A fantastic series from the Institute of public affairs. The Heretic is an insiders’ account of Peter Ridd’s ongoing legal battle with James Cook University. It tells the story of why Peter spoke out on the bad science surrounding climate change and the Great Barrier Reef, the extraordinary lengths that James Cook University went to…
From Jennifer Marohasy’s Blog April 10, 2020 By jennifer Exactly one year ago yesterday, I was getting off a train in Proserpine, looking to pickup a hire car to drive to Bowen. I wanted to know if the coral there was all dead, or not. Bowen is a coastal town in North Queensland, not far…
A comprehensive multi-year project challenges previous findings Norwegian University of Science and Technology A three-year, comprehensive study of the effects of ocean acidification challenges previous reports that a more acidic ocean will negatively affect coral reef fish behaviour. The study, conducted by an international coalition led by scientists from Australia and Norway, showed that coral…
Reposted from Jennifer Marohasy’s Blog November 14, 2019 By jennifer FRENCH military general Napoleon Bonaparte is quoted as saying that, “A good sketch is better than a long speech.” Then there is the expression, ”A picture is worth a thousand words.” So, why have I spent so much of the last two decades writing, rather…
Guest post by Mike Jonas I recently had a (fairly short) conversation with an acquaintance, who was stunned to discover that I did not think at all highly of the position that Professors Terry Hughes and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg at James Cook University, Queensland, have taken on coral science and the Great Barrier Reef. “Have you…
From Frontiers in Marine Science Original Research ARTICLE Front. Mar. Sci., 24 July 2019 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2019.00411 Severe Continental-Scale Impacts of Climate Change Are Happening Now: Extreme Climate Events Impact Marine Habitat Forming Communities Along 45% of Australia’s Coast Russell C. Babcock1,2*, Rodrigo H. Bustamante1, Elizabeth A. Fulton3, Derek J. Fulton3, Michael D. E. Haywood1, Alistair…
Reposted from Jennifer Marohasy’s blog July 16, 2019 By jennifer THE idea that the Great Barrier Reef is in need of saving from catastrophe is popular, especially among academics and politicians. In 2003, I published an article in the IPA Review entitled ‘Deceit in the Name of Conservation’ concerning the then Queensland Premier and Chief…
by Gideon Rozner Republished with permission from:The Spectator Australia, 9 March 2019 When the Left talks derisively about ‘climate deniers’, they probably imagine someone very different from Dr Peter Ridd. Bearded, bespectacled and softly-spoken, Ridd is a sandal-wearing one-time Green voter and former president of his local chapter of the Wildlife Protection Society. He is…
From The GWPF Date: 26/12/18 Peter Ridd, The Australian This unreliability of the science is now a widely accepted scandal in many other areas of study and it has a name: the replication crisis. When checks are made to replicate or confirm scientific results, it is regularly found that about half have flaws. Scientists from…
Guest post by David Middleton This gem was in my morning email from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in America… The Great Barrier Reef has had five near-death experiences in the past 30,000 years By Katie LanginMay. 28, 2018 , 11:00 AM Thirteen thousand years ago, as the last ice age ended,…
Guest post by David Middleton EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Climate change is internationally-recognised as one of the biggest threats to coral reefs around the world, including the Great Barrier Reef. For the last three years, coral bleaching, due to ocean warming associated with climate change, has impacted coral reefs worldwide. Mass coral bleaching events occur during…
Guest essay by Jim Steele Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism Recently Dr. Terry Hughes published the paper Global Warming and Recurrent Mass Bleaching of Corals (henceforth Hughes 2017) and concluded “immediate global action to curb future warming is…
Back in 1998, when we had the super El Niño, some of the warm water pooled east and west of Australia (seen in the 1998 image below) and damaged coral reefs there, setting off a cottage industry for noisy alarmy/worry types like Ove Hoegh-Guldberg that have turned the “save the coral reefs” issue into a…
by Walter Starck (with thanks to Dr. Bob Carter) The Great Barrier Reef is doomed again. A recent widely publicised scientific study reports the dramatic finding that it has lost half its coral in the last 27 years. Forty-eight precent of the loss is attributed to storm damage, with bleaching and crown-of-thorns starfish being responsible…
From the ocean weather will eat this idea alive department comes a ridiculous bit of wishful thinking from the world’s lead scientist on “the coral reefs are going to die and its all your fault” discipline. Yes, it is our hot headed buddy from Brisbane, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, with what just might be the wackiest climate…
Guest post by Bob Fernley-Jones The 12th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) was held in Cairns, Queensland, Australia last July. Not a bad venue for embracing subject field trips and the exotic and spectacular hinterland attractions. Yet they had time to reach a grand consensus statement endorsed reportedly by thousands of scientists. Step 1) Back in June, three eminent scientists…
Above: SST heat loss from Hurricane Irene The title is sarcasm, but it does present an interesting quandary for alarmists. What’s more acceptable – hurricanes and the loss of life and property they bring, or loss of coral reef systems? My guess is that given the dislike for humankind often demonstrated by the environmental movement,…
From the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University comes word of this paper in JGR. Washington, D.C. — Coral reefs are extremely diverse ecosystems that support enormous biodiversity. But they are at risk. Carbon dioxide emissions are acidifying the ocean, threatening reefs and other marine organisms. New research led by Carnegie’s Kenneth Schneider analyzed the role…
It seems that when you look at the way the data was gathered, and find that while some areas of the GBR declined, others gained. Analysed other ways, it doesn’t seem so alarming. Perhaps the phrase is “coral picking”? Assessing loss of coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef: A response to Hughes et al.…
From Andrew Bolt at Australia’s Herald Sun below, some sharp evidence in a new paper that the “coral bleaching” scare of the Great Barrier Reef is unfounded and mostly made up. This study indicates that at the scale of the whole GBR there was no net decline in live hard coral cover between 1995 and…