Jennifer Marohasy

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Sea Level Fall, Accurately Reported in Local Noosa News

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So much thanks to Peter Gardiner of the local Noosa News for so accurately reporting on Senator Malcolm Robert’s visit to Noosa National Park this morning in the article now available online: Scientists, Senator Claim Noosa’s Sea Level is Falling. It begins:

Noosa’s climate emergency declaration could well be on the rocks if a One Nation senator and his scientific advisers are right.

Sen Malcolm Roberts and two scientists, locally-based Dr Jennifer Marohasy and Dr Peter Ridd, have inspected Noosa National Park’s Boiling Pot headland and declared there are clear signs there the sea levels have fallen over many years, with only small rises in more recent times.

“With climate change you often have cycles within cycles,” Dr Marohasy said.
“We’ve got a rise of 36cm over the last 100 years, that’s what the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) talks about.

“That needs to be placed in the perspective of that over the last four-and-a-half thousand years the longer, more significant cycle that you can see in the landscape here is one of sea level falls of about 1.5m,” she said.

She said the IPCC has been selective in its data use, while linking the latter rise to the Industrial Revolution.

“There is a little bit of a human effect but maybe in the scheme of things it’s really quite insignificant,” Dr Marohasy said.

“When you walk along the shoreline here at Noosa you can see, for example, at the bottom of the cliff face that would have been eroded by the waves, that’s actually way above where the waves ever come to.

Jen, Malcolm and Peter Ridd at the bottom of the cliff face (below Boiling Pot lookout) this morning.

Such cliff faces are formed where the cutting action of waves brings down great lumps of rock from above. The debris is then removed by the wash, and the headland recedes landward as the sea eats into the cliff face creating what are called wave cut notches.

That the waves, even on the very highest tides, don’t reach the bottom of the cliff face is evidenced that the more significant trend is one of sea level fall.

Can you see us, on the cliff face this morning … humankind is really so punny in the scheme of things.

Malcolm Roberts and Peter Ridd spent a good amount of time walking the shoreline with me this morning. Ever interested in water quality, I did notice Peter Ridd tasting the water in the marine pot holes to check whether they were fresh, brackish or salty.

Jen, Malcolm and Peter about a marine pothole at Tea Tree Bay this morning. Potholes are formed by the relentless grinding of harder rocks caught in a depression in softer sandstone. Pounding surf causes the harder rock to swirl round and round, grinding around and also down. The grinding that created the potholes at Tea Tree Bay could only have happened when sea levels were higher, when this platform was between the high and low water mark. For as long as I have visited this bay, it is only the highest tides that splash some water into the marine potholes. Last December they were full of freshwater and breeding tadpoles of the green tree frog.

Peter Gardiner did include comment in the article that:

According to the Department of Environment coastal areas like Noosa are facing a sea level rise of 1.1 metres by 2100. More than an estimated 2200 Noosa properties could be impacted by sea rises and storm flooding.

Part of council’s policy is to adopt a precautionary approach to climate change adaptation and emissions reduction, while implementing short and long-term actions that seek to achieve resilience and carbon reduction.

Climate models – the results of which are compiled and assessed by the IPCC – forecast that one of the consequences of global warming from greenhouse gases will be rising sea levels due to the thermal expansion of the ocean water mass, plus the contribution of water from melting of ice sheets and glaciers residing on land.

In 2013, the IPCC concluded that the oceans had already risen 19 cm (17 to 21 cm) between 1901 and 2010, which is an annual rate of 1.7 mm/year (1.5 to 1.9 mm/year). They further predicted the oceans will rise approximately an additional 51 to 98 cm with a substantially accelerated rate of increase during 2081–2100 of 8 to 16 mm/year. There are a few things, however, that are almost never pointed out in discussions about climate change and sea-level rise. For example, the estimates of past and current global rates of sea-level rise, and the future projections, are calculated constructs that are largely the product of extremely complex computer models. We are being asked to simply trust them. However, the success of this modelling is dependent on chains of assumptions. If one assumption turns out to be incorrect then the results produced by the models could be wrong. This applies equally to estimates of past and present rates of global sea-level rise, as well as to future projections. They are hypothetical. Yet these calculated values are broadcast widely with such a sense of confidence that a false impression is created.

None of the global estimates derived from models correspond to directly observed and measurable sea-level change at any point on the open sea, or along any coastline.

Jen, Malcolm and Peter above the cliff face, at Boiling Pot lookout just this morning.

Senator Malcolm Roberts is so hard working, and completely fearless … and I thank him for taking the time to visit with me in Noosa this morning and also for helping Peter Ridd with his fundraising. You can donate to Peter Ridd’s appeal here: https://au.gofundme.com/f/peter-ridd-legal-action-fund-2019.

Speaking Out, for Zoe Lee

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First they came for the Socialists,
and I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists,
and I did not speak out
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak for me.

by Martin Niemoller

This video ends when the Victorian police officer took the phone which was recording live on Facebook. The arrest and search warrant apparently gave the police the right to confiscate all electronic devices in that home, including that mobile phone.

For more context, you can read the article online at The Australian newspaper by Janet Albrechtsen, it begins:

The state of Victoria is unfathomable. The duly elected leader, a Labor Premier, has armed police with brute powers to enter and search the Ballarat home of a young pregnant woman, her partner and children, arrest and handcuff her and seize all phones and laptops, regardless of who owns them.

Why? Here’s the fascist part.

Twenty-eight-year-old Zoe Buhler posted about “Freedom Day Ballarat” on Facebook. She wrote this: “PEACEFUL PROTEST! All social distancing measures are to be followed so we don’t get arrested please. Please wear a mask unless you have a medical reason not to. As some of you have seen, the government has gone to extreme measures and are using scare tactics through the media to prevent the Melbourne protests.

I’m speaking out, including through this weblog that is usually reserved for my natural history.

I worked out how to download the video from Facebook, and upload to a new Vimeo channel that I’ve just setup through Climate Lab. You are most welcome to share.

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The image at the top of this blog post is of course about a character in George Orwell’s novel called ‘Animal Farm’. And I copied the image from here: https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/animal-farm/boxer-horse

Sea Levels Falling, with Ridd and Roberts

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WE live at a time of so much misinformation and propaganda. What should we believe about global warming and sea level change: various claims, or what we can actually see in nature?

On Monday 7th September, I plan to show Dr Peter Ridd and Senator Malcolm Roberts evidence of a long-term trend of sea-level fall, which is etched in the shoreline at Noosa National Park.

I don’t mean that I am taking them out there in the afternoon when sea levels will fall by almost one metre over just a few hours because of the gravitational force of the moon. Rather I am referring to evidence for sea level fall over the last few thousand years, and some.

While there is much hype about a claimed 36-centimetre rise in sea level over the last 100 years, the longer-term, and more significant, trend is one of falling sea levels since at least the Holocene High Stand, and by more than 150 centimetres. Of course, sea levels were 12,000 centimetres (120 metres) lower just 16,000 years ago during the depths of the last ice age. During the time of the dinosaur’s – sea levels were more than 10,000 centimetres higher (100 metres) than they are now. Sea levels are always changing – on daily and also millennial time scales.

THE CLIFF FACE

There is a cliff face immediately below the Boiling Pot Lookout, which is just beyond the main car park at the official entrance to Noosa National Park. Below the lookout, to the south, there is a wave-cut platform. A group of us went and stood on it during the highest astronomical sea tide this year, which was on Monday 10th February, and the waves did not get to the base of the cliff face – we weren’t washed away!

The cliff face below the Boiling Pot lookout, as photographed by my drone showing the wave cut notch.

Such cliff faces are formed where the cutting action of waves brings down great lumps of rock from above. The debris is then removed by the wash, and the headland recedes landward as the sea eats into the cliff face creating what are called wave cut notches.

That this platform, and the notch, is above the highest tides is evidence that the longer-term trend is one of sea level’s falling, not rising. If sea levels were rising, we would have been washed away when we stood on that platform at the time of the highest tide, particularly given that morning was coincided with an offshore low that further elevated sea levels.

MARINE POTHOLES

Tea Tree Bay, just a bit further along the path into Noosa National Park, has interesting wave cut platforms of sandstone, with abrasions called marine potholes. Potholes are generally thought to be formed by the relentless grinding of harder rock – perhaps granite – caught in a depression in softer sandstone. Pounding surf causes the harder rock to swirl round and round, grinding around and also down.

The grinding that created the potholes at Tea Tree Bay could only have happened when sea levels were higher, when this platform was between the high and low water mark. For as long as I have visited this bay, it is only the highest tides that splash some water into the marine potholes. Last December they were full of freshwater and breeding tadpoles of the green tree frog.

This is further evidence that sea levels have fallen. But since when?

HOW OLD ARE THE MARINE POTHOLES AT TEATREE BAY

I received an email from a British geologist not so long ago, he wrote:

That is a really interesting photo of a wave-cut platform on your blog …

Drone view of Jen sitting beside a marine pothole at Tea Tree Bay, Noosa National Park

Some comments and questions:
1. It is a wave-cut platform – Fully agree, but is it bedding plane controlled?
2. It is a pot hole – Fully agree, but is it an exhumed pre-existing feature?

The thing that really catches my eye is the fracture pattern that goes around the ring of the pothole.

What is the geological age and nature of the sedimentary rock?

The fracture patterns are polygonal which suggests a fine-grained colloidal mudstone.

The fractures around the ring also imply the existence of a pre-existing body, possibly a fossilised tree trunk or if the rock is pre-carboniferous in age a stromatolite?

The pothole will therefore have exhumed this fossil sediment which we can assume had a different sedimentary infill.

Note the pattern of dimples round the pothole which, if this is a Jurassic age sediment could be due to the presence of roots of Taxodium sp.

Taxodium sp. tree with aerial roots, purchased as Image ID: 1128480158 from Shutterstock

So, the almost perfectly circular pothole was perhaps once a fossilised tree trunk, and it may date to the time of the dinosaurs!

GRANITE BAY & HELL’S GATES

There is a sign at Hell’s Gates, right at the end of that path through Noosa National Park, that explains the sandstones in the national park date to about (if I remember correctly the sign says, I can check on Monday) 120 million years ago.

I know that the dolorite rock intrusion to the north of Granite Bay, on the way to Hell’s Gates, has been dated to 145 million years. And the general consensus, including at Wikipedia, is that sea levels were a lot higher back then.

Really the only constant in life is change, along with sea levels!

Another drone shot, looking north from Granite Bay in Noosa National Park.

TIME SCALES

Some may claim that 145 million years ago is not a relevant time scale. So, when should history begin? I have been visiting Noosa since I was about ten years old, and now I live here. I’ve been looking for evidence of sea level rise for as long as I can remember, and I haven’t been able to see any: that is over the last 47 years.

There is a Sonel.org GPS reference station at Bundaberg (just to the north of Noosa) and Brisbane (just to the south). These indicate that there has been some land subsidence at a rate of -0.8mm/year and -1.8mm/year, respectively.

I’m guessing this is soil subsidence rather than crustal bedrock subsidence, but I’m happy to be corrected. Either way if there is such subsidence also occurring at Noosa, this reinforces my point that sea levels in the relatively recent past must have been higher to create the potholes at Tea Tree Bay and the wave-cut notch below Boiling Point.

This old photograph shows Jen at Noosa all the way back in 1973, and holding the tail of a Spanish Mackeral. While there is not much evidence of sea level rise, there is some evidence of overfishing. Our community here in Noosa can be so selective in what it chooses to see and discuss. Most people will not accept what is so obvious in the shore line, that there is no evidence for catastrophic sea level rise. If as a community we are to be more relevant to nature and the present, let’s be as interested in the recreational and commercial fishing catch, as atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and sea level change?

OTHER INFORMATION AT THIS WEBSITE/BLOG

Pictures and commentary about the highest astronomical tide this year, and showing that the waves didn’t get to the base of the cliff face can be found here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/sea-level-change/ with map.

About sea level change and the marine potholes: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2019/12/what-can-you-see-indicating-sea-levels-are-rising/

About sea level changing with El Ninos and at Darwin:
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2019/07/sea-level-fall-at-the-great-barrier-reef/

Blog post with some good questions and more photographs here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2019/07/recent-sea-level-fall-since-when/

Considering the coastline in these pictures taken from my drone:
1. When are the sandstone platforms likely to have been cut by the waves?
2. Would the rock platform with the potholes have been cut during the last inter-glacial period from perhaps 140,000 to 120,000 years ago, or much earlier?

I understand that sea levels were about 2 metres higher 120,000 years ago, and about 1.5 metres higher 6,000 years ago. According to Warwick Willmott’s book entitled ‘Rocks and Landscapes of the Sunshine Coast’ the headlands of Noosa, Coolum and Point Cartwright were islands during the last inter-glacial. In between this last-interglacial and the beginning of the Holocene (some 11,600 years ago) we had a fall in sea levels of about 150 metres along the Sunshine Coast – I’m quoting again from Warwick Willmott.

THE PEER-REVIEWED TECHNICAL LITERATURE

Howard Brady sent me a list of peer-reviewed articles some time ago, with a note:

“There is evidence of a gradual fall (not rise) from a high sea level stand between 8000 and 2000 years BP [before present]. Such evidence comes from an increasing number of peer-reviewed articles describing evidence of this high sea level stand and its decline along the coasts of Australia, South Africa, South America, South Korea, and Vietnam.
There is increasing evidence that such a wide occurrence of a high sea level stand, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, cannot be interpreted as due to crustal movements (Glacial Isostatic Adjustments -GIAs) in different continents at the same time as these areas did not experience any significant glacial or ice crustal loading during the last ice age advances.

Basically, there is now so much data on this fall in sea level from a high-level stand that the GIAs quoted by Dutton and Lambeck (2012) should be abandoned. A few references to peer reviewed articles describing a high sea level stand in the HTM and the fall in sea-level from 8000 -2000 BP are listed below. There is no justification for any glacio-eustatic uplift since 8000 BP that stopped (for some unknown reason about 2000 BP) in regions that did not experience any ice loading during the last glaciation.

A LIST OF RELEVANT TECHNICAL PAPERS – NOT FORMATTED

Accordi, A, Carbone, F, 2016. Evolution of the siliciclastic-carbonate shelf system of the northern Kenyan coastal belt in response to Late Pleistocene-Holocene relative sea level changes. Journal of African Earth Sciences. Volume 123, November 2016, Pages 234-257
Baker, R.G.V., Haworth, R.J; 2000. Smooth or oscillating late Holocene sea-level curve? Evidence from the palaeo-zoology of fixed biological indicators in east Australia and beyond. Marine Geology Volume 163, Pages 367-386.
Baker, R.G.V., Haworth,R.J., Flood,P.G; 2001. Warmer or Cooler late Holocene palaeoenvironments? Interpreting south-east Australian and Brazilian sea level changes using fixed biological indicators and their d18 Oxygen composition. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology Volume 168, Pages 249-272.
Baker,R.G.V., Haworth,R.J., Flood,P.G; 2001. Inter-tidal fixed indicators of former Holocene sea levels in Australia; a summary of sites and a review of methods and models. Quaternary International Volume 83-85, Pages 257-273.
Baker,R.G.V., Haworth,R.J., Flood,P.G; 2005.An Oscillating Holocene Sea-level? Revisiting Rottnest Island, Western Australia, and the Fairbridge Eustatic Hypothesis. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue no.42.
Bracco,B. et al; 2014. A reply to “Relative sea level during the Holocene in Uruguay. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.Volume 401.
Bradley, S, Milne,G, Horton,B, Zong,Y 2016. Modelling sea level data from China and Malay-Thailand to estimate Holocene ice-volume equivalent sea level change. Quaternary Science Reviews Volume 137, Pages 54-68
Chiba,T et al;, 2016. Reconstruction of Holocene relative sea-level change and residual uplift in the Lake Inba area, Japan. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, PalaeoecologyVolume 441, Part 4, Pages 982-996
Clement, A, Whitehouse,P, Sloss, S 2015. An examination of spatial variability in the timing and magnitude of Holocene relative sea-level changes in the New Zealand archipelago. Quaternary Science Reviews. Volume 131, Part A. January 2016, Pages 73-101
Haworth,R.J., Baker,R.G.V., Flood,P.G; 2001. Predicted and observed Holocene sea-levels on the Australian coast: what do they indicate about hydrostatic models in far field sites? Journal of Quaternary Research Volume 17, Pages 5-6.
Lee, S., Currell. M, Cendon, D. 2015. Marine water from mid-Holocene sea level highstand trapped in a coastal aquifer: Evidence from groundwater isotopes, and environmental significance. Science of The Total Environment. Volume 544. February 2016, Pages 995-1007
Oliver and Terry, 2019. Relative sea-level highstands in Thailand since theMid-Holocene based on 14C rock oyster chronology. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology,Volume 517. Pages 30-38
Prieto, A. Peltier, W. 2016. Relative sea-level changes in the Rio de la Plata, Argentina and Uruguay: A review. Quaternary International.
Sloss, C. R. 2005. Holocene sea-level change and the amino-stratigraphy of wave-dominated barrier estuaries on the southeast coast of Australia, PhD thesis, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, 20. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/447.
Sloss C.R, Murray-Wallace C.V, Jones B.G, 2007. Holocene sea-level change on the southeast coast of Australia: a review. The Holocene 17, 7. 999-1014.
Strachan K, et al, 2014. A late Holocene sea-level curve for the east coast of South Africa. S. Afr. j. sci. vol.110 n.1-2

Great Barrier Reef Platitudes, More Dangerous Than Sharks

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It has always been the case that the individual is expected to conform, and that there is hierarchy within myths.

Myths are of course traditional stories, often explaining a natural phenomenon typically involving supernatural beings or events. Of course, most people, most of the time, are so immersed (and kept so busy) within the established hierarchy and the myth, that they see it as their only reality. But it may not actually work for them (it could even be making them unhappy) especially if they want to be adventurous, and if they want to know the truth and be successful.

This is especially the case if they want to profit from the environment because at this point in our history anyone who interacts in a robust way with the natural environment, for example a farmer or fisherman, is likely to be immediately portrayed as harming the natural environment. Never mind that fundamental to our existence is food, that it still all comes from nature – whether farmed or hunted or gathered.

The Great Barrier Reef is a case in point. At the top of the established hierarchy are the scientists. They are telling us all that the reef is under so much stress from rising ocean temperatures, catastrophic cyclones and declining water quality and its our fault. Rising ocean temperatures have apparently caused the destruction of so many reefs especially through coral bleaching, which is when the corals expel their symbiotic zooxanthellae and become a stark white colour.

Because the scientists are at the top of the hierarchy, whatever they say tends to be parroted by others. Yet it makes no sense to undertake aerial surveys at 300 metres altitude from a plane window as a way of assessing the health of coral reefs that are growing vertically down cliff faces. Yet this is what they do: how the most widely reported assessments of reef health are conducted.

Scuba divers, and dive operators, record and log water temperatures and they go under-the-waves including over vertical edges and under dark ledges where so many colourful corals can be found. So, Scuba divers have firsthand experience of water temperatures and the state of the corals. What few realise, is that many of dive operators are also dependent on established hierarchies for their permits to operate, to visit the marine parks where the best corals grow.

A purple gorgonian coral and such pretty Tubastraea spp., growing at the dive site known as Vertical Gardens in January 2020.

When those with first hand experience turn-off their televisions and stop and think, they mostly know it to be a lie that ocean temperatures are rising catastrophically, and that the corals in the marine parks are in decline. Their experience is otherwise.

If there is any statistic that gives me cause to worry it is shark numbers. It is well documented that hundreds of sharks are killed each year in nets and on drumlines all along the Queensland coast. Scuba divers who have spent whole careers under-the-sea, including Val Taylor, write that the sharks are not coming back – that numbers are not what they used to be even in the most protected green zones within the marine parks.

In the end, if we really care about nature (the sharks and the corals) there needs to be much less hierarchy, and much more discussion between divers, fishers, farmers and scientists about the real issues that need addressing, and with all the evidence admitted.

At present there is a tendency for contrary evidence to be expelled like zooxanthellae from bleached reefs.

Except, that while most of the corals that expelled their zooxanthellae back in April 2016 have taken it all back and recovered – the situation within key Great Barrier Reef research institutions is to permanently expel contrary evidence and squash any, and everyone, who refuses to parrot their extraordinary claims.

What is not realised by most, is that just as the institutions expel wayward scientists, they also have the power to take away the licences of dive operators – such are the current hierarchies.

Jennifer just south of Cairns in January 2020, the day before I left for the week long Scuba trip (including to Vertical Gardens) that is documented in a soon to be released short film. Subscribe at my website to know exactly when and where it will be released: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/subscribe/

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The white-tipped reef shark at the top of this blog post was taken at the Vertical Gardens Dive Site in January 2020. To know when the cinematography that captures all of this is released as a first short film consider subscribing for my irregular email newsletter here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/subscribe/ .

Getting to the Truth: Who Cares? Perhaps the High Court

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Many of us know that there is little to no quality assurance of much of the environmental science that comes out of universities across the Western world. Yet academics are the new demigods, revered by so many while often just making stuff-up to fit the zeitgeist. So many within the university system that have tried to speak-up have been silenced, and then sacked.

Peter Ridd ‘s much publicised sacking has shown some of the tactics routinely used. And he lost in the Federal Court last week.

But again, he is not giving-up. Now is your opportunity to support him in his push to show the injustice through a hearing at the High Court of Australia. You can donate here:

https://gf.me/u/x5frxt

Yes, Peter is appealing the decision of the Federal Court to the High Court of Australia.

The case is of enormous public importance, for free speech and also the traditions of the scientific method. As the Chairman of the IPA, Janet Albrechtsen, wrote in The Australian newspaper 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. And a court has endorsed its actions.

JCU’s conduct, and the court’s decision, has sent intellectual inquiry down the gurgler in the 21st century at an institution fundamental to Western civilisation. Is that to be 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 will consider whether the case involves ‘a question of law that is of public importance’.

The Ridd matter easily meets this threshold. It would be the first time the High Court has been called upon to consider the meaning of ‘academic and intellectual freedom’, which is used in enterprise agreements covering staff at almost all Australian universities.

The court’s decision will therefore have very real consequences in terms of university governance, and the extent to which administrators tolerate controversial (and, often, commercially inconvenient) opinions from the professoriate. (Now I’m quoting from my colleague Gideon Rozner, published in today’s The Australian.)

Should ‘intellectual freedom’ be limited by the whims of university administrators, as the university is arguing? Or should it be wide enough to allow for the kind of controversial, but honestly held opinions for which Dr Ridd was ultimately sacked?

The Federal Court’s answer to that question is deeply disturbing. In its judgment last week, the majority seemed to suggest that free speech on campus is past its use-by date.

‘There is little to be gained in resorting to historical concepts of academic freedom,’ claimed justices Griffiths and Derrington in the majority judgement. They were quoting from an academic textbook outlining ‘a host of new challenges’, like ‘the rise of social media’ and ‘student demands for accommodations such as content warnings and safe spaces’ as reasons for doing away with the concept of intellectual freedom.

While I am not suggesting the judges acted improperly, it is worrying that the boundaries of free speech should be defined in this way.

Intellectual freedom and free speech are not antiquated notions. They are ancient and important rights through which we may get closer to the truth. And there will always be a percentage of us that care about the truth, that seek it out regardless of the consequences.

Peter Ridd and me, just south of Bowen in August 2019. The other side of the mudflat are all the corals that Terry Hughes couldn’t find. More here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2019/05/corals-other-side-of-mud-flat/

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About the picture of the corals on the cliff-face on the edge:

Beyond the corals, beyond the mudflat, and across the coral sea is Australia’s continental shelf that drops in places, 2,000 metres to the ocean floor.

Much of that edge is covered in coral, growing vertically so invisible to aerial surveys.

I SCUBA-dived this edge in January 2020, when the photograph at the very top of this blog post was taken. Yes, there is still so much coral and it is so beautiful. Much of it is in shades of beige.

And this photograph was taken by the Skipper and my friend, Rob McCulloch, just off beautiful Bowen. There is still so much to celebrate in this world: get up for dawn and look to the sky again at sunset.

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/