Jennifer Marohasy

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Wine and Climate Change in Australia – Journalist Michael Brissenden Just Makes Stuff-Up

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MICHAEL Brissenden, considered one of Australia’s most experienced journalists, failed on so many counts with the Four Corners documentary ‘Weather Alert’.

Michael Brissenden is an experienced Australian journalist, this picture is from his biography page at the ABC website.

He suggested that wine grower’s Brown Brothers are relocating at least part of their business to Tasmania because it is too hot in Victoria, which is untrue. He also failed to explain to the public that climate change can be natural, and for as long as humanity has been growing wine grapes harvest dates have changed. He also failed to provide balance by getting some expert perspective of the extent of recent climate change and its likely effect on wine growing.

When the ABC ran its Four Corners program on climate change some weeks back, it had as its theme: that farmers, small businesses, government planners and major corporations have stopped waiting for politicians to decide whether climate change is real. They’re acting now.

One of the more compelling examples provided was that well-known Australian wine producer Brown Brothers was moving part of its operations to Tasmania – to a cooler climate. That is what journalist Brissenden said:

“But that’s not all – the company has now also decided to move part of its operation to cooler country.”

The inference was clear. It has become so hot on mainland Australia, due to catastrophic climate change, that this business was having to act in quite a dramatic way by relocating.

But company representative, Ross Brown, never actually said this. Correspondence* has since established that it’s actually business as usual for Brown Brothers.

“At this stage we don’t intend on selling any vineyards in Victoria. We have always had the philosophy that we grow the right varietals in the most suited climate so we have an incredible team who ensure we are planning the right grapes in the right locations.”

On camera Mr Brown did go on somewhat about how the grape harvests now are getting shorter and earlier because temperatures are rising.

It is well known that temperature is central to all aspects of viticulture (grape growing and harvest), and that records of changing harvest dates have long provided an indication of local climate change. For example, the number of days from 1 September for the wine harvest in Bordeaux, France, has long been an estimate of climate change in Western Europe. As the start date pushed into October from the late 1400s so Europe entered a period known as the Little Ice Age, which followed the Medieval Warm Period. By 1850 – the beginning of the current warm cycle – the average dates of starting vintage were back in September.

There have always been cycles of warming, followed by cooling. For the ABC to really have a story about grape growing and climate change, Brissenden would need to establish the extent to which the current warming cycle is outside the realm of what might be expected from natural climate change. But he didn’t.

Consistent with the ABC’s misguided editorial policy, natural climate change was not even mentioned in ‘Weather Alert’.

I recently published on temperature change in Southeast Australia – the region where Brown Brothers grow wine. It is chapter 5 in the book Evidence-based climate science by scientific publishers Elsevier. In the chapter, entitled Southeast Australian maximum temperature trends, 1887- 2013: an evidence-based reappraisal, I conclude – from a weighted mean of the five highest quality maximum temperature time series for southeast Australia – that the 0.3 degrees Celsius warming since 1887 is well within what might be expected from natural climate change.

Figure 1. These time series lines are derived from data also published in Chapter 5, of the book Evidence-based Climate Science. They show that rural locations, cities and lighthouses have somewhat different temperature trends. Even the most pronounced warming, evident from the cities of Hobart and Melbourne, is within what could be considered natural – though the trends shown here are likely to be artificially exaggerated by the method of measuring temperature since 1996** (electronic probes) and the urban heat island (UHI) effect.

Mr Brissenden might have also mentioned a new book on the fascinating subject of wine and climate – a book written by an agricultural scientist focused on Australian wine. Wine Terroir and Climate Change by John Gladstones (Wakefield Press 2015) concludes that viticulture in Australia is not threatened by global warming, and that much of the computer modelling that underpins the climate change hype is wrong.

If Mr Brissenden was really interested in temperature change and wine growing, and if Four Corners really was about investigative journalism, it would have interviewed Dr Gladstone. But they didn’t.

The documentary was more a propaganda piece – and altogether consistent with ABC editorial policy on the topic of climate change.

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This article was offered to various mainstream Australian media outlets, they all passed on it. But The Spectator Australia has been brave enough to republish, ’tis here: https://www.spectator.com.au/2018/04/no-four-corners-brown-brothers-is-not-moving-to-tasmania/ .

* The correspondence with Brown Brothers was initiated by Bob Fernley-Jones, a Melbourne-based retired mechanical engineer. This blog post details just one of many errors of fact in the Weather Alert documentary identified and documented by Mr Fernley-Jones, which he has included in a series of formal submissions addressed to the ABC’s Audience and Consumer Affairs. Mr Fernley-Jones was recently advised that the ABC have exercised their discretion not to investigate any of his submissions.

** In a previous blog post I have detailed the extent to which recent warming trends are likely to be exaggerated by the change from mercury thermometers to electronic probes – this is also something that could and should have been investigate by Mr Brissenden.

Complaint Lodged Against Four Corners’ Weather Alert

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JO NOVA began a recent blog post”

After years of telling skeptics that you don’t ask a plumber to do heart surgery, the ABC “Weather Alert! last Monday was 90% plumbers.

The formerly iconic FourCorners “public affairs” show crafted a 43 minute advertisement for the Renewables Industry and Carbon Trading Bankers and the Green Blob. And we taxpayers paid for it all.

This very amusing blog post by Jo continues with much more to contemplate about the extent to which politics now rules when it comes to the mainstream media and the topic of climate change.

The program was full of factual errors.

Melbourne-based, retired mechanical engineer, Bob Fernley-Jones highlights some of these factual errors in a formal complaint that he has already lodged, and it has already been assigned a case number C10545-18. With Bob’s permission I provide the text and graphics from this complaint…

Complaint summary: The programme presented various anecdotal claims associated with recent severe weather events that prima facie seemed to be far-fetched. When those claims were subjected to the simplest of validity checks they were found to be false and very misleading. Also, important information that is available from various authoritative sources but that was opposite to the dramatically orchestrated programme agenda was excluded.

Example 1)

1.1) From the transcript:

“MARTIN ROYDS, Jillamatong Beef, Braidwood NSW: The temperatures are more erratic, we seem to get frosts in the middle of summer, we’ve had frosts nearly on Christmas day. We’re getting hot, dry weather in the middle of winter. so the climates got a lot more erratic.”

A simple Google search for ‘Summer frost NSW Australia’ yielded 428,000 hits, but nothing of relevance was found. A similar search for ‘hot winter day NSW Australia’ yielded only a report of a single warm day of 26 0C in Sydney in July 2017. However, Sydney is incomparable climatically because Braidwood is located at an altitude of about 690m (2,250 feet), in The Tablelands east of Canberra.

So, what does the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) have to say? Quite a lot actually. They opened a weather station at Braidwood Racecourse in 1985, and:

There was a solitary rather cold overnight Summer minimum of 2.3 0C on the 17/Feb/2017, but it was consistently colder in past decades (figure 1).

Figure 1.

There was a solitary warm winter day maximum of 20.9 0C on 22/August/2015, but again, it was consistently warmer in the past, with a notable cluster of up to 22.3 0C in 1995 (figure 2).

Figure 2

1.2) From the Transcript:

MARTIN ROYDS: Yes we have 130 years of rainfall and temperature graphs. Since 1985 to now, the temperatures have been increasing .8 of a degree per decade. So, in that thirty year period, it’s gone up 2.4 degrees, maximum temperature.

However, that would be an eight-degree rise per century, or implausibly about eight times greater than the Australian average as stated by the BoM’s Dr Braganza at 5 video-minutes. Also, the BoM data show no discernible warming trend in the summertime maxima at the racecourse (figure 2).

1.3) From the Transcript (summarising Mr Royds’ views):

“MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: All around the district the dams have been drying up… Braidwood slipped into drought once again and it’s taking a heavy toll on the local farmers.”

However, the available BoM rainfall data for the Racecourse reveals no discernible rainfall reduction trend since 1985 and nothing unusual in annual variability apart from a drier period in the 1990’s (figure 3).

Figure 3

1.4) From Mr Royds’ website:

He runs a business which provides accommodation for up to 52 people to “Live, Learn, Relax at Tombarra” to engage in conferences and workshops etcetera focussing on land and environmental matters. The possibility that he might gain financial benefits from the claims made above should have caught the notice of any nonaligned investigative reporter.

Example 2)

The opening narrative sets-up the programme agenda with several sensational TV news grabs:

2.1) Sydney newsreader:

“Tonight fires break out across the state as Sydney sizzles and the mercury soars, with Penrith recording its hottest day ever at 47.3 degrees.

This claim became rapidly obsolete in the media with widespread correction of a mistaken early tweet from the BoM. Again, your investigative reporter apparently failed to do a quick online search for ‘Penrith 47.3’ or the like. Maurice Newman, a former Chairman of the ABC put it rather succinctly in The Australian:

“…according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, little old Penrith in Sydney, Australia, was the warmest spot on the planet, recording its highest temperature ever, having “broken the all-time maximum temperature record for … the Sydney metropolitan area”. Well, perhaps in all that excitement the bureau can be forgiven for overlooking the fact Penrith Lakes started recording temperatures only in 1995 and for missing a much higher temperature recorded in nearby Richmond in 1939. But they were right. It was hot.”

2.2) Brisbane newsreader:

“Queenslanders have suffered through temperatures at least 10 degrees above average as the heatwave sets in for the weekend.

The claim of “at least 10 degrees above average” is again severally misleading including that sparsely populated areas in the hot centre have a long history of very high fluctuations in temperature that were more severe than those of late. Your programme failed to reveal the proper perspective of various less alarming reports such as in the Brisbane Times on 15/Feb/2018 (even though it too is partly exaggerative or mistaken when compared with the relevant BoM databases):

“[BoM] forecaster Sean Fitzgerald said much of Queensland recorded temperatures above 35 degrees during the week.
In particular, out west is where it is very very hot – temperatures out there are at or exceeding 40 in some places, so quite a bit above average,” Mr Fitzgerald said.

“Lots of places are five degrees above average and some places are even 10 degrees above average, so plenty of warm temperatures about the state.
“You’re talking about places like Charleville, Longreach, Roma even Toowoomba.”

Records were also broken in Winton in central-west Queensland which recorded 46.5 degrees on Wednesday, breaking a February 28, 2016, record of 45.5* degrees, while a couple of hundred kilometres south, in Richmond, a 1983 record of 44 degrees was broken when the town hit 44.5 degrees.”
However, when the BoM databases are examined, all six stations cited were relatively cool in recent times. (e.g. figures 4, 5, 6)

Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6

Mistakenly, the forecaster’s statement about Richmond is strongly contradicted in figure 3, and, although the stated 45.5 in 2018 is apparently OK, one of the corrective BoM tweets on the saga in 2.1 above admitted that it was 2.3 degrees hotter in 1939. Also, the Winton, Roma and Toowoomba examples only have short records that are incapable of providing long-term trend determinations. Moreover, Winton’s 45.5 in 2018 did not break the record high of 46.9 on 1/Dec/2006 anyway!

2.3) Melbourne newsreader:

“The state’s public transport system and power supply have come under pressure as Melbourne baked through its hottest day in two years.

There were 193 days hotter than 40 degrees recorded at the Melbourne Regional Office before its closure in 2015. At Olympic Park, the replacing station, it spiked at 41.7 0C on 6/Jan/2018 atop a modest month average of only 27.2 0C. Some more notable past highs were; 2009* = 46.4, 1939* = 45.6, 1908 = 44.2, 2003 = 44.1, 1862 = 44.0.

So, a single 41.7 0C day in Melbourne is hardly a big deal but it is dressed-up to be a sign of pending doom. * Catastrophic bushfires driven by extreme winds from the hot interior.

Please advise what corrective action will be taken over the seriously misleading statements in all of these seven points, and over failure to check their validity or provide balance.

Ends. [This is the extent of the text and charts as provided by Bob, and I thank him for letting me putting them on the public record here.]

I would encourage others with a strong empirical background to also lodge formal complaints.

An underlying theme of the Four Corners program is that the general situation across Australia is one of declining rainfall. In fact, while the overall trend for south western Australia, the example provided in the program, may be one of decline, in many other areas there has been record high rainfall over the last decade. For example, the highest recorded annual rainfall total since 1900, for the Murray Darling Basin, was in 2010.

Annual rainfall totals for the Murray Darling Basin. There is no evidence of general decline in rainfall, and it is noteworthy the highest annual rainfall ever recorded was in the last decade – in 2010.

Also, last week, I blogged on the issue of the unreliability of the temperature measurements as narrated by Michael Brissenden in this Four Corners program.

Sarah Ferguson and Michael Brissenden Withhold Important Information from the Australian Public Concerning Climate Change

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Australian politicians, and the media they sponsor, have been throwing their hands in the air and screaming unprecedented climate change – particularly over the last two weeks. A focus has been on the record number of new record hot days. But in all of this, there is no mention that the method used to actually measure hot days has changed.

This week’s Four Corners program began by interviewing Karl Braganza from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Braganza explained that it is really only since the 1990s that we have started to see the extreme heat. What he didn’t mention is that a totally new method of measurement came into effect on 1 November 1996 – with the transition continuing, so each new year, additional weather stations have their mercury thermometer replaced with an electronic probe taking one-second spot readings.

For example, the Bureau claimed a new record hottest day for September for the state of Victoria on 23 September 2017, which was actually a one-second spike from an electronic probe installed in June 2012. The Bureau reported this as the hottest September day back to 1889. Yet between 1889 and 1996 a completely different method was being used to measure maximum daily temperatures at Mildura.

According to the Guinness World Records, a record must be standardisable and verifiable. Yet the new record from Mildura was not measured according to world standards of calibration for the use of electronic probes which specifies that one-second readings be averaged over at least one minute. Meanwhile this questionable data is being used to justify ever more expenditure on Australia’s perceived climate catastrophe – without any questioning by leading Australian journalists Michael Brissenden or Sarah Ferguson, who presented Monday night’s program that lamented the new record hot days.

In not reporting that the incidence of “extreme heat” corresponds with a change in how maximum temperatures are measured, these two journalists, Brissenden and Ferguson, have withheld important information from the Australian public.

Given the new, very different, method of measuring temperatures, it would be assumed that there are dozens of reports published by the Bureau that document how comparable the measurements from electronic probes have proven at different locations, and under different conditions. Yet there are none!

The Bureau claims, when asked, that temperatures from its electronic probes and traditional mercury thermometers are comparable – without providing any actual evidence. My analysis of temperature data from Mildura indicates that there is a statistically significant different – with the first probe (in place from 1996 to 2000) recording too cool, and subsequent probes too warm relative to the mercury thermometer (often by up to 0.4 degrees Celsius).

I have been attempting to bring this to the attention of the media, particularly the ABC for some months. But their journalists turn-away. They don’t want any scrutiny of this much revered institution, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Gambling at an Australian mobile casino is a popular and fun pastime for many people. It’s easy to jump in at any time and many casinos have a very wide range of games to choose from. The popularity of online casinos is based not only on the good odds but also on the fact that you can play games from the comfort of your own home, which is why mobile casinos in Australia have developed at such a rapid pace.

Even in the Australian parliament there is a closing-of-ranks. Rather than consider my evidence, Monday before last Senators Richard Di Natale and Anne Urquhart from the Australian Greens claimed that the questions I have been raising about the integrity of the temperature data amounted to ‘climate denial’ and harassment of the Bureau’s CEO, Andrew Johnson.

In reality, my few emails to Johnson have focused on the single issue of how temperatures are measured, which really has nothing whatsoever to do with denying climate change. Indeed, if we are to accurately quantify the magnitude of global warming, then the integrity of the temperature databases is paramount. Yet the number of documented anomalies continues to grow – as does the indifference of our political class.

Sarah Ferguson introducing Michael Brissenden on Monday night’s ABC Four Corner’s program that ostensibly reported on climate change. Four Corner’s is a publicly funded news program, that claims to be investigative. On Monday night it could be best described as climate porn, or climate propaganda with critical information withheld – perhaps through ignorance.

‘Kill Climate Deniers’ – Now Showing at a Sydney Theatre

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JUST two generations back, in the 1960s, mainstream Australian society shunned both unmarried pregnant women and also homosexuals. They were loathed, and it would have been considered reasonable for the local police to turn-a-blind eye should misfortune befall members of either group – should they be killed.

In my opinion, human-beings are not naturally hateful, though powerful institutions often look to squash dissent by turning the tribe against groups with certain characteristics – particularly those likely to possess special knowledge.

The loathing of unmarried pregnant women and homosexuals back in the 1960s was a consequence of preaching, particularly by the Catholic Church. During this period the church, while preaching abstinence, employed thousands of priests active in the community, many of whom were secretly molesting young boys and girls. No doubt getting some of them pregnant, and grooming others to be their homosexual lovers. Key findings from the recent child sexual abuse royal commission include: abuse mostly occurred in religious institutions (58%), most victims were male (64%), most of those perpetrating the abuse were male (94%), the average age of the victims is now 53 years.

After some decades, finally, Australian society has woken-up and owned-up to this scandal. Times have changed, and unmarried pregnant women and homosexuals are now embraced.

It is my observation that homosexuality is now almost revered; at least by those who consider themselves progressive, trend-setters, supporters of the arts – our most virtuous. So, what does it say about this same group, that they now actively support hatred of so-called climate change deniers?

The arts community successfully sought government funding for a play entitled ‘Kill Climate Deniers’ that has just now opened at the Griffin Theatre in Sydney.

What special knowledge could so-called ‘climate deniers’ possess that would turn the now most virtuous in our society so against us – against my group. Find more than 40 unique weed seeds strains, including regular feminized, auto-flowering, and high-CBD medical marijuana seeds.

This is a screenshot, incredibly in Australia in 2018, it is fine to advocate on the internet the death of those who hold a different perspective on climate change. Indeed, I can’t see anywhere the words ‘comedy’ or ‘satire’.

BoM Blast for Dubious Record Hot Day

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IN September 2017, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) claimed a series of new record hot days across south eastern Australia, including on 23 September at Mildura. At that time, the mainstream media reported this as a new record for the state of Victoria, specifically claiming it was the hottest September day ever recorded – all the way-back to September 1889. This claim, however, cannot be verified because the BoM uses a non-standard method for recording temperatures at Mildura, and furthermore the parallel data provided to me in December 2017 as proof of equivalence is flawed and deficient.

Background

On 23 September 2017, a new record hot day for Victoria was claimed at the Mildura airport using an electronic probe in an automatic weather station (AWS) housed in a Stevenson screen.

The BoM claims that measurements from such devices are ‘comparable’ to measurements from traditional mercury thermometers, which were used to measure official air temperatures at Mildura from 13 June 1889 until 1 November 1996.

There is no documentation, however, supporting this contention for Mildura or any of the other nearly 500 AWS spread across the Australian continent. Furthermore, the BoM does not have World Meteorological Organisation, or any other form of accreditation (i.e. ISO 17025) for any of its AWS. In addition, the BoM uses a non-standard method of recording temperatures from such devices. Specifically, while one­-minute averaging of one­-second readings is standard across the world (e.g. in India, UK, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) the BoM records the instantaneous highest one-second readings from a probe as the maximum temperature for that location for that day.

Given electronic probes generally respond more quickly to fluctuations in air temperature than mercury thermometers, it follows that this method – instantaneous recordings from an electronic probe – would result in new temperature maxima under the same weather conditions. The BoM, however, claims that temperature measurements from electronic probes are nevertheless ‘comparable’ with measurements from mercury thermometers because the BoM’s ‘purpose-designed’ probes ‘closely mirror’ the behaviour of liquid-in-glass thermometers, including the time constant.

While this is theoretically possible, to know if it is being achieved in practice it is necessary to analyse parallel measurements i.e. data from an electronic probe and mercury thermometer operating side-by-side for a period of time.

While the BoM has never released reports with parallel data supporting the claim of equivalence, in late October and early December 2017 a first and second lot of A8 forms were released to me – this followed my request to Minister Josh Freydenberg on 26 September for parallel measurements, and more specifically on 22 October for these A8 forms… immediately after I was informed by a whistle-blower that these forms contained the relevant information.

Parallel data from Mildura – preliminary findings

After I manually transcribed and analysed relevant data from a subset of the first batch of over 4,000 scanned A8 forms received on 28 October, I wrote to Minister Freydenberg on 12 November explaining that the values recorded manually on the A8 forms from the mercury thermometers for the period November 1996 to December 2000 at Mildura are significantly different from the official values recorded from the electronic probes.

Just considering the values for September, the mean difference is statistically significant at the 0.05 level of probability, and is +0.34 °C, +0.27 °C and +0.28 °C for the years 1997, 1998 and 1999, respectively. Somewhat surprisingly, the automatic weather stations at Mildura for these three Septembers recorded statistically significantly cooler temperatures than the mercury thermometers.

Analysis of the second lot of forms, received on 4 December, has proven more problematic because of the quality of the available data, and absence of critically important data.

The electronic probe that measured the record hot day on 23 September 2017 was installed on 27 June 2012 and I was initially told that there was parallel data only available through until January 2015. So, there is no reading from a mercury thermometer for Mildura for 23 September 2017.

After scrutiny of the A8 forms actually provided, however, it appeared that the extent of parallel readings for the probe installed on 27 June 2012 would be limited to just the eight months July 2012 to February 2013… except that the BoM had omitted to scan September 2012 – the one month that could provide a direct measure of the equivalence of the relevant probe for that time of year at that location. After informing the BoM of this omission, I have been told it is being looked-into… that the relevant officer will follow-up on the missing month of data.

Meanwhile, if we consider the residual available parallel data… the very hottest days according to readings from the electronic probe (30 November 2012, 18 January 2013, 5 January 2013, 8 January 2013, 6 January 2013, 1 December 2013, highest to lowest) have no equivalent reading from a mercury thermometer. In short, it appears that on the hottest days in Mildura – during the period that manual readings were being taken after installation of the most recent probe – no one was turning-up to take the manual reading from the mercury thermometer. As a consequence, the data for this period from the mercury thermometer is not normally distributed, as shown in Figure 1. This makes statistical analysis using standard techniques impossible as assumptions implicit, for example in a standard paired T-test, are violated.

Fig. 1. When the frequency of specific temperatures/data points as measured from the mercury thermometer at Mildura after July 2012 are plotted, it is evident that the data is not normally distributed. This makes statistical comparisons with measurements from the electronic probe problematic.

There are many more maximum temperatures measurements available for the electronic probe (n=948) than for the mercury thermometer (n=115), and the distribution is quite different, with a somewhat more normal distribution for the probe data, as shown in Figure 2.

Fig 2. Distribution of measurements from the electronic probe recording in an AWS.

Considering days when there is parallel data available in the temperature band of interest (the claimed-record hot day in September 2017 measured 37.7 degrees Celsius) the new probe has been found to measure up to 0.4 degrees hotter (e.g. 26 February 2013 the recording for the probe is 37.3, while the mercury thermometer recorded 36.9 on the A8 form). In fact, Table 1 shows that for the last month of available parallel measurements the electronic probe (Tmax-Probe) often recorded considerably warmer than the mercury thermometer (Tmax-LIG).

Tbl 1. This screenshot of the Excel file where I record the transcribed values shows that for the very last month of parallel recordings at Mildura, the electronic probe was often recording hotter than the mercury thermometer by up to 0.4 degree Celsius. (The abbreviation LIG stands for liquid-in-glass i.e. mercury and alcohol thermometers. Also, note that the measurements/data points shown here are as recorded on the A8 forms that are one full day different from the values in the CDO and ADAM databases… this is because the actual recording is of the temperature the afternoon before.)

In conclusion

While it is official BoM policy to ensure that there is approximately five-years of overlapping parallel data when there is a site move or equipment change at an official weather station, this policy appears to be rarely implemented. Indeed, while it would seem reasonable to assume that there would be dozens of reports detailing the results from such parallel studies – none have been made publicly available.

In the case of Mildura, the quality and length of the available parallel data makes it difficult to draw any real conclusions about the equivalence of measurements from the electronic probe installed in July 2012, with measurements from earlier probes and/or the mercury thermometer first installed back in 1889.

The issue of verifying the claimed record hot day on 23 September 2017 is compounded by the BoM’s method of measuring temperatures – in particular the absence of averaging over at least one minute which is standard for electronic probes.

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The second chart and table were added to this post the next morning (12 Feb. 2018) – to aid understanding, and add clarity.

Peter Ridd Asks for your Help – Now

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PROFESSOR Peter Ridd is a physicist at James Cook University who has dared to question scientific findings that purport to show the Great Barrier Reef is in trouble. Specifically, he has been formally censured by the University and told to remain quiet about the matter – or risk his job.

The issue dates back to August 2017, and comments he made on television promoting the book I edited last year – Climate Change: The Facts 2017.

Peter wrote the first chapter in this book, and in it he suggests that there are major problems with quality assurance when it comes to claims of the imminent demise of the reef. He has also published in the scientific literature detailing his concerns about the methodology used to measure calcification rates, including a technical paper in Marine Geology (volume 65).

After some reflection over the last couple of months, and some thousands of dollars on legal fees – so far paid by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) that first published the book that got him into trouble – Professor Ridd has decided to fight the final censure.

In short, he has decided he would rather be fired than be quiet.

But he is now going to have to find about A$95,000!

So, this university Professor has set-up a crowdfunding account. It is now your turn to show support and help fight the case.

https://www.gofundme.com/peter-ridd-legal-action-fund

Peter Ridd and Jennifer Marohasy speaking about the need for quality assurance in science last November in Sydney.

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UPDATE – Saturday morning

This screenshot was snapped early Saturday morning (Queensland, Australia – time).

So, we have reached and exceeded the target in just two days!

Peter Ridd is exceedingly grateful to everyone who donated.

Also, a huge thank you to Anthony Watts who owns and manages https://wattsupwiththat.com/ for so actively supporting this campaign, and also the Executive Director of the IPA, John Roskam, who has backed Peter Ridd on this from the beginning. I would also like to thank ‘BM’ for his very generous donation, and also my Mum for her A$100.