Peter Ridd wins on all counts – so far

Professor of Physics Peter Ridd

James Cook University sacked Professor Ridd because of misconduct. Professor Ridd asked the Federal Circuit Court whether his actions or the decision of the university to sack him were unlawful. The Court’s decision, delivered on 16 April, was that the 17 findings made by the University, the two speech directions, the five confidentiality directions, the no satire direction, the censure and the final censure given by the University and the termination of employment of Professor Ridd by the University were all unlawful. He had done nothing wrong.

What follows down to the horizontal line are extracts from the judge’s decision. Continue Reading →

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Latest ‘sick oceans’ report absurd

Global warming making oceans ‘sick’, scientists warn

Global warming is making the oceans sicker than ever before, spreading disease among animals and humans and threatening food security across the planet, a major scientific report said on Monday.

The report lists several consequences of warming they claim are “absolutely massive.” The scientists say we are “making the oceans sick,” “drastically altering the rhythm of life” and “changing the seasons in the ocean.” Continue Reading →

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A dreadful trend

There was a recent post by Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit that was difficult for some of us to understand. Fortunately, there’s an exposition of it at Climate Skeptic called “How to manufacture the trend you want” that makes it all clear. It’s regrettable, but please have a look.

It has to do with rates of calcification in Great Barrier Reef coral growth over the past 400 years. On January 2, 2009, in Science, De’ath et al reported an ‘unprecedented’ decline. But it seems aimed more to alarm than inform us. They showed a graph to support their claims. Steve revealed a graph of a longer time series that tells quite a different story.

Then we got to see the actual data followed by the deficiencies in the data; well, what a trend! It turned out that ‘unprecedented’ referred only to the last 153 years.

Richard Treadgold

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