The way that the climate science denial
community and the conservative echo chamber has
rallied around Peter Ridd has been impressive.

All the usual suspects have had a run at Ridd's
story. The Daily Caller, FoxNews, Andrew Bolt
(lots of times), The Australian's, Graham Lloyd,
(lots of times) -
James Delingpole in Breitbart, Alan Jones (lots of times),
Rowan Dean, and so on.

The ABC fully covered the case in 2018.

Ridd has gone pretty much without criticism.
He's also being backed by the Institute of Public Affairs
(they raised $95,000 in two days).

Ridd has been hanging around with climate deniers for the
best part of a decade. He's been a science director of
the Australian Environment Foundation (not a real
Environment Foundation) since 2005 and he doesn't seem to
have had a problem saying what he wants since then.

Ridd's story starts in mid 2016 when through the pages of
The Australian he was making dubious claims about alleged
misuse of pictures of The Great Barrier Reef. The James Cook
University issued a censure against him.

Since then Ridd continued to claim that fellow James Cook
University scientists should not be trusted which lead to
allegations of serious misconduct from James Cook University
that Ridd had repeatedly breached their code of conduct.
Clearly he had. But Ridd hit back and filed a case against
them. Did he seriously expect to keep his job after that?

Clearly the man has a case to answer when he says things
like - "We can no longer trust scientific organisations like
the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the
Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral
Reef Studies." Two groups with partnerships and staff at his
own university.

It's entirely predictable that this man is getting full support
from climate deniers. He's serving up two of their favourite
dishes - in one serving. "freedom of speech" against the
establishment and a rejection of the science linking human
activity to climate change and in this case in particular - The
Great Barrier Reef.

Don't kid your self Foxy, most of the research being done at AIMS & at James Cook is propaganda conformation, & the quality of too many of the researchers leaves a whole lot to be desired.

In 85 I took the board of the Marine park authority, & a bunch of researchers from AIMS & James Cook out to our facility at Hardy reef.

They took half the day seemingly delighting in telling us we wouldn't be in business long. They reckoned the crown of thorns was already devastating the area, & there would be no coral to show tourists with in a couple of years.

None of them had ever been in the area, but they assured us their models showed the devastation would be in Gladstone with in 3 years. We tried to give them the benefit of our experience & local knowledge, at the reef 5 days a week with tourists & dive groups, & a dozen overnight fishing & dive trips to the outer reef a month.

The chair lady of the park authority, a history professor, said my skippers probably didn't know what one looked like, when I told her we had seen only one in 6 months.

If you want to know the facts Foxy, do avoid the fish tank specialists in Townsville. Go talk to a professional Swains fisherman, who effectively live out there. One of them told me about the annual coral spawning, about 20 years before the "scientists" discovered it. That was probably in a MacKay pub, it wouldn't have been in a fish tank in Townsville.

Dear Hassie,

Thanks for that.

However -

I get a bit suspicious when people push certain
barrows - Jennifer Marohasy is a former free
market think tank researcher who is now at
Central Queensland University with her
work paid for by the foundation of a
climate science sceptic.

None of the claims by her have been published in a peer
reviewed journal, despite the fact that since January
she has found time to write repeatedly to government
ministers, has spoken at the Sydney Institute and flown
to a conference for climate sceptics in Las Vegas all
the while making the same accusations.

What justification could there possibly be for the ABC to not report the March 2019 Peter Ridd case in Brisbane, involving whether GBR research is untrustworthy and lacking scientific quality?

Sacking Peter Ridd has previously been aired but this is also about trustworthiness of water quality research. Its also about more and more regulations for struggling farmers being blamed for sediment that rarely reaches actual GBR coral 40 miles offshore. Nothing is being said about nutrient feeding algae causing dead zones inundating coral.

Accomplished scientist Peter Ridd has seen need to speak up. People with local knowledge and observed evidence should also speak up.

As an underwater filmmaker and explorer in GBR and SW Pacific Islands waters since the mid 1960’s, long term observation and independent investigative general research has provided evidence of substance indicating there is very significant reason for concern about lack of GBR research quality assurance.

This is not about flogging the ABC, many good people work there. This is about news photographs not indicating the true story News photos generally show beautiful coral while dead coral in among healthy coral is not shown and discussed. So is the GBR ok?

ABC news about global warming usually shows images of power stations with steam billowing upward from tapered steam cooling towers, while nothing can be seen coming out of nearby furnace chimneys. Do many viewers think it’s smoke and CO2 billowing out?

It’s impossible to put the whole GBR in one photo. However there is a way to present evidence of unreported untrustworthy research. Dissolved municipal sewage nutrient over-load amounting to pollution is being transported northwards into GBR waters by known sediment dispersal current. That southern city point source nutrient load is not being measured in GBR science. Absolutely, sediment is measured but not the dissolved nutrient, nutrient that if proliferating algae, algae that is killing seagrass food-web nurseries and GBR coral - linked to fish depletion, dead whales, undernutrition and 21 children dead per minute daily, not duly reported either.

http://www.unicef.org/mdg/childmortality.htm

http://www.jcronline.org/doi/abs/10.2112/08-1120.1

Try this:

http://www.unicef.org/mdg/childmortality.html

Ah yeah, those nasty, poison spreading farmers getting the blame for the ills of the GBR.
If only we could stop these farmers from trying to grow so much food for the environmentalists in the air conditioned homes in the South on canal estates & pristine bush land & making a good living in the Public Service by taking advantage of the Peter Principle & conveniently not making decisions in order not to risk responsibility.
Then, in holidays time they can all travel by plane, train & automobile to exotic locations with air conditioned luxury units from which they head out to the reef on fuel guzzling tourist boats.
All the while being hugely concerned about the health of the reef as the sunscreen lotion washes off their bleached bodies & kills the coral polyps.
Back home they then start condemning the scientists who state facts. Yeah, nothing like a parasitic hypocrite !