Prof Brian J O’Brian remembers science before corruption by climate change

Australian physicist Professor Brian J O’Brien was closely involved in the Apollo 11 moon mission. He is interviewed by ABC’s Richard Fidler:

Prof O’Brian is a breath of fresh air from an era when science was about the science, environmentalism was about the protecting the environment and getting it wrong had consequences.

(I respect Richard Fidler, so it’s a little disappointing to hear him trying to politically correct the sceptical climate science views of his  guest physicist Professor Brian J O’Brian. I guess it is the ABC, after all).

First three quarters of interview explore Prof O’Brian’s contribution to Appolo 11 mission, the nature of moon dust, his polar bear expeditions, his environmental protection work and much more.

Transcript of last 1/5^th of interview:

….
Prof O’Brian: The 70’s were superb, in western Australia, for the cooperation betweens governments of both parties, industry, public service, CSIRO, universities whatever I could ask the best people, the experts on any thing to help me, whether it was RAAF, you know, or anything. And we’d all get together for thew good of the future…. and unfortunately that whole atmosphere’s all gone.

Fidler: Public service is much more attuned to the political needs of their ministers.

Prof O’Brian: Well they were professional in those days, the object was facts and alternatives.

Fidler: Why did the talk you gave to Perth Rotary in 1990 attract a fair bit of attention.

Prof O’Brien: They asked me to give a talk on climate change, well then it was called the greenhouse effect. I’d kept up to it but haven’t really dug down, so I spent 3 weeks or so with the fundamental papers and got frightened at the exaggerations that were going around. So I gave my first talk there, I gave the title The Greenhouse effect and the death Mark Twain.

Fidler: Why that title?

Prof O’Brian: Well, Mark Twain said when reading of his death in the headlines, said it was somewhat exaggerated. And yet it’s got a germ of truth in it. So ‘Averil’ typed out the notes and the notes became very popular. One of the gold miners asked me to expand on that and write a monogram. They funded the monogram. No editorial control, complete freedom to expand on the facts because, as they put it, their stockholders needed to know.

Fidler: What was the situation as you saw it, were you prepared to accept that climate change or global warming was largely man made or anthropogenic, as it’s sometimes called?

Prof O’Brian: No. It was certainly not proven. And so I took on the CSIRO. The sad part was that there were no senior scientists who were independent. I was independent –because I had my own consultancy.. so I could ask CSIRO to debate with me as we did in Melbourne…

But the funding for climate change research was only going to what you’d call ‘true believers’, when that happens you inevitably you get a bias”. The sad situation a of professor of physics told me Brian I completely support what you’re saying, but I have 65 researchers in my laboratory and the only funding I can for them and to get their PhDs is greenhouse funding from Canberra or wherever.

20 years people have been indoctrinated with the abuse of language” so “climate change” doesn’t mean climate change as common sense would say, you know, climate change, a mix of changes in climate from whatever causes… To the popular community and to the politicians now, climate change means changes in climate caused primarily by human activities.

Fidler: So your argument was that the climate is changing, but

Prof O’Brian: Oh sure, blind Freddy knows

Fidler: We all know that…That’s the science of it, but your argument is that primarily it’s changing because of natural factors or factors unrelated to human activities.

Prof O’Brian: It’s a mix. The scientific question is what contribution comes because of human activities?

Will, for example, the floods in Queensland, which they had in 1890’s, the great federation drought they had 1895 – 1902 throughout Australia, will they persist through great natural forces before the artificial greenhouse man made contributions modify them?

Fidler: I suppose anyone listening to you saying the funding went to true believers on this, would be thinking, well that’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it, is that it just reflects the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is largely man made.

Prof O’Brian: The first Australian policy on climate change was ‘pulled’ down by Paul Keating’s government Oct 1990 and was to support the Toronto target which was reduction of GHG by 20% by 2005 to the level they were in 1990. So that’s the Toronto target by 20%. Now that was assumed to be a scientifically derived figure.

Fidler: Where was that figure…

Prof O’Brian: That figure was derived at a half day workshop at the Toronto conference in 1988 by about 20 of the scientists and they said something along the following lines. We want to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by man. There are two issues, one is the demand for electricity or power, so we want to reduce the demand, well a challenging figure would be about 10%. That’s fine and they said we also want to increase the efficiency with which it’s to be used and a challenging figure would be 10%. And so you add up..and you get 20%. That becomes the Toronto target.

But then that became adopted as if it was scientifically backed up, scientifically derived, It was a useful target but was plucked from the entrails of the Toronto conference. And CSIRO gradually admitted that that’s all it was.

But the relevance was, forget about the old days of 1990, the relevance was Paul Keating insisted that Australia could adopt that target, provided our trading partners did likewise. Keating was a sharp cookie. And he was fine about reducing greenhouse emission by 20% providing our trading partners do likewise. And there is no better summary of the present quandary that.

Fidler: Then, you’ve written the old prisoners dilemma, it’s a philosophical problem, you go first – no you go first – no you go first and nothing gets done.

Prof O’Brian: Well that could be but we could go on at some length about that. It is the prisoner’s dilemma and we’re the prisoners. But it was so unnecessary.

[Cut to concluding conversation about future of space exploration.]

Richard Fidler has prisoner’s dilemma analogy in reverse. This game theory dictates, that without a global agreement and verification mechanism. i.e. prisoners unable to communicate, the rational strategy is for all to act selfishly. It is irrational for Australia to be selfless and ‘go first’ on CO2 reduction – we will be the only prisoner to have remained selflessly silent and get the maximum sentence.

prisoner’s dilemma argues against cooperation, and the associated game theory dictates that the rational action for countries is to try to cheat on global carbon mitigation efforts.  Without a global agreement Australia is the prisoner acting irrationally by acting selflessly and staying silent (abating CO2) while game theory dictates that the rational action for prisoners is to confess – so other countries will continue to emit CO2.

Furthermore, in the prisoner’s dilemma,  is further inappropriate because