That is the title of Bjorn Lomborg’s article in the Wall Street Journal on the current hysteria over the Great Barrier Reef:
Last month, headlines shouted in unison: Great Barrier Reef suffers worst coral decline on record. Environmental journalists paint a picture of immense devastation driven by climate change.
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Australian scientists have meticulously tracked the reef’s coral cover since 1986. For many years, they published an annual average coral cover figure. The data show that the reef was mostly stable until 2000, then began declining, and by 2012 it had shrunk to less than half its original cover.But then the reef started growing. It rebounded spectacularly. The scientists stopped publishing their reef-wide average, perhaps because it didn’t further the climate-change narrative. But they continued publishing regional and sectorwide averages, making it possible for anyone to effectively recreate the reef-wide average.
By 2021 coral cover was higher than it had been since measurements began. It increased further, staying at unprecedentedly high levels in 2022 and 2023. The coral grew more still in 2024.
That brings us to 2025. The new data show that coral cover has dropped across 10 of 11 sectors, with two experiencing their largest one-year drop. Climate alarmists rang their bells: “Great Barrier Reef suffers worst coral decline on record,” read a BBC headline. CNN: “Australia’s Great Barrier Reef devastated by worst coral bleaching on record, new report finds.”
Never mind that the reductions came off the record high of 2024, or that large year-to-year variations are typical. …
The data show coral cover across the entire reef in 2025 is “only” the fourth-highest ever recorded since systematic monitoring began. Cover across the entire reef is still higher than in 2021, which itself was higher than in any other time prior recorded year. All the highest years are in the 2020s, yet we hear nothing but doom and gloom.
Global warming alarmists, and leftists generally, tout themselves as voices of “science,” but the reality is that they consistently misrepresent the facts. In the end, one can only ask, if their theory is correct, why are they constantly lying in order to support it?
