Australians deserve answers. We rely on the Bureau of Metrology to be a trusted source of data and forecasts, yet time and time again there are too many examples of where the BOM does not give enough consideration to transparency and accuracy.
The IPA’s Jennifer Marohasy told Sky News Australia of her years’ long attempt to get accurate data from the BOM.
Rowan Dean:
I want to chat now to Jennifer Marohasy. With climate concerns at an all-time high and the rush towards renewables quickening. There’s this keen public interest in daily temperatures because we hear all the time about global warming. Now this is a really interesting story. You’ll have seen it in yesterday’s Weekend Australian. For many years, there’s been a Freedom of Information campaign that has blown the lid on how the Bureau of Meteorology actually record temperatures. That’s the Australian Bureau of Meteorology known as the BOM, or BOM. This month the Bureau released data, which showed a significant difference in the temperatures recorded on traditional mercury thermometers. This is a bit technical, but stick with us. And those recorded by their new, what are called resistance probes. Temperatures recorded by the probes were sometimes 0.7 degrees, I’m not on ice age watch yet, but we’ll do that later, 0.7 degrees warmer than temperatures recorded on a traditional thermometer.
If the case for rising temperatures is so strong, then there is no reason for the BOM, for the Bureau to conceal their findings, yet they refuse to make full records available to the public. One scientist fighting for the release of the data is Jennifer Marohasy, great friend of this show of outsiders who joins us now. Jennifer, always terrific to see you. I know it’s a bit of a technical story, but I just want to go back to a decade ago, Tony Abbott came into power in a landslide victory for the Liberal Party. Part of his platform was to investigate how the Bureau of Meteorology were recording data in order to show global warming. Now, Tony Abbott, that was an election commitment, but he was rolled by the bed wetters, Greg Hunt and so on, and the others who are still causing problems to this day, and they didn’t go ahead with the inquiry. Ten years later, Jennifer, you now have some information for us. Tell us about it.
Jennifer Marohasy:
If we go back to actually the last time I was on your program, I was talking about the homogenization, which is the remodeling of the data as it’s recorded. That’s a problem, and it may generate more of a global warming trend than this issue of transitioning to probes. I can actually homogenize data that’s homogenized, but I can’t do anything about temperatures recorded with a probe that’s not correctly calibrated. My concern is that when the Bureau started to transition and what you’re showing on the screen, there’s a Stevenson screen, and originally there were mercury thermometers in those Stevenson screens that the temperature was derived from the mercury thermometer.
They started transitioning to probes in November, 1996, and their policy is that they have parallel data because the probes might not record exactly the same as the Mercury. Now they’ve collected parallel data for 38 of their 700 weather stations, but they’ve never made that data publicly available and they haven’t actually analyzed it themselves properly. The little bit of analysis that they’ve done has been reported as not showing a statistical difference yet. When I got that Mildura data, I saw that there was a statistical difference. Now, just last, just before Easter, well, I started asking for parallel data back in 2015. John Abbott relentlessly pursued a request for parallel data for Brisbane Airport from December, 2019 and just before Easter, after he fronted and took the Bureau to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, he got three years of data. My analysis of that shows that yes, the probes sometimes record up to 0.7 degrees warmer, and remember, we’re meant to be concerned about a 1.5 degree tipping point. We’re talking about significant amounts of difference.
When you look at the entire three years, and I had to first transcribe because I was given by John this data as handwritten [inaudible 00:04:18] reports over a thousand of them. When I transcribed that data, when I ran some statistics over it, there’s a statistically significant difference between the temperatures as recorded from the probe versus the temperatures as recorded by the mercury thermometer. Yet the Bureau’s been telling us for decades that we don’t have to look at the parallel data because there’s no statistical difference.
Rowan Dean:
You’ve shown that there clearly is.
James Morrow:
Jennifer, what I’m curious here is with this withholding of data, and I know that you had to go to the AAT to get it, I’d note that the Labor government is trying to get rid of the AAT, but that’s another story. What excuse had they been giving all along for not providing the data? I mean, it’s clearly not national security commercial in confidence on what possible grounds could they want to withhold public scientific data?
Jennifer Marohasy:
Originally when John asked for the Brisbane data, he was told there was actually 15 years of data, but they wouldn’t give it, and he wanted all of it. They said they wouldn’t give it to him because it was going to be too onerous to scan these manually recorded, they’re handwritten.
Rowan Dean:
Poor public servants.
Jennifer Marohasy:
Then when John disputed that, he took it to the Office of the Information Commissioner, they said the data does not actually exist. Now, we disputed that. I assisted by providing equivalent data from Mildura, but the Information Commissioner actually sided with the Bureau that the data does not exist. Then they changed their story again and went back to it’s too onerous. Then they said, “Well, maybe you can have it, but this is only data of your interest, so you’re going to have to pay us tens of thousands of dollars to get the data.”
Rita Panahi:
Okay, why are they behaving in this manner? Has the Bureau been completely captured by climate change ideologues? I mean, from what you’ve just said, they’ve actually lied. They’ve said this data isn’t available when it is, and then they have eventually, after years of you trying, made it available to you. Why are they behaving in this manner?
Jennifer Marohasy:
Because they absolutely don’t want analysis of the parallel data because it will show that there is a real discrepancy between the traditional way of recording and the recordings from the platinum resistant probes in automatic weather stations. They didn’t calibrate these probes?
Rita Panahi:
Why are they so reluctant for us to know that? I mean, unless they’re activists, why would they care? They’re the Bureau. They should just be telling us what the weather has been and what it will be.
Jennifer Marohasy:
If you go back to the Climategate files, remember those leaked emails, you’ve got people like David Jones from the Bureau in discussions with people at the Hadley Center in the UK and [inaudible 00:07:15] talking about how we adjust temperatures, how we don’t let deniers have access to parallel data and so it goes on. It’s very clear from the Climategate emails that people in very senior management positions at the Bureau are more interested in the data supporting the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming than they are about being honest to the evidence.
Rowan Dean:
Okay, so Jennifer, I’ll just-
Jennifer Marohasy:
Or accurately recording the temperatures, which is what I want.
Rowan Dean:
Exactly.
Jennifer Marohasy:
I got interested in this because I wanted accurate recordings for my rainfall modeling.
Rowan Dean:
Jennifer, I don’t want to go into individuals and what their motives may or may not be because we don’t know that. You’re right, there has been controversy about Climategate emails in the past, but I think the more significant point is not the motivation of the individuals, but the realization that the old ways of measuring temperature and the new ways of measuring temperature are different and the new ways according to your results and statistics give a warmer result. 41% of the times you found I think it was 0.7 degrees, which is half the amount that we’re worried about with global warming. 1.5 degrees increase. What you’re clearly saying is that when you study the data, you find that the old ways of measuring temperatures and the new ways of measuring temperatures are different and the new ways show a slightly warmer world or a warmer result. That does call in to question-
Jennifer Marohasy:
Can I just say that sometimes it shows cooler and sometimes it shows warmer. So we’ve got actually problems. I actually think in the context of these probes, there’s as much incompetence as there is wrongdoing. They are having a problem getting the probes equivalent to the old mercury recordings. I actually did a lot of work with the Indonesian Bureau of Meteorology. They always have a mercury and a probe in the same Stevenson screen because it’s difficult to get equivalents.
Rowan Dean:
Yes.
Jennifer Marohasy:
Which is all the more reason for the Bureau to be transparent and let us see all the parallel data.
Rowan Dean:
Hear, hear.
Jennifer Marohasy:
We’ve only got access to a tiny three years of the 15 years from Brisbane. I want all 15 years.
Rowan Dean:
Exactly.
Jennifer Marohasy:
There are another 38 stations that have got about 20 years each of parallel data, that data needs to also be made publicly available.
Rowan Dean:
Of course it does. The data needs to be available to people like Jennifer Marohasy so that we the public know, because we pay for the Bureau of Meteorology, we want to know that we are getting all the information that we want not that the Bureau says we can have.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
