Jennifer Marohasy

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University Appeal Upheld, Peter Ridd Loses – We all Lose

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On 2 May 2018, Professor Peter Ridd was sacked by James Cook University for serious misconduct. It all started when he called-out his colleague Terry Hughes for falsely claiming healthy inshore coral reefs were dead from climate change and deteriorating water quality.

Ignoring the first censure in April 2016, Professor Ridd went on television in August 2017 and explained in an interview with Alan Jones and Peta Credlin why so much said and written about the Great Barrier Reef, including by scientists at the Australian Institution of Marine Science, is ‘untrustworthy’.

The interview was to promote a book that I edited, Climate Change: The Facts 2017. The book published by the Institute of Public Affairs, begins with a chapter about the Great Barrier Reef in which the orthodoxy on Great Barrier Reef science is challenged, in particular reporting on coral calcification rates. In that interview – that contributed directly to Peter Ridd’s sacking – the main argument was, and continues to be, for better quality assurance of coral reef science.

It is a fact that the Australian Institute of Marine Science refuses to release 15 years of coral growth data – because it contradicts the claims of high-profile activists that coral growth rates are in decline. They are not. But the false claims are central to their fundraising strategy. Never mind the truth.

The first finding handed down by Judge Salvatore Vasta back in April last year case concerned the photographs taken in 1994 that Terry Hughes used to falsely claim Acropora corals that were alive in 1890 are now all dead. Peter Ridd had photographs taken in 2015 showing live Acropora and the need for quality assurance of Hughes’ claims.

Judge Vasta found in favour of Peter Ridd and ordered that the 17 findings made by the University, the two speech directions, the five confidentiality directions, the no satire direction, the censure and the final censure given by the University and the termination of employment of Professor Ridd by the University were all unlawful.

Peter Ridd took on the institutions, and today lost in the Federal Court. The Judgement suggested his academic freedom was his personal opinion.

It was very significant that Peter Ridd won on the issue of academic freedom: that he did have a right to ignore the university administrators and continuing to speak out about the lack of quality assurance and explain how and why important scientific institutions had become so untrustworthy.

The University never accepted that decision by the Federal Circuit Court, and they have never conceded that Terry Hughes was wrong to suggest all the corals were dead, when a documentary has since been made showing them to be alive. Further, they have never supported any calls for the coral growth data to be made public.

Instead, the University appealed, and today the University won in the Federal Court. In the judgement, Peter Ridd’s academic freedom is portrayed as his ‘personal opinion’.

It is not Peter Ridd’s personal opinion that the corals are alive, and the Great Barrier Reef resilient to climate change. It is fact. I’ve seen the coral reefs whose health is contested with my own eyes: they are very much alive.

What is dead is academic freedom in Australia.

Universities should be understood by the judiciary as different from other workplaces because it is expected by the ordinary Australian that, on occasions, there will be vigorous debates on important and controversial issues. It is essential that academics can engage in these debates without fearing that the use of plain and colloquial English could end their careers.

Yet today, the university’s appeal was upheld on the basis Peter Ridd was un-collegial in stating plainly that his own university and the Australian Institute of Marine Science are ‘untrustworthy’ because of systemic deficiencies in their quality assurance processes. Further, it was mentioned that Peter Ridd did ‘satirise’ the university’s disciplinary processes in a personal email.

Today’s decision means that James Cook University, and other Australian universities, will continue to crush dissent and sack academics who campaign for the truth.

The truth is that coral reefs are resilient, and despite the fear mongering, refuse to die.

Australia’s universities may now be corporatist bureaucracies that rigidly enforce an unquestioning orthodoxy but it is the case that one day, when the travel restrictions are all lifted, you will be able to visit the Great Barrier Reef and see with your own eyes that Peter Ridd told the truth about the Stone Island corals, while Terry Hughes’ photographs deceive.

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The feature image at the very top of this blog post is of Premnas biaculeatus, an anemone fish, photographed at a Ribbon reef on the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef in January 2020. There are still so many fish, and so much healthy coral where Terry Hughes has most recently claimed devastating coral bleaching. I SCUBA dived for a week and could find very limited coral bleaching. The underwater footage from this expedition will be made into a feature length documentary.

The decision by the full bench of the Federal Court of Australia is here: https://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/full/2020/2020fcafc0123

Please support The Spectator, a publication that continues to republish important information from this blog: https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/07/peter-ridd-loses-we-all-lose/

Hottest Day Ever in Australia Confirmed: Bourke 51.7°C, 3rd January 1909

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The Australian Bureau of Meteorology deleted what was long regarded as the hottest day ever recorded in Australia – Bourke’s 125°F (51.7°C) on the 3rd January 1909. This record* was deleted, falsely claiming that this was likely some sort of ‘observational error’, as no other official weather stations recorded high temperatures on that day.

However, Craig Kelly MP has visited the Australian National Archive at Chester Hill in western Sydney to view very old meteorological observation books. It has taken Mr Kelly MP some months to track down this historical evidence. Through access to the archived book for the weather station at Brewarrina, which is the nearest official weather station to Bourke, it can now be confirmed that a temperature of 50.6°C (123°F) was recorded at Brewarrina for Sunday 3rd January 1909. This totally contradicts claims from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology that only Bourke recorded an extraordinarily hot temperature on that day.

Brewarrina Meteorological Observations Book, January 1909 — photographed by Craig Kelly MP. Note 123F recorded at 9am on 4th January 1909.

Just today, Friday 10th July 2020, Mr Kelly MP obtained access to this record for Brewarrina, the closest official weather station to the official weather station at Bourke.

He has photographed the relevant page from the observations book, and it shows 123°F was recorded at 9am on the morning of Monday 4th January 1909 – published here for the first time. This was the highest temperature in the previous 24 hours and corroborates what must now be recognised as the hottest day ever recorded in Australia of 51.7°C (125°F) degrees at Bourke on the afternoon of Sunday 3rd January 1909.

The Meteorological Observations Book for Bourke for January 1909 records 125°C for 3rd January. Photograph taken on 26th June in 2014 at the Chester Hill archive by Jennifer Marohasy.

These images are from more complete pages that were photographed and can be accessed here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/reinstate-hottest-day/

That the Bureau of Meteorology denies these record hot days is a travesty. Is it because these records contradict their belief in catastrophic human-caused global warming?

The temperature of 50.6°C (123°F) recorded back in 1909 which is more than 100 years ago, photographed by Mr Kelly today at the National Archives in Chester Hill, is almost equivalent to the current official hottest day ever for Australia of 50.7 degrees Celsius at Oodnadatta on 2nd January 1960. These are in fact only the fourth and third hottest days recorded in Australia, respectively.

Not only has Mr Kelly MP tracked-down the meteorological observations book for Brewarrina, but over the last week he has also uncovered that 51.1°C (124°F) was recorded at White Cliffs for Wednesday 11th January 1939. This is the second hottest ever!

The evidence, a photograph from the relevant page of the White Cliff’s meteorological observations book, is published here for the first time.

This photograph from the White Cliffs Meteorological Observation Book shows the second hottest temperature ever recorded in Australia using standard equipment in a Stevenson screen.

Until the efforts of Mr Kelly MP, this second hottest-ever record was hidden in undigitised archives.

It is only through the persistence of Mr Kelly to know the temperatures at all the official weather stations in the vicinity of Bourke that this and other hot days have been discovered.

If we are to be honest to our history, then the record hot day at Bourke of 51.7°C (125°F) must be re-instated, and further the very hot 50.6°C (123°F) recorded for Brewarrina on the same day must be entered into the official databases.

Also, the temperature of 51.1°C (124°F) recorded at White Cliffs on 12th January 1939 must be recognised as the second hottest ever.

For these temperatures to be denied by the Bureau because they occurred in the past, before catastrophic human-caused global warming is thought to have come into effect, is absurd.

At a time in world history when Australians are raising concerns about the Chinese communist party removing books from Libraries in Hong Kong, we should be equally concerned with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology removing temperature records from our history.

If global warming is indeed the greatest moral issue of our time, then every Australian regardless of their politics and their opinion on greenhouse gases and renewable energies, must be honest to history and these truths.

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* This temperature (125°F/51.7°C on the 3rd January 1909) was recorded at an official Bureau weather station and using a mercury thermometer in a Stevenson screen. Hotter temperatures were recorded in 1896 but the mercury thermometers were not in Stevenson screens, which is considered the standard for housing recording equipment.

The feature image shows Craig Kelly MP at The Australian National Archive, Chester Hill, just today examining the Brewarrina Meteorological Observations book.

The following YouTube video is of me being interviewed on Sky Television by Chris Smith last December 2019.

I have previously blogged on the record hot day at Bourke being deleted by the Bureau here:
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2017/02/australias-hottest-day-record-ever-deleted/

The Useful Things

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“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.” TS Eliot

So much thanks to each of the Queensland nurses who have just left for Melbourne… for doing the useful thing.

This must be such a difficult time for everyone in Melbourne, and for the families of each of the Queenslanders now flying in to that state to lend a hand.

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Photo credit Neil Hewett: Northern Leaf-Tailed Gecko – Saltuarius cornutus (Ogilby, 1892) – Daintree Rainforest – Cooper Creek Wilderness. Buy The Book with the Beautiful things.

How Badly Have Environmentalists Misled and Frightened the Public!

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Once too scared to speak out, finally, Michael Shellenberger, is explaining some inconvenient facts about environmentalism and how it is hurting our Earth in a new book published by Harper Collins.

In a synopsis Shellenberger articulates what I have known for so long:

● The most important thing for reducing pollution and emissions is moving from wood to coal to petrol to natural gas to uranium.

[though it could be that hydrogen will be the solution at least for aviation, and this is all explained in chapter 15 of the book I’m editing]

● 100 per cent renewables would require increasing the land used for energy from today’s 0.5 per cent to 50 per cent.

● We should want cities, farms, and power plants to have higher, not lower, power densities.

● Vegetarianism reduces one’s emissions by less than 4 per cent.

● Greenpeace didn’t save the whales — switching from whale oil to petroleum and palm oil did.

[so pleased this is being acknowledged! and Patrick Moore as a founder and leader of Greenpeace so hurt the discipline of conservation biology, he should also apologise]

● ‘Free-range’ beef would require 20 times more land and produce 300 per cent more emissions.

[Yes, but I like the idea that cows can also get to see the Sun]

● Greenpeace dogmatism worsened forest fragmentation of the Amazon.

● The colonialist approach to gorilla conservation in the Congo produced a backlash that may have resulted in the killing of 250 elephants.

It is also nice to finally hear an insider admit:

Why were we all so misled? In the final three chapters of ‘Apocalypse Never’ I expose the – financial, political and ideological motivations.

Environmental groups have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests. Groups motivated by anti-humanist beliefs forced the World Bank to stop trying to end poverty and instead make poverty ‘sustainable’.

And status anxiety , depression and hostility to modern civilisation are behind much of the klonopin alarmism.

I knew that too.

Michael Shellenberger even apologies:

On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologise for the climate scare we created over the past 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.

I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.

But as an energy expert asked by the US congress to provide-objective testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to serve as a reviewer of its next assessment report, I feel an obligation to apologise for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public…
Some people will, when they read this, imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s co-operatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.

I became an environmentalist at 16 when I threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network. At 27 I helped save the last unprotected ancient redwoods in California. In my 30s I advocated renewables and successfully helped persuade the Obama administration to ¬invest $US90bn into them. Over the past few years I helped save enough nuclear plants from being replaced by fossil fuels to prevent a sharp increase in emissions.

But until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an ‘existential’ threat to human civilisation, and called it a ‘crisis’.

But mostly I was scared.

I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.

Michael Shellenberger

He has some sobering comments in conclusion:

Once you realise just how badly misinformed we have been, often by people with plainly unsavoury motivations, it is hard not to feel duped. Will ‘Apocalypse Never’ make any difference? There are certainly reasons to doubt it. The news media have been making apocalyptic pronouncements about climate change since the late 1980s, and do not seem disposed to stop. The ideology behind environmental alarmism — Malthusianism — has been repeatedly debunked for 200 years and yet is more powerful than ever.

But there are also reasons to believe that environmental alarmism will, if not come to an end, have diminishing cultural power.

The coronavirus pandemic is an actual crisis that puts the climate “crisis” into perspective. Even if you think we have overreacted, COVID-19 has killed nearly 500,000 people and shattered economies around the globe.

Scientific institutions including WHO and IPCC have undermined their credibility through the repeated politicisation of science. Their future existence and relevance depends on new leadership and serious reform. Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalists at legacy publications.

Nations are reverting openly to self-interest and away from Malthusianism and neoliberalism, which is good for nuclear and bad for renewables.

The evidence is overwhelming that our high-energy civilisation is better for people and nature than the low-energy civilisation that climate alarmists would return us to.

And bravo to The Australian newspaper for publishing something about this important new book.

It is good if the extent to which people have been misled begins to be acknowledged. But it is also so important that we know what we stand for, not only what we stand against.

More than anything else it is so important that individuals begin to speak from the heart about what they see in nature. That they begin to acknowledge the beauty all around them — that still exists in such abundance on this planet.

Me, and a rainbow on the horizon, visible from the Sunshine Beach Surf Club just a few days ago. Still in 2020 there are rainbows.

I look out over the ocean to see the sunrise, the moonrise and so often I see rainbows. How could anyone doubt the resilience of nature.

Peter Ridd versus Prestige, and Clown Fish Beyond that Mudflat

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To be truly curious we must confess our ignorance. The person who knows everything would have no reason to question, no need to experiment. If they went in search of evidence, it could only be to confirm what they already knew to be true. Knowledge then would be something that conferred prestige, rather than something to be built upon.

It was because of Peter Ridd that I had to know if all the coral reefs off Bowen were dead, or not. I went looking for mud flats with a Gloucester Island backdrop after the first judgement was handed down, that was back last April 2019.

Of course, Peter was cleared by Judge Vasta in the Federal Court of all the misconduct charges that had resulted in his sacking. Yet the University appealed, and that appeal was heard this last week.

Peter Ridd and me at the mudflats that fringe Bramston reef, just to the south of Bowen.

The university appealed because the modern Australian university can’t let a comprehensive win by a dissident professor go unchallenged. The modern university is all about prestige, and they probably thought that eventually Peter would run out of money, the money needed to defend himself in the courts. But they don’t know Peter, or the team backing him.

Yesterday Peter thanked both the Union and also the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) for their support.

Peter also wrote:

The Federal Court appeal hearing is over, and the lawyers have done their work. We now wait, possibly for some months, for the three judges to make the decision. In essence the appeal was about defining the limits of academic freedom, and what a university scientist can say, and how he or she might be allowed to say it.

For example, was I allowed to say that due to systemic lack of quality assurance, scientific results from Great Barrier Reef science institutions was untrustworthy?

JCU said I was not, [not] even if I believed it to be true.
I am certainly not ashamed of anything I said, how I said it, or of my motivation.

Irrespective of the outcome of the appeal, I can now focus on other matters.

First, I will work tirelessly to raise the problem of hopeless quality assurance of the science of the GBR, including the effect of climate change on the reef. I am hoping that the Senate Inquiry will come out of Covid hibernation soon. I will also be pushing AIMS to release their missing 15 years of coral growth data, and JCU to release its buried report on possible fraud at its coral reef centre. It is shameful the contempt with which these institutions treat the people of the region.

Second, I will work with those agricultural organisations that show a determination to fight, which is sadly far from all of them, to demonstrate that the recent unfair regulations on Queensland farmers are based on shoddy science.

Third: I will work to encourage governments at both state and federal level to force universities to behave like genuine universities and not the glossy public relations companies that they have become. Governments must mandate the introduction of genuine and enforceable guidelines on academic freedom such as those outlined in the Commonwealth governments (unimplemented) review by ex-High Court judge, Robert French.

My IPA colleague Gideon Rozner has an important article in today’s The Australian newspaper that provides much more context. The piece includes comment that:

The Ridd case has resonated around Australia — and has attracted significant attention worldwide — for good reason. It confirms what many people have suspected for a long time: Australia’s universities are no longer institutions encouraging the rigorous exercise of intellectual freedom and the scientific method in pursuit of truth. Instead, they are now corporatist bureaucracies that rigidly enforce an unquestioning orthodoxy and are capable of hounding out anyone who strays outside their rigid groupthink.

JCU is attempting to severely limit the intellectual freedom of a professor working at the university to question the quality of scientific research conducted by other academics at the institution. In other words, JCU is trying to curtail a critical function that goes to the core mission of universities: to engage in free intellectual inquiry via free and open, if often robust, debate. It is an absurd but inevitable consequence of universities seeking taxpayer-funded research grants, not truth.

Worse still, it is taxpayers who are funding JCU’s court case. Following a Freedom of Information request by the Institute of Public Affairs, the university was forced to reveal that up until July last year, it had already spent $630,000 in legal fees. It would be safe to assume that university’s legal costs would have at least doubled since that time. The barrister who JCU employed in the Federal Court this week was Bret Walker SC, one of Australia’s most eminent lawyers. Barristers of his standing can command fees of $20,000 to $30,000 a day. And all of this is happening at the same time as the vice-chancellor of the university, Sandra Harding — who earns at least $975,000 a year — complains about the impact of government funding cuts.

While Australian taxpayers are funding the university’s efforts to shut down freedom of speech, Ridd’s legal costs are paid for by him, his wife and voluntary donations from the public. As yet, neither the federal nor the Queensland Education Minister has publicly commented on whether JCU is appropriately spending taxpayers’ money and, so far, both have refused to intervene in the case.

Gideon Rozner is tireless, and has also put together a fascinating 3-part podcast providing background into Peter Ridd’s fight for academic freedom. He interviewed me for this series.

The Heretic

The saga will continue for the next few years, whatever the judges decide. As will my interest in all things to do with the Great Barrier Reef.

I intend to be back SCUBA diving as soon as the restrictions on travel have lifted and I have finished editing a really important new book Climate Change: The Facts 2020. I’m so privileged, as part of this, to be working with some great scientists. Peter Ridd has a chapter in the book on tropical convection as the heat engine for atmospheric circulation. There are also chapters by Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen, Valentina Zharkova, and quite a few others. There will be 22 chapters, as there were in the last book in this series.

After the book launch, I hope to be launching a full-length documentary film from my trip to the coral reefs beyond the mud flats. The Ribbon reefs are right out on the edge of Australia’s continental shelf. I spent one week diving with the most committed and experienced underwater photographer, back in January 2020.

I learnt so much, especially about coral bleaching and also clown anemone fish. I got to swim with sharks. We have footage of reef sharks and red bass fish (Lutjanus bohar) chasing about one night at a coral garden. We also have footage of a 4,000 year old coral colony known as The Monolith. This massive living home to so many fish was badly bleached in 2016, but had fully recovered by January 2020.

So much to tell, so much to do, so much to finish.

Thank you for your patience. And thank you for your continuing support including for Peter Ridd against prestige. And, also, so that we can all keep asking the important questions. I still have so much to find out about the great diversity of corals and the colourful fish at the magnificient Great Barrier Reef. What I do know is that they persist as reef communities, despite the odds.

Clown anemone fish on the top of a towering coral bombie that I got to explore in January 2020.

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The feature image at the top of this post shows me, underwater, with some clown anemone fish back in January at the Ribbons. We found eight different species in a range of habitat types including on an exposed underwater cliff that dropped 2,000 metres to the sea floor.

Not Running Out of Oil, or Sunshine

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I remember through the 1970s, we were meant to run out of oil, soon. In fact, as long as I can remember we have been running out of oil, soon.

Instead, oversupply is such that the benchmark for US oil fell below zero for the first time ever a couple of days ago. That is, the share market suggested oil couldn’t even be given away because it was in such oversupply.

There is no shortage of oil despite more than 7.6 billion people on planet Earth, and so many vehicles powered by it.

Prices have collapsed, because despite all the pumping from ‘Mother Earth’ since I was a child, there is still more. Because of the pandemic, global demand, not supply, has fallen dramatically. In fact, the worldwide supply glut has created a worldwide shortage of storage space for oil.

The headlines read:

Oil futures collapsed to below zero for the first time ever

Oil plunges for a second day

Yet still we have movies by famous Americans claiming an imminent shortage because:

Too many human beings are using too much, too fast …

That’s according to the latest Michael Moore movie entitled ‘Planet of the Humans’, released earlier this week, which was about the same time oil couldn’t be given away.

The movie is long and a bit tedious and laments our so-called ‘addiction’ to not only oil, but also coal. Yet it is different, because it also effectively shows up ‘renewables’ as something of a scam, if their objective is long term energy security and sustainability.

Surprisingly for Moore, the movie looks beyond the popular to explain that whether solar panels or wind turbines: both are built using ‘fossil fuel’ infrastructure.

In the movie, Moore interviews a technician who explains how silicon is mined and then processed in very hot furnaces with coal. And that this is what solar panels are actually made of – silicon and coal!

The qualities of cement and steel consumed in the construction of a single wind turbine are also detailed.

The new Michael Moore movie also shows us electric cars fuelled by a power grid based on 95% coal.

So, is electricity from coal better than oil, and how could we possibly still have any of either of them? Since I was a young girl at the beach, these type of documentaries have explained we are running out of both.

I am also reminded of how the prices of various natural resources has tended down over the past few decades. It was in the early 1980s that Julian Simon famously betted Paul Ehrlich that the price of Cooper, chromium, nickel, tin and tungsten would fall. And they have.

Julian Simon explains why in his book The Ultimate Resource published in 1981. Yet back in the early 1980s, and still today, the conventional wisdom has claimed we would all be undone by resource scarcity. Simon explains that our notions of increasing resource-scarcity ignores the long-term declines in wage-adjusted raw material prices because of innovation.

Another book, ‘The Future and Its Enemies’ written by Virgina Postrel and published in 1999 puts more context around the notion of innovation. Interestingly Postrel explains why government regulation may only be a problem when it limits innovation. Further, Postrel suggests notions of ‘left’ and ‘right’ in politics are some what meaningless. She suggests the more significant battles will be between the values of a type of person she refers to as the ‘dynamists’ versus the ‘statists’. Quoting from an interview some time ago:

In the book, I talk about the sort of core values of dynamists versus stasists. The core values of dynamists are – it’s really about learning. It’s about discovery. The idea is we don’t really know the best way of doing whatever, and that requires a lot of experimentation, trial and error learning, competition, criticism. It’s a messy process, but it’s the process through which we discover better ways of doing things, whether that’s in business, technology, or the way we live our everyday lives.

On the stasis side, there’s sort of two competing or two complementary ideas rather. One is the ideal of stability – that the good society is the society that doesn’t change. And the other, which I associate with sort of technocratic stasis, is the idea of control – that someone needs to be in charge to set us on the right path and to decide centrally what that will be.

How might this pandemic show the need for regulation and cohesion, while allowing innovation?

That oil prices are at unprecedented lows must be upsetting established world orders? I hope so. Then again, I’m a dynamist.

It is a fact that there has never been so many people on planet Earth and that we live during a time of great wealth but also great uncertainty. Our times perhaps provide unique opportunities for both Postrel’s dynamists and also the technocratic stasis.

In Australia and around the world, how much have our values changed in just the last two months? And yet we have perhaps more social cohesion, at least here in Australia? And many are looking for new rules of engagement, to provide some certainty.

As long as the rules created by the technocrats are clear, and there is still incentive, there is perhaps potential for great innovation: for us to innovate our way out of this pandemic. It should be possible through trial and error, spontaneous adjustment, and adaptation – even if we can’t travel, or party, or watch sport. In fact, there may be more time for thinking.

It is a fact that we can still innovate for a new and different future, and that the best things in life will still be free, even if the movie-makers keep telling us that we are running out of oil, soon.

In Noosa where I live, the sun is still shining, and it shines for everyone.

My little sister and I enjoying the sunshine in Noosa back in the 1970s, when the price of oil was higher and we were about to run out of it.