The Best Australian Science Writing 2014

by Ashley Hay

  Don Aitkin does not reject climate science completely, but believes it is greatly exaggerated. ‘The evidence seems quite equivocal to me’, he writes on his blog. ‘I remain agnostic’; ‘I am a dissenter’. In two successive Ockham’s Razor talks on ABC radio in 2008, he was more dismissive. He concluded on the basis of his own exploration of the science – which he confesses on his blog relies a bit on Wikipedia and ‘Professor Google’ and on infamous sceptics like ‘the sharp-eyed Joanne Nova’ – that ‘human activity is unlikely to be a major cause of any warming’. And anyway, he argues, ‘On the evidence it is not obvious that an increase in the earth’s atmospheric temperature would be a bad thing.’

  What are the contours of Aitkin’s stance? He finds climate change a very interesting issue and believes in, and welcomes, debate and disagreement, although he does like to have the last word. He believes there is much more controversy about the science than the media is willing to tell us, especially The Conversation or the ABC, of which he has become a strong critic. He questions whether the Bureau of Meteorology is a science agency or a PR bureau. His experience in managing research culture and funding means he has some good criticisms of the anonymous peer review process, and he is well placed to advance important arguments about the value of humanities research, especially in its constant battle to secure a share of funding from the sciences. He is proud that Australia is ‘unhampered by elitist traditions’. His lifelong commitment to education is an expression of his desire to empower people, for he believes that a good democracy depends on people being willing ‘to talk to one another about issues, to write letters, to stand up for what we believe – to engage in “the great conversation” [quoting Manning Clark] of Australian public life’.

  Because of these views, Aitkin feels that climate science, like any other public issue, should be available for him to shape through debate, and the climate scientists annoy him by referring to a ‘consensus’ that doesn’t include him. He didn’t consent! Instead he offers dissent. Like Blainey, he became impatient with the ‘goodies vs baddies’ view of the world and especially with the ‘high priests’ of environmentalism and their ‘quasi-religious fervour’ and self-righteousness. He feels that climate science is anti-democratic; it shuts him out and tells him what to do. And he doesn’t like being told what to do. Although he celebrates effective social regulations about smoking and the wearing of car seatbelts, he argues that ‘people have to come to accept the virtue of the law’. During Earth Hour, which he considers a ‘wank’, his instinct is to set all the house lights blazing (but he confesses that ‘domestic counsels’ prevail). On the issue of global warming, he rejects the idea that scientists have any special ‘authority’ on a matter about which every educated taxpayer can and should form a respected opinion. One can hear the pain of a humanities scholar who has long battled with his scientific colleagues for respect and equality at the budget table.

  In a riposte to an Ockham’s Razor talk by the renowned American climate scientist, Dr Stephen Schneider, in 2008, Aitkin wrote:

  I am increasingly struck by the similarity of the [anthropogenic global warming] debate to the struggle between the Church of Rome and the Protestant dissenters in the 16th century and afterwards. The Church claimed the right to mediate between the believer and God, while the Protestants argued that each of us could establish a personal communication with God. Throughout your talk I could hear someone talking in the tones of ‘received wisdom’. My sceptical, protestant mind begins to object as soon as I hear anyone talk like this, no matter how many years they have worked in a field, no matter how many peer-reviewed papers they have published, no matter what their title. They are claiming authority. I don’t accept it.

  Thus a former vice-chancellor and manager of peer review and elite research finds himself rejecting the insights of carefully accumulated and rigorously tested knowledge.

  * * * * *

  The third figure I want to discuss is Ian Plimer, who may seem an odd choice, for he lacks the political independence of the typical contrarian and is an active participant in the trench warfare that characterises this debate. A former professor and head of the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, he is the most prominent Australian scientific warrior against the theory of anthropogenic climate change. He is on the boards of mining companies (and proudly declares those interests); his last book was launched by John Howard; and he is Tony Abbott’s chosen authority on climate change. What makes him interesting is his earlier history of fighting for peer-reviewed science against creationism. For this and related geological work, he was awarded Eureka prizes, including one for his 2001 book, A Short History of Planet Earth. I was at the award ceremony in Sydney to honour him and the other prize-winners and I warmly shook his hand. He has done much to promote the public understanding of science and to explain the scientific method, and his contribution was celebrated by his professional peers. He championed science as dynamic, exciting, and as an unfinished story wedded to evidence. He was named Australian Humanist of the Year in 1995.

  Now Plimer is a bitter and angry critic of the very processes he once defended, declines to submit his climate arguments to peer review, and accuses the IPCC of being ‘underpinned by fraud’. His book on climate science, Heaven + Earth, was critically condemned by scientists. Australia’s foremost coral specialist, JEN ‘Charlie’ Veron, declared that every original statement Plimer made in the book about corals and coral reefs ‘is incorrect and most are the opposite of the truth … This is unusual, even for pseudo-science’. Heaven + Earth finishes with a quote several pages long from Viscount Monckton of Brenchley and then some words from Pope Benedict XVI. What happened to Ian Plimer?

  Plimer became a public figure in the 1980s and ’90s through the vehemence and theatre of his attacks on ‘creation science’. In 1988 he challenged an American advocate of creationism in a debate about evolution by donning insulating gloves, holding a live electric wire out to his opponent and encouraging him to grab it. Electricity – just a theory, like evolution, like gravity. Plimer explained that he was using tactics he ‘learned in the mining world … you take no prisoners’. In the early 1990s, he legally pursued an elder of the Hills Bible Church in Sydney, Allen Roberts, for claiming in a series of public lectures that a boatshaped rock formation in eastern Turkey contained Noah’s Ark. The case over whether Roberts had breached the Trade Practices Act ended up in the Federal Court in 1997. Mr Justice Sackville, whose judgment began with a quote from Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, found that Roberts had made false and misleading claims and fined him for using a published illustration without permission, but rejected Plimer’s argument that the Trade Practices Act could extend beyond the commercial realm to cover false claims made in public. The judge, who commented on the ‘considerable personal antipathy’ between the parties, refused to oblige Plimer by imposing an injunction against Roberts expressing his views. Mr Justice Sackville added:

  Having regard to the way in which the issues were ultimately framed in this case and the conclusions I have reached, it has not been necessary for me to decide whether I should accept Professor Plimer’s evidence on all matters addressed by him. Had it been necessary to do so, I would have had to consider whether Professor Plimer’s zeal for his cause coloured his evidence.

  Plimer lost a lot of money in the litigation.

  In his book Telling Lies for God: Reason vs. creationism, Plimer was Darwin’s champion, explaining the strength of the theory of evolution and of accepted scientific theories in general. A distinguishing quality of good science, he declared, is ‘ruthless peer review’. People have no trouble accepting the theories of gravity, electricity and continental drift as ‘facts’. Like the theory of evolution, they are ‘testable, reproducible and open to international public scrutiny’. He was incensed by the ‘blatant scientific fraud’ peddled by creation ‘scientists’ and by their desire to insert creationism in the school curriculum. In 2011 he published a book for schoolch
ildren on climate science (the one launched by John Howard), How To Get Expelled From School. Plimer now seeks to insert his own views of climate science into schools, to be taught alongside or instead of the established science curriculum.

  This move from defending the scientific method to fighting climate science seems dramatically contradictory. But Plimer would presumably argue for continuity between his two campaigns, one to expose ‘fraudulent creation science’ and the other to reveal that the IPCC is ‘underpinned by fraud’. He would also see himself as defending science against two evangelical, religious positions. But his lone, zealous advocacy against the scientific community now seems very like the creationism he reviled years earlier. Creationism, he explained in 1995, began in reaction to the publication of Darwin’s Origin. ‘Creationism is about power … Creationism thrives on insecurity. Creationism provides simple, authoritative, dogmatic answers to complex problems.’ Creationism picks over the carcase of science ‘like hyenas’ rather than providing new, accepted evidence. Creationists misquote, use information out of context, fabricate data and ‘exploit the tolerant democratic process’ by seeking equal representation in schools. Plimer concluded that ‘the collective might of millions of scientists today must surely disprove creationism’, But now he is contemptuous of ‘consensus’, dismisses peer review and resents ‘the demonising of dissent’. He pugnaciously claims to ‘knock out every single argument we hear about climate change’.

  Why does an admired scientist turn on his peers and professional culture? In Merchants of Doubt, Oreskes and Conway analyse why a respected physicist and former president of the US National Academy of Sciences, Frederick Seitz, worked to create doubt about the link between tobacco and lung cancer well after the evidence was clear. It was partly his long reliance on tobacco industry funding, but also because he had developed a grudge against the scientific community he once led. His ardent rightwing politics and his support for the Vietnam War and nuclear armament had made him unpopular among his mostly liberal academic colleagues and led to his increasing social and intellectual isolation. He mixed more easily with corporate executives. He was attracted to being the arbiter of who among his scientific peers would win grants from the huge tobacco industry biomedical research funds he controlled.

  At home in ‘the rough and tumble of the zinc-lead-silver mining town of Broken Hill’ (as he put it), Ian Plimer found that his field of climate history had been hijacked by a bunch of younger atmospheric and oceanographic experts. He may have begun as a contrarian, but the heat of battle has forged him into something else. In ‘Charlie’ Veron’s words, Plimer is now ‘very careful to keep facts from spoiling a good story’.

  * * * * *

  I am going to give Charles Darwin the last word, for his advice about the likely reception of his theory of evolution is relevant to us today. At the end of The Origin of Species, he anticipated opposition to his theory and expressed his confidence in the responsibility and conscience of leaders of opinion, especially those of the new generation. He saw the task ahead as one not only of the communication of facts, but also of thoughtful public advocacy and education:

  Anyone whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory. A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt the immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look with confidence to the future – to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for thus only can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.

  This. Here. Now.

  TB and me

  Weathering the storm

  Peter Meredith

  The white Holden VE Commodore has ‘Storm Chasing & Lightning Research’ emblazoned on its side. The driver is Mike O’Neill, 51, who does what the sign claims. He’s wearing dark chequered shorts and a black T-shirt with ‘Do not follow in adverse weather’ printed on the back. I’m in the front passenger seat. It’s 1.50 p.m. and we’re heading south on the Stuart Highway from Darwin in search of storms. The sun is shining, the sky is a deep blue and I’m having doubts of finding any.

  O’Neill, a printer by trade, has been chasing storms and photographing lightning for about ten years. It’s more than a hobby for him; it’s a labour of love. On any other chase, his front passenger seat would be cluttered with gear. There would be a video camera on a dash-mounted tripod and a laptop stand bolted to the floor. The laptop would be showing near real-time radar images of the region, courtesy of the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM). There would also be two digital SLR cameras, a couple of tripods and a high-speed video camera. Today, the gear has made way for me, so we pull over occasionally to check the laptop.

  Today’s forecast is the same as it’s been for days: showers and a gusty storm. Locals tell me this 2012–13 wet season has been disappointingly dry, and showers and gusty storms have been in short supply. One probable reason is the tropical cyclones to the west and east that have been sucking atmospheric energy and moisture away from the Top End.

  First, Western Australia had Mitchell, Narelle and Peta. Now, in late January 2013, ex-Tropical Cyclone Oswald is rampaging through Queensland, having taken an unusual southward turn while crossing Cape York. It has spawned record-breaking rain, unprecedented flooding and half-a-dozen tornadoes.

  These are just some ingredients in what the Climate Commission would later dub ‘The Angry Summer’. The BOM confirms this January has been Australia’s hottest, with a national mean maximum temperature of 36.9° Celsius. The heatwave early in the month was the longest on record, with 14 of the nation’s 112 high-quality climate stations experiencing their hottest day ever, the most in a single summer. A national average record was also set for the number of consecutive heatwave days – seven at more than 39° Celsius.

  So while other Australians shelter or swelter, Darwinites bemoan the lack of a good storm. Still, O’Neill is upbeat. It doesn’t look good today for the city, he says, but around Adelaide River, some 100 kilometres to the south, things may get interesting. The laptop reveals no storms there. And right here the sky looks awfully blue to me. I ask him why he’s picked that spot. ‘I probably have a good knack for finding storms,’ he says. ‘Knack is a combination of gut feeling and knowledge. Field knowledge over the years has taught me a lot. It’s not a case of just looking at the radar and jumping in the car. A lot of work goes into what I do.’

  That work includes studying a bunch of local, national and international forecasts online that are built on a whole slew of criteria. ‘In my head I overlay the satellite image, the radar and all the charts to make one picture. From that, and from what’s happening now, I calculate what will be happening in four hours’ time and decide where to go.’

  * * * * *

  Web-based weather information is key to Mike O’Neill’s lightning research. Twenty years ago, Australian Geographic (for whom I’m chasing storms as part of an assignment) published a major feature on the BOM’s work. The fact that the bureau didn’t have a website then is testament to how far its services have evolved in two decades. But there’s another story here. An equally radical shift in our climate and weather has shadowed changes at the bureau. The two stories are inseparably intertwined.

  Most scientists have no doubt that our planet is warming and its climate is changing as a result. They believe most of the warming derives from human activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels. And the gases given off by this enhance the greenhouse effect – the atmosphere’s ability to trap heat. Temperatures across Australia and in the surrounding oceans have risen by 1° Celsius since 1910. Most of the rise has been since the 1950s during the post-World War II global oil boom.

  ‘The enormous excess heat energy accumulating as a result of the green
house effect is intensifying the global climate and weather system,’ the bureau said in its submission to the 2013 Senate Inquiry into the country’s preparedness for extreme weather events. Furthermore, ‘long-term observations show that some extreme weather events are now more common and severe than in the recent past’.

  Neil Plummer, the bureau’s assistant director of climate information services, says the climate is evolving before our eyes. ‘Things are changing quicker now than we have seen any time before in the historical record.’

  In brief, heatwaves in Australia are now longer and hotter than previously recorded and rainfall is more intense in places. Extreme heat stokes bushfires, heavier rain brings more flooding and, if it falls as hail, more damage. The evidence of this is plain to see: the 1999 Sydney hailstorm was Australia’s costliest, at $4.3 billion; the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria struck towards the end of the ‘millennium drought’ of 1997–2009, which was the worst since settlement; the Queensland floods of 2010– 11 came during one of the strongest La Niña events on record; and the remains of Cyclone Oswald drenched Queensland and northern New South Wales in 2013 – at around the same time that heatwave-boosted bushfires raged in Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania. Ex-Tropical Cyclone Oswald’s rain broke numerous records: Gladstone, in Queensland, received 820 millimetres in four days – more than the town’s record for a whole month.