Garth Paltridge

Garth William Paltridge
Born	(1940-04-24) 24 April 1940 Brisbane, Queensland
Nationality	Australian
Alma mater	University of Queensland University of Melbourne
Known for	Maximum entropy production (MEP) hypothesis, Climate change skepticism
Scientific career
Fields	Atmospheric sciences
Institutions	University of Tasmania Australian National University

Garth William Paltridge, (born April 4, 1940, Brisbane, Queensland), is a retired Australian atmospheric physicist. He is presently a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University and Emeritus Professor and Honourary Research Fellow at the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Oceans Studies (IASOS), University of Tasmania. In August 2009 he published a book on the global warming debate, The Climate Caper. Paltridge believes that anthropogenic global warming is real, but that the warming will probably be too small to be a threat, and that given time the dire prognoses given in many scientific quarters will be proven wrong.

Career

Paltridge obtained a BSc in 1961 from the University of Queensland, a PhD in 1965 from University of Melbourne and a DSc in 1976 from the University of Queensland. He worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 1966, then as Senior Research Scientist for the Radio and Space Research Station at Ditton Park, Buckinghamshire, England from 1967-1968. In 1968 he took up a role as Research Scientist at the CSIRO, Australia where he remained until 1981. During that time he worked briefly as a Consultant to the World Meteorological Organization in 1975 in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was involved in the early development of the World Climate Program, and in 1979 he was posted as Senior Visiting Scientist at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1980. In 1981 he was seconded as Director of the Environmental Executive of the Institute of Petroleum, and in 1982 he returned to the CSIRO as Chief Research Scientist, where he remained until 1989. He briefly served as Senior Visiting Scientist at the National Climate Program Office from 1989-1990. From 1990 to 2002 he was Professor and Director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Oceans Studies at the University of Tasmania and at the same time, from 1991-2002, he was the Chief Executive Officer of the Antarctic Co-operative Research Centre at the University of Tasmania.

Paltridge was involved in studies on stratospheric electricity, the effect of the atmosphere on plant growth and the radiation properties of clouds. Paltridge researched topics such as the optimum design of plants and the economics of climate forecasting, and worked on atmospheric radiation and the theoretical basis of climate. In terms of scientific impact, his most significant contribution has been to show that the earth/atmosphere climate system may have adopted a format that maximises its rate of thermodynamic dissipation, i.e. entropy production. This suggests a governing constraint by a principle of maximum rate of entropy production (MEP). According to this principle, prediction of the broad-scale steady-state distribution of cloud, temperature and energy flows in the ocean and atmosphere may be possible when one has sufficient data about the system for that purpose, but does not have fully detailed data about every variable of the system.

Paltridge has published more than 100 books and scientific papers.

Higher education in Australia

Paltridge has criticised what he calls the "publish or perish" ethos that holds sway in Australia in science and believes that too many doctoral degrees are being awarded in Australia.

View on climate change

Paltridge has argued that although the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere should cause the surface temperature to rise, he does not believe that the rise would necessarily be large, or even noticeable. He has expressed his view as follows:

In one limited sense the members of the "do something about global warming" lobby are correct. If humans insist on giving the atmosphere an extra dose of carbon dioxide, then indeed one can expect Earth's surface temperature to rise. To be strictly accurate, we should say that its temperature will be higher than it would have been otherwise. Either way, it doesn't take a lot of physical knowledge and insight to accept the statement. It is rather the equivalent of saying that if one hits something with a bat then that something will respond. So it is true, as the lobby delights in telling us at every opportunity, that there is no longer much argument among scientists about the existence of the greenhouse global warming phenomenon. There never was.

The consensus goes no further down the chain of political correctness than this. It is rather naughty of the greenhouse lobby either to say outright, or to imply by judicious omission, that it does.

It has not been solidly established, and it is certainly not accepted by the majority of scientists as proven fact, that global warming from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will be large enough to be seriously noticeable - let alone large enough to be disastrous. Imagine the response of a well-bedded concrete post when belted by a relatively small bat. In a situation where the post has been around a long time and has in the past survived the beatings of lots of much bigger bats, the chances are that it won’t move much.

He has also questioned the predictions of dangerous rise of sea levels if the Earth warmed by two or three degrees celsius, although he has said that if the flow rate of grounded ice into the sea increased, the sea levels may rise by one or two metres over the next one to two thousand years.

Paltridge has argued against the Australian government's proposed emissions trading legislation. He has said, "Given all the uncertainties about climate change itself and whether in any event its impact on the environment would be positive or negative, it's not exactly an open-and-shut case that one should spend a lot of money on reducing carbon dioxide emissions now." He has suggested instead that it would be better to invest in adaptation strategies. He has said, "We should be looking at this question of adaptation, which we'll have to do anyway, and setting up society so it can adapt is possibly more important than trying to restrict the amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at the moment and, by implication, restricting our industrial expansion."

Paltridge has also discussed censorship of scientists' expression of climate change skepticism in public. He has said, for instance, that in the 1990s he was threatened with funding cuts by his employer, the CSIRO, if he expressed his doubts about the extent of the effect of greenhouse emissions.

Book: The Climate Caper

In the short (111-page) book, Paltridge criticises the IPCC for having become a permanent feature with its own bureaucracy spawning a continuing series of reports which have not changed our basic knowledge of the problem. Yet, he maintains, the science of global warming is far less settled than climate scientists admit. He points to a lack of experimental data with which to compare the modelled predictions of temperature rise. He argues further that with the politicisation of the greenhouse effect issue, it has become almost impossible for dissenters to enter the field. In his view, it has been neither solidly established nor accepted as such by a majority of scientists that global warming from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will be large enough to be even noticeable, much less disastrous.

In the final chapter, Paltridge discusses what he sees as the "hidden agendas" of those advocating for mitigation on climate change. He suggests that the French President, Jacques Chirac, is pushing for carbon cap-and-trade as a first step towards global government; he believes that others have an agenda to redistribute wealth globally; the powerbrokers of the European Union "look upon such action as a basis for legitimacy"; bureaucrats the world over simply crave for the sort of power which, "until now, has been wielded only by the major religions". More generally, he writes, "there are those who, like the politically correct everywhere, are driven by a need for public expression of their own virtue."

The book was recommended by fellow global warming skeptic, Christopher Monckton, in the book's foreword:

Nevertheless, when the history of the bizarre intellectual aberration that is “global warming” comes to be written, once it is even clearer than it already is that the disasters, catastrophes, cataclysms and apocalypses that have been so luridly and so widely predicted have not and will not come to pass, Dr. Paltridge’s little book will be regarded as one of the few, rare, precious beacons of enlightenment that prevented humanity from wandering through carelessness, ignorance and absent-mindedness into a new Dark Age.

Ray Evans, co-founder and President of the New Right think tank, the H R Nicholls Society, said this of the book:

Having read the manuscript I can endorse this book without reservation. It is written by a scientist who was at the top of the scientific establishment in Australia, and who saw at first hand the intellectual corruption which went hand in hand with government funding of science "research". The book is written in a whimsical style, reminiscent of P G Wodehouse, and is difficult to put down.

Launch of the Climate Caper

- Paltridge is a speaker at conferences organised by the Lavoisier Group, which organised the launch of Paltridge's book on August 11, 2009 in Melbourne. Lavoisier Group president Hugh Morgan launched the book, and Paltridge responded.

Selected Publications

• Paltridge, G. W., Global dynamics and climate––A system of minimum entropy exchange, Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 101, 475–484, 1975.
• Paltridge, G. W. and C. M. R. Platt, Radiative Processes in Meteorology and Climatology, Developments in Atmospheric Sciences, vol. 5, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam, Oxford, New York, 1976, ISBN 0444414444.
• Paltridge, G. W., The steady-state format of global climate, Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 104, 927–945, 1978.
• Paltridge, G. W., Climate and thermodynamic systems of maximum dissipation, Nature, 279, 630–631, 1979.
• Paltridge, G. W., Thermodynamic dissipation and the global climate system, Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 107, 531–547, 1981.
• Paltridge, G. W., A physical basis for a maximum of thermodynamic dissipation of the climate system, Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 127, 305–313, 2001.
• Paltridge, G. W., "Stumbling into the MEP Racket: An Historical Perspective", in A. Kleidon and R. D. Lorenz [eds.], Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics and the Production of Entropy: life, earth, and beyond, Springer, 2005, 33-40, ISBN 3-540-22495-5.
• Paltridge, G. W., G. D. Farquhar, and M. Cuntz, Maximum entropy production, cloud feedback, and climate change, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L14708, 2007.
• Paltridge, G. W, A. Arking and M. Pook, Trends in middle- and upper-level tropospheric humidity from NCEP reanalysis data, Theor. Appl. Climatol., 98, 351-359, 2009.
• Paltridge, G. W., The Climate Caper: Facts and Fallacies of Global Warming, Connor Court Publishing, Ballan, 2009, ISBN 978-1-921421-25-9.

See also

• Global warming controversy

External links

• Garth Paltridge's home page, Australian National University
• Garth Paltridge, publications.
• Garth Paltridge, Limiting Greenhouse Warming: Is It Worth the Cost? Institute of Public Affairs, December 200, pages 16-17. (Pdf)
• Garth Paltridge, A short primer on climate change and the greenhouse issue Online Opinion, June 21, 2001.
• Garth Paltridge, Advice is poisoned by fear Letter to the editor, The Australian, May 30, 2008.
• Garth Paltridge on The Climate Caper YouTube
• Publisher's page for book