ~20 cm between 1901 and 2018, with rates climbing from ~1.3 mm/year last century to over 4 mm/year more recently:
http://www.climatechange.environment.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-06/Sea%20Level%20Rise%20Science%20and%20Synthesis%20for%20NSW.PDF

Why's that anyway?

Oh, I see now why you were so interesting in Syney's sea level rise, Indyvidual:

http://www.rmit.edu.au/news/lookout/shonky-maths-used-to-show-sea-level-fall

You dropped that one very quickly!

Gee 0.8mm a year ... man the lifeboats, we'll soon be up to the catastrophists' predicted 6 metres. What a joke. There is a list of failed catastrophic predictions that could fill a book, Gore's and Flannery's just a tiny example.

Meanwhile some good news from the US where solar firm bankruptcies are "the new norm" even in the ultra woke California. Keep doling out the cash by the $$$billions until the same happens here, just like Bowen and Albo's Green Hydrogen wet dreams are exploding financially faster than you can say Hindenburg.
An extract from https://www.masterresource.org/solar-power-issues/solar-bankruptcies-new-normal/
" 2024 has brought immense challenges, with higher interest rates, tighter financing, and adverse policy shifts in key states contributing to over 100 solar bankruptcies based on our industry data, a number unseen before in our almost 20 years in the solar sector.

California was particularly hard hit due to new net metering rules under NEM 3.0 that radically reduced system economics. These adverse state policy impacts exacerbated financing shifts, triggering plummeting demand and an 80% decrease in rooftop solar installation volume. The California Solar & Storage Association reports that the fallout includes thousands of stalled projects, over 17,000 industry layoffs, and a wave of high-profile bankruptcies...."

Australia next...

The paper "Coral in a Warming World - Causes for optimism" by Peter Ridd, has this foreword -Acknowledgements
The author thanks D. Mason Jones, A. Jones, E. Ridd, M. Ridd, and A. Montford who helped improve the manuscript, and a myriad of people of who have supplied him with information and support.
Two peer-reviewers greatly improved the manuscript.
The author works unpaid by any organisation or individual ....

So yes I mentioned "peer reviewed" to hook the vastly knowledgeable JD, but there is no set number needed to be classed as peer reviewed:
AI Overview
There isn't a single, universal number of peer reviews required, but a scientific paper generally needs a minimum of two independent peer reviewers to be considered for publication. The exact number can vary depending on the journal's specific policies..

I wonder how many were required for the publication of the sex life of dogs as referred to earlier to show how "peer review" can be manipulated.

Mikko2,

So now we’ve got three different deflections in one post: sea level rise, solar bankruptcies, and another attempt to rescue your “peer review” claim. Let’s take them in turn.

Sea level rise:

Trivialising “0.8 mm a year” ignores the point: it’s not static, it’s accelerating. Globally the rate is now over 4 mm a year, which scales to decimetres per century. That’s why insurers, engineers, and coastal councils plan for higher floods and storm surges. Talking in millimetres is a rhetorical trick, not an answer.

Solar bankruptcies:

Yes, some California rooftop solar firms failed after state policy changes (NEM 3.0) and high interest rates. That doesn’t mean “solar doesn’t work,” it means a policy shift disrupted that particular market segment. Globally, renewables are still the cheapest source of new power, and utility-scale solar keeps expanding. Fossil fuel firms also go bankrupt - Enron, Peabody, dozens more - but no one claims that proves coal “doesn’t work.” Industry shake-outs are part of growth, not proof of collapse.

Peer review:

The Ridd report you’re clinging to was published by GWPF, a political lobby group, not a journal. The fact he thanks “two peer reviewers” in the acknowledgements doesn’t make it peer-reviewed science. Real peer review means independent, anonymous referees chosen by an editor, a published acceptance date, and a permanent DOI in a scientific journal. GWPF doesn’t provide that. It’s editorial vetting, not scientific review. If two named friends in the acknowledgements count as “peer review,” then every blog post on the internet qualifies.

Dog sex paper hoaxes:

Your “dog sex paper” example misses the point. Those hoaxes were exposed and retracted precisely because journals have oversight. A GWPF pamphlet faces no such scrutiny, which is why it doesn’t belong in the scientific literature in the first place.

So no, you haven’t rescued the peer review claim. It’s still just a lobby group pamphlet dressed up as science. Jokes and anecdotes don’t change that.

Back to the old peer review is great , Peter Ridd's isn't line. There are heaps of articles and studies revealing how peer review is frequently a case of "follow the money" and a scam just like "climate change" based on dodgy computer modelling - "garbage in, garbage out".
Despite all the peer reviews and failed predictions from fund-chasing scientists, not one has been able to come up with empirical evidence that CO2 is the main driver of climate change despite numerous challenges from independent scientists and experienced geologists over the years.
On the peer review theme here is just one study showing "organised scientific fraud is growing at an alarming rate". https://phys.org/news/2025-08-scientific-fraud-alarming-uncovers.html#google_vignette
"Although concerns around scientific misconduct typically focus on lone individuals, the Northwestern study instead uncovered sophisticated global networks of individuals and entities, which systematically work together to undermine the integrity of academic publishing.

The problem is so widespread that the publication of fraudulent science is outpacing the growth rate of legitimate scientific publications. The authors argue these findings should serve as a wake-up call to the scientific community, which needs to act before the public loses confidence in the scientific process..."

Mikko2,

So we’ve gone from “Ridd’s report is peer-reviewed” -> “okay, it isn’t” -> “peer review is a scam.” That’s not a defence, that’s just moving the goalposts again.

Yes, fraud exists in science. It always has. But that’s precisely why peer review, replication, and retraction systems exist. Your own link proves the point: misconduct gets uncovered, flagged, and published for all to see. That’s accountability. By contrast, GWPF pamphlets like Ridd’s face no independent checks at all. If you think peer review is weak, what you’re clinging to is weaker.

As for CO2: the “no empirical evidence” line is flat-out wrong.

In the lab, we’ve measured CO2’s heat-trapping properties since Tyndall in 1859.

Satellites directly detect CO2’s infrared absorption bands in the atmosphere.

Surface stations measure the downward “back-radiation” from greenhouse gases increasing over time.

Rising CO2 levels match the radiative forcing needed to explain observed warming.

That’s empirical. You can dislike models, but you can’t magic away spectroscopy.

And predictions? Long-term projections from the 1970s (like Hansen 1981) have tracked reality remarkably well once actual emissions are plugged in. A few soundbites from Gore or Flannery aren’t “the science.” The peer-reviewed record shows warming, sea level rise, ice loss, and bleaching all on pace with greenhouse forcing.

So no, pointing to fraud in some corner of academia doesn’t make Ridd’s GWPF pamphlet legitimate. It just highlights the difference: real science is self-correcting, advocacy think-tanks are not. Peer review may be imperfect, but it beats no review at all.

And that’s exactly what you’re defending: no scrutiny, no accountability, no science.

John Daysh and WTFNot again.
I would be interested to know who I should believe in this continuing debate with Mikko2 but I do not know your experience so until then I have to depend on my knowledge.
I reckon you two and anyone else who has so much time on their hands really needs to read someone who has more knowledge than most and you may learn a little about Coral, Reefs and anything to do with "heaven + earth" by Professor Ian Plimer (of yes – I can hear you already – you will no doubt poo hoo this great scientist). That book is a great educational tool.
I have been having brief visits to this On Line Opinion article but have been too pre-occupied to interact as I like to be sure of my facts before I get into debates.
This is the thing though – you must read this link from 1874 – about the first CLIMATE SCAM. Read it carefully especially the first few lines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Hoax_of_1874#:~:text=The%20%22Global%20Warming%20Hoax%20of,of%20all%20life%20on%20Earth.
Then when that had all gone “cold” along comes Margaret Mead with her “Endangered Atmosphere Conference” in America 100 years later in 1974. She gathers whoever at the time and they all DECIDE to push the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX. N.B. She makes sure that they all AGREE TO MAKE THIS SOUND REALLY WORRYING.
Hence teachers with an agenda have been scaring the living daylights out of our students ever since. This second link needs time to read so if you come straight back at me, I’ll know you haven’t even bothered.
Cheers.
https://21sci-tech.com/Articles%202007/GWHoaxBorn.pdf

A few things about the sources you’ve cited, Farnortherner:

The “1874 climate scam.”
That wasn’t science, it was satire. The Iowa State Register ran a spoof about a telegraph cable pulling Earth into the Sun. As RMIT’s FactLab notes: “The Global Warming Hoax of 1874 was a newspaper hoax…not a scientific prediction.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Hoax_of_1874

Margaret Mead’s 1975 meeting.
The conference was The Atmosphere: Endangered and Endangering, held in October 1975 at a U.S. federal institute, with proceedings published in 1977. That’s routine science - peer discussions and printed proceedings - not a “plot.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atmosphere:_Endangered_and_Endangering

The PDF you linked comes from 21st Century Science & Technology - a LaRouche movement magazine. LaRouche publications are notorious for conspiracy narratives, not peer-reviewed science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Science_and_Technology

Ian Plimer.
Plimer’s Heaven + Earth was reviewed by climate scientists and found riddled with errors. Prof. Ian Enting wrote: “a collection of contrarian misrepresentations that does not meet the standards of an academic text.”
http://sks.to/plimer

Just a fraction of what climate science actually rests on:

- 1859: John Tyndall demonstrated CO2 and water vapour trap heat in the lab.
- 1896: Svante Arrhenius calculated how rising CO2 would warm the planet.
- 20th-21st century: Satellites and ocean data confirmed the trend.

This isn’t something “invented” in the 1970s, it’s a physical principle measured for over 150 years.

So, the 1874 hoax was a newspaper parody, the 1975 Mead conference was a published scientific meeting, 21st Century Science & Technology is a conspiracy magazine, and Plimer’s book has been debunked in detail. Meanwhile, the basic physics of CO2 warming the planet is laboratory science going back to the 19th century.

And the evidence against anthropogenic climate change?

Zip.

Welcome to the climate change conga line Far Northerner but no need to read repetitive claims from the vastly knowledgeable JD who really seems to think that someone with a test tube in a lab represents "empirical proof" that CO2 drives climate change. That really is laughable and as you mention experienced geologist and successful author Prof Ian Plimer, he is just one who has challenged group-think scientists with their hands out for government funding to provide actaul empirical evidence and the truth is NO ONE has been able to. It's no wonder they try unsuccessfully to discredit him.
They also try to discredit other experienced scientists such as Joanne Nova who posted this recently exploding the myth of disappearing polar sea ice:

By Jo Nova

One third of all human emissions has had no effect on the Arctic
Since 2005, humans have emitted one third of all the emissions we’ve ever put out — some 600 billion tons of CO2. Yet the Arctic sea ice is the same as it was twenty years ago. And even though the modelers cling to the excuse that this is “consistent with simulated internal variability” there was not one model that forecast this would happen.

For twenty years arctic sea ice was the Posterchild of Panic, and on the verge of disappearing forever, while Antarctic sea ice was invisible. Now the sea ice at the South Pole is at “a climate tipping point”, and the northern sea-ice is just a surprise.

Even when sea ice does nothing, it’s dramatic:
As long as the buzzwords are there in the headlines, The Guardian readers may not even realize the scientists were completely, utterly wrong, and all the hand-wringing and tears about the polar bears was just a fundraising publicity stunt.
Remember, bad news is due to man-made climate change, but good news is a natural variation, and it’s only temporary. The Prophets of Climate say disaster is just around the corner still...
https://www.joannenova.com.au

Let’s unpack your latest deflections, Mikko2:

Ice Change Realities

Yes, studies like the recent University of Exeter paper report a temporary slowdown in Arctic sea ice loss since 2005. A “pause”, not a reversal. The September minimum decline has slowed by ~55-63%, but that's decades of decline still in place - just at a slightly lower rate. Scientists agree it's a natural fluctuation, not proof climate change isn’t real. It’s a reprieve - only temporary.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/20/slowdown-in-melting-of-arctic-sea-ice-surprises-scientists

Moreover, overall ice has shrunk by ~50% since 1979, and volume continues its downward trend. Even if area temporarily stalls, the remaining ice is thinner and less stable.

http://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline

For decades, climate models have consistently tracked ice loss - recent slowdowns were anticipated and are well within expected variability.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/05/predicted-arctic-sea-ice-trends-over-time

Jo Nova & Polar Trends

Joanne Nova dismisses Arctic changes as a media-fueled frenzy, yet:

- September sea ice extent is plummeting.
- Volume keeps declining.
- Multiple independent datasets - NASA, NOAA, NSIDC - all show steep long-term loss.

http://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/claim-says-arctic-sea-ice-isnt-changing-but-truth-is-the-polar-opposite

To compare: while headlines briefly mentioned increased Antarctic winter ice, seasonal bounce-back is overshadowed by long-term global declines and ecosystem collapse.

So, in short:

- A short-term slowdown doesn’t cancel a persistent decline.
- Arctic summer ice is shrinking rapidly overall.
- Climate models anticipated these "pauses" - they don’t undermine warming trends.
- Citing “good news” snapshots doesn’t counter consistent, global data.

Your “conga line” of cherry-picked “myths busted” ignores the real, documented long-term decline - ice area, volume, and thickness, all diminishing.

The physics, satellite records, and model projections all align. Reality persists, whether it’s dramatic headlines or “quiet reprieves.”

John Daysh – YOU STILL didn’t answer what your profession is - why are you afraid to say? If you have said before, I cannot remember.
I don’t really care though as you are obviously someone who is rusted on in his own view so everyone else must be wrong.
I told you that 1874 link was written in fun but the less educated at that time took it seriously just as you are now.
I told you to make sure you read the first sentence as I thought you may miss that bit.
As for the 1974 one – Margaret Mead didn’t always get it right either so I wouldn’t believe any of her work either especially on Climate having followed how some of her original supporters at that conference that she organized decided against the scam too.
She has been criticized for her portrayal of Samoans in the book she wrote about the “Coming of Age in Samoa.” One critique was: Derek Freeman's critique that Mead misrepresented Samoan society as less hierarchical and restrictive than it was, with higher rates of murder and rape than she indicated, and that her findings were based on an overly romanticized and simplistic view of adolescence. Other criticisms highlight Mead's methodology as potentially flawed, including her reliance on an interpreter and lack of fluency in the Samoan language, and the discovery of discrepancies between her published statements and her field data, particularly regarding adolescent promiscuity.”
I think I will not be losing sleep over any of this though as the Great Barrier Reef is doing fine.
I sure would believe Professor Ian Plimer and Professor Peter Ridd though as they work in the field and have done for years as have others who frequent the GBR in their daily work and for whatever reasons.

John Daysh - I suggesgt you may like to read Ian Plimer's book "How to get expelled from school" A guide to climate change for pupils, parents & Punters.
He lists some questions that pupils should ask their teachers.
He does suggest though that one pupil should not ask all the questions but get friends to ask some - it would take many classes to get through them all and would be silly to ask all at once. Just one thrown in every now and again I should imagine.
It is an educational book but I feel that it insinuates (and is probably correct) that most teachers probably would not be able to answer questions over and above what they have been told to teach.

Farnortherner,

Demanding my “profession” is an appeal to authority fallacy. Science isn’t true or false depending on who cites it. The Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, NASA, NOAA - their tide-gauge data and satellite records don’t change if I’m a teacher, a tradie, or a taxi driver.

That’s the whole point of empirical evidence.

On the 1874 “hoax,” you’ve admitted it was satire. Good - so we can park that. It’s irrelevant to climate science, which rests on lab physics from Tyndall (1859) and Arrhenius (1896), long before Mead or modern politics.

On Mead: even if her Samoan fieldwork was contested, that has nothing to do with whether CO2 absorbs infrared radiation (measured in labs, confirmed by satellites). That’s a genetic fallacy - dismissing science by smearing an unrelated part of someone’s career. Climate science predates Mead by a century and has been replicated endlessly since.

On Plimer and Ridd: they’re contrarians, not the mainstream. Plimer’s Heaven + Earth was reviewed by Prof. Ian Enting, who documented “hundreds of errors, misquotations and contradictions.” Ridd’s GWPF pieces aren’t peer-reviewed science, they’re lobby group pamphlets.

Meanwhile, AIMS, GBRMPA, and CSIRO - scientists who actually survey the reef system-wide - publish open datasets showing repeated mass bleaching and long-term stress. That’s where the empirical weight lies.

So no, sidestepping into careers, Samoa, or sceptic books doesn’t answer the evidence. The reef isn’t “fine.” It’s being hit harder and more often, and pretending otherwise by waving Plimer around doesn’t change that.

So John D believes a couple of scientists messing about with test tubes in strictly limited archaic conditions back in the mid 19 century provided "empirical evidence" that CO2 is the main driver of climate change. ROTFLMAO as the kids would say.
Even today's most ambitious scientists with their hands out for government funds can't replicate the hugely variable conditions of our open atmosphere and the influences of global orbit variations, ocean currents, movement of the Poles, undersea volcanoes and vents, water vapour (a much more effective greenhouse gas as stated by NASA) and other natural cyclical factors that result in climate always changing.

JD says: "And the evidence against anthropogenic climate change? Zip."

As I've stated repeatedly there is heaps of documented work by scientists NOT dependent on government funding or climate models which give a desired (false) result. Here is one:
A Critical Reassessment of the Anthropogenic CO₂-Global Warming Hypothesis: Empirical Evidence Contradicts IPCC Models and Solar Forcing Assumptions
SCC-Publishing
Michelets vei 8 B
1366 Lysaker, Norway
ISSN: 2703-9072
Correspondence:
cohler59@gmail.com
Vol. 5.1 (2025)
pp. 13 - 28
Grok 3 beta1*
, Jonathan Cohler2, David Legates3, Franklin Soon4, Willie Soon5
1xAI, USA
2Cohler & Associates, Inc., USA
3Retired Professor, University of Delaware, USA
4Marblehead High School, USA
5Institute of Earth Physics and Space Science, Hungary

https://scienceofclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/SCC-Grok-3-Review-V5-1.pdf

Mikko2,

So this is the big “new evidence” you’re leaning on? A paper whose first listed author is literally an AI chatbot - “Grok 3 beta” - not a climate scientist.

That alone should tell readers everything.

In proper science, AI tools can be acknowledged (like software or statistical packages), but they are never authors, because they cannot take responsibility for data, methods, or conclusions. Listing a chatbot as first author is a red flag that this isn’t mainstream science, it’s advocacy dressed up as scholarship.

Then look at the rest of the author list: David Legates (a Trump appointee who’s been aligned with denial think tanks for years) and Willie Soon (long documented as fossil-fuel–funded). One co-author is from Marblehead High School. That’s not “independent science,” it’s a rogues’ gallery of professional contrarians with a chatbot on top.

And where is it published? Science of Climate Change (SCC-Publishing, Norway) - a vanity outlet not indexed in Web of Science or Scopus. Real science goes through established journals where it’s independently refereed, not pushed through boutique websites with no oversight.

As for the content, it just recycles the same tired lines: “CO2 is only 4% of the carbon cycle,” “short residence time,” “models are unreliable.” All of these have been answered for decades:

That “4%” is precisely the problem - natural fluxes balance, our extra 4% is what accumulates and drives CO2 from 280 ppm to 420 ppm.

Residence time isn’t molecule turnover, it’s system adjustment. A large fraction of excess CO2 lingers for centuries.

Multiple independent datasets (NASA, NOAA, HadCRU, JMA) all converge on the same warming trend, even with different methods.

So no, this isn’t a peer-reviewed refutation of climate science. It’s an unindexed vanity paper, co-signed by a chatbot, fronted by long-time contrarians, recycling arguments that have been answered again and again.

If that’s what you have to fall back on, it says more about the weakness of your case than it does about the science.

The evidence against climate change?

Still zip.

Yeah right JD just like you claimed "empiracle evidence" about CO2 driving climate change was uncovered in archaic laboratories back in the 1800s.
You totally ignored this fact: "Even today's most ambitious scientists with their hands out for government funds can't replicate the hugely variable conditions of our open atmosphere and the influences of global orbit variations, ocean currents, movement of the Poles, undersea volcanoes and vents, water vapour (a much more effective greenhouse gas as stated by NASA) and other natural cyclical factors that result in climate always changing..."
I remember writing an article about 20 years ago quoting a Victorian man who posted a statutory declaration promising to pay $10,000 to the first person who could provide him with the same empiracle evidence you claim has existed for almost a century.
The result? As you say, Zip.
Maybe it's in an account earning interest...

Mikko2,

//A couple of scientists messing about with test tubes in the 1800s isn’t empirical proof.//

That "messing about" was John Tyndall’s 1859 spectroscopy experiments showing CO2 absorbs infrared. That’s physics, not tinkering. Today, satellites detect those same absorption bands in the atmosphere. Lab -> observation -> replication.

That’s empirical.

//You can’t replicate the whole atmosphere in a lab.//

Nobody claims you can. Nor is that necessary.

Labs establish the mechanism; global measurements confirm it. Surface radiation budgets, ocean heat uptake, and satellite data all show the same signal. That’s how physics and atmospheric science fit together.

//Natural cycles like orbits, volcanoes, currents, water vapour drive climate.//

They all matter, and they’re already accounted for.

Orbital cycles are on 20,000+ year scales and would be cooling us. Volcanoes cool, not warm. Ocean cycles shuffle heat but don’t add energy. And yes, water vapour is a strong greenhouse gas - but it’s a feedback, not a driver. It amplifies the warming initiated by CO2, it doesn’t start it. NASA makes that clear.

//Nobody has ever claimed the $10,000 prize for proof.//

That’s no different to Kent Hovind’s "$250,000 prove evolution" challenge. It was rigged so no evidence would ever count, because the judge decides what "proof" is.

It’s theatre, not science.

Meanwhile, the real evidence doesn’t sit in prize funds - it’s published and replicated in open journals, by multiple independent teams.

And let’s not forget:

- Tyndall measured CO2’s absorption in 1859.
- Arrhenius calculated the effect in 1896.
- Satellites since the 1970s directly observe CO2’s fingerprint in the atmosphere.
- Argo floats show oceans steadily taking up the excess heat.

That’s empirical. That’s physics, observations, and replication across decades.

So no, it’s not "Zip." What’s zip is the evidence against CO2-driven warming. Which is why contrarian outlets keep offering gimmicky challenges - they’re great theatre, but they collapse under the same scientific standards everyone else has to meet.

John D - And climate will always change despite human's puny efforts and the hugely expensive "renewables" (unreliables) scam pushed by our Labor government.
You recently posted:
"Mikko2,
So this is the big “new evidence” you’re leaning on? A paper whose first listed author is literally an AI chatbot - “Grok 3 beta” - not a climate scientist. .."

Well, If you checked you would see that so-called climate scientists also use AI, as do organisations such as NASA, the IPCC and our CSIRO:
"AI Overview
Yes, the CSIRO actively uses, conducts research on, and partners on artificial intelligence (AI) projects to solve national challenges and benefit industry and the community. With one of the largest applied AI capabilities in the world, CSIRO employs AI to address issues like bushfire management, climate change, agricultural productivity, and cybersecurity.
AI Overview
Yes, climate scientists widely use AI to improve climate modeling and predictions, analyze vast datasets for patterns in climate and weather, and assess climate change impacts. AI enhances computational efficiency in forecasting, allowing for faster and cheaper predictions than traditional methods. It also helps develop climate action tools for policymakers, such as systems that track policy effectiveness, though challenges remain regarding model transparency and bias"
So it's ok for organisations and scientists pushing their climate catastrophe agenda to use AI, but not for independent scientists with a contrary view!
Yeah, right.

Mikko2,

This isn’t about using AI, it’s about crediting an AI as a lead author.

CSIRO, NASA, IPCC? They use AI as a tool - like using a calculator, a microscope, or a weather radar. They don’t slap “Casio FX-82” or “Nikon” or “Doppler 3000” on the author line of their papers. Because tools don’t take responsibility for data, methods, or conclusions. Humans do.

That’s the difference.

When CSIRO publishes a climate paper, the author list is climate scientists. The AI they used to crunch data is acknowledged in the methods. When Willie Soon and friends publish in a fringe outlet, they actually list “Grok 3 beta” as first author - a chatbot brand name.

That’s not science, it’s a credibility stunt. And it backfires.

If your strongest “independent science” has to put a Musk chatbot up front to sound authoritative, that tells us everything about the weakness of the case.

As for “puny human efforts”: climate doesn’t “always change” at the rate we’re now measuring. Orbital shifts happen over tens of thousands of years. Volcanoes cool, not warm. The current multi-decade, accelerating heat trend matches the radiative forcing from CO2 - measured in the lab, confirmed by satellites, replicated across the globe.

That’s the empirical evidence you keep dodging.

So no, the issue isn’t that AI is used. It’s that contrarians thought putting Grok on the author list was good optics. It isn’t. It’s the scientific equivalent of waving a prop around because you’ve run out of data.

Meanwhile another post in On Line Opinion featuring the highly qualified and very experienced scientist and scuba diver Dr Jennifer Marohasy shows just how science and the Great Barrier Reef have been politicised and manipulated for woke agendas.
The Coral Reef Fact-Check Fiasco & Noble Cause Corruption
Just one small extract:
"I have shown that aerial surveys of coral reefs claiming extensive coral bleaching could easily be proven wrong by taking images with a drone at a lower altitude and also by simply getting in the water myself on scuba with an underwater camera — by doing old fashioned field work. Rather than being praised for these efforts, I was accused of misinformation by the RMIT ABC Fact Check Unit back in 2022, a unit affiliated with the international association of fact checkers that the new committee maybe looking to reinstate..."

It seems there is even an element of political blackmail with the GBR and the fabled quest for "net zero".

So now we’re onto Jennifer Marohasy, Mikko2? Sheesh, this is getting worse and worse!

Her claim that aerial surveys can be “proven wrong” by a handful of drone shots or scuba photos is not the knockout you think it is.

AIMS and GBRMPA don’t just fly over reefs and tick boxes. They combine aerial surveys with manta-tows, fixed-site in-water surveys, and long-term monitoring across hundreds of reefs, depths, and coral types. That’s how you build a reliable picture of a 2,300 km system. A diver’s photos from one site can be striking, but they’re not a substitute for systematic coverage.

And the irony?

Drones and in-water surveys are already being used in proper science, and they confirm the bleaching. A 2025 drone study at Lizard Island documented over 90% coral mortality after a mass bleaching event. The technology strengthens the aerial results, it doesn’t undermine them.

As for the “politicisation” angle, what’s actually political here isn’t AIMS’ methodology (which is public and transparent), but contrarians dressing up selective anecdotes as if they overturn system-wide data.

That’s not science, it’s spin.

So sure, Marohasy’s photos show that parts of the reef can look healthy up close, but system-wide surveys show repeated, accelerating bleaching events, and that’s the reality you keep deflecting from.

Mikko, I saw that article by J Marohasy, and submitted a comment via Substack blog. Here it is, as it may be of interest—the article is
“Very clear about the misinformation that often is spread around about the Reef. Reefs can have a long history but they don’t exist forever. For instance, when the Sea Level was about 100m lower about 30,000 years ago, it was much colder in an Ice Age. As the Ice Age departed, the Sea Level rose, with higher temperatures, corals formed and migrated upwards, close to the new shoreline. This has gone on for ages. What we see today is like a snapshot not a video over time. There is no guaranteed stability for a coral reef but inevitable change over time. Of course, there may be some questions about the influence of humans but as this article shows, interpretations often vary. I like the interpretation put forward in this article.”

Lytton,

Again, those changes happened gradually and over thousands of years. Not every 4-6 years like we're now seeing, which is orders of magnitude faster than the natural pace. Corals can adapt to slow shifts in sea level or temperature, but struggle when stressed repeatedly in just decades.

Your “snapshot not a video” line cuts both ways.

Yes, today’s Reef is one moment in a long history - but the “snapshot” we’re capturing right now shows record-breaking heat stress, back-to-back bleaching, and rising ocean heat content. That isn’t just “inevitable change.” It’s change at a speed and scale that undermines the reef’s ability to recover.

As for interpretation, there’s room for debate about severity and resilience. But the core measurements - water temperature thresholds, bleaching frequency, ocean heat uptake - are not interpretations, they’re empirical. That’s why AIMS, GBRMPA, CSIRO and international reef scientists all warn that the system is under unprecedented pressure.

So yes, reefs have always changed. But the pace matters. A reef that can rebuild over centuries is not the same as one hammered every few years by marine heatwaves. This is what Marohasy’s anecdotes gloss over, and it’s why the peer-reviewed science looks at long-term trends as well.

Waving away today’s bleaching as just another turn of the wheel ignores the difference between a reef that changes over millennia and one being hammered in real time.

The end is nigh! Oh dear…THE END.

No need to panic just yet, Lytton.

The Reef isn’t going to vanish overnight, and the planet isn’t going to collapse. Parts of the system look vibrant, others are stressed, and the main difference from the past is how often these big bleaching events are now rolling through.

That’s not "doom," it’s just the pattern we’re measuring.

Coral cover does bounce back - you’ll see that if you dive after a few good years. But the problem is, the next hit often comes before full recovery, so you end up with a reef that looks okay at first glance but isn’t as resilient as it appears.

So yes, change is happening faster than in the past, but it doesn’t equal "the end." It means management, not melodrama. Think of it like someone who keeps getting the flu: not dying, but not at their strongest either.

I hope this helps.

Dear me John Daysh, all those words to deny reality. The latest statistics show the Barrier Reef is in rude good health, and why shouldn't it be? Corals like warmer water, and the number of cyclones has dialled down significantly in recent decades, while it turns out that crown of thorns star fish plagues are just a natural response to abundant coral.

The Reef has never been at real risk, and it isn't now. The greatest "risk" is that it will spread further south along with the warmer water. We might get some barrier off the Gold Coast.

Graham,

In amongst all those words of mine are direct rebuttals to the talking points you’ve rehashed. If you’ve got something new, I’ll be glad to address it. But there’s no sense going in circles.

Thanks for another dose of common sense, Graham Young and Lytton. The article from Jennifer Marohasy is also significant in showing how the GBR has been weaponised as a political tool over the years despite actual evidence to the contrary. And yes, reefs are also thriving and growing off the Sunshine Coast as recent surveys have shown.
But if the climate catastrophists are right, it won't be too long before I have a beach right outside our front door rather than a couple of hundred metres away (it's all happening so fast, right?)
Yeah, right.

As if we needed more drive-bys, Mikko2.

You’ve ignored every challenge to your claims, offered no credible counter-data, and are now leaning on a published Texas Sharpshooter fallacy from Marohasy.

If your argument is that climate science is wrong because your local beach hasn’t moved yet… that says more about the argument than the beach.