Dr. Jennifer Marohasy: There Is No Climate Crisis
According to biologist Jennifer Marohasy, climate change is a natural phenomenon and CO2 has nothing to do with it. Such claims will get you cancelled though, as we can learn from her own experience.
In 2017, Australian biologist Jennifer Marohasy and her colleague John Abbot published an article in GeoResJ, a prestigious scientific journal that publishes top research within the entire Earth science field. The central claim of their article was pure heresy by today's mainstream standards. In an analysis of temperature variations over the last 2,000 years, the scientists argued that climate change is not the result of an increase in anthropogenic carbon dioxide over the last century, but a natural process in nature. To do this, they brought together the proxy data already published in the scientific literature that had been used to calculate past temperatures. Such data have been obtained by studying tree rings, corals or lake sediments, for example, and Marohasy says they express Earth's warming and cooling cycles, with a variation of about 2ºC.
According to her, there is ample evidence that there was a warmer period in Western Europe about a thousand years ago, which allowed, for example, the Vikings to settle in southern Greenland. In 1234, however, the last olive trees were destroyed in Germany as a result of a particularly harsh winter and Marohasy suggests this could mark the end of it. As is well known, the warmer period was followed by a much colder period, also known as the Little Ice Age, which lasted until the first half of the 19th century. Marohasy offers 1826 as the end of this period when Upernavik in north-western Greenland – Marohasy has thoroughly examined the settlement's temperature history – became habitable again.
Forecasting rainfall using AI
With all this in mind, Marohasy and Abbot set their sights in their research on looking at what could have been the 20th century temperature changes, if based on historical data, unaccounting for CO2. To do that they used computers that can run artificial neural networks (ANN), which are a form of machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI). Abbot, who studied chemistry at Imperial College London and later received a PhD from McGill University in Canada, has long been interested in the use of machine learning and AI to build forecasting models. Initially, he used this method to predict the direction of stock markets. At the same time, however, Marohasy was interested in weather forecasting, specifically rainfall. Marohasy – who has a PhD from the University of Queensland in Australia – has been analysing weather conditions since the beginning of her research career, when she worked in Madagascar studying insects. "At that field station, we had weather stations. I was recording temperature data and always thinking about temperature, as it affects the distribution and abundance of the insect species that I was interested in at that time," she says. She later worked for the sugar industry in Australia, and water and its availability is a very important issue in sugar cane farming. "We were continually being told that the drought was caused by climate change and that it had never been so dry. And yet when I looked at the records because I've always loved climate records, any sort of data, and the more of it the better, I could see that really we were just in a dry cycle that was likely to break with flooding rains, as it did," Marohasy notes.
However, Marohasy came to rainfall forecasting a decade later when she realised it would be helpful in analysing the constant flooding in the state of Queensland. She asked his colleague Abbot if it would be possible to use his AI method to work through past data for forecasting. Abbot was also interested in the subject since the 2011 Brisbane flood submerged his red Corvette, which he had purchased with profits from successfully forecasting directional trends in the Australian share market using his AI method.
This is how Marohasy, together with her colleague Abbot, initially arrived at seasonal rainfall forecasting, and she became one of the first scientists to publish research in this field a dozen years ago. They also proposed their method to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, which was not interested. "They didn't argue with the fact that our forecasts were actually more accurate for the 17 locations in Queensland with long historical records," Marohasy notes, adding that they were also told that historical data could no longer be used to forecast the future weather conditions, as the climate had changed and was on a new trajectory. She disputes this.
Are we living in an era of global boiling?
The climate is changing. And it is warming too now, according to Marohasy. But was the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres correct to say in July last year that we have entered an era of 'global boiling'? Not according to Marohasy. She explains that through her work she has come to understand how temperature measurement data is actually handled and reported today. Marohasy says that the kind of linear upward trend in temperature on which today's claims of global warming are based is not actually reflected in the raw data. Marohasy has looked at data from Australia, Indonesia, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Greenland, for example, and says the growth trend model has been plotted by a process of data homogenization and adjustment. According to Marohasy, in Australia the measurements of the last century actually show a cooling at the beginning of the graph, followed by a warming. "But what the Australian Bureau of Meteorology does so that it has a fashionable record is it drops down the temperatures from the early part of the record to get this linear increase." If this remodelled data is fed into an AI model it will produce a nonsense rainfall forecast. Accurate data that shows the natural cycles is needed to generate reliable weather and climate forecasts, she says.
Importantly, Marohasy says, the data does not show that we are living in an era of climate catastrophe. "When they're saying the drought is never going to end and you have to install water tanks, you have to have two minute showers, you have to stop growing these particular crops because they're too water intensive, then people like me look at the data. And we say that actually it's been drier before. It was drier a hundred years ago, it was drier in the 1930s when we had dust storms and we had very dry periods in Australia, as they had in the US. If you look at the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) data you can see that in the 1930s they had terrible heat waves and we had terrible heat waves. We had drought in Australia in the 1930s and we also had it in the 1890s. And then you ask why are they saying it's so terrible now when the data very clearly shows that it's no worse than it was in the past,” she explains. According to Marohasy, climate and weather change cyclically, and these cycles can be measured in both shorter and longer periods. "It's getting to the warmest it's been for 60 years but if we go back 120 years, it was this warm. If we go back a thousand years, it was probably a little bit warmer. If we go back 400,000 years you can see the Ice Ages every 100,000 years. So there are cycles within cycles within cycles, affected by different natural phenomena," she adds.
Climate change is also often associated with natural disasters, and it is said that there are more cyclones now that are more intensive. Marohasy has also looked at this data and disagrees. "Here in Australia we actually have a decrease in the number and intensity of cyclones, even though they say that with more carbon dioxide we would have an increase,” she comments.
Can CO2 affect the climate?
Over the years, Marohasy has collaborated quite a bit with the Indonesian meteorology agency, presenting her forecasting models to them and consulting them on their use. “They can't understand this obsession that the West has, places like Australia has, with carbon dioxide. They just don't understand it," she says.
So where does the CO2 problem even come from? Marohasy recalls that the claim that CO2 has a warming effect on the climate comes from a Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, who made the claim in an article published in 1896. But she adds that it was not much remembered before the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, became the first leader of a major world power to start talking about how greenhouse gases will cause a climate catastrophe. Thatcher invoked Arrhenius and his theory, to argue against coal mining and in support of nuclear energy. It is worth recalling that the Thatcher government was engaged in privatisation efforts and a fight with striking coal miners. Thousands of miners lost their jobs. As a result, in 1984-85 she faced huge strikes by miners, which in some places escalated into riots.
The Thatcher government went on to fund the Hadley Centre at the Met Office. Margaret Thatcher opened the Hadley Centre in May 1990 with Sir John Houghton who oversaw the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report published the same year. It is these IPCC reports, that have been published every few years since then, that provide the scientific impetus and legitimacy for the energy transition.
Marohasy agrees that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere now than there was a hundred years ago. But most of the carbon dioxide released is not anthropogenic, she adds. "I don't actually think that's going to have an effect if you reduce anthropogenic carbon dioxide levels, because the amount being released naturally from the ocean is probably what's driving the current trend. So there's no mechanism at the moment where people could actually have an impact on atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide," she explains. She cites the example of the Covid crisis when people travelled significantly less. "There was no effect on atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide," she says.
Because the oceans are warmer now, more carbon dioxide is being released. But carbon dioxide is not the cause of warming. "The ocean naturally warms up with these cycles that have nothing to do with human activity,” Marohasy says. To put it simply, it is the Sun that warms the ocean, and the ocean in turn radiates that heat into the atmosphere. Claims that this is somehow reversed – for example by climate activist-politician Al Gore – and it is the CO2 emissions that are warming the atmosphere and in turn, the ocean, are not true, Marohasy says. "We know from the laws of thermodynamics that heat always goes from warmer to colder. And if you look at average temperatures, the ocean is warmer and it's always warmer and it's still warmer than the atmosphere. And that's the direction of movement – from the ocean to the atmosphere. The oceans are warming the atmosphere and the atmosphere is not warming the ocean,” she says.
Higher CO2 levels, on the other hand, make the planet greener, Marohasy says, because plants need it to grow. Drier areas will also become greener, she says, because more CO2 means plants don't need as much water to grow. More carbon dioxide is good for agriculture because it causes higher crop yields.
The problem with energy
"I know this isn't consensus science and most of the time we don't have an opportunity to discuss this science because in the West there's a huge industry pushing energy transition and they justify that on the basis that they don't want carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels," Marohasy notes. In Australia, too, she says, there is currently a debate about whether to go nuclear or renewable after closing coal powered production. "The reality is we should not be closing down our coal fired power stations because they are reliable and they provide cheap energy that makes our industries competitive," she says, adding that at the same time, wind farms are being built with heavy subsidies and making big money for powerful business groups while ordinary people's electricity bills rise. "We are on the edge of an energy crisis here in Australia. We are losing particular industries because energy is becoming too expensive and too unreliable. And life is becoming more expensive for ordinary people," she says.
What's more, the construction of large wind farms is damaging the natural environment, because space is needed for both wind turbines and power lines. This means, for example, clearing forests. "And it's all being justified on the basis that we have a climate crisis and yet you look at the Great Barrier Reef, you look at how sea levels have changed, you look at the instrumental temperature record and you can see that there are just cycles. There's no crisis at all,” Marohasy says.
The Great Barrier Reef is not dying
Another example that has been cited over and over again over the years when talking about the climate change crisis concerns corals and the Great Barrier Reef. Data from the Australian Institute of Marine Science shows that corals are now there in record numbers. Marohasy knows the reef well – she has been diving and snorkeling there since she was seven years old and has started consistently documenting the situation in recent years. Whenever someone has told her about major damage and coral bleaching in an area, she has taken a professional photographer to document the situation. In 2022, for example, the bleaching of a reef named John Brewer was in the news around the world. Marohasy decided to document the situation. "I got there and there was a little bit of bleaching. But mostly I have never seen that reef look so beautiful," she says, adding that three months later the bleaching was gone.
Marohasy points out that it's not climate change or global warming that is damaging corals, but cyclones. And while the number and intensity of cyclones have decreased, they still do a lot of damage to corals, and Marohasy says no one even wants to go and see what the damage looks like. "I mean it's just mad here in the West, the media reports this reef being in trouble when there was hardly any bleaching at all and they didn't report its recovery from the bleaching which happened within 3 months. And now 2 years later that same reef has been absolutely smashed by a cyclone and nobody wants to talk about it,” she says.
Academic freedom replaced by cancel culture
In fact, it's not just a question of what is and isn't shared with the public, but how the scientists who critically analyse the claims of mainstream climate science are treated. The 2017 paper by Marohasy and Abbot, highlighted at the beginning of the article, in which they argued that climate change is in fact a natural part of life, and the treatment they got after publishing it is a good example. The IPCC estimates the total warming for the 20th century at 1°C and says it is entirely due to industrialisation, or CO2. Marohasy and Abbot concluded in their study that the maximum contribution of industrialisation to climate warming over the 20th century could be in the order of 0.2°C. But even such a claim is seen as inappropriate to many in today's world as we can observe.
Marohasy says that she was a regular expert in the media a decade ago and was frequently asked to comment on weather events on TV. But all that changed and by 2012 she was already finding it difficult to publish her research. However, they still managed to get their in-depth work published in a prestigious scientific journal in 2017. “That paper created quite a stir and there was a whole Twitter campaign against me and against that paper. I'm blacklisted now. If I turn up at or I'm invited to speak at particular events or have been invited to speak at particular events, the event organisers now say 'the Australian Broadcasting Corporation won't cover this event because you're going to be there. So can you please not be on that panel anymore, because we want the mainstream media to cover it as they always have',” she says. Of course, there's no logic to this behaviour. Today, Marohasy has published far more scientific articles on climate than 20 years ago, when she was still a welcomed guest in the mainstream media. She has edited scientific books and has much more work experience. But it all doesn't count. “The mainstream media will not tolerate my viewpoint,” she says.
Common sense always wins in the end.
Bryant Macfie
Excellent article...