Climate Scientists: We Need More Money!

In 1999, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg published a highly influential paper which predicted the loss of coral reefs by 2050--50 years in the future at that time--due to global warming (although there were some dissenting voices that said it was due to killing wildlife or pollution, which had been ongoing for centuries in some parts of the world). 

In 2017, the British Independent newspaper continued to report that "More than 90 percent of world's coral reefs will die by 2050," and that there was, at that point, no way to stop it. 

Today we are being told that "Almost all coral reef ecosystems face risk of collapse in 50 years, study warns." In other words, after 26 years, we are still 50 years from when the coral reefs will collapse. Or, as the Los Angeles Times put it last month: "The Great Barrier Reef refuses to die on schedule." 

The author of the latter article, Bjorn Lomborg, begins by noting (bold added):

    Australia’s marine scientists released their annual audit of the Great Barrier Reef last month, and it contains news you almost certainly haven’t heard: Coral cover held steady or increased across most of the reef. The scientists measure the percentage of living hard coral cover, and in the 40 years of systematic study, the five best years on record are the five most recent. That is the sound of a catastrophe not happening.

    You haven’t heard the good news because the reef has an entire public relations industry built around predicting its imminent demise as a result of global warming. In 2012, researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science reported that the reef had lost about half its coral cover since the mid-1980s — falling from 28% to just 13.9% — and projected that cover could halve yet again by 2022. In 2014, the Guardian published an interactive obituary for the reef. In 2016, Outside magazine agreed, declaring the reef dead at age 25 million.

    The patient, it turned out, hadn’t read the notices. By 2021, coral cover was higher than at any point since measurements began in 1986. It stayed at unprecedented levels through 2022 and 2023 and climbed to a new all-time high in 2024. The reef answered two decades of death sentences with more coral than anyone had ever measured.

    The scientists even stopped publishing the reefwide statistic — making it harder for the layperson to easily see that the reef was defying long-held predictions. But researchers from AIMS continued publishing regional averages, making it possible to effectively re-create their reefwide average — which clearly kept increasing.

 In the case of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia then reverted to Plan B:

When catastrophe fails to arrive, a second story stands ready: Take a bow and send the bill. Australia’s federal and Queensland governments have spent more than 5 billion Australian dollars on reef programs since 2014, and when UNESCO declined in July to put the reef on its “in danger” list, Australia’s ministers hailed the decision as recognition of the country’s world-leading reef management. It takes nerve to spend decades forecasting an ecosystem’s death and then claim credit for its historically high coral cover and remarkable resilience. 

But Lomborg's article must have caused a stir because we are now back to Plan A, just with the doomsday of coral reefs pushed out a bit longer.