If you listen to folks like David Attenborough, Prince Charles, Greta Thunberg, the BBC or other global warming cultists, there are certain key iconic symbols of their religion. There are the Maldives which we were first told would be underwater within 20 years in 1992 as a result of global warming and thus rising sea levels. Oddly every single Maldive island is still above water, the population of the Islands has grown dramatically and sea levels are unchanged. But still we must take action because we have only 20 years to save them. Then there is the Great Barrier Reef.
Hotter water will blanche the coral so killing the reef off. That is the official narrative as you can see in a recent edition of the BBC’s sister paper, the Guardian, below. But there are certain inconvenient facts. According to Mr Peter Ridd the Great Barrier Reef is now experiencing “record high coral cover”.
“This is data that’s been accumulated over a little while now and it shows … it’s actually at record high coral cover. We’ve got more coral on the Great Barrier Reef now than we did when records began in 1985. We’ve got twice as much coral as we had after huge cyclones went through the reef in about 2011 and 2012, and this record-high coral cover is despite supposedly having three catastrophic unprecedented bleaching events in just the last five years.“
This is all a little inconvenient, Mr Ridd putting some hard data out there. And so what happened to the debate when Ridd raised these issues? His employer, James Cook University in Queensland sacked him claiming that his work breached its code of conduct and that he was “failing to act in the collegial and academic spirit”, in criticising the work of a colleague. So I guess those colleagues who criticised Ridd got fired too? Er no. They were engaging in debate which is what Universities used to do but if you do not agree with the party line you are not allowed to debate.
Ridd is taking his case to court but the hard facts he presented remain out there, just like the Maldives with its unchanged land mass and increasing population. More inconvenient truths.
