John Abbot

Senior Fellow

John Abbot is a Senior Fellow with interests in environmental issues, including climate change, in the Research Program at the IPA. Current projects with the IPA include examination of evidence for impacts of ocean acidification and investigation of methods to separate natural from anthropogenic influences on climate change. He holds adjunct positions at both James Cook University and the University of Tasmania.

John Abbot has a BSc in chemistry from Imperial College, London, an MSc from the University of British Columbia, Canada, a Master of Biotechnology from the University of Queensland and a PhD in chemistry from McGill University, Canada. He has spent more than 20 years as a research scientist in universities and industry working in areas of industrial chemistry, particularly relating to petroleum refining and pulp and paper production. He successfully supervised a group of about 20 PhD and Honours students at the University of Tasmania, and has published more than 100 papers in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

He obtained a Juris Doctor Law degree from the University of Queensland in 2003, and was admitted as a solicitor in Queensland. He worked for a period at Welfare Rights dealing with Centrelink issues, and also disability discrimination. He also obtained an LLM degree from the University of Queensland, specialising in intellectual property law. He has published a number of papers in legal journals, including several relating to Freedom of Information law in the context of public access to environmental information from government agencies.

During the period 2009 – 2015 Dr Abbot had an appointment at Central Queensland University as a Professorial Research fellow. A number of projects in the environmental area were undertaken, including re-examination of the evidence for an influence of pesticides on biota in rivers, and the use of diatoms to determine the salinity history of Lake Alexandrina. Other projects undertaken included the application of artificial intelligence using neural networks for medium-term rainfall forecasting. This work was initiated following the devastating flooding in Queensland during the 2010-11 summer, where flooding of Brisbane has been linked to poor dam management practices and inadequate official rainfall forecasts. These projects resulted in about 20 papers – published in the peer reviewed literature. His work at CQU was wholly funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation, and this continues to be the source of funding for his employment at the IPA.

BOM Makes Heavy Weather Over Temperature Data
2 May 2023

BOM Makes Heavy Weather Over Temperature Data

This article reflects the author’s ongoing research into the methods used by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to collect, collate, adjust and publish temperature and rainfall data. Research into this topic have been published in the IPA Climate Change The Facts Publications, with an updated working paper shortly to be published. My request three years ago to obtain temperature data
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A Land Of Droughts And Flooding Rains: Forecasting Rainfall At Long Lead Times
27 April 2022

A Land Of Droughts And Flooding Rains: Forecasting Rainfall At Long Lead Times

The IPA has today released a new research paper by Senior Fellow, Dr John Abbot, highlighting the recurrent patterns of drought and flooding rains in Australia – challenging claims that recent weather events were unprecedented – and exploring the potential of AI techniques to provide more skilful long-lead monthly forecasts than those provided by the Bureau of Meteorology’s GCM models,
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Sunshine and Sine Waves
14 December 2021

Sunshine and Sine Waves

A new Research Paper from the IPA has found there is sufficient evidence to question the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) view that global warming in the industrial era is dominated by anthropogenic factors, particularly greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The paper, Sunshine and Sine Waves: Identifying Oscillatory Patterns in Temperature Records Highlights Solar Influences While Reducing Anthropogenic Contribution to
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How the IPCC Buries Evidence of the Sun’s Climate Influence
7 October 2021

How the IPCC Buries Evidence of the Sun’s Climate Influence

The latest IPCC report conclusively states that global warming can be attributed mainly to human activities, particularly emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. Contributions to warming in recent times from natural causes, including variations in solar activity, are assumed to be negligible. As far as the IPCC is concerned, regarding attribution, the science is settled and there is a
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No Evidence for IPCC’s Certitude
12 August 2021

No Evidence for IPCC’s Certitude

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released its latest report, unequivocally stating that human influence has warmed earth’s climate at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years.  The IPCC Report includes a section on the Physical Science Basis that explains the dire consequences that are in store for the earth and humanity due
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What Corals Can Tell Us About Climate Change
24 June 2021

What Corals Can Tell Us About Climate Change

A new paper from Dr John Abbot, Senior Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, reveals that records from living and fossilised corals show natural variations in temperature stretching back thousands of years. Dr Abbot urged Australia’s Government-funded research institution to resume the program of coring corals and publication of trend data that appeared to cease in the early 2000’s,
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Abbot And Marohasy Respond To Criticisms Of GeoResJ Paper
15 November 2018

Abbot And Marohasy Respond To Criticisms Of GeoResJ Paper

Historical Temperature Reconstructions and Estimating the Contribution of the Industrial Revolution to 20th Century Warming 1. Introduction During the 12th Century, the English philosopher, diplomat and bishop, John of Salisbury (1120-1180) wrote that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted-up and borne aloft on their
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A Carbon Neutral Climate
4 October 2018

A Carbon Neutral Climate

Jennifer Marohasy and John Abbot investigate what the world’s climate would be like if the Industrial Revolution never happened. What if there’d never been an industrial revolution? What if the ‘dark satanic mills’ decried by William Blake had never been built, and the fossil fuels stayed in the ground? According to official climate bodies like the International Panel on Climate
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Ocean Acidification: Not Yet a Catastrophe for the Great Barrier Reef
20 February 2018

Ocean Acidification: Not Yet a Catastrophe for the Great Barrier Reef

The following is an excerpt from chapter 2 in Climate Change: The Facts 2017, published by the IPA in 2017. A PDF of the full chapter is available here, and the book can be purchased here. There has been an exponential increase in research on the topic of ocean acidification, which broadly concerns chemical changes in the ocean in response
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10 March 2014

Climate Change – The Facts 2014

Australia needs an honest debate about the facts of climate change. Governments around the world are preparing to dramatically increase taxes, regulate energy supplies and limit individual choices to deal with climate change. But what do we really know about the science of climate change? Is climate change caused by humans? Is it new? Is there a “scientific consensus”? Is
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