{"id":738140,"date":"2026-08-14T21:02:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T21:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/738140\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T21:02:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T21:02:18","slug":"the-great-barrier-reef-isnt-dead-yet-according-to-news-corp-that-makes-climate-science-a-pseudo-religion-graham-readfearn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/738140\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Barrier Reef isn\u2019t dead yet. According to News Corp that makes climate science a \u2018pseudo-religion\u2019 | Graham Readfearn"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Australian newspaper appeared to think it had a slam-dunk this week with a front page story pointing to official government data which showed \u201cthe Great Barrier Reef is refusing to die\u201d despite decades of warnings that global heating would cause its demise<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In an editorial to back its reporting, the newspaper claimed<\/a> the \u201ccontinued good health\u201d of the reef was a \u201cwelcome reminder that physics rather than the pseudo-religion of climate change doom still holds sway over the natural order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientific-based assessments of risks facing the reef from global heating were wrong, it seemed, and the data and the physics showed it.<\/p>\n

But the Australian Institute of Marine Science \u2013 the agency upon which the outlet pinned its claims \u2013 has told this column the newspaper was guilty of \u201coversimplified framing\u201d and that its recent surveys did not contradict warnings about the risks to the reef from the climate crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scientific concern is not that the GBR should already have disappeared, it\u2019s whether reefs will have sufficiently long periods between disturbances for full ecosystem recovery,\u201d the institute said.<\/p>\n

The Guardian sent questions to The Australian but received no response.<\/p>\n

\u2018Volatility is evidence of ecosystem instability\u2019<\/p>\n

The Australian\u2019s report<\/a> leaned heavily on the latest annual results of the institute\u2019s long-term monitoring program \u2013 a 40-year effort which, between August 2025 and June 2026, took detailed records from surveys of 121 reefs.<\/p>\n

The program reports annually on levels of coral cover \u2013 that is, how much live hard coral is growing on reef areas \u2013 which was at \u201cnear record levels\u201d across the reef, The Australian reported.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

According to the institute, \u201ccoral cover across all three regions of the GBR increased slightly or remained similar to levels recorded in 2025, signalling the start of recovery from the impacts of the 2024 mass bleaching event.\u201d<\/p>\n

But was this evidence that \u201cdecades of scientific consensus\u201d about the reef was wrong, as The Australian had suggested?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d replied Aims.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe [monitoring] findings show that many reefs in the Great Barrier Reef<\/a> retain a strong capacity to recover when disturbance pressure eases. That is evidence of resilience, not evidence that climate-related risks have been overstated.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an editorial, The Australian newspaper wrote: \u201cThe continued good health of the Great Barrier Reef is a welcome reminder that physics rather than the pseudo-religion of climate change doom still holds sway over the natural order.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Aims responded that it was physics that underpinned the science of climate change and coral bleaching.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe phrase \u2018continued good health\u2019 overlooks the volatility of the reef during the past 15 years when rapid gains in coral cover have been followed by sharp losses,\u201d Aims said.<\/p>\n

\u201cVolatility is evidence of ecosystem instability; it shows how quickly recovery can be reversed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Out of touch\u2019<\/p>\n

The Australian\u2019s report gave prominence to several quotes and claims of Dr Peter Ridd \u2013 a long-time climate science sceptic<\/a> who rejects the risk to corals from global heating.<\/p>\n

Ridd had said, the newspaper wrote, that recent coral bleaching events had \u201cnot produced a major drop in coral cover.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said \u201cdata since 1986\u201d showed reefs in every sector \u201chave had periods of very low coral cover. This is entirely natural.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CouldCould \u2018Godzilla\u2019 El Ni\u00f1o bring the hottest year on record? \u2013 video explainer<\/p>\n

Aims said that \u201chigh coral cover in 2026 doesn\u2019t demonstrate low mortality in preceding years\u201d and that it was \u201cwrong to suggest [coral bleaching events] have killed very little coral.\u201d<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter | When needed<\/p>\n

Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n

Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 2016 and 2017 events caused serious coral mortality at very large scales, and the 2024 event drove the Reef\u2019s largest coral loss in nearly 40 years of monitoring in two of the three regions,\u201d Aims said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHigh coral cover is evidence of recovery and resilience, not evidence that the disturbances causing mortality didn\u2019t happen. The concern is whether recovery windows remain long enough for that resilience to continue operating as disturbance frequency increases.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aims reported that increases in coral cover after 2017<\/a> \u201chad been primarily, but not exclusively, driven by fast-growing but vulnerable corals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Australian\u2019s report also briefly referenced \u2013 accurately \u2013 research by Dr Mark Eakin, a US-based oceanographer and leading coral reef scientist.<\/p>\n

Eakin told Temperature Check it was \u201cwell-understood this rapid colonisation by weedy, fast-growing corals is only the first step in the succession that occurs after reef destruction and that full recovery takes decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rapid return of five severe marine heatwaves causing widespread bleaching in less than a decade shows that the reefs of the GBR are not being given enough time to recover,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Study findings \u201cmisinterpreted\u201d<\/p>\n

Lloyd\u2019s story also reported on a study by Macquarie University of \u201cpotentially \u00adclimate-resilient reef locations\u201d around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout one-third of the Great Barrier Reef was judged to be resilient to the impacts of climate change,\u201d Lloyd reported.<\/p>\n

This is also wrong and is not what the study found.<\/p>\n

One of the study\u2019s authors, Dr Stacy Jupiter, of the Wildlife Conservation Society, told Temperature Check the Australian had \u201cmisinterpreted\u201d the study\u2019s conclusions.<\/p>\n

\"GreatGreat Barrier Reef coral bleaching event in 2024 most widespread and severe on record – video<\/p>\n

She said the study \u2013 which has not yet appeared in a journal \u2013 had modelled coral cover at reefs around the world now and up to the year 2050 and looked for areas with better chances than others of surviving.<\/p>\n

Crucially, she said the study was \u201cpre-designed to select 30% of coral reefs from each ecoregion\u201d to match with global targets to protect 30% of oceans by 2030.<\/p>\n

She said it was \u201cnot predicted that every identified reef will survive\u201d and it was \u201can incorrect interpretation to say that the study judged a third of the GBR to be resilient with any degree of certainty.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, rather than finding a third of the reef to be \u201cresilient to the impacts of climate change\u201d the study was, rather, set up to identify 30% of the Great Barrier Reef that may have a better chance at surviving global heating in the short term so that conservationists might choose to focus their efforts in those places.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Australian newspaper appeared to think it had a slam-dunk this week with a front page story pointing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-738140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}