Sections of coral reef in Australia's Great Barrier Reef have made a "spectacular" recovery from a devastating bleaching event three years ago, marine scientists say.

In 2006, high sea temperatures caused severe coral bleaching in the Keppell Islands, in the southern part of the reef - the largest coral reef system in the world. The damaged reefs were then covered by a single species of seaweed which threatened to suffocate the coral and cause further loss.

A "lucky combination" of rare circumstances has meant the reef has been able to make a recovery.

Note that the environmentalists will never say that their apocalyptic warnings were wrong. The next environmental disaster is ever around the corner if mankind is not careful to leave the management of the earth to them. If disaster does not come to pass, they were not wrong, we were just lucky. Or, as the Voice of America will have it, environmentalism was the cause of the recovery. ...

... to attribute fragility to the environment, as virtually every environmentalist does, is to infantilize the issue. The earth is not fragile. It is remarkably robust. It has withstood floods and drought, earthquakes and volcanoes, fires and floods, heat and cold and the earth endures.

Undaunted, like the people who gather on mountaintops to watch the end of the world, when it does not come, they don't lose faith. They simply sacrifice a virgin, adjust their calendars and recalculate the next end of everything.