Australian Climate Change Whistle blower Censorship

Theres a good court case going on in Australia at the moment over the firing of a University Professor. Peter Ridd was fired from James Cook University in North Queensland over his comments about climate change exaggeration and lack of trustworthiness in Australian Scientific Institutions as it relates to the Great Barrier Reef.

It started when Ridd said that images given to the media by The Australian Institute of Marine Science and The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority were misleading.

Ridd Said the images of bleached coral reefs near Stone Island, off the coast of Bowen in north Queensland, were misleading because they showed poorly affected corals, which were selected over nearby healthy coral and used to show “broad scale decline” of reef health.

After attempting to blow the whistle on what he found — healthy corals — Professor Ridd was censured by James Cook University and threatened with the sack. After a formal investigation, Professor Ridd — a renowned campaigner for quality assurance over coral research from JCU’s Marine Geophysics Laboratory — was found guilty of “failing to act in a collegial way and in the academic spirit of the institution”.

His crime was to encourage questioning of two of the nation’s leading reef institutions, the Centre of Excellence for Coral Studies and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, on whether they knew that photographs they had published and claimed to show long-term collapse of reef health could be misleading and wrong.

He has also said: "…we can no longer trust the scientific organisations like the Australian Institute of Marine Science, even things like the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies – a lot of this is stuff is coming out, the science is coming out not properly checked, tested or replicated and this is a great shame because we really need to be able to trust our scientific institutions and the fact is I do not think we can any more."

Ridd looks like he will win as JCU's arguments have been ridiculous, saying, he is not allowed to comment on reef climate change because it is not his field of expertise and also that he is not actually an academic.

This will be a good thing for academic free speech in Australia, should find out the judges decision by Easter. You can watch the court summaries below. And of course, theres a complete media blackout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BgYtapBSzE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJwu59hK3Sw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARoteL6-LW4

http://joannenova.com.au/2019/03/day-2-james-cook-uni-checks-your-emails-but-not-the-science/

http://joannenova.com.au/2018/05/james-cook-uni-goes-nuclear-on-free-speech-professor-peter-ridd-sacked/