Corals destined to outlast all the alarmists out there

FOR decades taxpayers and other innocents have supported a parasitic industry in academia, bureaucracy, law, media and Green alarm “charities”, all studying, regulating, inspecting and writing about yet another “imminent threat to Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef”.

It has become the never-ending battle of the Coral Sea.

The threats change, but there is always a doomsday forecast – crown-of-thorns, oil drilling, fishing, cane farming, global warming, ocean acidity, coral bleaching, port dredging, chemical and fertiliser run-off, coal transport, river sediments, loss of World Heritage status etc. Every recycled scare, magnified by the media and parroted by politicians, generates more income for the alarm industry, usually at the expense of taxpayers, consumers or local industries.

No one supports overuse of toxic man-made chemicals, but well-run cane, cattle and coal companies can coexist with corals.

Corals first appeared 500 million years ago and have proven to be one of Earth’s great survivors.

They thrive in warm tropical water, cluster around hot volcanic fumaroles and survive massive petroleum spills, natural oil seeps, tidal waves and volcanic dust.

They have even recolonised the Montebello Island waters devastated by atomic bomb testing in the 1950s.

The ENSO oscillation of blobs of warm Pacific water which caused recent coral bleaching can be identified in historical records for at least 400 years.

Corals have survived El Nino warmings for thousands of years and they will probably outlast “Homo Alarmism” as Earth proceeds into the next glacial epoch.

Corals do not rely on computer models of global temperature – they read the sea level thermometer which falls and rises as the great ice sheets come and go.

In the warming phase like the one just ending, ice melts, sea levels rise and the reef that houses the corals may get drowned.

Corals have two choices – build their reef higher or just float south/inshore and build a new reef (like the Great Barrier Reef) in shallower, cooler water.

When islands sink beneath rising oceans, corals may build their own coral atolls as fast as the water rises. Then when the cold era returns, ice sheets grow, sea levels fall, and the warm-era coral reefs get stranded on the new beaches and coastal plains.

Usually the process is slow enough to allow the coral polyps to float into deeper warmer water closer to the equator and build another reef.

This eminently sensible policy of “move when you have to” has proved successful for the corals for 500 million years.