CO2 is Not a Black Polluting Gas: Dr Judy Ryan’s Battle against Govt Bureaucracy
Australia’s obdurate pro-green governmental bureaucracy has too long portrayed CO2 as a pollutant in taxpayer-funded literature, contrary to scientific fact. Campaigner and retired epidemiologist, Dr Judy Ryan, has championed objective reality over green spin to demand that the blatant lie that carbon dioxide is a black and polluting gas be expunged. Below, for the edification of concerned readers, we have pleasure in publishing Judy’s entire correspondence in this matter.
BACKGROUND TO THE FORMAL COMPLAINT (No 2013- 502790) TO THE OMBUDSMAN FOR THE INCORRECT PORTRAYAL OF CO2 AS A BLACK POLLUTING GAS BY THE DEPARTMENT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
The Original Formal Complaint was lodged against the then Department for Climate Change (DCC) on 29th August 2013. It had many political and media entities openly copied in, Students newspapers from all the major universities were also copied in. DCC had 28 days to respond before we could exercise our right to take it to the Ombudsman. The elections intervened and DCC became the Department of the Environment (DOE). Nobody from DOE contacted us so we took the formal complaint to the Ombudsman on the 10th October 2013. Nothing happened for a while, but I was assured over the phone that it was waiting to be attended to. Time passed, and passed, and passed, until on the afternoon of the 26th November 2013 I left a message on the Ombudsman’s answering machine, stating that If the matter was not dealt with within the next 48 hours we would lodge it again by public email. The following morning 27th November an officer from the Ombudsman’s office contacted me, deeply apologetic because the original formal complaint to DCC had somehow got lost in the change over of Government. It’s a bit like “Yes Minister” We re-resubmitted the complaint to DOE.
It was not dealt with satisfactorily by the DOE officer and we took the complaint to the Ombudsman on 15 January 2014. The Ombudsman rejected it on 22nd January , but we intend to exercise our right to resubmit the complaint.
The power of the evidence based public letter is that those who would like to ignore us are unable to do so anymore without it being on the public record. This is not a good look for them. Go to my Facebook https://www.facebook.com/judy.ryan.75457 to find email addresses for your own public letters.
Note from the correspondence thread that Government Agencies do not supply references. When requested to they attempt to send you on a futile pursuit to read documents that are thousands of pages long. One way to deal with that is to always provide specific references in your letters and request that they do the same. It’s not a good look for them if they don’t.
From: Judy Ryan [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, 29 August 2013 1:38 PM
To: Enquiries; [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]; T
Subject: 2nd Formal Complaint against the Department for Climate Change
This is another formal complaint against the Department for Climate Change.
Since its inception the Department for Climate Change (DCC) has failed to follow correct procedure in checking the validity of the basic science that underpins its policies and actions. For example DCC has misinformed the Australian people by shortening the noun ‘carbon-dioxide’ to ‘carbon’’ then coupling it with the word ‘pollution’, hence the term ‘carbon pollution’. Further, DCC has mislead the Australian people into believing that emissions from coal fired power stations are ‘carbon pollution’. The evidence shows that emissions from coal fired power stations are ~96{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} carbon-dioxide, which is a non polluting, environmentally friendly, transparent, trace greenhouse gas. Corrected to
The emissions from coal fired power stations contain anywhere between 10-25{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} carbon dioxide.
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/is-coal-dirty.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flue-gas_emissions_from_fossil-fuel_combustion
It is essential for plant life which is the basis of our food chain. The white emissions from coal fired power stations are water vapour. There is a small amount of some pollutants such as sulphur released from burning coal, but power stations use scrubbers to remove those pollutants.
Over a period of years DCC has coloured the emissions from coal fired power stations as black in both its animated videos and its ‘scientific’ publications which, as stated above, is incorrect and misleading.
Since its inception DCC has also misinformed the Australian people via radio and TV interviews. As recently as July16th 2013 the term carbon pollution was used six – seven times in a seven minute ABC interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRAR5-BmEwk.
To summarise ,these are just a few of the multitude of instances where the DCC has mislead the Australian people over a considerable period of time. I expect the DCC to acknowledge receipt of this formal complaint within the next 24 hours. It has 28 days from today to respond in a satisfactory manner or I will take this matter to the Ombudsman.
Dr Judy Ryan, Dr Marjorie Curtis
On 15 January 2014 03:30, Judy Ryan <[email protected]> wrote: to the Ombudsman with around 230 media, political and scientific entities openly copied in.
Dear Ombudsman,
As you can see from the Appendices the Department for the Environment (DOE) has not responded to our formal complaint no 2013- 502790 in a satisfactory manner. Our issues were very specific:-
(1) Over a period of years DCC now DOE has coloured the emissions from coal fired power stations as black in both its animated videos and its ‘scientific’ publication. This is incorrect and misleading.
(2) The then DCC now DOE has misinformed the Australian people by shortening the noun ‘carbon-dioxide’ to ‘carbon’’ then coupling it with the words ‘pollution’ or ‘ missions’ hence the terms ‘carbon pollution’ and ‘carbon emissions’.
These maladroit policies have mislead the Australian people into believing that emissions from coal fired power stations are ‘black carbon’ i.e. soot, which would be a pollutant if it were in the atmosphere. However, Australian power stations have scrubbers which remove the soot from the gas and it does not reach the atmosphere. What is emitted into the atmosphere from coal fired power stations is the gaseous state of carbon-dioxide. It would be impossible for a coal fired power station to emit the solid state of carbon-dioxide as it is Dry Ice.
As you can see from the first Appendix, DOE refuses to acknowledge that the term ‘carbon pollution’ is misleading. It maintains that the historical common usage of the term somehow justifies its use. This is not a satisfactory response to our complaint.
As you can see from the second Appendix, I have provided DOE with specific references to evidence that carbon-dioxide is not a pollutant, even at enormously higher levels than currently.
DOE/DCC also does not address the fact, that as it paid the salaries of the Climate Commissioners, it was/is responsible for the Climate Commission’s consistent misleading graphical portrayal of carbon-dioxide as black. Just because the Climate Commission has been abolished does not mean that the misleading misrepresentation to the Australian people should not be investigated
As you can see from (Appendix three )DOE’s response to my correspondence (Appendix 2) is as equally unhelpful as the first, and did not address the specific issues.
As you can see from (Appendix 4) I am very critical of DOE for referring me to the Working Group 1’s contribution IPCC Fifth Assessment Report – Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. www.ipcc.ch This document is an unapproved draft. Having looked at the draft, there is not one instance where the scientists of Working Group 1 have referred to carbon-dioxide as black. Nor is there one instance where they have labelled carbon-dioxide a pollutant.
All other issues that DOE raises in its correspondence with me are irrelevant to this complaint.
In closing the Ombudsman should be well equipped to investigate these two specific policies . The science that indicates they are fundamentally flawed is in the public domain and within the comprehension of a High School Science graduate. However, if the Ombudsman wants to seek independent advice then it should not use either the CSIRO or the Bureau of Meteorology. These two Government agencies will be the subject of formal complaints in the near future. For a balanced view I recommend the scientists of the NIPCC http://nipccreport.com
Regards
Dr Judy Ryan
Dr Marjorie Curtis, my cosigner is copied into this correspondence:
Appendix One
Dear Dr Ryan
I refer to your email of 29 August 2013 to the former Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education lodging a complaint against the Department for Climate Change, that the department has misrepresented the characteristics of both carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and emissions of carbon dioxide from coal-fired power stations. The Department of the Environment now has responsibility for domestic climate change policy matters. I apologise for the delay in replying to you.
Carbon is an essential part of natural and man-made systems. However, carbon dioxide becomes a pollutant when the concentration in the atmosphere results in harm to the functioning of the Earth’s climate system. The current global concentration of carbon dioxide is almost 400 parts per million (ppm), well beyond the natural range of the last 800,000 years of between 172 and 300 ppm. While many pollutants occur naturally, it is not until they reach a certain level of concentration that they become harmful. The harmful impacts of increases in carbon dioxide are already being observed, including warming of the Earth’s climate system and increasing acidity of the oceans. Coal-fired power stations are a major source of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions globally.
The terms ‘carbon’ and ‘carbon pollution’ have often been used in the public discourse about climate change in Australia and internationally. In some cases the term ‘carbon dioxide’ is simplified to the term ‘carbon’ to enable members of the community to better understand and engage with the discourse on climate change.
I note that your email included images from information products about climate change published by the former independent Climate Commission. As you would be aware, the Minister for the Environment, the Hon Greg Hunt MP, dissolved the Climate Commission on 19 September 2013. In deciding to dissolve the Climate Commission, the Minister explained that it was part of the government’s commitment to streamline processes and avoid duplication of services. The Climate Commission’s function to provide independent advice and analysis on climate change will be continued by the Department of the Environment, informed by the Australian Government’s two principal climate science agencies the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO.
Regards
John Higgins
A/g Assistant Secretary
Climate Adaptation Branch
Department of the Environment
Appendix Two
From: Judy Ryan <[email protected]>;
Subject: Re: 2nd Formal Complaint against the Department for Climate Change
Dear Mr Higgins,
This is just a short email to let you know that I find your response to my, and Dr Marjorie Curtis’s, formal complaint against the Department of Climate Change dated 29th August 2013 completely unsatisfactory.
SUPERFLOUS TEXT DELETED
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/04/dr-vincent-gray-on-historical-carbon-dioxide-levels/
Regards
Dr Judy Ryan
Appendix Three
Dear Dr Ryan
I refer to your emails of 19 and 23 December 2013 expressing dissatisfaction with – and requesting references for – the information provided in my email to you of 19 December 2013.
The Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report – Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis provides a comprehensive assessment of the scientific understanding of climate change, including the changes in global concentration of carbon dioxide over time, the contributions of combustion of coal and other fossil fuels to rising carbon dioxide concentrations, and the effects of rising carbon dioxide concentrations on the Earth’s climate system and ocean acidity. In addition, a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of rising carbon dioxide concentrations is provided in the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report – Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. You may wish to refer to these IPCC reports and their respective references for further information. The reports are available from www.ipcc.ch. For further information on current global concentrations of carbon dioxide, you may also wish to refer to the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration website: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html
The scientific issues raised in your email of 23 December are well known to the scientific community and are comprehensively addressed in these reports. The Department has no further information to offer on these matters.
I trust that you find this information useful.
Regards
John Higgins
A/g Assistant Secretary
Climate Adaptation Branch
Department of the Environment
Appendix Four
From: Judy Ryan <[email protected]>;
Subject: Re: 2nd Formal Complaint against the Department for Climate Change [DLM=For-Official-Use-Only]
Date: 11 January 2014 3:54:20 pm AEDT
To: “Higgins, John” <[email protected]>;
Cc: [email protected], Tony Abbott <[email protected]>;
Dear Mr Higgins,
Your Response is still totally unsatisfactory.
Our complaints against your department are very specific.
(1) It has been the policy of the Department for the Environment (DOE) to colour the emissions of carbon-dioxide from coal fired power stations black in your publications, when it is clearly a transparent gas (*)
* Dictionary of Environment and Development: People, Places, Ideas and Organizations. By Andy Crump. MIT Press, 1993. Page 42: [CO2] is a “colourless, odourless, non-toxic, non-combustible gas.”
(2) DOE has published reports that refer to carbon-dioxide as “carbon pollution” and “carbon emissions” without distinguishing it from highly toxic forms of carbon such as carbon monoxide . Also, by colouring carbon-dioxide black DOE have mislead Australian citizens to think of it as black carbon. This is extremely misleading as “black carbon” is soot as referred to in the IPCC 5th Assessment WG1 Draft 7 chapter 8. It . As you can see from (**) soot is recognised as residue from the combustion process and is regionally specific. In Australia and most other nations, coal fired power stations have scrubbers that remove the soot. It is carbon-dioxide, not soot that is emitted into the atmosphere.
** Frieler et al. (2012) derived joint probability distributions for regionally averaged temperature and precipitation changes as linear functions of global average temperature and additional predictors including regionally specific SOx and black carbon emissions. Final Draft (7 June 2013) Chapter 12 IPCC WGI Fifth Assessment Report
In our earlier correspondence you suggest that human activity will cause atmospheric CO2 levels to increase to levels that will threaten the flora and fauna of our planet. This is absolutely incorrect on two counts *** and ****
***Carbon dioxide is “vital to life” and nontoxic to humans up till 50 times the concentration found in Earth’s atmosphere. Natural emissions of CO2 outweigh man-made emissions by a factor of twenty to one. http://www.justfacts.com/globalwarming.basics.asp#
**** levels of anthropogenic CO2 are calculated at not more than 5{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the atmospheric Co2 content. It has not increased at a statistically significant level in the last 150 years. To quote from Wolfgang Knorr Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?.Geophysical Research Letters, November 7, 2009.
“It is shown that with those uncertainties, the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has been 0.7 ± 1.4{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} per decade, i.e. close to and not significantly different from zero”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL040613/abstract
I am surprised that your refer me to the url IPCC Fifth Assessment Report – Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis . It is an unapproved draft and has the warning Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute on its pages. This indicates to me that in Working Group 1 the scientists have not reached agreement on the basic science of ‘Climate Change”.
Also you are incorrect when you state that the scientific issues raised in my email of 23 December are well known to the scientific community and are comprehensively addressed in these reports. Please point out, for example ,where the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report – Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (1) states that carbon-dioxide is not transparent, and (2) states that carbon-dioxide in either its gaseous or solid state, dry ice, is a pollutant.
In closing, the 28 day timeframe for DOE to respond satisfactorily has expired. We will be taking our formal complaint to the Ombudsman.
Regards
Dr Judy Ryan & Dr Marjorie Curtis
Subject: Ombudsman Response [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
Date: 22 January 2014 11:50:32 am AEDT
To: “[email protected]” <[email protected]>;
Our ref: 2014-100355
Dear Dr Ryan
Thank you for your email of 15 January 2014 in which you raise concerns about the Department of the Environment.
I have considered the information in your email. You have said that you are not satisfied with the information provided to you by the Department of the Environment in regards to the scientific understanding of climate change. I can see that the Department of the Environment has responded to your complaint and provided you with the details of a number of reports in which you would be able to find the information you have requested.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman’s office investigates complaints about the administrative actions of Australian Government agencies. Given your complaint appears to concern the policy of the Department of the Environment, this is not something our office is able to investigate. For this reason we will not investigate your complaint.
If you want to discuss this decision, please contact me using the details provided at the bottom of this email.
You can view a copy of our Service Charter and our brochure Making a complaint to the Ombudsman, which explain the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s role in more detail at http://www.ombudsman.gov.au/.
Yours sincerely
Ally
Public Contact Officer | Public Contact and Records Management Team
Commonwealth Ombudsman
Phone 1300 362 072 | Fax 02 6276 0123
Email [email protected]
Website www.ombudsman.gov.au
PO Box 442, CANBERRA CITY ACT 2601
Influencing agencies to treat people fairly through our investigations of their administration.
It took 3 emails and 2 phone calls to get the Ombudsman to respond.The email of 31st January is not shown as it is superfluous. The Ombudsman’s response was predictably disappointing. See for yourself.
The obstacle for the ombudsman currently is that we do not provide specific evidence that the Department’s publications have confused members of the public. Well, I can certainly testify to the effect that my children have been confused by the propaganda and misinformation.
If you, or your children, think that you have been mislead,
PLEASE SUBMIT A FORMAL COMPLAINT TO THE DOE STATING THAT, THEN TAKE IT TO THE OMBUDSMAN WHEN THEY DO NOT GIVE YOU SATISFACTORY ANSWERS.
Its time to clean up the public service and rid it of its corrupt elements.
EMAIL SENT 13TH FEBRUAURY
To: Ombudsman <[email protected]>;
Cc: Marjorie Curtis <[email protected]>;, “Higgins, John” <[email protected]>;, [email protected], Tony Abbott <[email protected]>;
Dear Ombudsman,
The email shown below was sent to the Ombudsman on 31st January 2014. The officer who had not returned my call, Ally, rang me within an hour of the email being sent. She was helpful and offered to accept the email below as the formal request for a review. I now want to accept her offer.
We are formally requesting a review by a senior officer who not involved with the case number 2014-100355 as soon as possible.
The essence of the complaint is that over a considerable period of time DOE has consistently coloured Carbon dioxide black in its publications. It also has consistently substituted the words “pollution” or “emissions” for the word “dioxide”. These deficient administrative practices have mislead the Australian people into thinking that carbon dioxide is black and polluting which is totally incorrect.
We found Mr John Higgins’s responses from DOE entirely unsatisfactory. Our complaint provided specific evidence based references. It is a deficient administrative policy of DOE not to provide specific references to support its response to our complaint. Further, it is a deficient administrative policy of DOE, when pressed to provide specific evidence, to refer the complainant to copious extensive documents and instruct them to go find the references themselves. However, having done that I cannot find any evidence to support DOE’s claims.
Finally we are very disappointed with the deficient administrative practice of the Ombudsman’s office to refuse to investigate such a serious complaint.
For this reason we request a review.
Dr Judy Ryan
Dr Marjorie Curtis
EMAIL RESENT 27TH FEBRUARY
To: Ombudsman <[email protected]>;
Cc: 151 POLITICIANS MEDIA ETC OPENLY COPIED IN
Dear Ombudsman,
We are resending you this message. We have not heard from you. We do not know your decision regarding reopening our formal complaint against the Department of the Environment for the misleading and totally incorrect portrayal of Carbon dioxide as a black polluting gas.
For independent information we refer you to http://www.justfactsdaily.com/the- term-carbon-pollution-is-unscientific-and-misleading
We would appreciate your prompt reply acknowledging that you will reopen the investigation.
Regards
Dr JudyRyan
Dr Marjorie Curtis
Below is the Ombudsman’s rebuttal. He apparently does not believe that DCC/DOE’s long standing, consistent practice of portraying carbon dioxide as black and polluting has misled the public!
Even though Australian Public Servants do not provide specific evidence, they rebut our formal complaint on a supposed lack of specific evidence.
To quote from the letter:
“In the absence of specific evidence to demonstrate that the Department’s publications have misled members of the public, I do not consider that your complaints of misinformation warrant further consideration.”
Trackback from your site.