Dr Peter Ridd: The Great Barrier Reef is NOT dying, CLIMATE CHANGE is NOT destroying it!!

An expert panel led by the former chief scientist Ian Chubb has warned ministers that controversial scientist Peter Ridd is misrepresenting robust science about the plight of the Great Barrier Reef, and compared his claims to the strategy used by the tobacco industry to raise doubt about the impact of smoking.

The warning, in a letter to the federal environment minister, Sussan Ley, and the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, follows Ridd launching a lecture tour in which he has repeated his claim that farmland pollution does not significantly damage the natural wonder.

Ridd’s tour has been supported by rightwing commentators and sugarcane industry managers campaigning against proposed state regulations limiting sediment and chemical runoff on the reef coast.