Greta Thunberg maintained that the corals of the Great Barrier Reef had “halved” due to global warming. In the same alarmist vein, the Spanish government now blames the heat for an excess in mortality. Are they correct?
The Great Barrier Reef off the Australian coast is of enormous importance for flora and fauna. Therefore, the death of the world’s largest coral reef would be a devastating consequence of global warming. It is precisely because of this “fatal development” that climate activists have been sowing panic for years.
But now the opposite has happened: Since scientific records began in 1986, the researchers have never registered anything remotely as large as the current increase. Most recently, Swedish climate termagant Greta Thunberg claimed that the corals there had “halved“.
Calcium carbonate reef-building organisms play an important role as a carbon magnet (as CaCO₃) absorbing rates of up to 90 million tonnes of carbon per year. Reefs also provide chemical compounds for treatments for cardiovascular diseases, ulcers, and cancers.
Visible even from space, the Great Barrier Reef is considered a unique habitat for thousands of animals and plants. Some 1500 different fish and 4000 mollusc species live in the ecosystem consisting of 900 islands and 2500 reefs. As the water temperature increases, the corals bleach and then die, it has been claimed. In fact, sensitive corals have repeatedly died from the “Great Bleach”. The few scientists who had disagreed with the disappearance of the reef, were vigorously denounced by climate alarmists.
But they were right all along. This year, Australia is reporting strong growth of corals in the central and northern reaches of the 2 300-kilometer ecosystem. The Australian Institute for Marine Sciences reported that the new growth was well above expectations.
Even if the coral growth in the south has decreased, overall there is a clear plus – the reef has grown more quickly than since the beginning of the monitoring program 36 years ago. However, climate activists who predicted the demise of the Reef are now warning against speaking of a trend reversal, because the development could also change again as corals are very sensitive to temperature changes.
Two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia recorded the highest amount of coral cover in nearly four decades, though the reef is still vulnerable to climate change and mass bleaching, a monitoring group said last week. Previously, scientists had warned that the Great Barrier Reef was at a “terminal stage”.
The northern and central parts of the UNESCO world heritage-listed reef have experienced some recovery while the southern region has seen a loss of coral cover due to crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks, according to a report by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, a government agency.
AIMS CEO Paul Hardisty said that while the coral in the north and central regions was a sign the reef could recover from disturbances, the loss of coral in the southern region demonstrated how the reef was still vulnerable to “continued acute and severe disturbances that are occurring more often and are longer-lasting”.
The Great Barrier Reef has suffered from widespread and severe bleaching because of rising ocean temperatures. The reef was hit especially hard in 2016 and 2017 by underwater heat waves that prompted bleaching events. This year, it suffered a sixth mass bleaching.
Exploding number of deaths in Spain also blamed on heat
According to official figures, the “high temperatures” in Spain are responsible for over 20 000 additional deaths from January to July 2022. But this statement does not seem to be credible.
Incidentally, over 90 percent of those over 12 years old in the country have had the experimental “vaccines”. With the country’s death toll exploding, the official claim is that the high temperatures are to blame; but there are legitimate doubts about this explanation.
Spanish lawyer Aitor Guisasola used the figures from the MoMo (Mortality Monitoring), which describes itself as a “system for monitoring daily mortality from all causes”, as a basis. It was developed in 2004 as part of the “Plan for preventive measures against the effects of excessive temperatures” coordinated by the Ministry of Health.
“The aim of MoMo is to determine the deviations of the daily observed mortality from the expected mortality based on historical mortality series. MoMo allows for an indirect estimation of the impact of events of public health importance.”
The Instituto Carlos III in Madrid is responsible for these “estimates”. The “research institute in the field of public health is legally constituted as a public research agency, a kind of quasi-autonomous body under Spanish law”.
The current MoMo report was published on July 26, 2022 and shows the “key results” since January 1, 2020.
The number of deaths from January to July 2022 reflect “true barbarism”, said Guisasola. According to MoMo, 22 541 more people than expected died in the first seven months of the year. Of these, only 3828 are assigned to high temperatures in the statistics. How the remaining 18 713 people died is not mentioned.
And for July alone, MoMo estimated 7 985 additional deaths, but only 1 913 of those deaths were attributed to high temperatures. So how did the other people die?
“Someone should explain that to us,” Guisasola remarked. The lawyer considered it “curious” that even in January there were 631 more deaths than expected. “Must be because we had a very hot January,” Guisasola noted with irony.
According to MoMo statistics, there were a total of 24 490 more deaths in Spain in 2021 than expected. So how many additional deaths will there be by the end of 2022 compared to 22 541 in the first seven months of the year?
Spanish media portal El Debate also reported that the official claim that the heat was responsible for the additional deaths was not credible.
Health Minister Carolina Darias therefore felt compelled to declare that the MoMo numbers were only “an estimate” that “does not necessarily correspond to reality”.
According to the MoMo report, there have been 115 203 “excess deaths from all causes” nationally since January 1, 2020. The high temperatures are only mentioned as the cause in 9 286 cases.
Despite climate scare-mongering, the highest temperature in Spain was actually recorded in Ecija in the south with 47C in 1956.