Peter Ridd in Brisbane getting ready for the trial.
Peter Ridd’s court case is set for 26 to 28th March in Brisbane. He invites you to watch the proceedings (Jennifer Marohasy says she’ll be there, all three days!). Go on…
If James Cook Uni (JCU) wins, they lose. Whatever happens, the taxpayer lost a long time ago.
On a philosophical note, in my opinion JCU will lose the ethical argument even if they manage to win on some narrow legal definition. If they win, it will mean that a judge has decided that a university has set up legally binding contracts that give them the power to effectively take away the right to intellectual freedom of an academic and silence him/her. That would be something of a pyrrhic victory. The university hierarchy may feel vindicated but the general public, especially those in North Queensland who are most affected by the questionable Great Barrier Reef science, will take a different view. But without getting over-confident, I reckon the chances of us winning are considerably above average, so we will see. — Peter Ridd, March 2019
Ridd’s employment contract says he has the right to speek freely, […]
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How about a ban on endless international climate conferences that lead to hundreds of flights – including many long-haul – but produce little of value, ‘to save emissions’? In fact the ’20 flights in a lifetime’ proposed here would probably have that effect anyway. The report ends with an apparent claim that particulates in the air are a ‘climate problem’.
Leading German climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber has called for a substantial shift in strategy for the tourism industry to make sure that its carbon footprint does not contribute to the sector’s possible demise.
“Tourism bites the hand that feeds it if it contributes to climate change,” the former director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) said at the ITB international tourism fair in Berlin.
If beaches around the world are flooded due to a global rise in temperature of 4 or 5 degrees Celsius, “there will be no more beach tourism,” Schellnhuber said.
Radical measures are necessary to bring down tourism emissions, the climate researcher said, arguing that “domestic flights within Germany should be banned” and replaced by a better continental high-speed train network.
“This is one of the innovations that I would say should rank high on the German government and the EU’s agenda,” Schellnhuber said in an article in the Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung.
Schellnhuber also proposed that air travel be reduced to 20 flights in a person’s lifetime and that its price should be increased considerably. “This would bring air travel to an acceptable level,” he argued.
The climate researcher also said that the cruise industry is putting an increasing burden on the climate, with some ships emitting as much particulate matter as one million passenger cars, even though more climate-friendly propulsion systems like liquid gas or sails are available.
On the persecution of Peter Ridd and its implications for free speech
When the Left talks derisively about ‘climate deniers’, they probably imagine someone very different from Dr Peter Ridd. Bearded, bespectacled and softly-spoken, Ridd is a sandal-wearing one-time Green voter and former president of his local chapter of the Wildlife Protection Society. He is also a marine geophysicist who has been studying the Great Barrier Reef for over 35 years. And like many in his field, Ridd is passionate about his subject.
But Ridd is equally passionate about his profession, and has spent years questioning the orthodoxy that climate change is ‘killing the reef’. In speaking out against this climate alarmism, Ridd put himself on a collision course with his employer, James Cook University. After years of warnings, censures and absurd gag orders, Ridd was finally made to walk the plank. Now, he’s fighting back, in a case with momentous implications for free speech in Australia.
Reading Ridd’s work can be difficult for a layman. It is detached, dispassionate and everything that scientific writing should be: careful consideration of the evidence followed by a sober conclusion.
Take, for example, Ridd’s contribution to the Institute of Public Affairs’Climate Change: The Facts 2017, in which he dispels the myths about the Great Barrier Reef repeated ad nauseam by climate evangelists. Yes, coral bleaching has occurred, but that is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the white colourisation that creates the ‘bleached’ look is a natural response that enables the coral to adjust to warmer temperatures and, over time, thrive.
So why does ‘conventional wisdom’ suggest that the reef is in mortal, man-made danger? Largely because dissenting voices ‘are typically ignored, drowned out and sidelined by the majority’, Ridd writes. ‘There is now an industry that employs thousands of people whose job it is to “save the Great Barrier Reef”. As a scientist, to question the proposition that the reef is damaged is potentially a career-ending move’.
Ridd’s biggest beef is with the questionable marine science fuelling the save-the-reef hysteria. The ‘peer review’ process feted by ‘the-science-is-settled’ types is not the guarantee of scientific authenticity that its name suggests. Peer review, according to Ridd, ‘usually consists of a cursory read of the scientific paper, often just for a couple of hours, by two scientists. They never have time to check the data property, or to try to repeat the analyses’.
But the minute Ridd blew the whistle on this shoddy science, he was a goner. Given JCU’s extensive interest in reef science, publicly questioning their methodology was arguably always going to make him an irritant.
Ridd had been on JCU’s radar for some time, but the publication of his chapter in Climate Change: The Facts transformed his struggle from the occasional skirmish to all-out war. After a subsequent interview on Sky News, a barrage of letters from the university started, accusing Ridd of ‘serious misconduct’ on several trumped-up grounds.
When Ridd publicly – and understandably – objected to his treatment by the university, JCU accused him of ‘denigrating’ the university, ‘interfering with the disciplinary process’, even of being ‘insubordinate’. And when public statements weren’t enough, the university searched his email account to dig up further breaches of the code.
Worse still, JCU has slapped Ridd with numerous ‘confidentiality’ directions in relation to the disciplinary process. As Ridd has correctly pointed out, gag orders of this nature effectively create a star chamber in which ‘victims are isolated, subjected to a closed disciplinary procedure where highly subjective concepts are applied’.
Ridd’s ordeal culminated in his termination in May last year. He has taken legal action in response, in part with the help of a campaign on crowdfunding website GoFundMe. Thousands of Australians donated, and the campaign amassed over $250,000 in just a few days. Ridd will have his day in court in Brisbane later this month.
Ridd has much in his favour. The enterprise bargaining agreement covering JCU staff – essentially Ridd’s employment contract – has extensive free speech protections. Under the agreement, staff have the express right to air unpopular or controversial views, and participate in wider public debate. Importantly, they are also entitled to express public opinions about the operation of JCU and university decisions.
The problem for Ridd is he is also subject to JCU’s staff code of conduct, which imposes all manner of vague requirements, like behaving ‘in a way that upholds the integrity and good nature of the university’. Under the pretext of this code, JCU has hit Ridd with a barrage of outlandish claims of alleged breaches, such as failure to be ‘collegial’ and ‘respect the reputations of other colleagues’.
JCU would have this dispute reduced to the narrow legal matter of which document trumps the other. Is it the enterprise bargaining agreement, with its protection of academic freedom? Or is it the code of conduct, with its rubbery obligations of ‘collegiality’?
But this case is about more than that. It will decide what academic freedom means, what intellectual inquiry means, what free and open debate means. And it is about whether a binding legal agreement promising these things can be rendered meaningless by a cadre of self-interested university administrators via an Orwellian code of conduct and a Kafkaesque disciplinary process.
And above all, this case is about the simmering free speech crisis at Australian universities, about places of higher learning that place their own reputations above the search for truth.
Iowa Climate Science Education 