One of the least examined but most influential bodies in Australia is the Academy of Science. Its Fellows such as Kurt Lambeck, Mike Raupach, Graeme Pearman, John Church and John Zillman are big contributors to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, and Academy committees are full of IPCC authors and reviewers.
In the 2007 IPCC Working Group 1 (Science) report, analyst John McLean has shown how Australian official scientists and bureaucrats made 362 review comments, second only to the US with 689, and leaving UK (49), Canada (51) and even Germany (179) looking like slackers.
The loss of credibility of the UK’s Royal Society was illustrated by Andrew Montford’s dispassionate study this year. The Royal Society’s extremism had extended to standover tactics against companies funding sceptics. Has our own Academy, in its enthusiasm for the dangerous-global-warming hypothesis, also put its credibility on the line?
This article will not dive into climate science itself: Are climate models reliable? Do feedbacks really treble the carbon dioxide impact? This essay instead asks: How professional is the Academy? Does it operate with integrity?
