For a long time, the environmentalist Left has sworn that the Great Barrier Reef off the northeast coast of Australia was going to be destroyed by pollution and manmade climate change. It’s the world’s largest coral reef system, covering over 344,000 square kilometers (about the size of Japan) and home to more than 600 types of coral and 1,500 species of fish.
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Losing it would be an ecological disaster, of course. But despite the doom-and-gloom predictions of the environmentalists, it turns out the Great Barrier Reef is rebounding.
Annual report of Great Barrier Reef shows coral continues to rebound, defying climate doomsayers’ predictions https://t.co/r12giDuity
— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) September 8, 2026
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 or 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.
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Bjorn Lomborg, who wrote about the Great Barrier Reef’s coral growth, said the reason the media aren’t reporting on record growth is because it’s inconvenient to their narratives.
Last 5 years, Great Barrier Reef coral cover better than ever
But many deeply worried people don’t want to hear
First 4 years: response was to ignore data and claim ‘next year will be much worse’
Now: ‘Of course GBR improved—Australia spent billions fixing it’
But spending ≠… https://t.co/nvd92tVLeI
— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) August 15, 2026
This includes the massive amount of spending by Australia, spending $200-300 million (Australian dollars) annually on programs for “water quality, park management, monitoring and research.”
New 2026 data
Great Barrier Reef: Last five years best on record
Why doesn’t the media tell you?https://t.co/siAvj2dyiP pic.twitter.com/MT0sN4kuy8
— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) August 12, 2026
The coverage of the Reef largely stopped in 2020, when coral levels began their increase.
Official, reef-wide stat widely published as the Great Barrier Reef got worse
But when it got better, official stat stopped
Here is the optimal average (least-square) based on their own estimates from 1986-2020https://t.co/siAvj2dyiP pic.twitter.com/ehxePXJfMG
— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) August 12, 2026
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This is fantastic news for the Great Barrier Reef and for the environment. But because the environmentalist Left cannot tolerate good news — they don’t get to control your life if environmental news is good, after all — this story will get buried, ignored, and dismissed when it does pop up. But it proves once again that the Left’s climate predictions haven’t come to fruition, and that makes them mad.
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