I do agree with Ken Russell that inaction on the climate crisis is indefensible and I understand why he believes that climate scientists should be at the forefront of the global campaign to take targeted and effective action.
But, until I watched the Graham Readfearn Guardian interview ‘The Weight of the World’, with scientist Graeme Pearman, I didn’t understand why this couldn’t and wouldn’t happen.
Dr Graeme Pearman was a scientist with the CSIRO. Before he lost his job, he was recognised as one of a tiny handful of scientists whose research clearly showed that the rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere was due solely to human activity. This was proven using CO2 trapped almost 1 million years ago in Antarctic ice cores.
In the last quarter of the 20th century he briefed three Australian Prime Ministers, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard and their senior ministers on the need to recognise the impending problem, and that it was imperative to take immediate action. His research indicated that the problem couldn’t be ignored; and that it was only going to get worse. Much, much worse.
In the interview Graeme explained why scientists have to remain separate from articulating policy. The nature of science is to undertake research and then to present the facts to those in a position to draft and enact the necessary legislation.
Good science has no bias. Whilst the solutions that appear evident from the research may seem obvious to all, including politicians, other scientists and the general public, it isn’t the job of the scientific community to press for a course of action, or to formulate policy.
Ken states, ‘What if the influencers in our community – high-profile, powerful Australians who are calling for the phase-out of fossil fuels – combined forces and resources with climate scientists and relevant experts; then stepped up and initiated a campaign to stop the fossil fuel industry from destroying the planet’?
Ken’s suggestion, no matter how attractive it might seem as an effective lobbying tool, contravenes a basic scientific tenet, that science – and scientists, must show no bias. The conclusions, even when they are patently obvious, are there for others to draw. It’s repeated again also in his article, ‘The key to success is for climate scientists to play a major role in any initiative.
And it appears again in this piece on 20th July, ‘This expert group would include energy analysts, climate scientists and other relevant experts. I have proposed the formation of such an expert group’.
The accepted reality within the scientific community is that it’s absolutely essential for scientists to remain once removed from the policy makers. It’s not the business of science to advocate policy. Graeme Pearman discovered this in the worst way possible. He lost his job with the CSIRO.
The media was largely responsible for this. Whether this was a deliberate attempt on the part of the fossil fuel lobby to silence him, using the media to misrepresent him and paint him as a ‘crazy rogue scientist’, one who has overstepped the boundaries of impartiality, is moot. Whatever the reason, Graeme was crucified by the media and he subsequently found himself out of a job. His was an inconvenient truth.
The irony here is that Graeme’s only ‘crime’ was to present the facts. And he makes this point very clear in the interview ‘The Weight of the World’, he never once crossed the boundary that separates science from politics.
In 1896, in a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius, the first prediction was made that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.
Then in 1938, Guy Callendar connected carbon dioxide increases in the Earth’s atmosphere to global warming.
In the seventies it still really wasn’t ‘a thing’. Graeme just happened to be one of the very first people in the world to quantify the levels and to recognise that we had a problem. A very big problem. Graeme was on a CSIRO project in 1971 to determine how much CO2 was being absorbed by a wheatfield in Rutherglen in Victoria.
The science ultimately led him on to his own voyage of discovery and to his own conclusions. But his personal observations were his own, and he kept them to himself.
He readily admits he was naive enough to believe that once he’d shown the decision makers the results of his research on the staggering levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, that both the problem and the solution would be self-evident, even to those politicians with the most rudimentary levels of education, and that the appropriate action would be taken.
But he was always mindful of the need to ensure that there was no bias in his research, and especially in the way that it was presented. His science, like all good science, simply presented the facts. It was up to the politicians to draw the conclusions and to take the necessary legislative action.
We all know that didn’t happen. And we all know why.
What did happen is that Graeme was vilified, pressure was brought to bear and he found himself unemployed. All because he had done his job really well. Perhaps too well.
It’s for this reason that scientists can’t and won’t be leading the campaign to press for policies to replace fossil fuels. And this is why we don’t and won’t see scientists in the front line.
That task is up to the Gretas, the Violets and the Davids of the world. The activists. And to each and every one of us.
For more on this topic, P&I recommends:
Full spectrum resistance: we need militant teams who are willing to destroy the death machine
Peter Hehir was a co-founder of the first Green Party in Australia, the Sydney Greens. He is a past secretary and president of the Rozelle branch of the ALP, who was expelled for opposing Hawke’s backflip on uranium with Labor’s endorsement of Roxby Downs. He was also a member of the now defunct Nuclear Disarmament Party. Peter no longer has any political party affiliation.
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