Fight to save Great Barrier Reef could cost billions, secret government modelling estimates


Secret government modelling obtained by the ABC estimates it could cost up to $16 billion to meet water quality targets over the next decade to help save the Great Barrier Reef.

Key points:

The costings were meant to be included in a key report last week
It is a preliminary estimate from independent water quality and economic experts
The $16 billion cost estimate is now undergoing peer review
This figure dwarfs the funding commitments of both the major parties for fighting pollution in the reef.

The initial costings, which were formulated by an independent group of economic and water quality experts, were originally meant to be included in the final report of the Great Barrier Reef Water Science Taskforce released last week.

But the modelling was left out so it could be properly reviewed and tested. It is expected to be finished by next month.

But the ABC has obtained a copy of the preliminary modelling which warns that the cost estimate needed "to meet the 2025 targets for the GBR requires a very significant increase in investment from current levels...the total cost of meeting the targets...is $16bn."

"It is a bit more than we thought, it does worry us," said WWF's reef spokesman Nick Heath when the ABC showed him the estimate.

"But it's not out of the ballpark. I think it is a credible figure. It's absolutely billions not millions that will save the reef, yet we've only seen millions from the major parties to date."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-02/great-barrier-reef-pollution-fight-could-c...

Lying hypocritical Greenie Warmists just LOVE the Great Barrier Reef.

It enables them to tell SO many lies.  That coral "bleaching" (expulsion of symbiotic algae) has been happening for millions of years goes unmentioned below -- as is the fact that corals have in the past coped with far greater temperature variations than anything we have seen  recently.  And corals are still with us, funnily enough.

They do respond to temperature, among other things, but the "bleaching" is mainly in order to recruit different varieties of symbiotic algae.  And corals are hardier than they look.  In "bleached" form they can survive for quite a while on just their normal filter feeding.  "Bleached" corals are NOT dead.

And the present ocean warming is clearly due to El Nino, a temporary warming that is part of a natural cycle.  It's actually the La Nina that normally follows El Nino that is the biggest concern.  Corals are more likely to "bleach" in response to cooling than they are to warming.

And let me again mention my favourite fact about coral:  In 1954 the USA exploded a 15 megaton thermonuclear device over Bikini atoll.  And Bikini atoll had lots of coral.  So there is no coral there at all now?  Far from it.  The corals there now are huge, abundant and thriving.  So if coral reefs can recover from an H-bomb blast, why is a pissy one degree temperature rise in GBR waters of concern?


Corals at Bikini atoll today

Strange that all that goes unmentioned below, isn't it?  You would not suspect any of it from the screeches below.  The words below are "an orchestrated litany of lies", to quote a distinguished judge on another matter.  The Waremists just want more funding and are prepared to lie and deceive to get it.  Global warming is a global racket dreamt up by scientists for the benefit of scientists.


Scientists: Act This Election, Or The Reef Is Doomed
By Thom Mitchell on May 19, 2016

The Federal Government’s plan to save the Great Barrier Reef is “totally inadequate,” and if whoever forms government doesn’t commit at least $10 billion this election the natural wonder is likely to be doomed, scientists at James Cook University have said.

This extraordinary warning comes from leading water quality expert Jon Brodie and Emeritus Professor Richard Pearson, who are speaking out after they published a paper this week. In an interview this morning, Brodie said the Reef “will never be in its full gory again, we can’t expect that, [but]it’s going to get worse unless we do something”.

The Scientists said the twin threats of poor water quality and climate change could put the Reef in “terminal” decline within five years, unless whoever forms government comes to office with a comprehensive, cohesive, and adequately-funded rescue plan.

The Coalition Government has released a plan, known as Reef 2050, but it scarcely mentions climate change and Brodie said it is “totally inadequate”. “I’m probably the leading water quality expert for the Great Barrier Reef over the last 30 years and I’m saying the water quality [aspect of the plan]is absolutely inadequate,” he said.


IMAGE: WWF Australia. Coral bleaching at Lizard Island.

“It was meant to be a comprehensive plan, of course, but as has been pointed out by everyone, and particularly the Australian Academy of Science, it’s totally inadequate,” he said.

The James Cook University scientists said catchment and coastal management programs need to be funded in the order of $1 billion per year over the next ten years. “We need a plan to fix up water quality as best we can, to provide some resilience against the oncoming climate change impacts,” Brodie said.

The Great Barrier Reef has made headlines over recent months as 93 per cent of the Reef, which is the only living structure that can be seen from space, has been affected by coral bleaching.

Fuelled by warming waters, the coral bleaching event was the worst in recorded history. The uncompromising heat was a result of an El Nino climate system, superimposed over baseline temperatures already pushed up by climate change.

“Before climate change kicked in we simply never saw bleaching,” Professor Terry Hughes has previously told New Matilda. “It’s quite confronting that we’ve now got to the stage that every El Nino event – and they happen every few years – is a threat to the Great Barrier Reef,” said Hughes, the Director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

The threats posed by climate change are exacerbated by plague-like outbreaks of Crown of Thorns Starfish, which are triggered by poor water quality. According to the James Cook University Scientists, the next outbreak is most likely to occur around 2025.

If we don’t make serious inroads at improving water quality by then, the fate of the Reef looks grim.

Brodie and Emeritus Professor Pearson are calling for management of the Reef to be extended beyond the bounds of the World Heritage Area, north to the Torres Strait, south to Hervey Bay, and inland to include the Great Barrier Reef catchment.


Now go to the LINK to feast on more Greenie lies and hypocrisy:-

https://newmatilda.com/2016/05/19/scientists-act-this-election-or-the-reef-is-do...

Somebody will clean up, thats for sure. 

The greatest danger to the quite normal and healthy Great Barrier Reef now is the threat of deliberate damage to the reef by the Greenies frustrated by the public exposure of their lies, deception and hypocrisy as these sleazy grubs will stop at nothing to try to stop the Adani coal mine.

Just a short while ago I predicted the frustrated and exasperated and humiliated and embarrassed Lefties and Greenies would start to get nasty and defamatory.