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A new report is out showing a 14 percent decline in the world’s coral reefs due to climate change between 2008 and 2019, but there are many reasons not to take the report at face value.

The report stated there is “a strong association between a decline in coral cover and progressively rising sea temperatures associated with climate change.”  However, the report also blamed overfishing, coastal development, and declining water quality for stressing coral reefs.  Therefore, anyone seeking to make grandiose conclusions about climate change based on this report would be disingenuous at best and lying to you worst.

But the grandiose conclusions and policy recommendations have already started.  The report itself noted many reefs could recover if immediate action is taken to stabilize emissions and fight future warming.  That’s quite a claim – pass the Green New Deal and the oceans will cool down just in time for the coral to bounce back – that’s fantastic!  An NOAA official said, “It is possible to turn the tide on the losses we are seeing, but doing so relies on us as a global community making more environmentally conscious decisions in our everyday lives.”  That claim is even more fantastical – I can save the coral if I don’t pop the top on my soda can today.

Actually, they’re talking about far bigger changes.  They’re talking about completely disrupting everybody’s lives in the name of stopping climate change.  The report said, “It is clear that a reduction in global emissions is necessary to deliver a positive future for coral reef ecosystems and the human communities that depend on them.”  How much of a reduction?  The report doesn’t say, but other climate crackpots have:  Carbon emissions will have to fall to zero by the end of the century if the coral reefs are to be saved, a government scientist claimed.  Zero emissions – but that’s not all.  New research from the University of Leeds in the UK says every American will have to cut their energy use by 90 percent if we’re gonna save the planet from burning up.   Energy use will have to fall by half, the world over.  The climate crackpots also want to limit your travel, only let you have 16 gallons of gas a year, cut your food consumption by almost a third, and allow you to buy only 9 pounds of clothing annually.   Sign me up!

But wait!  The coral reefs aren’t disappearing, after all.  The report notes coral reefs rebounded in 2019, regaining 2 percent of their cover.  Moreover, the Australian Institute of Marine Science found in July this year the coral cover in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is at a record high with no serious bleaching detected.  Due to regrowth, coral cover there is now higher than at several points in the 1980s, the Institute found.

Finally, China has destroyed as much as 100 square miles of coral reefs in the process of building artificial islands and military bases in the South China Sea in recent years.  Where’s the outrage?  Where are the environmental groups?   Why aren’t they up in arms about this?

I don’t believe coral is in crisis because the people who say it is don’t act like it.  If they were serious, we never would have heard the end of them complaining about China destroying miles and miles of coral.  What did we hear?  Nothing!

So pardon my skepticism.  Coral reef advocates can’t place the blame squarely in climate change, there are other factors, they themselves admit.  Climate change advocates want to completely turn your life upside down based on politicized science that remains hotly disputed.  And they can’t explain why coral reefs are rebounding when, according to them, climate change keeps getting worse and worse and worse and we’re all gonna die when the planet burns up in 10 years.  They’ve hyped everything, so I believe nothing.   Until somebody can show me otherwise, the supposed coral crisis looks a lot like other climate hoaxes, like the disappearing polar bears that didn’t disappear and the preposterous prediction New York City was going to be completely underwater by 2019.  What a bunch of bunk.  Why does anybody listen to these clowns?

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