Last week I wrote about how the Australian government was gagging scientists from expressing mainstream science views on global warming. Garth Paltridge has responded with a claim that global warming skeptics get gagged as well. From the Feb 22 Australian Financial Review:
Graeme Pearman (in his ABC Four Corners interview last Monday)
maintained that CSIRO is not backward in stifling comment from
scientists on matters that bear on its political aspirations. It was
ever thus. In the early nineties I was involved in setting up the
Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre, which was, and still is, a
sizeable research institution specifically designed to examine the
role of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean in global climate. I made
the error of mentioning in a media interview that there were (as
there still are) lots of doubts about the science of global warming.
Suffice it to say that within a couple of days it was made very clear
to me from the highest levels of CSIRO that, should I make such
public comments again, then it would pull out of the process of
forming the new Centre. Since CSIRO was a major partner in the
venture and its withdrawal would have killed the whole thing dead, I
guess it is not surprising that I found the message to be both cogent
and effective.It turned out that the ferocity of the response was related to
efforts by CSIRO at the time to abstract many tens of millions of
climate research money from the newly formed bureaucracy of the
Australian Greenhouse Office.
However, John Quiggin has noticed that Paltridge's dates don't add up. The Australian Greenhouse Office wasn't formed until 1998, way after the early nineties and the formation of the Antarctic CRC.
Formed in 198, eh? Sounds like Paltridge isn't the only one with a time warp! ;-)
I blame the spell checker.
Hell yeah! Since when has 198 been a word!?
curse you for getting that song in my head.
Oh yes, gagging scientists!
They won't let him set policy, but they'll publish his propaganda.
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001183.html#trackbacks
Your taxes at work...
Dear Tim and readers,
Professor Paltridge made a minor error in confusing acronyms when he referred to the AGO instead an earlier body, the National Greenhouse Advisory Committee (NGAC) which nestled in the Department of Arts, Sport, the Environment & Territories (DASET), for some time at least.
NGAC distorted a broad area of scientific research as multi millions of Canberra dollars were pumped out to support projects which generally buttressed pro-IPCC positions.
Professor Paltridge's recollections about bias in climate research starting more than a decade ago stand up despite his writing AGO and not NGAC.
Best wishes to you all,
Warwick Hughes
Warwick, did you read the quote? He wrote "Australian Greenhouse Office", not "AGO". It's not a matter of confusing acronyms.
Tim Lambert said:
Warwick, did you read the quote? He wrote "Australian Greenhouse Office", not "AGO". It's not a matter of confusing acronyms.
I say:
There goes Tim Lambert nitpicking again. If it's not a matter of confusing acronyms or even names, what is it? some devilish plot of course.
And when is Lambert going to admit to going overboard about Julian Simon? If he ever produced anything half as good as any book of Simon's (which would require some real work instead of hosting a frivolous blog), I will be the first to applaud.
Actually Warwick, since the Antarctic CRC was established in 1991, you need to go back before the early 90s. And then a new problem arises.
Paltridges article is an attack on Graeme Pearman, the CSIRO Chief of Atmospheric Research who was recently made redundant and the implication is that Pearman organised the alleged attempt to silence him. But Pearman didnt become Chief until 1992.
His predecessor, Brian Tucker is mentioned in the article as someone who was a sceptic but kept quiet until after his retirement (when he was hired by the IPA). But if Paltridge was threatened in the leadup to the formation of the Antarctic CRC, it must have been when Tucker was Chief of Atmospheric Research.
A further problem with Paltridge's account is that the total budget for NGAC, and its successor the National Greenhouse Research Strategy was about $5 million per year, making the task of extracting "many tens of millions" rather difficult.