Bigdog (04-17-2019), Truth Detector (04-17-2019)
Peter Ridd was sacked from his professorship at John Cook University. He has been very robust in stating the Great Barrier Reef is not dying and reports of such are just the usual climate hysteria so prevalent these days. Good luck to him and I hope they sack the bastards that tried to silence him.
https://jennifermarohasy.com/2019/03...uck-in-denial/
At the heart of this court case is the matter of Peter Ridd disputing media’s reporting of the health of the Great Barrier Reef back in 2015 and 2016. Specifically, Peter Ridd was first censured for proposing to a journalist in April 2016 that he investigate the state of the fringing reefs around Stone Island, which is part of the Great Barrier Reef.
Instead of investigating, the journalist sent Dr Ridd’s evidence that the reefs were in good health with spectacular coral, to his arch adversary at the university, Terry Hughes, who was claiming the exact opposite, and who promptly forwarded the evidence from Dr Ridd to university management. This began a disciplinary procedure that would eventually result in Peter Ridd’s sacking.
The trial opened on Tuesday with Mr Wood QC outlining Dr Ridd’s honestly held expert opinion that the Great Barrier Reef is in good health, but that many of his colleagues, particularly Professor Hughes, suggest otherwise, that their research is “untrustworthy” and is not subject to any “quality assurance”.
The Judge seemed genuinely interested in this issue of “quality assurance” of the research. Towards the end of Day 2 he specifically requested that Mr Murdoch QC explain to the court what quality assurance procedures were in place.
I had assumed that Mr Murdoch QC, the Barrister acting for the University, would thus begin Day 3 with some explanation of this – but he didn’t. The University continued to refuse to engage on any matters of science, particularly the issue of quality assurance. Rather the University simply argued that because there is a code of conduct that expects professors to be collegial – they thus had a right to sack Peter Ridd because he had become disrespectful of his colleagues and also had broken confidentiality.
At the beginning of Day 2 Peter Ridd clearly explained that he was concerned about the trustworthiness of the science, and the lack of quality assurance because it was having a significant negative economic impact on rural and regional economies – because of the bad publicity for tourism and increasing government regulation of farming.
It is generally agreed that modern, cohesive democracies work because there is an independent judiciary (legal system), impartial media, and a government that makes public-policy based on evidence. The judiciary and the media are generally educated university-graduates.
Universities are expected to be dominated by intellectuals, who are curious and dispassionately seek out the truth. Mr Wood QC, acting for Dr Ridd, emphasized the importance of intellectual freedom in his closing remarks today – that it is integral to a university.
Universities are expected to be places where there is vigorous discussion of contentious issues. It would be expected that where there is disagreement – for example about the condition of the fringing coral reefs at Stone Island – there could be a debate that followed rules of logic and considers evidence in an attempt to arrive at the truth.
This requires both sides to engage.
Back in 2016, and again today, instead of considering Dr Ridd’s evidence and concerns, the University choose to look away. It showed no interest in finding out about the real state of the corals surrounding Stone Island, or at the Great Barrier Reef in general.
There is a crisis in our democracy and as clearly illustrated by this court case, it is at least in part because the mainstream media and our universities too often refuse to engage in any real discussion with those who hold an opinion contradicting their own.
Bigdog (04-17-2019), Truth Detector (04-17-2019)
A damn sight more than a bunch of useless biologists doing experiments in fish tanks!!
What Would a Physicist Know About The Great Barrier Reef?
THE Australian Broadcasting Corporation – the most significant source of news and current affairs for Australia – is not reporting on Peter Ridd’s trial in the Federal Circuit Court in Brisbane. A key point made by Dr Ridd this morning is that there is absolutely no quality assurance of Great Barrier Reef research – research that they report on almost daily.
Changes in temperature, acidity, and also turbidity (muddiness) are consequences of physical processes. Yet the media mostly interview biologists who assume changes, without actually measuring them and then set about establishing effects in fish tanks.
Ocean acidification, for example, is an area of research where, in less than 20 years, the number of published papers has increased from zero to 800 each year. Sometimes the biologists have even added hydrochloric acid to artificially reduce the pH of the water in their fish tanks to mimic what their computer simulation models have determined must surely be our dystopian future. The media headlines then incorrectly report the result as the current situation at The Great Barrier Reef – this makes for more and more fake news.
Meanwhile, physicist Peter Ridd has been studying and measuring actual changes at the Great Barrier Reef for more than 35 years – contributing to a deeper understanding of many of the most important physical processes.
For example, if we are to measure the impact of sugarcane farming then we need to know how much muddier reef waters are now, relative to before European settlement.
In the wake of the very high-profile launch of the WWF Save the Reef Campaign back in June 2001, there was a flurry of newspaper articles. They reported that sediment was literally smothering the corals of the Great Barrier Reef. Yet there was no evidence for this beyond some fake photographs that were exposed yesterday in the Federal Court by Peter Ridd’s Barrister, Stuart Wood QC. You can see these photographs in my last blog post.
Over the years many biologists have been claiming that muddiness (caused by excess sediments) is a problem, and yet no one from the Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University has been interviewed about this. At this laboratory there are physicists studying ocean tides, currents, waves and their effect on the concentration and distribution of the sediments, which are supposedly causing the problem.
Peter Ridd joined the laboratory in 1989, as one of the first four post-doctoral fellows employed there. He is the only one to survive several decades as an academic at James Cook University, being promoted to Professor in 2008 and becoming the Head of Physics in the same year.
Professor Ridd began his career undertaking detailed measurements of turbidity with different instruments. He was interested in how to measure the advection of sediment (mud) and its resuspension by wave generated shear stresses. This requires an understanding of Newton’s laws of motion and wave theory. So obsessed was he with the accuracy of these measurements that he invented new equipment so that more accurate measurements of turbidity (muddiness) could be recorded under the variety of different natural conditions – considering the vastness of the reef.
Once Peter Ridd had mastered this, he moved on to understand in more detail how sediments potentially carry pollutants, including fertilizers and pesticides, from farmland into reef waters. He was most interested in how these pollutants could potentially be mixed through turbulent diffusion and dilution, which are also complex physical processes.
He has also studied temperatures: heat fluxes from the sun, infrared radiation from the surface (Stefan Boltzmann Law), evaporative fluxes and latent, vertical mixing of hot water into the water column by waves (another physical mechanism). These processes are now well documented including in some of his over 110 scientific publications.
It is now understood how pH (acidity) varies on a daily, seasonal and inter-annual basis, including with large fluctuations in temperature that is common across bodies of water, and also with water depth. Yet the experiments in fish tanks, which some biologists persist with, fail to incorporate this variability into their design, or the interpretation of results.
The Great Barrier Reef is a vast and complex ecosystem. It is the case that the considerable daily variations in temperatures, pH and turbidity from natural processes still dwarf any measurable human impact. While there are trends of increasing water temperature and pH at some locations, it is unclear to what extent these longer-term trends are part of existing natural cycles.
Peter Ridd’s life’s work has been focused on understanding real physical processes in extreme detail. In all of this, his interest has been on understanding the potential impacts of human activity on biological processes.
One of his most recent peer-reviewed publication is entirely about a biological phenomenon: coral calcification rates. He measured coral extension and density and determined that corals like it hot!
It is a fact that most species of coral that live on the Great Barrier Reef also live in much warmer waters, closer to the Equator around Indonesia and Thailand. Coral growth rates are closely linked to temperature, and both appear to have increased ever so slightly at the Great Barrier Reef over the last 100 years. This is good news – unreported. The increase in growth rates may all be part of a natural cycle, or there may be an anthropogenic (human-cause) effect linked to global warming.
Peter Ridd has been keen to find a human-impact in the many and varied research projects that he has been involved with, many including biologists. If he had found a negative impact, he would no doubt still have a job doing what he is best at – teaching, and scientific research. But science is currently funded and reported in such a way that inconvenient facts are ignored while Dr Ridd who has persisted with the truth – explaining that The Great Barrier Reef is healthy and reef research has no proper quality controls – finds himself in a law court and fighting for his job back.
https://jennifermarohasy.com/jenns-blog/
Last edited by cancel2 2022; 04-17-2019 at 03:20 AM.
Bigdog (04-17-2019), Truth Detector (04-17-2019)
. I
Lazy media and inept scientists have been banging on relentlessly about the Great Barrier Reef dying, but it's all bullshit. I hope Peter Ridd gets a fuckton of compensation from those scumbags at John Cook University.
Truth Detector (04-17-2019)
It is kind of scary how far the dogma of man caused global warming has been beat into our thinking. The cost is becoming untenable.
"When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
A lie doesn't become the truth, wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good just because it is accepted by a majority.
Author: Booker T. Washington
Bigdog (04-18-2019), cancel2 2022 (04-18-2019)
Ridd wasn't let go because of his views, but rather due to contractual problems, it wasn't the contest you implied in your "Climate Sceptics 1 Climate Alarmists 0"
"Peter Ridd was dismissed by James Cook University (JCU) last year after being issued with a number of warnings for comments he made about a lead coral researcher and for telling Sky TV that organisations like the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) could "no longer be trusted"
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-...gment/11021554
“Some have thought that this trial was about freedom of speech and intellectual freedom. Rather, this trial was purely and simply about the proper construction of a clause in an enterprise agreement"
"The judgement noted Ridd had been in trouble with university management for contacting a News Corp journalist and making media appearances on Sky News after dark claiming he had breached a code of conduct."
“Dr Ridd was not sacked because of his scientific views. Dr Ridd was never gagged or silenced about his scientific views, a matter which was admitted during the court hearing.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...ruled-unlawful
And your second comment/post again is attempting to establish the false paradigm you have been shown a number of times to be totally erroneous
(time for the personal insults and "I am going to ignore you" comments, anything but a rebutal)
cancel2 2022 (04-18-2019)
Micawber (04-18-2019)
Bigdog (04-18-2019)
Last edited by cancel2 2022; 04-18-2019 at 12:32 AM.
Peter Ridd writes of this unbelievable example of arrogance and hubris from James Cook University on his GoFundMe page:
Dear All,
There has been a flurry of media activity on the case but the main news is that it looks as though the Vice Chancellor (VC) is digging in. She and the Provost Prof Chris Cocklin released an extraordinary statement saying the Judge was wrong on all 17 findings against JCU (see link below). In my opinion, she had not read Judge Vasta’s judgement and clearly does not comprehend what has just happened.
But this means that unless the JCU council (the governing body) deals with the VC, an appeal is likely. In my media statements I have repeatedly stated that the JCU council will be complicit in this mess if they do not deal with the VC and Provost. Due to the huge media response in Australia, the council will have heard this loud and clear.
JCU has near infinite resources from the taxpayer and the VC will not pay a cent when she ultimately loses. It matters not to JCU if they appeal on weak grounds, and the VC may well have retired from the university in the time it could take, perhaps 5 years, if it goes all the way to the high court.
An appeal will cost the best part of a million dollars – much more if it goes to the high court. But I reckon that if we are forced, we can raise the funds. I am very confident that we can win any appeal, although we would want to look closely at whatever mischief they come up with.
The fact is that we have the upper hand – we won the first round 17-nil. The university is bleeding reputation due to its own mistakes, and there is growing anger especially in North Queensland. If they think they can intimidate us with an appeal, they should think again.
Kind regards
Peter
https://tinyurl.com/yyhemwqy
And while Al Gorians piss and moan ...
"Thousands of crown-of-thorns starfish are understood to be eating their way through coral in a major outbreak at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, as authorities consider how to tackle the problem."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-...tbreak/9305580
"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."
— Joe Biden on Obama.
Socialism is just the modern word for monarchy.
D.C. has become a Guild System with an hierarchy and line of accession much like the Royal Court or priestly classes.
Private citizens are perfectly able of doing a better job without "apprenticing".
cancel2 2022 (04-18-2019)
cancel2 2022 (04-18-2019)
I'm tempted to join in at this point and make a fool of maggot and his fringe denial claims- but he's doing a good job without me.
" First they came for the journalists...
We don't know what happened after that . "
Maria Ressa.
The judge in the case is going to decide the penalties on John Cook University, it's crystal clear that the scum that run it felt they were a law unto themselves. Hopefully this will put the climate alarmists on notice that their bullshit will no longer be tolerated and will prove costly.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/...firing-fiasco/
Last edited by cancel2 2022; 07-15-2019 at 10:17 PM.
Into the Night (07-16-2019)
cancel2 2022 (07-15-2019)
Bookmarks