About
A Whistleblower
I have a Bachelor of Science and a PhD from the University of Queensland, Australia.
In the late 1990s I started studying environmental campaigns. In 2002 I documented my concerns with the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF) ‘Save the Reef Campaign’’ in ‘WWF Says Jump, Government asks How High’ ( IPA NGO Project, March 2002). I wrote about the perverse influence of this campaign on public policy including in a short piece for the IPA Review in March 2003 entitled, ‘Deceit in the Name of Conservation’ .
I went on to study the ‘Living Murray' an Australian federal government initiative, again comparing allegations from environmentalists and senior government scientists with the official statistics. My monograph ‘Myth and the Murray, Measuring the Real State of the River Environment’ influenced the Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’s Inquiry into future water supplies for Australia’s rural industries and communities.
By 2005 ‘water’ had become my main focus of research and writing. At that time various high profile Australians made public statements claiming global warming would have a major impact on water availability and water quality. So, I started reading up on the science of global warming. While my initial interest in global warming was to better understand water policy, I am now perhaps best known for my public comments as a so-called global warming skeptic.
After I attended the ‘2008 International Conference on Climate Change’ in New York in March 2008 I was interviewed by Michael Duffy from Australia’s ABC Radio National and discussed the last 10 years of temperature data and also output from NASA Aqua Satellite (Climate Change, Michael Duffy, March 17, 2008)
This interview was the focus of an opinion piece by Christopher Pearson in The Australian (Climate facts to warm to, Christopher Pearson, March 22, 2008) which was subsequently picked up by Fox News (Cooling Effect, Brit Hume, March 24, 2008, to watch the Fox News video clip you will need to first watch a short advertisement).
Fox News accurately summarized my key points:
"A number of environmental experts now say that global temperatures have stopped rising — and that the earth is in fact cooling. Jennifer Marohasy, an Australian biologist and think-tank member says that even though carbon dioxide levels continue to rise that — "temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."
In an interview on an Australian radio station last week — Marohasy was then asked if her claim was controversial.
She replied — "No. The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has actually acknowledged it"
She also said that new data from a NASA satellite show that weather patterns are compensating for carbon dioxide emissions while limiting the greenhouse effect. She added — "the policy implications are enormous... I think people are still in shock at this point."
On April 4, 2008, Paul Biggs, a fellow blogger and medical researcher at Birmingham University, noted that the BBC had changed the title and text in one of their published online stories.
On April 7, 2008, I received email correspondence between an activist, Jo Abbess, and BBC Environment reporter Roger Harrabin. From this email exchange it appeared that the BBC had changed the information from the World Meteorology Organisation, as noted by Paul Biggs, following demands from the activist who was concerned that in its original form the article supported 'the skeptics' correct observation that there has been no warming since 1998
After I posted the email exchange at the weblog this news was picked up by many UK and US bloggers and then various news outlets including CNN’s Glen Beck Show (click below to watch the clip from CNN).
In summary, I apply my formal training in the scientific method to understanding different issues including global warming.
1. I note what is being said publicly.
2. I look to see whether public pronouncements are supported by the available evidence.
3. I look for correlations, being careful to always distinguish between out-put from computer models as opposed to observational data.
4. I seek advice from experts who support the ‘consensus’ as well as ‘skeptics’.
5. I try and understand the physical processes that might explain the real world observations.
I try and restrict my analysis and comment to the data – not what may or may not motivate others to come to particular conclusions.
Early years
I was born in Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia in 1963. My parents were farmers at Coomalie Creek near the uranium mine of Rum Jungle. They grew tomatoes and pasture seed, ran buffaloes and cattle.
I started school at Batchelor, but by second grade my parents had sold up and we left the Northern Territory in a green holden station wagon towing a caravan complete with matching green stripe.
After a few months of travelling Australia including living in beach front caravan parks, Dad decided Queensland was the place to be and we moved into a little house nestled in the Conondale ranges in south eastern Queensland. That home eventually became the community centre for the alternative lifestyle village of Crystal Waters.
After Conondale, Mum and Dad and my three siblings moved to Indonesia where Dad worked on aid projects. I was sent to Clayfield College, a boarding school in Brisbane.
During school holidays I visited diverse and exotic locations including cattle stations in north western Queensland, little fishing villages on remote islands in the Phillipines and also big cities like Paris and Hong Kong.
Then I was moved to a Brisbane Girls' Grammar school. When it came time to fill in my tertiary entrance form it was easy. I wanted to study Agricultural science - I wanted to feed the world.
But after a semester at the University of Queensland I switched from a Bachelor of Agricultural Science to a Bachelor of Science and enrolled in everything from ethics to plant taxonomy.
Career
While at University I had a variety of jobs from interpreter for the Asian Development Bank in Indonesia to cotton scout on the Darling Downs, Australia.
On graduating I got a job with the Alan Fletcher Research Station and within a couple of years I was their field biologist in Madagascar.
I subsequently worked for seven years in remote parts of Africa and Madagascar. The success of the biological control project that I worked on in Madagascar is documented in 'Reclaiming lost provinces: A century of weed biological control in Queensland' (Queensland Dept of Natural Resources and Mines, 2005).
During the 1990s, I published in Australian and international scientific journals and completed a PhD.
In 1997 I switched from researcher to environment manager with the Queensland sugar industry. In 2001, I started to develop an interest in environmental campaigns and, in particular, anomalies between fact and perception regarding the health of coastal river systems and the Great Barrier Reef.
In July 2003, I became director of the environment unit at the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). Then in July 2006 I signed a new contract with the IPA and my title changed to senior fellow and I have continued to research and write on environmental issues of national significance.
Over the last few years I have helped establish a new environment group, The Australian Environment Foundation. The AEF is a different kind of environment group in that it is evidence-based, solution focused and works from a basis that environmental protection and sustainable resource use are generally compatible.
Publications
During the 1990s I published over a dozen scientific papers in International and Australian scientific journals and two book chapters including on weed biological control, insect and plant taxonomy, insect behavior, animal ecology and risk management.
With the sugar industry I wrote the first commodity specific code of practice endorsed under the Queensland Environment Protection Act 1994 and coordinated development of the sugar industry’s first best management practice manual.
More recently I have written and published several critical reviews on environmental issues including the state of the Murray-Darling river system, Australian agriculture, environmentalism in Australia, and the Great Barrier Reef.
Over the last three years as a columnist for NSW rural weekly The Land, and more recently e-journal On Line Opinion, and as an occasional opinion writer for the Age, Herald Sun, Courier Mail and The Australian I have had over 100 pieces published on environmental and food-related issues including global warming, bushfires, cyclones, salinity and whaling. I also write for the IPA Review and have published in Quadrant magazine.
Most days I post something at the 'Politics and Environment' weblog which is read by about 50,000 people each month (January 2008) from across Australia and also in the US, UK, Japan, Germany, Sweden and New Zealand. The blog is a partnership with eco-tourism operator Neil Hewett and medical researcher Paul Biggs. This website and the Politics and Environment blog are archived in the National Library, Canberra.
If you have information on an environmental issue that you would like published, consider sending it to me to be published as a 'guest blog post'. We don't always agree with what we publish, but we believe in giving people an opportunity to be heard.
Current Employment
I am a senior fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). The IPA is an independent, non-profit public policy think tank, dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of economic and political freedom. The IPA is about the free market of ideas, the free flow of capital, a limited and efficient government, the rule of law, and representative democracy. These are the ideas which, throughout history, have proven themselves to be dynamic, liberating and exciting.
I am paid for some of the columns and opinon pieces that I write for various newspapers and I charge a fee for some of the speeches I give.
I work from my home in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains in NSW, in Australia. I regularly visit Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
Motivation
I have always been interested in the environment - how it can be farmed, mined and harvested for food, fibre, timber, minerals and energy and also how wildlife and wilderness areas can best be protected.
Pronunciation
My surname Marohasy is pronounced
"Mahr oh hassee".
The first ‘a’ is long and the second ‘a’ is short.
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