By Jo Nova

Sixty percent of all human CO2 emissions have been emitted since 1985 but today the corals are healthier than ever

In 1985 humans were emitting only 19.6 billion tons of CO2 each year, and now we emit 37 billion tons. In the meantime AIMS have been dragging divers thousands of kilometers over the reefs to inspect the coral cover. These are the most detailed underwater surveys on the largest reef system in the world, and they show that far from being bleached to hell, the corals are more abundant than we have ever seen them.

As Peter Ridd points out, when the reef was doing badly, AIMS was happy to combine the data on the whole reef, so we could lament its demise. But lately AIMS splits it into separate sections and if Peter Ridd didn’t check the numbers, who would know it was a record across the full 2,300 kilometer length of the reef? And that may be exactly the point. As Ridd reminds us, in 2012 the AIMS team predicted the coral cover in the central and southern regions would decline to 5 – 10 percent cover by 2022. Instead the whole reef is thriving at 30 percent.

…

Meanwhile preposterous power games continue

UNESCO has been threatening to slap an endangered label on the reef for years. They  would have looked ridiculous if they had done this whilst corals were at a record high. But that didn’t stop them demanding tribute and conditions anyway, as if Australia can’t manage the reef by itself.

By Graham Lloyd, The Australian

The UNESCO recommendation that the World Heritage Committee not proscribe the reef as “in danger” at its meeting next month no doubt has come as a big relief for government but it still has plenty of strings attached. To keep favour with UNESCO, governments must ban all gillnet fishing by mid-2027 and more closely supervise land activities stretching hundreds of kilometres inland from the coastline, and further still from the reef itself. It must also keep the billions of dollars flowing for research and reef management.

 Who runs the country, is it our elected government or a foreign committee at the service of third world dictators?

The Greens, unfortunately, still struggle with big-numbers, or any numbers at all:

The Greens say the UNESCO decision is a “triumph of lobbying and spin over science”.  “The burning of fossil fuels is ­literally cooking our oceans and degrading marine ecosystems across the globe, and nowhere else has this been more politicised than on the Great Barrier Reef,” says Greens spokesman Senator Peter Whish-Wilson.

And who is politicizing The Great Barrier Reef more than The hyperbolic Greens themselves? No wonder Greens voters were the most confused in the AEF survey.

Ten years after our corals hit a record low, our survey showed that half the country didn’t realize the reef has recovered. Only 3% knew the corals were at a record high, and nearly half the Green voters were as wrong as they possibly could be — they thought coral cover was at a record low.

The full AIMS report will be released in August. There have been some bleaching events both before and after the survey, and as is normal, we won’t know for months whether any corals actually died or whether it  was just the normal home renovation that corals go through when they get stressed. It’s common for corals to throw out the zooanthellae as temperatures change and let in newer house-guests that are better acclimatized. Since sea levels near Queensland were 1 -2 meters higher 6,000 years ago, and the world was a lot warmer, corals can clearly look after themselves.

As Peter Ridd says the biggest threats to the reef are cyclones and crown-of-thorns starfish plagues, neither of which appear to be any worse now than they were years ago.

REFERENCES

Cumulative CO₂ emissions by world region: OWID

CO2 cumulative emissions 687 bt in 1985 and now 1,700 billion

From THE DAILY CALLER

REP. HARRIET HAGEMAN
CONTRIBUTOR

For two generations the Chevron Doctrine has given federal agencies an unfair advantage, outsized authority and unconstitutional power in interpreting statutes and issuing rules. Friday, the Supreme Court righted this wrong. 

Carved into the stone above the Supreme Court’s grand entrance is the phrase “Equal Justice Under Law.” But for as long as Chevron deference has existed, the courts have favored the desires, opinions and agendas of unelected bureaucrats, while placing unfair burdens on the American people. Established in the 1984 case Chevron v. NRDC, this doctrine instructs courts to defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of laws where the underlying statute is, according to the agencies themselves, ambiguous or even silent.

As a career Constitutional law and water rights attorney, I’ve seen first-hand how Chevron deference tips the scales of justice against the American people and in favor of the federal government. In short, the Judiciary surrendered its duty to interpret and apply the law for nearly 40 years, blindly trusting agencies to interpret the scope of their own power and what the law means. 

I’ve spent decades fighting against Chevron deference in my role as a private attorney and while working as Senior Litigation Counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens against unlawful regulatory overreach. 

Chevron deference strips authority from our courts and emboldens federal agencies to exceed and abuse their congressionally designated powers. While the best antidote for an oppressive, overbearing executive branch is a strong Congress, the decision by the Supreme Court to end Chevron deference is a huge step towards restoring our constitutional freedoms and separation of powers.

There has been much handwringing over this decision by those who support giving the administrative state unlimited power. How will the government function? How will legislators and courts keep up with all this extra work? How will anyone know what a bill or statute means? We need the “experts” to decide!  Let’s examine this hysteria.

For roughly two centuries our federal government functioned – and I might argue functioned better – without relying on the Chevron Doctrine. Congress passed laws; agencies enforced them and if adjustments were needed, then Congress could pass or repeal legislation to fix particular issues, or our courts would adjudicate them. While not even the greatest Congress can avoid some ambiguity when writing laws, more carefully thought out and thoroughly researched work can reduce it. Courts have always interpreted the meaning of laws – and being required to “defer” to an agency’s view simply because it could be deemed “reasonable” should be offensive to judges everywhere. 

Congress has been ceding its legislative authority to unelected bureaucrats for far too long. Administrative rule-making, which the citizens and businesses must adhere to, has far outpaced actual lawmaking in America. The Biden administration issued 4,429 final rules in 2021. That number was 3,168 the following year. Over the same period, Congress passed only 365 bills that became law. This discrepancy is a stunning reality check – it has been federal bureaucrats, not your elected representatives, that have been legislating, and not one of them is accountable to you. 

There has been much handwringing over this decision by those who support giving the administrative state unlimited power. How will the government function? How will legislators and courts keep up with all this extra work? How will anyone know what a bill or statute means? We need the “experts” to decide!  Let’s examine this hysteria.

For roughly two centuries our federal government functioned – and I might argue functioned better – without relying on the Chevron Doctrine. Congress passed laws; agencies enforced them and if adjustments were needed, then Congress could pass or repeal legislation to fix particular issues, or our courts would adjudicate them. While not even the greatest Congress can avoid some ambiguity when writing laws, more carefully thought out and thoroughly researched work can reduce it. Courts have always interpreted the meaning of laws – and being required to “defer” to an agency’s view simply because it could be deemed “reasonable” should be offensive to judges everywhere. 

Congress has been ceding its legislative authority to unelected bureaucrats for far too long. Administrative rule-making, which the citizens and businesses must adhere to, has far outpaced actual lawmaking in America. The Biden administration issued 4,429 final rules in 2021. That number was 3,168 the following year. Over the same period, Congress passed only 365 bills that became law. This discrepancy is a stunning reality check – it has been federal bureaucrats, not your elected representatives, that have been legislating, and not one of them is accountable to you. 

The end of Chevron deference is the return to a system of government more aligned with our Constitutional Republic (despite the fact that CNN apparently doesn’t know what that means).

Congresswoman Harriet Hageman is serving her first term as Wyoming’s at-large Member in the U.S. House of Representatives. She serves on the House Committee on the Judiciary, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government and the Committee on Natural Resources.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.