UNESCO pushes ahead with Great Barrier Reef plan

UN World Heritage Committee is on track to classify the Great Barrier Reef as "in danger".
New Daily
Jul 19 2021

Despite opposition in Australia, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee is pushing ahead with plans to classify the Great Barrier Reef as an endangered natural site.

The draft decision is a proposal to place the site on the list of endangered world heritage, the committee’s director Mechtild Roessler said during the 44th session of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in the Chinese city of Fuzhou.

The proposal would be on the agenda on Friday, she said.

The director and the president of the 44th session, China’s Vice Minister of Education Tian Xuejun, dismissed speculation that the move was related to political tensions between China and Australia.

“The recommendation is based on the reports and data provided to us by Australia,” said Tian Xuejun, who objected to “baseless allegations.”


As a result of climate change, the world’s largest reef is threatened by warm water and coral bleaching.

To prevent it from being red-listed, the Australian government had invited more than a dozen ambassadors on a snorkelling trip to the reef ahead of the meeting.

Nine of the 15 diplomats were from countries that would have voting rights at the committee’s meeting.

The Great Barrier Reef off the east coast of Australia stretches over more than 344,000 square kilometres, making it larger than Italy.

It can be seen with the naked eye from space.


‘In danger’: UNESCO flags risk to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef
Fury in Canberra as UNESCO advises world’s biggest reef be moved to list of world heritage sites ‘in danger’ because of climate change.

In the UNESCO draft, the World Heritage Committee has urged Australia to take action against climate change. It also addressed the quality of the water around the reef, which has been a World Heritage Site since 1981.

The long-term outlook for the natural wonder has gone from “poor” to “very poor.”

Climate change and its impact on World Heritage are an important topic at the meeting in Fuzhou. The director of the World Heritage Committee stressed that the idea of the List of Endangered Sites is “a call to action” in which the entire world community should cooperate.

Ernesto Ottone, the UN agency’s department head in charge, also said, “That’s not about punishment, it’s how we preserve our heritage for future generation.”

The meeting was postponed a year ago because of the coronavirus pandemic and is now being held via a mixture of online and in-person participation.

Decisions on applications for classification as new World Heritage sites are to be made next weekend. There are 1,121 World Heritage sites worldwide.

Currently, 53 World Heritage sites are classified as endangered.

Is The Great Barrier Reef In Danger?

No - it has survived warmer temperatures, cooler temperatures, more CO2, less CO2.  ::)

https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/image-84.png
Figure 1. Hard Coral cover for 9 of the 11 sectors. Pompey and Swains removed.

So there is variation. Cyclones, storms in general, Crown of Thorns starfish, impact from a ship and the Reef continues on. The same level now as 1986.

If Pompeys/ Swains is included it is included it is still at about the same level as 1986.

https://i2.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/image-85.png
Figure 2, Hard Coral cover for the entire AIMS dataset of 11 sectors.

Edit: "The Great Barrier Reef has lost half its coral cover in the last 27 years. The loss was due to storm damage (48%), crown of thorns starfish (42%), and bleaching (10%) according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today by researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in Townsville and the University of Wollongong."

https://www.aims.gov.au/docs/media/latest-releases/-/asset_publisher/8Kfw/content/2-october-2012-the-great-barrier-reef-has-lost-half-of-its-coral-in-the-last-27-years

Dated October 2012

edit2: "“The recommendation is based on the reports and data provided to us by Australia,” said Tian Xuejun, who objected to “baseless allegations.” "

Baseless? ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

BTW - Crown of Thorns starfish is a natural predator. Its numbers vary also.

A new paper discusses the known GBR bleaching events.

Excerpt -"  Coral bleaching was first observed in 1981 according  to  Veron  (2008)  and  many  others.  However,  this  phenomenon  was  also  reported  earlier  but  little  or  no  attention  was  given  to  it.  Yonge already  in  1931 found  that  living  corals on  the  Great  Barrier  Reef  were  bleached  after being  exposed  to  high  temperature  (Oliver  et  al. 2009; Yonge  and  Nicholls  1931),  and  Kamenos and Hennige (2018) recorded the traces of coral bleaching  in  coral  rock  cores  from  the  Great Barrier Reef back to 1575. So, coral bleaching is a phenomenon that always has existed as a normal way of adaptation to changing water temperatures, and is not a modern phenomenon. "

https://km.dmcr.go.th/ckeditor/upload/files/Research%20Bulletin/FullpaperPMBC/06Coral_bleaching_recorded_durin.pdf

An analysis of more than 600 coral reef islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans showed that some remained stable (40 per cent) or increased in area (40 per cent). Only 20 per cent decreased in area yet it is widely promoted in green activist circles that coral islands, atolls and reefs are disappearing with sea level rise. Some islands grew as much as 5.6 hectares in a decade. Tuvalu’s main atoll, Funafuti, comprising 33 islands around the rim of a lagoon, gained 32 hectares during the last 115 years.It was predicted in 1988 that some of the 1,196 islands of the Maldives would be under water by 2018 and that drinking water would run out for the 200,000 inhabitants. Thirty years have been and gone since this dire prediction. The Maldives is thriving, has potable water, the population has doubled and there has been a building boom of waterside tourist facilities.
...
Tuvalu is the symbol of a drowning Pacific island nation yet the total land area of Tuvalu has increased by 2.9 per cent over the last four decades. At the 2019 South Pacific Forum in Tuvalu, Australia was berated for refusing to commit economic suicide and close its coal industry despite handing out $500 million for climate change to the region. There was no mention of China. This shows the essence of the politics of climate change. It is a cash grab that knowingly ignores validated science.
...

A global scale analysis of 221 islands in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans reveals ‘a predominantly stable or accretionary trend in an area of atoll islands worldwide’ throughout the 21st century. Land area for the 221 studied islands had increased by six per cent between 2000 and 2017. The Maldives alone expanded 37.5 square kilometres from 2000-2017. This is in accord with a 2019 global scale analysis of 709 islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans that revealed 89 per cent were either stable or growing in size and only a few small islands had slightly decreased in size.

Climate activism by the IPCC and COP is littered with lies, false claims, fraud and cooked data. Young women like Brianna Fruen and Greta Thunberg are paraded to deliver an emotional fact-free message and yet claim to follow the science. The COP26 doomsday scenario for Pacific atoll nations has nothing to do with climate, the environment or the welfare of islanders. These are UN-sponsored meetings to use their sticky fingers to extract money from Western countries that do not protect their economy, freedoms and sovereignty.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2021/11/cash-levels-rising/

lee wrote on Dec 4^th, 2021 at 3:25pm:

A new paper discusses the known GBR bleaching events. Excerpt -"  Coral bleaching was first observed in 1981 according  to  Veron  (2008)  and  many  others.  However,  this  phenomenon  was  also  reported  earlier  but  little  or  no  attention  was  given  to  it.  Yonge already  in  1931 found  that  living  corals on  the  Great  Barrier  Reef  were  bleached  after being  exposed  to  high  temperature  (Oliver  et  al. 2009; Yonge  and  Nicholls  1931),  and  Kamenos and Hennige (2018) recorded the traces of coral bleaching  in  coral  rock  cores  from  the  Great Barrier Reef back to 1575. So, coral bleaching is a phenomenon that always has existed as a normal way of adaptation to changing water temperatures, and is not a modern phenomenon. " https://km.dmcr.go.th/ckeditor/upload/files/Research%20Bulletin/FullpaperPMBC/06Coral_bleaching_recorded_durin.pdf

In 1830, Sir Charles Lyell published the first of his three-volume classic Principles of Geology: Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes in the Earth’s Surface by Reference to Causes now in Operation. Charles Darwin received the first volume in 1830 which he took with him on HMS Beagle, the others he received during his voyage. Lyell suggested that coral atolls formed around the rims of ancient submarine volcanoes.

Darwin’s voyage allowed him to inspect many volcanic islands, coral reefs and atolls. In his 1842 book The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, Darwin showed that volcanoes were at various heights above the sea floor. If sea level falls or a volcano rises from the sea floor, coral attached to the volcano is killed upon exposure to air. If sea level rises, coral attaches itself to a volcano and grows vertically and horizontally as sea level rises. Even very rapid sea level rises enlarge coral atolls and do not destroy them. Darwin drew a cross-section of a coral atoll on a sunken volcanic substrate showing the effects of a relative sea level rise by the sinking of a volcano.

In 1897, three holes into the Tuvalu’s main atoll were drilled by Professor Sir T.W. Edgeworth David to test Darwin’s theory. More than 300 metres of coral was intersected showing that coral kept growing as the substrate sank. Deep drilling through coral at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia in the 1960s intersected volcanic rocks at depth. The theories of Lyell and Darwin were validated.
Ibid