The Integrity of the Australian Academy of Science
We have entered the “Anthropocene”…It carries risks of abrupt and/or irreversible environmental changes, which could have deleterious and even catastrophic repercussions for contemporary human civilization.
—AAS press release, December 9, 2010
One of the least examined but most influential bodies in Australia is the Academy of Science. Its Fellows such as Kurt Lambeck, Mike Raupach, Graeme Pearman, John Church and John Zillman are big contributors to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, and Academy committees are full of IPCC authors and reviewers.
In the 2007 IPCC Working Group 1 (Science) report, analyst John McLean has shown how Australian official scientists and bureaucrats made 362 review comments, second only to the US with 689, and leaving UK (49), Canada (51) and even Germany (179) looking like slackers.[1]
The loss of credibility of the UK’s Royal Society was illustrated by Andrew Montford’s dispassionate study this year[2]. The Royal Society’s extremism had extended to standover tactics against companies funding sceptics. Has our own Academy, in its enthusiasm for the dangerous-global-warming hypothesis, also put its credibility on the line?
This article will not dive into climate science itself: Are climate models reliable? Do feedbacks really treble the carbon dioxide impact? This essay instead asks: How professional is the Academy? Does it operate with integrity?
It began in 1954 as a spin-off of Australians, led by Sir Mark Oliphant, from the Royal Society. The Academy’s Canberra headquarters are in the “flying saucer” building called the Shine Dome (after Professor John Shine, not because it shines).
It chooses not to make its annual accounts public. The Royal Societies of the UK, New Zealand and Canada do publish accounts. The US National Academy of Sciences, like the Australian Academy, publishes only a list of its grants. The Academy’s president, Suzanne Cory, says the Academy is behaving quite properly with its audited accounts, which go out to all Fellows. Summaries of grants are made public and internal accounting validations are strong.[3]
The bulk of the Academy’s revenues are from federal government funding, about $5m in 2010-11.[4] The rationale is partly that Academy people do valuable free advisory work to the government.[5] The Department of Climate Change put in $222,400.[6] The Academy also has investment and consulting income.
It puts in submissions to government on science issues, usually beseeching more research funding. One Academy submission a year ago was quite odd:
Humans are ultimately the main threat to the environment, especially in Australia, per capita the world’s most effluent and most affluent nation …[7]The first priority must be containing human population growth … to preserve our biodiversity.[8]
The modelling of global climate change is, the Academy believes, already dependable, so funds are needed to parlay the forecasting down to regional level, e.g. south-east Australia. One Academy submission said that local models, when their projections are weighted, showed either a “drying a particular region, or of wetting”.[9] It is a shock to come across this: “More fundamentally, there is a need to examine the limits to which reliable regional forecasts are possible.”[10]
The Academy’s Holy Grail is an “Australian Climate Change Research Institute”, doing its own research via satellites and oceanographic vessels, and doling out money to the universities, CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology. The price-tag? $3 billion a year, to make Australia the Southern Hemisphere leader in climate work.[11]
The federal government last year, rather than shipping billions to the Academy, instead scrapped its $3 million a year support for school science. This caused a rare tiff: President Cory quoted Education Minister Peter Garrett as saying the Labor government had spent $65 billion on its education revolution, but in practice the government couldn’t spare $3 million for the Academy’s top-class science and maths programs for children, she said.[12]
The Academy has grown, slowly, to 458 Fellows. Female Fellows number 38, or 8.3 per cent, but comprise 27 per cent of committee chairs.[13]
The by-laws say that one Fellow per year can be elected for contributions other than personal research, if they are “a person who has rendered conspicuous service to the cause of science or whose election would be of signal benefit to the Academy and to the advancement of science”. This is a good place to start a critical examination.
Last March the Academy’s members thus elected Chief Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery as a Fellow. Some Fellows have protested to the Academy. Flannery had not only predicted Perth becoming a waterless “ghost metropolis”, and permanent drought in the Eastern States, but speculated that during this century “the planet will have acquired a brain and a nervous system that will make it act as a living animal, as a living organism”.[14]
Academy Fellow John Finnigan, Will Steffen (now a Climate Commissioner and thus Flannery’s subordinate) and CSIRO’s Roger Gifford, objected. They said that “talk of the earth ‘growing a brain’ trivialises the growing body of knowledge about the functioning of the whole-earth system.”[15]
Flannery really riled the climate team when he said in November 2009 that global warming had stopped. Rightly or wrongly, he was slapped down by climatologist Andy Pitman: “Communicating complex science is about accuracy and balance. Flannery is not a climate expert.”[16] Flannery is now a Fellow. Steffen, Gifford and Pitman are not.
Cory says the Academy is pleased and proud to have Flannery, an “Australian of the Year”, join its Fellowship, because of his public advocacy for science and personal work on extinct and living mammals and marsupials. He was endorsed by a substantial majority of Fellows.[17]
The Academy cites ABC science presenter Robyn Williams as a similar appointment in 1993. Williams earned ridicule with his comment in 2007 that climate change could cause 100 metres of sea level rise by 2100.[18]
Cory, a molecular biologist, has been President since May 2010. Her predecessor was Kurt Lambeck (2006-10), a geophysicist.
Lambeck was among 255 scientist signatories to a post-Climategate petition in 2010. The petition said, inter alia,
We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.
The petition was published in Science magazine on May 7, the same day that Cory succeeded him.[19] He must have signed it while President but listed (quite properly) his affiliation as “Australian National University”. The petition was accompanied by a tragic, but faked, photo of a polar bear on an ice-floe.[20] Worse, the petition was authored by Peter Gleick, who last February confessed that he obtained fraudulently and passed on for publication, private information from a sceptic think-tank, the Heartland Institute. He also passed on to the press a purported Heartland document that someone had faked.[21] Academy presidents need to be careful about signing such petitions.
Cory has backed off from the Academy’s half-decade of climate activism. She has said little ex-officio about the merits of the dangerous-warming hypothesis, other than to endorse in general terms the Academy’s climate booklet of August 2010. “I stand right behind our Academy’s booklet and don’t distance myself from it one skerrick,” she says. “I can’t comment on it as a climate scientist, but I respect the views of those who compiled it.”[22] She has said she prefers, incidentally, the term “earth systems change” to “climate change/global warming”.[23]
On March 16 last year she called for a separation between scientists commenting on science and on political choices.[24] That was startling given the Academy’s previous gung-ho urgings for emission cuts.
In June 2011 Cory and the Academy fell hook, line and sinker for the adroitly-timed scare about “death threats” to scientists at the ANU’s Climate Change Institute. Cory “called on community leaders to defend intellectual freedom”.[25] Public release of the eleven ANU emails in May this showed how risible the scare was.[26] Cory did waive the opportunity to bag sceptics, who are just as subject to threats and vicious personal attacks as warmists.[27]
However, a fortnight later Cory was endorsing the program of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies (FASTS) to have 200 scientists meet federal Parliamentarians and badger them “to put a stop to this misinformation campaign”, that is, the views of sceptics. To be charitable, I doubt Cory was aware of that agenda, as expressed by its chief executive Anna-Maria Arabia.[28]
Cory’s predecessor Lambeck was himself offensive on occasion, such as his July 12, 2007, statement as President, “Those who deny human-induced global warming are in the same camp as those that deny smoking causes lung cancer and that CFCs deplete the ozone layer.”[29]
In 2010, Cory presided over a serious omission by the Academy. The matter concerned the Inter-Academy Council (IAC) report of August 30, 2010 on faulty IPCC processes.[30]
The IAC is run by presidents of fifteen national science academies. Lambeck was an IAC board member before Cory, was a lead author for the IPCC’s 2001 report, contributing author for the 2007 report, and one of the two monitors overseeing the IAC report.[31]
It was triggered by the melting-Himalayan-glaciers nonsense in the IPCC’s 2007 report. The inquiry was into the IPCC’s impartiality, accuracy and balance, not into the science. The report found “significant shortcomings in each major step of IPCC’s assessment process”.[32] (Try substituting the word every for each.) The report concluded, “Some fundamental changes to the process and the management structure are essential.”[33] Specifically,
Review editors were not ensuring that authors heeded reviewers’ comments. They should “ensure that genuine controversies are adequately reflected in the [IPCC] report”.[34]
In the “‘impacts” section of the 2007 report, “authors reported high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence” and had made some statements deliberately vague so they could claim “high confidence” for them: “Such statements have little value.”[35] The Summary for Policy Makers “contains many such statements that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective, or not expressed clearly.”[36]
- The IPCC responses to proven errors were “slow and inadequate” and IPCC leaders [IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri, obviously] were hurting the IPCC’s credibility by straying into political advocacy.[37]
- The IPCC’s processes for selecting key authors and science papers were poorly understood and not transparent.[38] [This would enable reports to be “stacked” to deliver a particular agenda]
- IPCC authors were not ensuring that unpublished and non-peer-reviewed literature were critically evaluated.[39] [In fact, such grey literature comprised 30% of all the 2007 report’s citations].[40]
- There had been “opportunities for political interference with the scientific results” during final negotiations on the reports’ key summaries.[41]
- So how did the Australian Academy, led by Cory, react to the announcement of this important report, on which it was strongly represented? The Academy said nothing. Then, seven months later, on page 40 of the Academy’s annual report, signed by Cory, we read: “The report released on 30 August 2010 concluded that the process employed by the IPCC had been successful overall but recommended a range of reforms particularly in relation to management structures to strengthen procedures.” Move along, nothing to see here.
The IPCC itself then began watering down and rejecting key elements of the IAC’s “fundamental” and “essential” recommendations. The Australian Academy did not react. It’s called Totschweigetaktik, or “death by silence”. In a frank e-mail, a Fellow and Academy office-bearer explained:
Needless to say, any adverse findings do great damage to the credibility of climate scientists as a whole, especially in the current climate of almost religious opposition to the acceptance of climate change science as a whole. Regretfully the climate change nay-sayers apply different ethical standards when it comes to their own unsubstantiated proclamations! They remind me of Tea Party activists.[42]
Cory says the IAC report was outside her professional area. The Academy is necessarily selective on what third-party material it endorses or publicises, she says. An example was the Academy’s comments on the 2012 Gonski education report, where the Academy had a direct interest. She believes Lambeck and Zillman worked on the IAC review as scientists, not Academy representatives.[43]
Since 2005 the Academy has greeted twelve IAC-type studies with enthusiasm.[44] Here’s the Academy on the UK Stern Review (2006) that urged colossal spending to head off global warming (the Academy has no economics expertise):
Let’s get on with it now! – that’s the message, loud and clear, from Australian Academy of Science President Professor Kurt Lambeck in commenting on the Stern Review … Professor Lambeck added: “… The Australian Academy of Science emphasises therefore, that it deserves a considered, immediate and positive response from Federal, State and Territory Governments.”[45]
The Stern review was torn apart by economists such as Australia’s former Statistician, the late Ian Castles, and Dr David Henderson, former head of the Economics and Statistics Department of the OECD.[46]
The Academy’s partisan nature is evident in another context. In mid-2007 the ABC screened a sceptic documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle. The Academy was outraged and went to great lengths to expose Swindle’s alleged errors.[47] Let us assume these errors were deserving of the Academy’s scorn.
An earlier documentary is Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (2006).[48] A UK judge found nine scientific errors in it. Because UK government schools are not allowed to politically indoctrinate students, Justice Burton ordered in October 2007 that screenings to students be accompanied by a “Guidance Note” with error corrections, and also advising teachers that
- The film promotes one-sided political views
- Teachers must not promote those views
- Teachers must point out where Gore’s view may be inaccurate or unsubstantiated.[49]
An Inconvenient Truth has been screened in Australian government schools to myriads of Australian students, some sitting through it multiple times as they change grades or schools. The film is accompanied by no official guidance note about the film’s errors and its sub-text of political indoctrination. A major function of the Academy is promoting scientific thinking and knowledge in students. The Academy was vociferous about errors in Swindle (screened once or twice on the ABC), but turns a blind eye when Gore’s climate errors and indoctrination are force-fed to students.
Cory says she is not familiar with the UK judgment on Gore’s film. The film’s use in Australian schools is a matter for schools and education departments. The Academy had fulfilled its obligations by providing students with its own trustworthy booklet.[50]
As President, Lambeck went to the ABC to insult geologist Ian Plimer’s sceptic book Heaven & Earth: “If this had been written by an honours student, I would have failed it.”[51] As for the howlers in Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers: no criticism from the Academy, followed by a Fellowship.[52
In May 2010 Opposition leader Tony Abbott told some Adelaide primary students that human contribution to climate change was an open question, and that it was warmer in Roman times than today. Lambeck responded officially to the press that Abbott was glib and wrong about Roman temperatures and encouraging students to accept unsubstantiated information.[53] Again, why correct such an “error” but not correct Gore’s errors, or government ministers’ errors? (The science literature can support Abbott’s conjectures.)[54]
Cory responds that it is normally unwise for the Academy to criticise politicians but scientists as citizens may choose to point out errors where their own expertise justifies it.[55]
Some of Lambeck’s own statements draw the long bow:
“Since the (IPCC) report in 2001, computer models used to predict climate change have vastly improved and are now converging. Predictions are for more droughts and reduced rainfalls throughout much of Australia …” (February 2007).[56]
“If you intend to leave your beachfront property for enjoyment by your grand children then decisions about reducing emissions will have to be made soon.”[57]
“Let’s hope there’s a change in the weather soon on accountability and action for the Earth’s climate. Otherwise, our children will be living in a world that would be well-nigh unrecognisable to us …”[58]
Lambeck claimed to the National Press Club in 2006 that in compiling IPCC assessment reports, “An independent judiciary is set up to ensure that all criticisms are properly answered.”[59] This was wildly incorrect, as shown in the IAC audit of 2010, and Donna Laframboise’s 2011 documentation of IPCC realities. [60] [61]
A different approach would be for the Academy to talk with leading sceptical scientists. Richard Betts, head of the climate impacts research team at the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre and an IPCC lead author, has helped organise a number of “conversations” at the UK Met Office with sceptics, attracting 100 or so Met staff. The invitees include blogger Andrew Montford, who spoke to them this year on his book, The Hockey Stick Illusion.
In August 2010 the Academy published its lay-reader booklet, The Science of Climate Change: Questions and Answers.[62] The booklet’s circulation is now above 200,000, with students the main market. The project was initiated by Lambeck who went to the Department of Climate Change to get funding for it. The department came good with $39,700 and later a further $15,900 for reprints.[63] The cosiness didn’t square with the tradition that “The [Australian] Academies maintain fiercely their mandated independence.”[64] A presidential predecessor of Kurt Lambeck, Jim Peacock, put it well (in respect of the government’s Office of Chief Scientist):
What is important is that appropriate safeguards are put in place so that not only is the potential for conflict of interest minimised, the perception of potential for conflict of interest is minimised. [Peacock’s emphasis].[65]
Cory says the Academy is necessarily dependent on government and other grants for projects, especially as general-purpose government funding is only $1.4 million a year, of which about $450,000 is spent on international affiliations. On the climate booklet grants, the Academy made it clear that it would maintain independence and give unencumbered fact-based advice. The booklet grant covered only costs such as travel and production. Participants got no fees and indeed put in 1400 voluntary hours.[66]
Of the sixteen-member author and review team on the Academy’s booklet, seven had signed the activist Bali (Climate) Declaration, one had also served on the green lobbyist Worldwide Fund for Nature Advisory Panel and was also a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, one had signed a Guardian petition-letter on climate change, Kurt Lambeck had signed a petition-letter to Science magazine, and two had signed a petition-letter to the Wall Street Journal.[67] The team was not independent of the government ($55,600 funding), nor of the IPCC (nine of sixteen had IPCC involvement. Would the “IPCC nine” nitpick the IPCC’s work?). The team was devoid of both statistical and economics experts, which might explain its blithe endorsement to reduce global emissions to “near zero” by 2100, consistent with progress in North Korea. [68]
Lambeck explained at the launch: “There was a sense of frustration…consensus was being reached and somewhere along the line the debate started to fall apart, I think partly because of the [growing] complexity of the science.”[69] Climate-gate e-mails, Himalaya-gate, Hockey-Stick-gate, Flannery’s scare-gate: Lambeck might have cast his net wider than “complexity” for why the debate fell apart.
The rationale was put more crudely in an e-mail from a top Academy office-bearer, who said the booklet was written “to help resolve many issues which have been deliberately rendered obscure by climate change deniers … and the AAS imprimatur helps its credibility.”[70]
The rest of Lambeck’s speech included his trademark bagging of ignorant sceptics, and warnings to reporters to distinguish between the true climate scientists and “smokescreens thrown up by those with little understanding of the science”.
The Academy originally recruited its sceptic Fellow Garth Paltridge for anonymous discussions on the draft booklet. But Paltridge took his name off the booklet lest he be thought to endorse it. Lambeck was asked at the 2010 launch about any Academy dissenters, and replied only: “There is controversy in any debate. No controversy, no debate.”[71]
A month later, in September 2010 the UK Royal Society, as a result of a revolt by forty-three of its Fellows, toned down its aggressive 2005 primer on climate change science, putting more emphasis on the uncertainties and removing the earlier sceptic-bagging theme.[72] The document to this day has not been publicised by the Academy. (Cory says the Academy doesn’t publicise Royal Society reports and vice versa: “I am not sure what you are asking of me.”)[73]
The Royal Society divided the issues into those with wide agreement; wide consensus but continuing debate; and aspects not well understood. Under the header, “wide consensus but continuing debate”, the Royal Society included (a) the sun’s influence and likely feedback mechanisms (“areas of active research”); (b) carbon dioxide feedbacks including water vapour and (c) “There is an ongoing controversy concerning whether or not the increased warming with height in the tropical regions given by climate models is supported by satellite measurements.”
The Royal Society’s “aspects that are not well understood” include (d) cloud formation (“current understanding of this effect is poor”); and (e) future uptake of carbon dioxide by the land and oceans (“very poorly understood”).
The document concludes that some uncertainties are “unlikely ever to be significantly reduced”. And finally, “There remains the possibility that hitherto unknown aspects of the climate and climate change could emerge and lead to significant modifications in our understanding.” So much for “settled” science.
Turn now to our Academy’s document. Although the Royal Society said that modelling couldn’t manage climate forecasting at regional level, the Academy team had a go, with the booklet forecasting Victorian coastal rainfall decreases.[74] Within three weeks, Victoria, awash, had declared a state of flood emergency.[75]
Using the same letter code to the Royal Society’s tract, we read in the Academy booklet:
(a) “Could changes in the sun be causing global warming?” Answer: Not much of it, if any.
(b) Water vapour positive feedback: “Supported by most evidence and analyses so far although some views are different.” (Seven studies cited “for”; a study by Paltridge being the outlier).
(c) The “tropical hotspot” test of climate models? The issue is unmentioned, although the booklet offers a different test, stratospheric cooling, which it says suggests human-caused warming.
(d) Cloud uncertainties? Barely a throwaway line, although cloud reactions are a crucial determinant of whether C02 feedbacks are three-fold positive (IPCC) or negative (sceptics).
(e) Land/ocean carbon dioxide uptake? The booklet’s co-chair Ian Allison explained at the launch, “We know a great deal about how carbon dioxide enters and leaves the atmosphere”, and the other co-chair Raupach said that “climate models have less uncertainty in this area than in many other areas of climate feedback”.[76] They should let the Royal Society know.
Lambeck in his foreword acknowledged the uncertainties of modeling, but the body of the report relies on model outputs, barely qualified or unqualified: “Climate models, together with physical principles and knowledge of past variations, tell us that…”; “climate models estimate that…”; “modelling studies indicate that…” and “climate models and evidence from past climate change provide a plausible range of values.”
The Academy paper solved the Medieval Warming quandary (was it hotter or not hotter than now?). “Several assessments indicate that Northern Hemisphere average temperatures over the last fifty years have been warmer than during the Medieval Warm Period, and temperatures over the last decade are warmer still.”[77]
The 2007 IPCC report, on which the document normally relies, concluded no more than that “it is likely” (that is, more than 66 per cent probability) that the twentieth century was warmer than the Medieval period.”[78]
The Academy document also asserts the Medieval Warming was localised to the Northern Hemisphere: “Records are sparse in the Southern Hemisphere, but those available indicate little or no correlation with warming in the Northern Hemisphere during the Medieval Warm Period.”[79]
Three of eight studies cited by the paper about the “localised” northern warmth involved Tasmanian and NZ tree ring studies. Putting aside such curious selectivity, tree-ring-width proxies for past temperatures are dubious, as when the IPCC’s favorite “Hockey Stick” evidence about the Medieval Warming became so anomalous that the authors had to use graphing and statistical “tricks” to “hide the decline”.
According to David M.R. Evans,
[Medieval Warming] was worldwide and is verified by hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, by over 700 scientists from over 400 separate research institutions, most of whom found that the period was probably warmer than today.[80]
Not one such study found its way into the Academy citation list.
In June 2011 the Academy endorsed an appeal to “respect the science”.[81] On climate science, there are indications under Cory that the Academy is doing so.
She concluded our interview: “As a professional I’d be happy to talk about cancer but not about climate change. Our value to the community is providing agreed scientific findings and the uncertainties involved. Government policies, however, involve many other inputs. The Academy tries to gives facts useful for policy forming and keeps a good distance from policy advisings, except in special cases such as policy on visas for scientists.
“It is really important to allow scientists to seriously question any matter from any perspective. You discover truth by knocking down an hypothesis with new evidence. Scientific debate on climate change is the only way we will improve the science.”
“So the science is not settled?” I asked.
“Exactly,” she replied. [82]
Tony Thomas’s articles “The Fictive World of Rajendra Pachauri” and “The Stagecraft behind Global Warming Alarmism” appeared in Quadrant’s March and May issues respectively. Footnoted versions of all three articles appear on Quadrant Online.
[2] http://thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/montford-royal_society.pdf
[3] Interviewed at Melbourne University, 18 April, 2012
[4] http://www.science.org.au/reports/2011anrep.html Appendix 18
[5] http://www.naf.org.au/2005-review.pdf. Page 3.
[6] Op. cit., Appendix 18
[7] Neither is correct. In CO2 emissions per capita, Australia ranks about 11th. In wealth per capita, about 12th.
[9] http://www.science.org.au/reports/documents/AAS%20submission%20cover%20letter%20and%20Senate%20select%20on%20climate%20policy.pdf
[10] http://www.science.org.au/reports/28november08.html
[11] http://www.science.org.au/reports/documents/AAS%20submission%20cover%20letter%20and%20Senate%20select%20on%20climate%20policy.pdf; http://www.science.org.au/reports/documents/12september06.pdf
[13] Email from the Academy, 11/4/12
[14] http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/warmist-cant-take-the-heat/story-e6frfhqf-1225878118730; http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/tim-flannery—reasons-to-be-hopeful/3012698; http://www.smh.com.au/news/Opinion/Running-out-of-water–and-time/2005/04/24/1114281450815.html
[15] http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/42794.html
[16] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/no-need-to-go-gaga-over-gaia/story-e6frg6zo-1225983237159
[17] Op. cit., Interview
[18] http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/warming_williams_exaggerates_again/
[19] http://www.pacinst.org/climate/climate_statement.pdf
[21] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/heartland-institute-documents_b_1289669.html
[22] Op. cit., Interview
[23] Transcribed from http://www.science.org.au/policy/audio/AAS%20climate%20statement%20audio%2016%20Aug%2010.mp3
[24] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/climate-debate-must-separate-science-from-policy-australian-academy-of-science/story-e6frg6xf-1226023285726
[25] http://www.science.org.au/news/media/10june11.html
[26] https://quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2012/05/death-threat-emails
[27] For example, and this one wasn’t even anonymous, “Andrew Bolt is a vile c—t of a man. I openly condone hunting him down and beating him within an inch of his life”. Bolt is not as precious about these faux threats as the climate scientists.
[28] Transcribed from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzMAM7231Ow
[29] http://www.science.org.au/news/media/12july07.html
[30] http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/report.html
[31] The other was Ralph Cicerone, President of the US National Academy of Sciences. The IAC report team leader was Harold Shapiro, a past President of Princeton University. An Australian Academy member, John Zillman, was one of the 12 independent reviewers of the report.
[32] Op. cit., reviewippc p13
[33] ibid p28
[34] ibid p3
[35] ibid p34
[36] ibid p4
[37] ibid p34; p5
[38] ibid p5
[39] ibid p54
[40] http://www.amazon.com/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Climate-ebook/dp/B005UEVB8Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318837382&sr=1-1 p25
[41] Op. cit., reviewippc p54
[42] Email from an Academy official to Peter Bobroff.
[43] Op. cit., Interview
[44]2005: Academy endorses an InterAcademy Panel (IAP) report on biosecurity and an IAP report on energy sustainability
2006: Academy publicizes an IAC report on avian flu, and endorses an IAP report on teaching of evolution
2007: Academy not only endorses the IPCC Assessment Report but goes to the trouble of issuing its own summary of it.
2007: Academy publicizes an Australian/Chinese report on sustainable ecosystems, as well as an IAP report on inquiry-based science education
2008: Academy endorses statement by Group of 8 Plus 5 nations on climate change
2009: Academy endorses IAP report on ocean acidification
2011: Academy endorses a statement by 13 national science academies on science education and clean water
2012: Academy applauds the Gonski review on funding for schooling
[46] www.globusz.com/ebooks/…supressed/APPENDIX%20ITEMS.doc
[47] http://www.science.org.au/natcoms/nc-ess/nc-ess-12july07.html
[48] Dr Graeme Pearman, a Fellow, “consulted to Al Gore on the notable documentary The Inconvenient Truth”, according to his speaker profile on the web.
[49] http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/2288.html
[50] Op. cit., Interview
[51] http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/comments-on-heaven-and-earth-global-warming-the/3147158
[52] See the scathing review even on RealClimate, an anti-sceptic blogsite. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/my-review-of-books/
[53] http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-scientists-cross-with-abbott-for-taking-christs-name-in-vain-20100509-ulqt.html
[54] http://joannenova.com.au/2010/05/gullible-rudd-steps-right-in-it/#more-8557
[55] Op. cit., Interview
[56] http://www.science.org.au/news/media/2february07.html
[57] http://www.science.org.au/events/lectures-and-speeches/npc2006.html
[58] http://www.science.org.au/policy/lambeck-op.html
[60] http://www.amazon.com/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Climate-ebook/dp/B005UEVB8Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318837382&sr=1-1 page 31
[61] Laframboise found for example (p85) that 26 references to the Stern Review were added to 12 IPCC chapters after the expert reviewers’ work was completed.
[62] http://www.science.org.au/reports/ClimateChange2010-highres.pdf
[63] http://www.science.org.au/reports/annual-report-10-11/2011anrep.pdf Appendix 18 p115. 2009-10 annual report, p93.
[65] AAS Submission: Inquiry into the Office of Chief Scientist, 4/6/2004.
[66] Op. cit., Interview
[67] http://tome22.info/Organisations/AASQNA-Australian-Academy-of-Science-Q&As.html
[68] Op. cit., reports/ClimateChange2010-highres.pdf p14
[69] Transcribed from http://www.science.org.au/policy/audio/AAS%20climate%20statement%20audio%2016%20Aug%2010.mp3
[70] Op. cit., Email from an Academy official
[71] Op. cit., transcribed
[72] http://royalsociety.org/policy/publications/2010/climate-change-summary-science/
[73] Op. cit., Interview
[74] Op. cit., reports/ClimateChange2010-highres.pdf p14
[75] The booklet’s co-chair, Mike Raupach, in 2009 was showing a slide entitled: “It is increasingly likely that current drought in Southern Australia is exacerbated by climate change”. Raupach in 2011 was among the science team publishing “Understanding Floods: Questions and Answers”.
[76] Op. cit., transcribed
[77] Op. cit., reports/ClimateChange2010-highres.pdf p6
[79] Op. cit., reports/ClimateChange2010-highres.pdf p6
[80] www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
[82] Op. cit., Interview
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