Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for October 2021

Do Glaswegians Mostly Breathe Nitrogen?

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I wonder how many of the approximately 30,000 ‘special’ people who are on their way to Glasgow for COP26 know that 78 per cent of the atmosphere is made-up of nitrogen. I asked this question of a group of retired professionals just yesterday and there was silence. My second question was about oxygen and a retired airline pilot answered correctly: she said that 21 per cent of the atmosphere is oxygen.

My late father was an agronomist who once worked for CSIRO and for a period led aid programs in different parts of Southeast Asia – he always used to say that his big issue was working out how to get more nitrogen into the soil because it was so important for plant growth.

I just asked my husband – a chemist who once worked in pulp and paper – what the cardboard box on the floor beside my desk would be composed of. He ventured about 40 per cent carbon, 40 per cent oxygen,10 per cent hydrogen and 10 per cent other elements. The box is empty so inside it would be about 78 per cent nitrogen and 21 per cent oxygen with trace amounts of carbon dioxide.

While few people seem to know that carbon dioxide makes up only 0.04 per cent of the Earth’s atmosphere, I’m often told that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas: FACT!

They do shout the bit about it being a ‘fact’, as though that makes it special because it proves that carbon dioxide is warming the Earth. But it doesn’t. The fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas is meaningless if we don’t place this in some context given the complexity of real-world physics and chemistry when it comes to climate change.

There are other greenhouse gases, including water vapour which spectroscopy has shown to be 12 times more active than carbon dioxide in long-wave radiation absorption and re-radiation. This is because water vapour is both more abundant and absorbs the long-wave radiation over a larger band of wavelengths.

An important research paper published 20 years ago by Richard Lindzen, Ming-Dah Chou and Arthur Hou (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Volume 81) contradicts the popular IPCC-endorsed theory that water vapour concentrations increase with atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, causing a positive feedback and thus more global warming as the consensus theory goes. Specifically, Lindzen et al. showed that the area of upper-level cirrus cloud decreased as temperatures increased in the tropics, providing negative feedback that cancels any positive water-vapour feedback.

I know this is more information than most people who want to be an expert on carbon dioxide care to think about. In fact, even those who are experts on carbon dioxide and climate change would prefer not to know about the Lindzen et al. 2001 paper. The response to that paper was for the editor of that publication, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, to be immediately replaced. The next issue of the Bulletin contained an attack, not in the form of a letter (to which Richard Lindzen would have immediately replied had he been given an opportunity) but as a separate article (Hartmann & Michelsen 2002). The title of the article was ‘No Evidence for Iris’, with the new editor appending a subtitle ‘Careful analysis of data reveals no shrinkage of tropical cloud anvil area with increasing sea surface temperature (SST)’. This rebuttal muddled Lindzen et al.’s method but did have a compelling title.

Facts often need context, but in the case of world-wide polar bear numbers it is straightforward: since bans on hunting were introduced in the 1970s numbers have increased from about 10,000 in the late 1960s to an official estimate of 26,000 in 2015. Surveys conducted since then, by those reluctant to report a further increase, suggest a modest 28,500 bears. When estimates for subpopulations are added to this, the more realistic number becomes 39,000 – that could be rounded to 40,000. 

The bottom-line is that despite a reduction in sea ice at the North Pole over this same period, there has been an increase in polar bear numbers. Which is good news that runs contrary to the zeitgeist. 

Successful Australian businesswoman Gina Rinehart reported the increase in polar bear numbers in a lecture she gave to her former girls’ school; it sent the ‘fact’ checkers at the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) into a spin resulting in a long essay that was short on facts and big on snow. How dare Ms Rinehart – whose profits from mining fund them – have an opinion on bears. I suspect Twiggy Forest is allowed to have an opinion on bears because he knows better than to explain that despite a decrease in the amount of ice at the North Pole, polar bear numbers have been increasing.

It is a fact that over the last few decades there has been an overall decrease in the amount of ice at the North Pole, but there has been a contrasting increase in the amount of ice at the South Pole. It is also a fact that should all the remaining ice melt at the North Pole it will have hardly any effect on global sea levels because it is sea ice not land ice. Should all the ice melt at the South Pole, well this could cause global sea levels to rise by some 70 metres. So, we might be grateful that it is trending as it is, with more ice at the South Pole even though there are no polar bears there. But whenever I talk about the South Pole to those wishing they were off to Glasgow I’m told I should be talking about the North Pole as though I am trying to trick them with any mentions of the South Pole.

Just yesterday I was told that what is most important is not that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas or the amount of new ice accumulating at the South Pole, but that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing. When I ventured that this could be a consequence of increasing temperatures I was shouted at. Specifically, I was told that while atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide-increase does lag behind temperature increases, this is not relevant, and this does not prove that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas. I had to write that down to check I wasn’t missing something, that I was being thrown a non sequitur.

It is difficult having a rational and logical discussion with a true believer. I suspect they get very emotional very quickly, because climate change is a topic to which they are very attached, while knowing really very little about. It is something like an infatuation – not to be scrutinised, lest the feeling dissipates, and the individual find themselves all alone again and without a cause.

If none of this makes sense to you, it is probably a good thing that you are not going to Glasgow where they could probably be convinced that 78 per cent of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide and 21 per cent oxygen with this percentage rapidly declining with every new coal fired power station.
If you do want a day-by-day account of what is happening in Glasgow consider signing up to the IPA’s daily newsletter for the period of COP26, Net Zero.

Each of these daily newsletters will include commentary from Aynsley Kellow who is Professor Emeritus of Government, University of Tasmania, and author of Negotiating Climate Change: A Forensic Analysis and Transforming Power: The Politics of Electricity Planning – and an all-round sensible fellow. Following is his contribution just yesterday:

Australia has an embarrassment of riches. It possesses vast resources of high quality coal, both coking coal (for iron ore production) and steaming coal (for energy production), with low sulphur and low ash. Much of it can be mined at low cost by open cut methods. This endowment has become an embarrassment because coal combustion gives rise to the emission of the highest levels of CO2 of all the fossil fuels. Australia exports both large quantities of coal and of energy-intensive products like aluminium, so that emissions occur here rather than in consuming nations.

On the other hand, Australia has a vast land area and a dispersed, though comparatively centralised, (growing) population, so transportation requires more energy than is the case with many other nations, with fossil fuels powering this.

Both these factors make reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Australia difficult and relatively costly. How should it respond to the challenge of anthropogenic climate change?

Many Australians are under the impression that it can meet the challenge easily and cheaply. ALP leader Anthony Albanese stated in an interview on 20 October 2021, that renewables were now the cheapest form of electricity, suggesting that wind generators, solar panels and electric transportation would make the response an easy one.

But this was wrong – and typical of the mistaken beliefs of many renewables enthusiasts.

Non-hydro renewables have indeed become much cheaper when measured by what is called the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE), (which is a tool used to do comparisons, see here for example) although spot prices of the polysilicon used to make solar panels have increased six-fold in the past year, thanks largely to the energy problems that have beset China and elsewhere. But LCOE misses many of the disadvantages and costs of renewables in an electricity system. What matters is the System Levelised Cost of Energy, and when this is considered, renewables cannot compete. Moreover, while their cost has declined markedly, the cost curve for both wind and solar has followed that typical of new technologies and flattened out – suggesting most of the cost reductions have already accrued.

The problems with renewables stem from the fact that they are intermittent and weather-dependent. Solar cannot produce electricity at night and its output is reduced when there is heavy cloud – such as that which crashed the network in Alice Springs a year or so back. Wind is variable and ‘wind droughts’ can occur for hours or even days.

A heavily renewables system requires storage, and storage Is expensive, driving its cost above coal. Storage is necessary on an inter-day as well as intra-day basis, and even inter-seasonal. The capacity factor of renewables is often 25-30 per cent, so to meet average demand a generating capacity of three or four times the average is required – in fact more, because storage and discharge is often of the order of 85 per cent efficient, so storage consumes perhaps 15 per cent.

Storage is expensive. The US group Environmental Progress has calculated that it would require 15,280 storage centres the size of the largest existing in the US to provide 4 hours back-up for the US grid at a cost $764 billion, and 696 Hornsdale (South Australian) batteries are required to provide just 4 hours of backup power for the Australian grid. But that is only intra-day storage. What of inter-day storage?

The United Kingdom has recently had to fire up a retired coal-fired station because of a shortage of gas (especially inadequate storage capacity) and problems with the cable that allows it to draw on France’s predominantly nuclear capacity. But it has also experienced a prolonged period of very low winds – lots of what the Germans call a Dunkelflaute (dark doldrums) days.

This prompted Professors Peter Edwards and Peter Dobson and Dr Gari Owen to calculate the cost of backup required for a 50 per cent renewables UK and a 100 per cent renewables UK. Their estimate for 50 per cent was £1.5Trillion ($A2.75T) and £3T ($A5.5T) for 100 per cent renewables. If anything, this was an underestimate, because it assumed 100 per cent efficiency of storage. But, of course, it was assumed that there was adequate excess renewable generation capacity pre-Dunkelflaute to charge the battery storage. (It should be noted that the UK system is of the same order of magnitude as that of Australia, but has fewer solar resources).

Renewables also incur substantial network costs. Non-hydro renewables have a very low density and considerable land-use requirements. To transmit the energy generated – which is Direct Current (DC) and must be run through an inverter to synchronise with the Alternating Current (AC) grid frequency – vast additional transmission resources are required, and must be capable of coping with peak generation, but with only 25-30 per cent utilisation. (Because of the DC rather than AC issue, a largely renewables system lacks the inertia of a traditional electricity system which is underloaded with a ‘spinning reserve’ to cope with fluctuations in generation or load; the presence of high levels of renewables on the system requires batteries like the one in South Australia to stabilise voltage and frequency).

Moreover, if renewable electricity is to replace petroleum fuels for transportation (directly or in hydrogen fuels), huge amounts of additional capacity will be required.

Any sensible energy policy must consider all sources: nuclear, hydro, renewables and coal. Simply writing coal out of the equation because it generates the most CO2 per unit of electricity is simplistic foolishness. Technological advances mean that coal-fired electricity can produce cheap, reliable electricity with substantially lower GHG emissions, and therefore reduce Australia’s emissions if it were to replace existing plants. (It is also significant for developing countries, which are likely to want to industrialise and do so economically).

GE is now marketing advanced ultra-supercritical (AUSC) technology, calling it SteamH. SteamH combines steam plant technology operating with advanced ultra-supercritical conditions and a digital power plant data platform called Predix. GE claims 49.1 per cent efficiency for AUSC, and the first plant, Pingshan power plant phase two in China of 1350MW was commissioned in December 2020. The average efficiency of the existing global coal fleet is 34 per cent, and every 1 per cent improvement in efficiency can reduce GHG emissions by 2–3 per cent. So AUSC could reduce emissions from coal-fired power stations by 30–45 per cent if they were replaced by best available technology.

Unfortunately, current Australian policy settings effectively preclude the construction of an AUSC station, and a crunch is looming. As noted above, the LCOE of renewables is usually quoted, but the effect of expanding renewables capacity on the reliable, dispatchable system is being ignored. In point of fact, the expansion of renewables is cannibalising the dispatchable capacity, because it is effectively parasitic on the system.

The economics of renewables in a traditional, dispatchable system is well established. While the value of renewables initially increases, its value declines as its share of total generation increases. Australia’s renewables share has now passed 20 per cent and the value of additional renewables capacity will in future decline considerably as backup and network cost accumulate. Coal cannot compete with subsidised, privileged near zero marginal cost renewables, so lower capacity factors destroy the value of existing generation plant.

In addition to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and economics of different energy sources it is also important to note their resource requirements, life cycle impacts and other environmental impacts. For example, it has been estimated that the installation of sufficient wind turbines to meet US demand would increase the surface temperature of the country by 0.24°C mostly at night (when the increase would be 1.5°C).

But the really telling evaluation of renewables is in their resource impacts, especially compared with nuclear energy. For the same energy production, solar energy requires about 450 times the land area of nuclear and wind 400 times. Wind requires seven times the amount of concrete of nuclear, and solar about two and a-half times. Each of them requires about 17 times as much steel. Add in copper for generators and transmission.

What also must be considered is the energy consumed in the production of renewables, much of it in China where most PV panels and many wind turbines are manufactured, using coal-fired energy. Moreover, the manufacture of PV panels releases solvents such as sulphur hexafluoride and nitrogen trifluoride, with Global Warming Potential numbers about 20,000 times that of CO2.

When it comes to the end of economic life, solar panels produce 300 times the amount of waste as does nuclear energy, and both wind and solar are made of composite materials that are difficult to recycle, so most are currently sent to landfill. Both are at risk from extreme weather, and catastrophic failure of wind turbines is well-documented.
Then there is the well-documented impact on birds and bats, an impact that extends to solar thermal generation, where the focused sunlight turns unwary birds into ‘streamers’.

A balanced energy policy must consider all sources and all their advantages and disadvantages – including all environmental impacts.

Looking only at coal-fired electricity generation without considering best available technology or the GHG emissions related to renewables regardless of where they are released is not a wise climate change policy.

Simplistic responses such as attempting to ban coal simply opens the door for rent seekers who have invested in the alternatives while shutting another door – that to economic development for the millions who lack access to affordable energy and the opportunity for the prosperity we take for granted.

Thanks for reading this far.
Dr Jennifer Marohasy

PS Thanks to Dr Arthur Day – who is also contributing to the daily newsletter – for the chart that features at the very top of this note. It does seem to be the case that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are unaffected by all the meetings and also the reduction in air travel due to Covid, etc. Could it be that atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing because of ocean degassing and this has absolutely nothing to do with us? It is what would be expected from the solubility curve of carbon dioxide in water. Some of the little bumps on the line can be traced to volcanic events with the oceans scavenging any excess carbon dioxide from volcanic events within about 2 years.

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This was written for my monthly e-newsletter and is republished here by popular request. If you want to be sure to get something from me once a month in your inbox, then subscribe to my e-news, by clicking here and then scrolling down.

Unable to See the Polar Bears for the Snow

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Facts often need context, but in the case of world-wide polar bear numbers it is straight forward: since bans on hunting were introduced in the 1970s numbers have increased from about 10,000 in the late 1960s to an official estimate of 26,000 in 2015. Surveys conducted since then, by those reluctant to report a further increase, report a modest 28,500 bears. When estimates for subpopulations are added to this, the more realistic number becomes 39,000 – that could be rounded to 40,000.

The bottom-line is that despite a reduction in sea ice at the North Pole over this same period, there has been an increase in polar bear numbers.

This is good news that runs contrary to the zeitgeist.

Successful Australian business woman Gina Rinehart reported the increase in polar bear numbers in a lecture she gave to her former girl’s school, and it sent the ‘fact’ checkers at the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) into a spin resulting in a long essay short on facts and big on snow. How dare Ms Rinehart – who’s profits from mining fund them – have an opinion on bears.

This bear hopes Gina keeps speaking out with the facts, and thanks Gina for the royalties that pay for our schools and hospitals.

Canadian Polar Bear expert Susan Crockford describes the ‘fact check’ as convoluted and explains how it ignores the many polar bear subpopulations across the Arctic and still fails to refute the 150% increase in bear numbers between 1960 and 1993 and further 56% increase from 1993 to 2018.

For more information download the IPA’s factsheet.

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Filing here:

It is interesting how much interest this information can generate at Facebook, the following screenshot was taken 24 hours after posting.

There is potential for a larger audience by paying to ‘boost’, which I would do if this website was sponsored.

Subscribe Against Net Zero with Aynsley Kellow

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For those of you who want a blow-by-blow, day-by-day, account of what transpires at Glasgow the Institute of Public Affairs will be providing commentary via my dear friend and colleague Professor Aynsley Kellow.

An email just went out today to members explaining:

To keep you updated on the events of Glasgow and how they impact mainstream Australians, I am excited to let you know the IPA will be publishing a Say No To Glasgow daily email bulletin featuring expert commentary from our Director of Policy, Gideon Rozner, and Climate Policy expert Emeritus Professor Aynsley Kellow, starting tomorrow Wednesday, 27 October.

Australians have repeatedly voted against a tax on carbon dioxide and against a policy of net zero emissions. As Jennifer Oriel put it so eloquently:

Climate change is the country where Australian prime ministers go to die. It featured in the demise of former Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. It sank the political career of Malcolm Turnbull twice, leading to his removal as opposition leader in 2009 and prime minister in 2018. It was the promised land for former Labor leader Bill Shorten in 2019 until it turned to dust on election day.

Scott Morrison was elected Prime Minister at least in part because he differentiated himself from Bill Shorten by explaining he was not going to impose a net zero emissions policy. He has completely ignored this mandate in changing his policy position and promising to go to Glasgow advocating the exact opposite of what the Australian people voted for.

Shame. Democracy is undoubtedly the worst form of government, except for all the others.

I’m yet to meet an Australian who denies that the climate changes, but there is an amount of scepticism about the science and a general understanding that we are a rich nation that can afford things like social security and free education and hospitals because we have a very profitable mining industry based on things like coal, that provides cheap electricity for not only Australians but also those in many other parts of the world. All of this would be placed in jeopardy should our government adopt a radical energy policy only superficially transferring dependence to renewables, which in reality are dependent on coal as Michael Moore explains in ‘Planet of the Humans’.

I’ve spent time in rural Indonesia, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, the Sudan, and Kenya. I know what poverty looks like and smells like, and I have always been grateful that I was born into privilege simply by being born Australian. It is the case that the opportunity for any one individual in a community to be fed, clothed, and educated depends to a large extent on the collective wealth and wellbeing of that society and that it doesn’t squander its opportunities. As Mr FOIA wrote back in 2019 just before the elites gathered in Copenhagen:

It makes a huge difference whether humanity uses its assets to achieve progress, or whether it strives to stop and reverse it, essentially sacrificing the less fortunate to the climate gods.

As far as I can make out Scott Morrison is about to throw all of that away at Glasgow – Australia’s competitive advantage and our sources of wealth and independence – by subscribing to a massive hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavour marketed as ‘net zero’.

Anyway, I’m leaving for Heron Island soon to make another short film. I’m turning off from Glasgow. But if you want to stay informed sign-up to hear what Ansley Kellow has to say by clicking here: https://ipa.org.au/netzero

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The feature image is of me some years ago in Norfolk County, in England, where there are wind turbines just off shore.

Ivermectin Banned, Leunig Sacked: No Opportunity for Dissent When it Comes to Covid

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I’ve just put a pen through the name of the doctor who prescribed the triple therapy (Ivermectin, Zinc and Zithromax) for me back in September, as either a prophylaxis or cure for Covid. That same doctor gave me the AstraZeneca vaccine. They are potentially complementary, according to that registered Australian doctor.

I crossed out his name on the medicines I have, not because I don’t like him or trust him, but because I don’t want him to get in any more trouble – but I wanted to post a picture of the medicines he prescribed for me, when it was still legal to do so.

I got my tablets (see feature image) the week before they were banned by the TGA for use against Covid.

These medicines are now banned, because here in Australia, we are not allowed to make up our own minds when it comes to best medicines, especially when it comes to Covid.

Should you have an informed opinion chances are you will be cancelled by one or more of the institutions. Indeed, that is what has just happened to one of Australia’s best-known cartoonists. Michael Leunig has just been sacked for questioning the government’s covid vaccine mandate.

A cryptic 39-word statement on the newspapers letters page last Monday said that they were “trialling new cartoonists”. The cartoonist confirmed to The Australian newspaper just yesterday that he was axed from his prized Monday editorial page position by The Age, after it dumped a cartoon in which he compared Daniel Andrews’ threat of “vaccine mandates” for Victoria to the famous Tiananmen Square vision of “Tank Man”, the Beijing dissenter who defiantly faced off against the Chinese government’s tanks in 1989.

The offending cartoon posted to Twitter, it was never published by the newspaper.

We are all expected to just get vaccinated never mind that this potential solution might not be the best option for everyone. It could even turn out that there are long term consequences. When I gave my daughter antibiotics back when she was two years old, I thought I was doing the right thing, it was what my doctor recommended. Chances are that it had a negative effect on the development of both her teeth and her gut microbiota, with long term consequences. Not that I’m against antibiotics but sometimes they may exacerbate a problem, rather than solve it. If I had my time over again, I would have done some research, and probably dissented.

Right now, when it comes to best public health responses, I’m no expert, and neither is Rebecca Weisser but I think she makes some good points:

Overlooked by almost everyone is the possibility that the pandemic could end with an effective treatment. If there were an outbreak of plague (which still exists in parts of the US and Africa) would the Australian government lock down the country because there’s no vaccine? Let’s hope not since there’s a perfectly effective antibiotic to treat the Black Death. When HIV emerged in the 1980s, there was no vaccine to prevent it. There still isn’t. Yet Aids-related deaths have been reduced by over 60 per cent, thanks largely to effective treatment.

The first essential element in responding to any pandemic is not a vaccine, which does nothing for people already infected, it is treatment. Indeed, an effective treatment reduces the circulation of a virus reducing the chances of mutations and makes a mass vaccination program safer and more effective.

It is to Australia’s credit that one of the most effective treatments was identified at Monash University along with the Doherty Institute which showed that ivermectin kills the Sars-CoV-2 virus within 48 hours. Yet to our national shame, the researchers have been starved of resources and the discovery ignored.

Not so in Indonesia where an enterprising philanthropist, Haryoseno, leapt into action and made ivermectin available to the masses for free or at low cost. As a result, Indonesia has had an extremely low Covid mortality rate. That is until the Ministry of Health decided, in line with the WHO’s recommendation, that ivermectin would only be used in a clinical trial. Haryoseno has been threatened with a fine and a ten-year jail sentence and the supply of ivermectin has dried up. Result? Deaths per million have increased five-fold since withdrawal of ivermectin on 12 June.

In Australia, one of the few doctors brave enough to use the drug to treat patients and save lives, Dr Mark Hobart, was reported to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA). Thankfully, AHPRA advised that there had been no infringement. Indeed, federal Health Minister Greg Hunt wrote to one of the doctors in Australia who prescribes ivermectin confirming that he was aware that some physicians are prescribing ivermectin off-label for Covid and that they were quite within their rights as the practice of prescribing registered medicines outside of their approved indications is not regulated or controlled by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)*, it is at the discretion of the prescribing physician*. Yet the silence persists. Ivermectin is the drug that dare not speak its name.

Some doctors prescribing ivermectin* are members of the Covid Medical Network. They can be contacted via their website and provide prescriptions for prophylaxis and treatment anywhere in the country (covidmedicalnetwork.com). Many follow the protocol established by world-renowned researcher Dr Thomas Borody who, largely at his own expense, has run a trial of an ivermectin triple therapy which has shown a reduction in mortality of 86 per cent in patients who were seriously ill with Covid. The only patients who died in the study – which has been published on preprint server medRxiv – were those that declined treatment.

Demonstrating the complete lack of urgency with which it treats repurposed drugs, the TGA last updated its advice on ivermectin on 1 June. It claims that there is currently insufficient evidence to support its safe and effective use. Yet since 1 June results of 15 new trials and meta-analyses of ivermectin have been published almost all showing steep declines in mortality. The question that the TGA has to answer is how is it possible to approve an experimental gene therapy vaccine with plummeting efficacy, significant short-term safety signals and unknown longterm side effects and yet not recommend a drug with an outstanding safety profile, which is supported by Nobel laureates and multiple randomised controlled trials?

* This situation has now changed, it is now illegal to prescribe Ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of Covid in Australia. And if you are a cartoonist of some standing dare not question the logic of this, or the vaccine mandate.

Plain English Lost on the High Court of Australia

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Coral reefs can be messy, and so can court cases. And so it is with the case of Peter Ridd, sacked by James Cook University because he exercised his intellectual freedom. The only thing that is neatly settled from this case is apparently ‘the science’, never mind that this is only because anyone who publicly disagrees with it is censored or sacked. In the case of Peter Ridd, even after he managed to raise over A$1.4 million to appeal his sacking by James Cook University all the way to the High Court of Australia, he lost.

In a unanimous decision handed down this morning, the Court concluded that Dr Ridd’s right to intellectual freedom is constrained by the procedural requirements of James Cook University’s Code of Conduct. The High Court found his freedom of speech is limited only to his area of expertise. Those freedoms do not extend to issues about how the University is run, or whether the pronouncements made by its research institutions are trustworthy.

These matters are apparently internal; the University’s academics are obliged to follow procedure over these and, in particular, must be mindful when disciplinary matters are deemed confidential.

This sends a very strong message to all politically astute academics: if they are likely to make findings that do not accord with the consensus, these findings should be hidden within phrases that are unintelligible gobbledygook. In other words, their findings should be communicated in language that is meaningless, or is made unintelligible by the excessive use of technical jargon. They should certainly not translate their findings into plain English, or, worse, air them on national television, because that way the average Australian would have some understanding of what they are actually funding with their hard-earned taxes.

The climate science literature is replete with hidden meaning and technical jargon. The extent of the gobbledygook is such that the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently concluded that humans are the main cause of global warming and the role of the sun is inconsequential, never mind that there is an extensive prestigious scientific literature that arguably comes to the opposite conclusion – which is that much of the global warming we have been experiencing can be explained in terms of solar variability. This extensive literature was recently reviewed by Ronan Connolly, Willie Soon and 20 of their colleagues from 14 countries and published in the international journal Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (Volume 21). However, it appears that tenured academics are not allowed to argue, at least not publicly.

There was a sense of irony this morning that made me smile. As I waited for the High Court judgement, I looked through a paper by Peter Ridd’s former colleagues – Emma Ryan, Scott Smithers and others – entitled ‘Chronostratigraphy of Bramston Reef reveals a long-term record of fringing reef growth under muddy conditions in the central Great Barrier Reef’ published in the very respectable journal Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Palaeoecology (Volume 441).

It would be difficult for the non-specialist to decipher this jargon-filled technical analysis that essentially supports what Peter Ridd has been saying for some years – and which earned him his first censure by the University, but, in short, it says there is still healthy coral reef in Bowen Harbour. It’s cold comfort, by the way, for the High Court to find in passing that the 2016 censure was unlawful, especially when it led directly to the 2018 censure, which, in turn, resulted in Peter’s employment being terminated. Anyway, I’m told Scott Smithers is a very competent scientist and an all-round good guy. He never replies to my emails. Perhaps this is because I could translate his gobbledygook into plain English. His potentially subversive publications would then be understood by the intelligent layperson for what they are – which is that they back up what Peter Ridd is saying in plain English and provide a very detailed explanation of how many inshore reefs of the Great Barrier Reef have been in decline for more than 1,000 years because of falling (yes, falling) sea levels.

The deceleration of reef growth occurred long before European settlement of the Queensland coast and was driven by natural constraints, probably associated with limited accommodation space due to late-Holocene sea-level fall. Our results demonstrate that mainland-attached reef initiation and accretion can occur in muddy inshore environments over long timeframes (centuries to millennia).

Because academics are not allowed to speak freely about controversial subjects most people have no understanding of the cyclical nature of sea levels. The general public are under the misconception that the most important global trend is one of sea-level rise. There are cycles within cycles and the most significant cycle has been one of sea-level fall, by some 1.5 metres over the last 2,000 or so years, notwithstanding that there has been sea-level rise of some 40 centimetres since the industrial revolution, which coincides with the end of the Little Ice Age (circa AD 1303 to AD 1835).

To put all of this in some context, along the Great Barrier Reef there is a large and variable daily tidal range. For example, at Hay Point the tide varies by as much as 7.14 metres; at Mackay by 6.58 metres; and at Gladstone by 4.83 metres. Sea levels have changed even more dramatically over geological time frames. For example, just 19,500 years ago, during the depths of the last major ice age, sea levels were 120 metres lower (yes, lower) than they are today. And the Great Barrier Reef did not exist. This very long record shows changes in temperature precede their parallel changes in carbon dioxide by 800 to 2000 years. This vital point establishes that carbon dioxide cannot be the primary forcing agent for temperature change at the glacial-interglacial scale, but this reality is mostly hidden by the modern astute geologist and ice-core expert who arguably cares more for his career than the truth. If this were not the case, they would be marching on Glasgow.

The modern Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system to have ever existed on planet Earth, according to Peter J. Davies writing in the Encyclopedia of Modern Coral Reefs. It is but a thin veneer growing on top of at least five previous extensive reef systems, each destroyed by dramatic falls in sea level in the past. The modern reef has grown up on top of extinct reefs, the last of which existed 120,000 years ago. In some places the depth of the coral growth since the last ice age, which had begun by 100,000 years ago, is 28 metres – layer upon layer. This growth is now constrained by sea level.

Filming far offshore with Clint Hempsall at one of the Ribbon Reefs on 21st January 2020. Many of the Ribbon reefs have dead reef crests. What Peter J. Davies describes as flat-topped platforms with live coral growth only around the perimeter. The evolution of these barrier reefs, found a long way off shore, is explained in my short documentary film, ‘Clowns on the Ribbon’s Edge’.

Many of the nearly 3,000 reefs that make up the modern Great Barrier Reef have a crest that is flat-topped because the most recent 1.5 metre drop in sea level has sliced this much off their tops. So, the crests of these reefs are dead coral that is thousands of years old, sometimes capped with coralline algae. These reef crests were dead long before European settlement. Yet it is surveys that include exactly this reef habitat, taken from the window of a plane by Peter Ridd’s nemesis Terry Hughes flying at an altitude of 150 metres, which have made media headlines around the world, and which suggest that the Great Barrier Reef is more than half dead.

Worse, they were used in a recent Australian Academy of Sciences report (March 2021) to claim the imminent demise of the Great Barrier Reef due to carbon dioxide emissions and thus the need for a commitment to net zero greenhouse gas emissions in Glasgow. It is all nonsense, and politics. But beware the academic who explains as much in plain English, especially following this morning’s ruling by the High Court of Australia.

Jennifer Marohasy at the mudflat to the west of Bramston Reef on 29th August 2019. Professor Hughes showed a photograph of this mud flat to 2,500 marine scientists who attended a conference in Cairns on 9th July 2012 and told them that the mud now covers what was once healthy coral reef, and that this reef is an example of the ‘sad decline’ of the Great Barrier Reef. In fact, Bramston reef is prograding to the seaward side beyond this mudflat as shown in the feature photograph with Peter Ridd at the very top of this blog post. Both photographs were taken on 29th August 2019, on the very lowest day tide for that year at Bowen.
Beyond the mudflat is Bramston Reef, and beyond Bramston Reef is Beige Reef. I took this photograph at Beige Reef on 25th August 2019. Corals at most reefs across the world are beige in colour.

On 2 May 2018, Peter Ridd was sacked by James Cook University for serious misconduct. It all started when he called-out Terry Hughes, whom he believed was falsely claiming that the inshore coral reefs at Bowen, specifically Bramston Reef, were dead because of climate change and the deteriorating water quality. It is the case that Professor Hughes was showing photographs of the mud flat as though it had replaced the coral reef that still exists to the seaward side.

Professor Ridd had been complaining quietly for years. He had already published peer-reviewed papers explaining in detail some of the serious issues with the official science. It was nevertheless a tough decision to go public, which he made in full knowledge that there could be consequences. At the same time there was a feeling of optimism; eventually, the truth would win out and the University would acknowledge the importance of implementing some form of quality assurance over the various pronouncements made by one or two high-profile academics. These academics, whom he believed were speaking beyond their area of expertise and hammering the theme of the reef being dead in order to progress their own personal political agenda and, at the same time, their careers.

Former Chairman of the Institute of Public Affairs, Janet Albrechtsen, wrote in The Australian on 25 July 2020:

Remember that Ridd wasn’t querying the interpretation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He was raising questions, in one particular area of his expertise, about the quality of climate change science. One of the fundamental challenges of our generation is to get the science right so we can settle on the right climate change policies. JCU told Ridd to keep quiet, then it sacked him.

Peter Ridd did win the first round in the Federal Circuit Court back in April 2019. Judge Salvatore Vasta found in his favour and order that the 17 findings made by the University, the two speech directions, the five confidentiality directions, the no satire direction and the censure and the final censure given by the University and the termination of employment of Professor Ridd by the University were all unlawful.

Then the University appealed, and the Federal Court of Australia overturned the decision of the Federal Circuit Court. That decision, according to Dr Albrechtsen, has sent intellectual inquiry down the gurgler in the 21st century at an institution fundamental to Western civilisation:

Is that to be the legacy of JCU’s vice-chancellor Sandra Harding? And what oversight has JCU’s governing council provided to this reputational damage, not to mention the waste of taxpayer dollars, in pursuing a distinguished scientist who was admired by his students?

Following this decision, no academic can assume that an Australian university will allow the kind of robust debate held at Oxford University in 1860 between the bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, and Thomas Henry Huxley, a biologist and proponent of Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The Historical Journal records how this legendary encounter unfolded: ‘The Bishop rose, and in a light scoffing tone, florid and fluent he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution: rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons have always been. Then, turning to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey? On this Mr Huxley slowly and deliberately arose. A slight tall figure stern and pale, very quiet and very grave, he stood before us, and spoke those tremendous words … He was not ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor, but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used his great gifts to obscure the truth.

Not for nothing, Ridd’s lawyers submitted this example of intellectual freedom during the first trial. In sacking Ridd, and to win in court, JCU had to argue against the means that seeks the truth – intellectual freedom.

In deciding whether to grant special leave for the appeal, the High Court considered whether the case involved ‘a question of law that is of public importance’. It was the first time the High Court had been called upon to consider the meaning of ‘academic and intellectual freedom’, a term that is used in enterprise agreements covering staff at almost all Australian universities.

We now have a judgement. For the High Court, it seems that intellectual freedom is like a delicate flower that does not survive being plucked. It can be contemplated from afar but cannot be held or given as a gift. Intellectual freedom survives in academia only if limited to gobbledygook that alludes to the truth in such a way that no member of the pubic could understand how deeply that truth contradicts the official scientific consensus. Perhaps I already knew that.

Some argue there are other legal avenues – not through the courts – that could, perhaps, have been pursued and may have achieved a different outcome, but which may or may not have provided some vindication. But as for the courts: if you have to raise A$1.4 million and put in a further A$300,000 of your own money, as Peter Ridd has done, just to run one argument all the way to the High Court, how much would you need to fight on the substance of each issue? For sure the lawyers did well out of this case.

The alternative strategy might have been to try and get the matter raised under the Queensland whistle-blower legislation. Peter Ridd would at least have been, theoretically, protected while an investigation was conducted. The focus would have been on science rather than a narrow construction of employment law and the procedures laid out in the University’s Code of Conduct. But given the determination of James Cook University to silence its critics, and the need for this to have included testimony from colleagues desperate to avoid controversy – lest they are admonished by their family and communities for failing to be respectable, thereby jeopardising their own careers – it is unclear this would have been any more fruitful.

And so to this day there has never been any consideration given by the courts or any other independent body to the actual state of the corals in Bowen Harbour, including at Bramston Reef, even though this was the reason for the first censure that the High Court has ruled should not have been issued in the first place. Yes, the ruling this morning clearly states, in agreement with Judge Vasta, that Professor Ridd’s initial comments about his colleague Terry Hughes and the state of the corals in Bowen Harbour were reasonable and that the censure should not have been issued. Yet that is where all the other allegations subsequently came from as Peter Ridd tried to defend himself in the public domain.

There is more than one coral reef in Bowen Harbour. I like to refer to Bramston reef as the one the other side of the mudflat, it is the muddiest. There is a much prettier reef the other side of the channel and in the northeast facing bay of Stone Island at the entrance to Bowen Harbour, a reef that I have named Beige Reef. I produced a short documentary film about the extent of the scientific misrepresentation of these corals, to watch it scroll down at this link. The film, Beige Reef, was funded by the B.Macfie Family Foundation through the Institute of Public Affairs. In the film, I let people see for themselves rather than engage in gobbledygook. But sadly that’s a freedom no longer available to any serving academic at an Australian University.

Following today’s decision, Peter Ridd has accepted an invitation to join the Institute of Public Affairs as a Research Fellow, without salary, to lead a newly established project for ‘Real Science’. The Project’s aims are to improve science quality assurance and to support academics speaking out for integrity in science and research. You can support this project by way of a tax deductable donation to the IPA. It is the case that long ago scientific inquiry was mostly privately funded, now is your opportunity to be a part of this new initiative for open and honest inquiry.

Peter Ridd and Jennifer Marohasy in front of the mud flats which are to the west of Bramston Reef just to the south of Bowen. While at James Cook University, Peter Ridd studied suspended sediments in the coastal zone as an important natural limiting factor for the growth and health of inshore coral reefs.

Peter released the following statement today, immediately following the decision by the High Court:

It is with a heavy heart that I inform you that we have lost the appeal in the High Court. We lost, in my opinion, because JCU’s work contract, under which I was employed, effectively kills academic freedom of speech – and the contract is effectively the law.

So, JCU actions were technically legal. But it was, in my opinion, never right, proper, decent, moral or in line with public expectations of how a university should behave.

I often ask myself, if I knew what was going to happen, would I have handled that fateful interview with Alan Jones and Peta Credlin in 2017 differently. Would I still say that, due to systemic quality assurance problems, work from a couple of Great Barrier Reef science institutions was “untrustworthy”?

It has cost me my job, my career, over $300K in legal fees, and more than a few grey hairs.

All I can say is that I hope I would do it again – because overall it was worth the battle, and having the battle is, in this case, more important than the result.

This is just a small battle in a much bigger war. It was a battle which we had to have and, in retrospect, lose. JCU’s and almost every other university in Australia and the western world are behaving badly. We have shown how badly.

Decent people and governments can see the immense problem we have. The universities are not our friends. Only when the problem is recognised will public pressure force a solution.

The failure of our legal action, and JCU’s determination to effectively destroy academic freedom of speech, demonstrates that further legislation is required to force universities to behave properly – especially if they are to receive any public funding. The Commonwealth government introduced excellent legislation in parliament early this year, partly in response to our legal case, to bolster academic freedom of speech. It is an excellent step in the right direction. If my case had been fought under this legislation, I would have had a better chance of winning. But it would still have been far from certain. There would still have been a clash between the new legislation and the work agreement.

There needs to be major punishment against universities for infringement of academic freedom of speech, such as fines or losing their accreditation. There needs to be active policing and investigations of the universities to make sure they comply and do not threaten academics with expensive legal action to stop the university’s behaviour becoming public. Universities must be told that they cannot spy on academic’s email communications (this should only be done by the police) or use secrecy directives to silence and intimidate staff. And all this protection for academics MUST be written into the work contracts to put the matter beyond legal doubt.

I am very mindful that I asked for, and received, donations of about $1,500,000 (in two GoFundMe campaigns of around $750k#) for the legal battle – from over 10,000 people. And I lost. Some of those donations were from people who have very slender financial resources. All I can say is that it weighs heavily on my conscience, but I hope they agree that it was still worth the battle.

A last thank you

I would like to express, one last time, my thanks to Stuart Wood AM QC, Ben Jellis, Ben Kidston, Colette Mintz, Mitchell Downes, Amelia Hasson and the rest of the team. They were fabulous. They did everything that was possible.

Thanks also to John Roskam, Gideon Rozner, Evan Mulholland, Morgan Begg and the Institute of Public Affairs. They backed me when things got tough. They are one of the few institutions in the country that will fight on issues of freedom of speech. I’d like to make a special mention of the IPA’s Jennifer Marohasy. She has been a great support over many years and played a crucial role in the critical early days of this fight.

Thanks to the National Tertiary Education Union. They supported the cause in court, even though my views on the Reef may well be opposed to the views of many of their members.

There are many politicians who have gone into bat on my behalf such as Matt Canavan, George Christensen, Pauline Hanson, Bob Katter, Gerard Rennick, Malcolm Roberts, Dan Tehan, and Alan Tudge (in alphabetical order). They obviously could not interfere with the legal proceedings, but were instrumental in bringing in the new academic freedom legislation.
There are many journalists and bloggers who helped spread the word, but I would particularly like to thanks Graham Lloyd from The Australian, Jo Nova, and Anthony Watts (WUWT).

There are also many other people, far too many to list, that I am thankful to. They will know who they are.

And finally, thanks to my family, and especially Cheryl.

On 29th August 2019 a few of us gathered in the pub at Bowen with Peter to yarn about Bramston reef, and how you need to walk the other side of that mudflat to find the corals. Beige Reef is the other side of Bramston Reef, across the channel and around the headland. Skipper Rob McCullough (sitting between Peter and me) gave freely of his time for the filming of Beige Reef, and sadly passed away earlier this year. Vale to Rob McCullough, and thank you for your enthusiasm. You would have said about today: it is but one battle lost, we will keep fighting for the truth.

Your donation to Peter Ridd’s ‘Project for Real Science’ will contribute to the production of more short documentary films. Thank you for reading this far, and don’t forget:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Beyond Bramston Reef, still in Bowen Harbour, is the very pretty Beige Reef. This photograph was taken at Beige Reef on 25th August 2019. You can watch a film about this reef on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqFFqBuFVqU&t=77s

If public policy is to be based on evidence, as opposed to myth, then there is a need for all of us to fearlessly seek out the truth. Beyond this there is a need for expertise to be recognised, and valued, and the claims of activists to be always tested against the evidence. If we turn the other way, and choose to ignore these facts, on the basis they offend or are unkind to those we hold in high esteem, we cannot honestly consider ourselves, or our community, to be very civilised or educated. And finally, I have explained the four myths behind Peter Ridd’s sacking in a short report, that can be downloaded here.