Global Mystery: Barrier Reef dying, total panic, but no one cares enough to measure growth for last 15 years?
Fifteen years of missing data tells us everything we need to know
Peter Ridd and Jennifer Marohasy are continuing to follow up on the death of the Great Barrier Reef. Strangely, while everyone professes to care, and cry, and Malcolm Turnbull casually tossed half a billion at it, we see the extremely radioactive oddity that no one is worried enough to bother measuring the actual supposed decline of the seventh wonder of the modern world. Fifteen years is a long time to overlook that. Many panicked press releases have gone under the bridge yet apparently AIMS (and all the others) just want to keep quoting the shrinking growth rates, but not keep track of them.
On top of that, Peter Ridd and Jennifer Marohasy have spotted a pretty major flaw in the methodology for that much quoted study that claims growth on the reef has slowed by 15% from 1990 to 2005. If that number is right, the reef will have ground down to a 30% decline by now [in growth rate]. Disaster, disaster. Worthy of a hundred press releases and a thousand grants. So either it just hasn’t occurred to AIMS et al to keep studying the reef they say they love, or else they have quietly looked at those growth rates, found the reef isn’t dying and they shelved the results in the “don’t look now folderâ€.
Oh the dilemma. Which could it be?
https://joannenova.com.au/2020/01/global-mystery-barrier-reef-dying-total-panic-but-no-one-cares-enough-to-measure-growth-for-last-15-years/
