People send me stuff.
Just last week we heard that Dr. Robert Carter had been blackballed at his own university where he served as department chair, and now we have this from Dr. Murray Salby, sent via email.
Between John Cook, Stephan Lewandowsky, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, plus Mike Marriot and his idiotic ideas, I’m beginning to think Australia is ground zero for AGW crackpottery.
This email’s accusations (if true I have independent confirmation now, title changed to reflect this – Anthony) is quite something, it illustrates the disturbing lengths a university will go to suppress ideas they don’t agree with. So much for academic freedom at Macquarie University.
From: [redacted]
Sent: Monday, July 08, 2013 2:25 PM
To: [redacted]
Subject: From Murry Salby
Thanks for your interest in the research presented during my recent lecture tour in Europe.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/another-nail-in-the-climate-change-coffin.php
Remarks from several make it clear that Macquarie University
is comfortable with openly disclosing the state of affairs,
if not distorting them to its convenience. So be it.
Macquarie’s liberal disclosure makes continued reticence unfeasible.
In response to queries is the following, a matter of record:
1. In 2008, I was recruited from the US by “Macquarie University”,
with appointment as Professor, under a national employment contract with
regulatory oversight, and with written agreement that Macquarie would provide
specified resources to enable me to rebuild my research program in Australia.
Included was technical support to convert several hundred thousand lines of computer code,
comprising numerical models and analyses (the tools of my research),
to enable those computer programs to operate in Australia.
2. With those contractual arrangements, I relocated to Australia.
Upon attempting to rebuild my research program, Macquarie advised that
the resources it had agreed to provide were unavailable. I was given an excuse for why.
Half a year later, I was given another excuse. Then another.
Requests to release the committed resources were ignored.
3. Three years passed before Macquarie produced even the first major component
of the resources it had agreed to provide. After five years of cat-and-mouse,
Macquarie has continued to withhold the resources that it had committed.
As a result, my computer models and analyses remain inoperative.
4. A bright student from Russia came to Macquarie to work with me.
Macquarie required her to abandon her PhD scholarship in Russia.
Her PhD research, approved by Macquarie, relied upon the same computer
models and analyses, which Macquarie agreed to have converted but did not.
5. To remedy the situation, I petitioned Macquarie through several avenues provided
in my contract. Like other contractual provisions, those requests were ignored.
The provisions then required the discrepancy to be forwarded to the Australian employment tribunal,
the government body with regulatory oversight.
The tribunal then informed me that Macquarie had not even registered my contract.
Regulatory oversight, a statutory protection that Macquarie advised would govern
my appointment, was thereby circumvented. Macquarie’s failure to register
rendered my contract under the national employment system null and void.
6. During the protracted delay of resources, I eventually undertook the production
of a new book – all I could do without the committed resources to rebuild my research program.
The endeavor compelled me to gain a better understanding of greenhouse gases
and how they evolve. Preliminary findings from this study are familiar to many.
http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/speaker/murry-salby/ Refer to the vodcast of July 24, 2012.
Insight from this research contradicts many of the reckless claims surrounding greenhouse gases.
More than a few originate from staff at Macquarie, which benefits from such claims.
7. The preliminary findings seeded a comprehensive study of greenhouse gases.
Despite adverse circumstances, the wider study was recently completed. It indicates:
(i) Modern changes of atmospheric CO2 and methane are (contrary to popular belief)
not unprecedented.
(ii) The same physical law that governs ancient changes of atmospheric CO2 and methane
also governs modern changes.
These new findings are entirely consistent with the preliminary findings,
which evaluated the increase of 20th century CO2 from changes in native emission.
8. Under the resources Macquarie had agreed to provide, arrangements were made
to present this new research at a scientific conference and in a lecture series at
research centers in Europe.
9. Forms for research travel that were lodged with Macquarie included a description
of the findings. Presentation of our research was then blocked by Macquarie.
The obstruction was imposed after arrangements had been made at several venues
(arranged then to conform to other restrictions imposed by Macquarie).
Macquarie’s intervention would have silenced the release of our research.
10. Following the obstruction of research communication, as well as my earlier efforts
to obtain compliance with my contract, Macquarie modified my professional duties.
My role was then reduced to that of a student teaching assistant: Marking student papers
for other staff – junior staff.
I objected, pursuant to my appointment and provisions of my contract.
11. In February 2013, Macquarie then accused me of “misconduct”,
cancelling my salary. It blocked access to my office, computer resources,
even to personal equipment I had transferred from the US.
My Russian student was prohibited from speaking with me.
She was isolated – left without competent supervision
and the resources necessary to complete her PhD investigation,
research that Macquarie approved when it lured her from Russia.
12. Obligations to present our new research on greenhouse gases (previously arranged),
had to be fulfilled at personal expense.
13. In April, The Australian (the national newspaper), published an article which
grounded reckless claims by the so-called Australian Climate Commission:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/last-summer-was-not-actually-angrier-than-other-summers/story-e6frgd0x-1226611988057 (Open access via Google News)
To promote the Climate Commission’s newest report is the latest sobering claim:
“one in two chance that by 2100 there’ll be no human beings left on this planet”
Two of the six-member Australian Climate Commission are Macquarie staff.
Included is its Chief Commissioner.
14. While I was in Europe presenting our new research on greenhouse gases,
Macquarie undertook its misconduct proceedings – with me in absentia.
Macquarie was well informed of the circumstances. It was more than informed.
15. Upon arriving at Paris airport for my return to Australia, I was advised that
my return ticket (among the resources Macquarie agreed to provide) had been cancelled.
The latest chapter in a pattern, this action left me stranded in Europe,
with no arrangements for lodging or return travel.
The ticket that had been cancelled was non-refundable.
16. The action ensured my absence during Macquarie’s misconduct proceedings.
17. When I eventually returned to Australia, I lodged a complaint with the
Australian employment tribunal, under statutes that prohibit retaliatory conduct.
18. In May 2013, while the matter was pending before the employment tribunal,
Macquarie terminated my appointment.
19. Like the Australian Climate Commission, Macquarie is a publically-funded enterprise.
It holds a responsibility to act in the interests of the public.
20. The recent events come with curious timing, disrupting publication of our research
on greenhouse gases. With correspondence, files, and computer equipment confiscated,
that research will now have to be pursued by Macquarie University’s “Climate Experts”.
http://www.science.mq.edu.au/news_and_events/news/climate_change_commision
Murry Salby
Though I hated to add to Jan’s traffic (which increased significantly with my visit) I noticed he only had a handfull of comments in the last 6 months. Most of his posts were nothing but complaints about Anthony’s moderation policy and claims he’s been banned here. Too funny.
Patrick wrote in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/professor-critical-of-agw-theory-being-disenfranchised-exiled-from-academia-in-australia/#comment-1359335
And what is the analogy to Salby supposed to be? Is he soon going to prove that conservation of mass does not apply to carbon dioxide, refuting the “hoax” created by the AGW crowd about the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere due to human activities?
Yes – anyone with the password is encouraged to scrawl it on craphouse walls, on sidewalks in chalk, on napkins in fast food restaurants, and in the sand at beaches. Be creative.
This can be done anonymously. At that point the password belongs to the world with no trail to follow. Do leave your cell phone at home, though, and rfid shields are a must-have in your wallet.
Reply to Jan P Perlwitz:
Salby claimed: “To promote the Climate Commission’s newest report is the latest sobering claim:
“one in two chance that by 2100 there’ll be no human beings left on this planet”
After researching this, I find Salby’s claim is correct. To launch the “Climate Commission’s report, Retired admiral Chris Barrie appeared with Will Steffen to launch a new report from the Climate Commission on ABC television. Chris Barrie did in fact make the claim. The claim did in fact occur in order to help promote the Climate Commissions report. The reason for Retired admiral Chris Barrie to appear with Will Steffen was in order to help promote the Climate Commissions’s report.
Salby quote: “(i) Modern changes of atmospheric CO2 and methane are (contrary to popular belief) not unprecedented.
Jan P Perlwitz wrote:”Contrary to whose popular belief? And how is this something new?”
The statement was an opinion by Salby. It is a common claim that changes in atmospheric CO2 and methane are unprecedented as are changes in temperatures. I know from discussions with people that it is a popular belief that changes in CO2 and methane are unprecedented. Hence, I find the opinion by Salby to be reasonable and I believe correct.
Salby quote: “(ii) The same physical law that governs ancient changes of atmospheric CO2 and methane also governs modern changes.
These new findings are entirely consistent with the preliminary findings, which evaluated the increase of 20th century CO2 from changes in native emission. ”
Jan P Perlwitz wrote:”These “findings” could only be valid, if basic physical principles like mass conservation did not apply to carbon dioxide.”
When he discussed this, he was showing the correlation between changes in CO2 and temperature on the scale of changes between interglacial to glacial conditions. He discusses human emissions of CO2 and changes in CO2 in detail. In other words, you have taken his statements out of context. Buy his book and you will be able to understand what he is talking about.
If the laws of Australia don’t permit this poor man to sue Macquairie University for a minimum of $10m, then it’s national anthem should have the words ‘Australia Fair’ removed immediately…..
Jan Perlitz used to defend James Hansen here. Interesting that he should jump to the defense of Macquerie U of Oz in their sabotage of Salby’s career there. Perlitz’s method of defending Macquerie is to insinuate that Professor Salby is dishonest and deserved what ever evil that Macquerie U could devise against him. So Nick Stokes and Perlwitz team up to heap further calumny and injury on Professor Salby, thus supplementing the efforts of Macquerie U to injure Salby. Interesting.
RE: Nick Stokes says:
July 9, 2013 at 12:16 am
” . . . But anyway, that should not leave him unable to write anything at all.”
I’m wondering how Nick missed this:
6. During the protracted delay of resources, I eventually undertook the production
of a new book – all I could do without the committed resources to rebuild my research program.
Anthony offers a potential answer:
“Nick, sometimes I think your head is up your arse.”
Race Horse indeed . . .
Silly me thinking that universities were the last bastion of unbiased science and thought.
According to Web of Science, Murry Salby has had 87 papers since 1979, with his latest in 2012:
Title: Changes of the Antarctic ozone hole: Controlling mechanisms, seasonal predictability, and evolution
Author(s): Salby, Murry L.; Titova, Evgenia A.; Deschamps, Lilia
Source: JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES Volume: 117 Article Number: D10111 DOI: 10.1029/2011JD016285 Published: MAY 26 2012
Times Cited: 2 (from Web of Science)
His WoS record shows a good rate of publication up through 2008, then a hiatus until 2012. The 3-year 2009-2012 paper drought is consistent with the related history of problems imposed by Macquarie University. Presumably, co-author Evgenia Titova is the Russian Ph. D. student of whom Salby wrote.
@ur momisugly Jan Perlwitz
“It is interesting to watch how almost all of the “skeptic” crowd here just accept all those claims by Salby he makes in this email as true at face value w/o being a bit skeptical. Why is that?”
—
Being sceptical about someone’s scientific hypothesis is always fair, regardless of whoever turns out to be right in the end. It is a central part of scientific ethos. On the other hand, being “sceptical” about another man’s assertion of simple fact means to assume that he is a liar. This is usually done based only on prior evidence of untruthfulness. Do you have such evidence? Put up or shut up.
Pat Frank says:
“His WoS record shows a good rate of publication up through 2008, then a hiatus until 2012. ”
—
He wrote a textbook, for crying out loud. Did you ever try that? I did. It too me about five times longer than I had planned, and it very significantly impacted my rate of paper output, too.
@ur momisugly Jan Perlwitz what Michael Palmer said. PUOSU.
I am sorry to see the empty face of academia exposed again, Pointmans quip, of how amazing, that such tiny brains can produce such planetary size egos, is right on the money.
This rot of ethics free groupthink is rampant in our bureaucracies, universities are just the easiest window into the mindset of our “intellectual superiors.”
Govt worldwide is in breach of contract, long promised services are denied, but the money has already been forcibly extracted from the taxpayer.
Promise made, money taken, promise not kept. Yet our bureaucracy insist we must provide the extravagant rewards and pensions they promised themselves.
This treatment of Murry Salby is business as usual for modern bureaucrats, ethics and laws are only for the “little people”.
As usual it escapes the attention of these parasites, that society as a whole may be better off without their “help”.
Maybe there are some computing gurus here who could help Prof. Salby with his code?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/09/after-a-tense-year-nyu-and-chen-guangcheng-part-ways.html
That Australian experience is going about as well as human rights forced-abortion opponent Chen Guangcheng at NYU. The blind guy with the trademark glasses, whose plight eventually had to be acknowledged by Sec of State Clinton.
I don’t know what motivated NYU to accept Chen in the first place; We NYU-educated elistist totalitarians are totally jealous of the way China controls fertility, and we will be doing the same as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
Hopefully another university picks up Dr. Salby.
Michael Palmer wrote in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/professor-critical-of-agw-theory-being-disenfranchised-exiled-from-academia-in-australia/#comment-1359397
Following this logic, if someone accused someone else of a crime, and I didn’t have any knowledge about prior untruthfulness of the accuser, I should believe the accusations to be true at face value, and I would be the one at fault, if I said the burden of proof for the accusations was on the accuser, and I didn’t believe anything before the accusations to be proven true.
pressed for time so some quick notes:
Computer code conversion – I presume that Dr Salby is talking about HPC code (High Performance Computing) in which case there would very likely be major conversion issues that require trained resources to undertake, and these are a different skill set than the researcher’s in most cases, so yes, he may well have needed considerable help.
Fact checking – yes we haven’t heard the other side of the story yet, but if they are guilty as charged we never will. The plane ticket is the smoking gun. It should be possible to independently verify that the claims is true, that they cancelled a non-refundable return ticket. If so, that’s a remarkable level of spite and lends credence to the balance of Salby’s story.
Jan P – Having debated him on other issues before, his rushing to the defense of Macquarie makes me all that much more sympathetic to Salby. Jan P has a history on this site that in my experience suggests a smokescreen to hide the fire.
Michael Palmer says:
July 9, 2013 at 10:01 am
On the other hand, being “sceptical” about another man’s assertion of simple fact means to assume that he is a liar.
__________________________________________
That’s not true. I have no reasons to doubt that what Dr. Salby wrote is truth, but I have many reasons to believe that it’s not the whole truth. That’s why I believe we should wait for reaction from Macquarie and compare the two versions before we start judging anyone.
Not only almost everyone here accepts provided information with no doubts but many people are midlessly jumping on a conspiracy bandwagon. Dr. Lewandowsky would sure be pleased.
If we want to call ourselves skeptics we should be first of all skeptical to our own conclusions based on insufficient and incomplete evidence.
They have “academia” in OZ? Dementia,maybe,like a lot of the so called scientists in the rest of the world.
This is the shameful extent to which the ‘establishment’ will go to thwart any questioning
of the global-warming/climate-change orthodoxy. Dr. Salby’s findings threaten to under-
mine the claims of ‘consensus science.’
I thought I had read the most outrageous, possible, scaremongering promulgated by the
increasingly desperate warmists; but, even the most fanciful, anti-scientific, claims are
exceeded by that of Item 13. It takes my breath away.
“one in two chance that by 2100 there’ll be no human beings left on this planet”
Surely, even warmists must henceforth question their association with institutions willing
to use such an unabashed application of naked power to frustrate the evolution and present-
ation of new scientific research. This action, at last, exposes..for all to see…the fraudulence
of the claims to science made by the ‘consensus scientists.’
They should be ashamed and embarrased!
Jimmy Haigh says:”Maybe there are some computing gurus here who could help Prof. Salby with his code?”
Well, the email indicated there were “several hundred thousand lines of code” to convert.
To me, this implies that the code base is a monster that was not written over time to work on hardware/software operating systems that are no longer common at every University. It probably goes along with an older unique or non-commercial database instead of using for example an Oracle database. That would have been typical years ago.
Therefore, I would speculate he needed help getting his models to work properly on PC based server platforms or Linux based platforms instead of whatever older hardware it was working on previously (probably Unix boxes of some kind). Such a task would require a bit of research to determine if there are any relatively efficient ways of doing it. If there isn’t, then it would possibly require quite a bit of work. But it should be work that they could hire for example computer science students at the University to work on.
Jan P Perlwitz says:
July 9, 2013 at 6:02 am
“Since there are no substantial anthropogenic sinks of carbon dioxide, it follows from mass conservation and basic mathematical logic that Nature can’t be a net source in the carbon dioxide cycle of the planet under the present day conditions.”
Idiotic statement. It does not follow.
Jan P Perlwitz says:
July 9, 2013 at 6:37 am
It is interesting to watch how almost all of the “skeptic” crowd here just accept all those claims by Salby he makes in this email as true at face value w/o being a bit skeptical. Why is that?
This is my first comment on this article. When I read it this morning, I checked out Joanne Nova’s article, the Bishop Hill’s. The latter gave me confidence the Email was authentic. I do have some troubles with Salby’s claims in his CO2 views, but they’re minor enough to ignore until I have time to look at things in detail. (Suffice it to say that the IPCC projections vs. observations and also the decade + of warming followed by a decade + of plateau is enough to raise significant questions.)
I did wish I had the University’s view on the events and especially their rationale for cancelling a non-refundable ticket. That seems to be either utter incompetence, utter vindictiveness, or perhaps the Univ can suggest something a bit milder.
Then you came along and reminded me of the sort of people I’d hate to have to rely upon. Anthony, please keep Dr Perlwitz around, we need to be reminded of the personality of some people in the climate change community. Until we hear more from the University, Dr Perlwitz makes a good stand-in.
I can fully understand the actions of the Australian University to do what they have allegedly done, if the believe fully, in the CAGW theme.
The only way that they could excuse such behaviour is that they genuinely believe/fully accept what I and many others believe to be nonsense.
Around the world, bureaucracies are implementing policies which are reverting their countries years of development by the use of poorly understood concepts, without any proof.
Being a WUWT reader, it appears that Australia wants to take the lead in acceptance of and the implementation of these policies.
Like any efficient organisation, if you have a senior member of the team who does not play ball, you ‘let them go’.
I just hope that a reader here who has the ‘C3’ password will now release it.
The Australian Universities, being such key players within the team will have many critical mentions within the ‘C3’ posts that will surely be help by being aired.
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
This terrible. I’ve read Carter’s book, “Climate, the Counter-Consensus,” and it’s a masterpiece of intelligent skepticism, just what good science should be. And now another academic is being ostracized for not going along with the dominant dogma? What the Hell is going on Down Under?