A small item sent by an alert reader caught our eye partly because it’s good news and partly because it pokes “settled science” chanters in the eye. According to ABC, the Australian one not the American one, “Coral colony discovered by mother and daughter citizen scientists could be world's largest”. How cool is that? Not just that it’s a big coral colony, or that it was found by “citizen scientists”, but that amateurs found “what is thought to be the largest coral colony on the Great Barrier Reef and possibly in the world” right under the noses of the cocksure climate establishment. An establishment that seems to have lost track of the difference between staring at a computer screen and actually diving into the water to have a look.
When we say “amateurs” we don’t mean it in a bad way. Indeed, as the story says:
“Sophie Kalkowski-Pope and her mum, Jan Pope, discovered the 111-metre-long Pavona clavus colony offshore from Cairns in Far North Queensland. They were diving for Citizens of the Reef's Great Reef Census when they realised they had found something special. ‘It's just these meadows of rippling coral as far as the eye can see,’ Ms Kalkowski-Pope said. ‘It's just an absolutely stunning ecosystem and this hotspot of life.’ After the pair made the discovery late last year, Ms Kalkowski-Pope returned with the charity in January to map and measure the structure with drones and measuring tapes, and created a 3D model.”
So if anyone wants to snarl “You’re not a climate scientist” we retort with the immortal words of William Pitt the Elder:
“There is one plain maxim, to which I have invariably adhered through life: that in every question in which my liberty or my property were concerned, I should consult and be determined by the dictates of common sense. I confess, my Lords, that I am apt to distrust the refinements of learning, because I have seen the ablest and the most learned of men equally liable to deceive themselves and to mislead others. The condition of human nature would be lamentable indeed, if nothing less than the greatest learning and talents, which fall to the share of so small a number of men, were sufficient to direct our judgement and our conduct. But providence has taken better care of our happiness, and given us, in the simplicity of common sense, a rule for our direction, by which we can never be misled.”
An expert, not an expert who says, is someone who uses common sense, knowledge, persistence and imagination to investigate a subject, not someone with paper credentials on media speed-dial. Oh, and at least in this case with monster flippers as well, because Ms. Kalkowski-Pope “described the area as ‘tidally dominated’” and added “Which we think is actually why this area has remained undiscovered for so long, because it's quite difficult to dive there”.
ABC had the good grace to state up front:
“A research scientist says the find indicates some coral reefs are surviving challenges like mass bleaching events.”
Brilliant. Though we already knew some coral reefs were surviving because they weren’t all dead or even sickly. But hey, we’re not experts who say.
As for other experts:
“James Cook University marine scientist Allison Paley believed the ‘quite impressive’ colony was undiscovered. ‘I think what's equally likely, possible, is that we just also haven't discovered a lot of equally large corals that are on reefs around the world,’ she said. She praised the citizen scientists as researchers’ ‘eyes on the ground’.”
Indeed. And please remember next time the experts who say say something, that the air of apodictic certainty that accompanies highly speculative declarations, about the current state of climate or something in the past for which we have only the faintest and blurriest of proxy evidence, that they went right past the largest coral colony on the GBR, possibly the world, time and again with modern sensing gear.
