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50 per cent
The paper that minted the 50 also named the storms. The slogan kept the fraction.
Coral cover in the Great Barrier Reef has declined by 50 per cent in just 27 years.
CSIRO, still on the eReefs page: coral cover “has declined by 50 per cent in just 27 years.” The footnote is De’ath, Fabricius, Sweatman and Puotinen, PNAS 2012 — AIMS authors, 1985–2012. That paper is the mint.
This card files that fraction. It does not file “no coral died.”
What did have a receipt:
- The same PNAS paper split the loss: tropical cyclones 48%, crown-of-thorns 42%, bleaching 10%. The slogan is the 50. The storms are the second sentence.
- Peter Ridd, Senate: the 50 is treated as a one-way death. He noted the 2011–2016 recovery after Yasi that some society papers skipped. AIMS’s own later series made his point without his name on it.
- AIMS 2022: northern 36%, central 33% — regional highs in the 36-year record. AIMS 2026: northern 35.1%, still above the long-term 27%. A 50% decline to 2012 and a record high a decade later are both in the government ledger. The slogan only kept the first.
Grammar: 50 per cent, 27 years. Logic: a cyclone year is not a tombstone. Rhetoric: declined.