bamos aug/sep 2015 supplement by prof john zillman

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological& Oceanographic Society

Vol 28, No. 4, AUGUST/SEPTEMBER (supplement) 2015 ISSN 1035-6576

AustralianMeteorological& OceanographicSocietyAMOS

CLIMATE SCIENCE AND GREENHOUSE POLICY: SOME OBSERVATIONS FROM EARLY YEARS AT THE SCIENCE-POLICY INTERFACE — by John Zillman

Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol. 28 page 105

ContentsSummary ....................................................................................................................................................................................................106Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................106A short history of climate science and policy ............................................................................................................................................107The main international organizations and events .....................................................................................................................................111The major players on the Australian scene ................................................................................................................................................115Towards a more effective science-policy interface ....................................................................................................................................120References ...................................................................................................................................................................................................121

ISSN 1035-6576

Cover picture:

U.K. Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Margaret Thatcher addressing the high level segment of the Second World Climate Conference in Geneva on 6 November 1990. Behind her are King Hussein of Jordon (left) and Federal Councillor A. Köller, President of the Swiss Confederation.

Image: John Zillman.

Unless specifically stated to the contrary, views expressed in the Bulletin are the personal views of the authors, and do not represent the views of the Society or any other organisation or institution to which the author(s) may be affiliated.


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Climate science and Greenhouse policy: some observations from early years at the science-policy interfaceExpanded text of dinner address at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science workshop, Hunter Valley, 26 November, 2014.

Professor John ZillmanSchool of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne

INTRODUCTIONEver since the time of Aristotle (384–322 BCE), the societal implications of climate have been a central focus of meteorology (Frisinger, 1977). They inspired the establishment of the International Meteorological Organization (IMO) in 1873 and the IMO Commission for Climatology in 1929 (Daniel, 1973). Most of the National Meteorological Services of the world, including the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, have a long tradition of maintaining national meteorological networks to describe and understand their countries’ climates and to provide a scientific basis for anticipating and managing the social and economic impacts of climate variability and extremes (Zillman, 1999; 2003a).

But, with the dramatic growth of military and civil aviation during World War II and in the immediate post-War period, the focus of meteorology world-wide turned primarily to the challenge of short-term weather forecasting (Berry, Bollay and Beers, 1945). In most countries, the collection, processing and interpretation of the climate record was relegated to second priority behind the critical infrastructural and scientific needs of weather forecasting for the safety and efficiency of aviation. Good climatology was recognised as an important aid to forecasting but climate research was focussed more on improved statistical approaches to climate description and classification than on physical understanding of climate processes (Conrad and Pollak, 1950; Malone, 1951).

When I began my career in meteorology in 1957, climatology was the backwater of atmospheric science.

Most of the Bureau of Meteorology’s capital city offices had dedicated climatologists but their support was limited mainly to off-shift forecasters and observers and student cadets like me who spent their University breaks averaging temperatures and summing monthly rainfall totals with mechanical adding machines. When I did my basic meteorological training in 1961, we learned about the greenhouse effect as an important part of atmospheric physics but climatology was mainly about climate classification systems and climate change was really a problem for geology. Only one Australian university had a small meteorology department and what climatology was taught at university level appeared mainly in first year geography courses (Gibbs, 1962). I doubt that there were many who did their meteorological training in the 1950s and early 1960s who foresaw that, within a matter of decades, climate research would be at the cutting edge of the Earth sciences, greenhouse warming would have become a mainstream public policy issue around the globe and almost every Australian university would be rushing to establish its own climate change research group, centre or institute.

Although my own early research interests had focussed on the radiative forcing of southern hemisphere climate (Zillman, 1967; 1969; 1972a; 1972b), my first in-depth involvement with the policy implications of climate science came from my responsibility, as head of Bureau of Meteorology research 1974–78, for Bureau participation in the Global Atmospheric Research Programme (Zillman,

SUMMARYOver the past 50 years, the study of climate has moved from the backrooms of meteorological institutions to the debating chambers of national parliaments and to almost every significant international public policy forum around the world. There is now an enormous literature, a huge interdisciplinary professional community and a wide range of passionately held views on the most appropriate international and national response to human-induced climate change. This paper recalls some eyewitness observations from five decades at the evolving interface between climate science and public policy on the global scene and in Australia. It provides a short history of the emergence of climate change as a policy issue and some brief comments on the role of a few of the major players in the science-policy process. It concludes with some personal views on the scope for a less turbulent and more effective science-policy interface.


1977) and the arrangements for its transition to the World Climate Research Programme (Zillman, 1980); and, especially, following my appointment as Director of the Bureau in 1978, from extended periods as acting Secretary of the Commonwealth Department of Science and the Environment under the Fraser Government (1975–83). I was subsequently involved in the establishment and early operation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and served as Principal Delegate of Australia to the IPCC and a member of the IPCC Bureau (1994–2005). As Director of Meteorology (1978–2003) (Zillman, 2003b) and President of the World Meteorological Organization (1995–2003) (Zillman, 2003c) I had a fair bit to do with the initial development of national and international climate policy, including through the World Climate Programme and, subsequently, through chairing the Steering Committee for the Global Climate Observing System (2006–09) and the International Organising Committee for the Third World Climate Conference (2009). They were years of spectacular progress in climate science and of rapidly increasing bustle and turmoil at the science-policy interface.

During the 50-odd years of my professional career, I witnessed the emergence of greenhouse-induced climate change from the obscurity of the meteorological and geological text books to become ‘the greatest moral challenge of our time’. Like many of my meteorological generation, I was pleased at the speed with which carefully formulated scientific advice on the prospect of human-induced climate change were taken seriously by governments but disappointed at the depth of public and political dissension that subsequently developed on the nature and urgency of the response at both international and national levels. With the daily media now full of expert (and non-expert) commentary on almost every aspect of climate change science and greenhouse policy, and something approximating one new book a day on some aspect of climate change, one hesitates to add to the cacophony of discordant voices. And the issues involved have expanded far beyond the traditional areas of competence of someone trained in meteorology. But, since I became somewhat deeply entrained into the international and national processes that shaped the development of the climate science-policy interface during the second half of the 20th century, I have been presumptuous enough to assume some historical value added through a few eye-witness observations of the major climate-related issues, influences and events of that period and what they meant for the handling of the enormous public policy challenges of climate change. I will draw a little on the vast general literature on climate change but, as far as possible, I will source my recollections and interpretation from my own records and accounts as written over the years of my involvement.

I will begin with a short history of the role of science in the development of climate change as a policy issue, both

internationally and in Australia. I will then elaborate a little on some of the main international scientific organisations and events and on a few of the key players on the Australian scene whose activities brought the public and political debate on climate change to its present polarised and turbulent state. I will finish with some personal views on the evolving role of climate science in public policy development as I saw it at the end of my period of active involvement.

A SHORT HISTORY OF CLIMATE SCIENCE AND POLICYThe study of climate has a long and fascinating history (Zillman, 2009a) from the speculative theories of the ancient Greeks through the meticulous observations of the astronomer-meteorologists of the later middle ages to the great insights of Humboldtian science and the work of the IMO and its intergovernmental successor, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

When the WMO replaced the IMO in 1950, it re-established the Commission for Climatology to focus on the processing, publication and application of climate data. However, within a couple of decades, four major influences converged to transform the traditional world of early 20th century “climatology” into the new satellite and computer-based field of “climate science”. These brought the potential public policy implications of climate change to the attention of the United Nations and national governments around the world:

• Recognition of the variability and societal impact of climate. With increased awareness of the inherent natural variability of climate and the impacts of drought and other large-scale climate anomalies on almost every sector of society, the early 20th century view of a statistically stable climate gave way to a growing interest in understanding and prediction of its variations and their impacts (Flohn, 1970; Lamb, 1972; Pittock et al., 1978);

• The second objective of GARP. In response to the 1961 address from US President Kennedy to the United Nations General Assembly (Zillman, 2013), WMO and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) developed the Global Atmospheric Research Programme (GARP) through the 1960s and early 1970s with its so-called “Second Objective” focussed on “better understanding of the physical basis of climate”. Two notable influences on the development of the science were the 1974 Stockholm Study Conference on Climate Modelling (Joint Organizing Committee, 1975), attended from Australia by Brian Tucker, Garth Paltridge and Barry Hunt, and the land-mark publication by the US Committee for GARP (1975) on “Understanding Climate Change: A Program for Action”;

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• Global cooling and speculation on a new ice age. By the early 1970s, the combined impact of the observed global cooling trend since the 1940s and a series of especially cold winters in the northern hemisphere coupled with speculation, mainly amongst the geological community, that these could be the early signs of imminent descent into a new ice age, were sensationalised in the media (eg Calder, 1974) and drawn to the attention of governments; and

• The SCEP and SMIC reports and UNCHE. The late 1960s and early 1970s brought the prospect of long-term greenhouse warming out of the meteorological and geological text books and research literature as potential flag bearer for the first wave of global environmentalism reflected in the SCEP (Study of Critical Environmental Problems) and SMIC (Study of Man’s Impact on Climate) Reports (Wilson, 1970,1971), and the organisation of the 1972 United Nations (Stockholm) Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) which gave birth to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

These international developments were closely mirrored in Australia. In particular, the international research focus on the Second Objective of GARP was reflected in the climate research program of the joint Bureau of Meteorology-CSIRO Commonwealth Meteorology Research Centre (CMRC) established in 1969 and the

Australian Numerical Meteorology Research Centre (ANMRC) which succeeded it in 1974 (Bourke, 1984).

The potential policy implications of the rapid developments in climate science were soon taken up in a range of governmental and non-governmental fora. Much of the early insight into the science-policy process on the international scene was brought together at a special symposium on “Atmospheric Science and Public Policy” at the 56th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society (Atlas, 1976) and consolidated, more broadly, on the local scene, at the Australian Academy of Sciences’ Silver Jubilee Symposium on “Science and the Polity” (Philip and Conlon, 1980).

By the mid 1970s, the climate issue, in all its complexity, was poised to emerge from its traditional home in meteorology into the much broader world of Earth system science and onto the policy and political agendas of the United Nations and national governments. Dr. C. H. B. (Bill) Priestley, arguably Australia’s most eminent research meteorologist of the 20th century, opened the 1975 Monash Conference on “Climate Change and Variability” (photo above) with the prophetic observation (Pittock et al, 1978) that:

“It is a very remarkable thing that climatology faces such an important, possibly a dramatic, future when it is the oldest science we have”.

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The panel session at the 1975 Monash Conference on Climate Change and Variability. The Conference was opened by the panel chairman Dr. Bill Priestley (right). The other panellists (from the left) were Prof. Reid Bryson (US), Prof. Hermann Flohn (Germany), Dr. John Chappell (Australia), Dr. Bill Gibbs (Australia) and Dr. Bill Budd (Australia). Image: John Zillman.


Although the possible implications of greenhouse warming had been canvassed in the meteorological community from the late 1800s to the 1960s (Bolin, 2007; Houghton, 2009), it was, paradoxically, the extensive public exposure of the scientific speculation about global cooling (Calder, 1974) which first attracted serious attention to the threat of climate change in the United Nations and in the policy organs of national governments:

• At the international level, the WMO responded to questions raised in various intergovernmental fora by establishing a Panel of Experts on Climate Change, chaired by Dr. Bill Gibbs of Australia, to examine the scientific basis for concern about a new ice age. The Gibbs Panel largely dismissed the concerns, stressed the need for better understanding of the mechanisms of climate and drew attention to the more likely long-term trend towards global warming (Gibbs et al., 1977).

• In Australia, the Australian Academy of Science established a “Committee on Climate Change”, chaired by Dr. Priestley, to respond to a request from Prime Minister Whitlam for advice on claims that a new ice age could be on the way. The Priestley Committee also largely dismissed the concern about a new ice age but drew attention to the need for improved observations and research to better equip Australia for living with its climate as well as exploring the risks of future human impacts on the climate system (Australian Academy of Science, 1976).

The 1977 Gibbs Panel report served as the formal international trigger for organisation of the February 1979 (First) World Climate Conference which, at the end of its second week, issued its historic “appeal to nations” in the following terms (White, 1979) :

“Having regard to the all-pervading influence of climate on human society and on many fields of human activity and endeavour, the Conference finds that it is now urgently necessary for the nations of the world

a) To take full advantage of man’s present knowledge of climate;

b) To take steps to improve significantly that knowledge;

c) To foresee and to prevent potential man-made changes in climate that might be adverse to the well-being of humanity”.

Three months later, the Eighth World Meteorological Congress established the World Climate Programme (Zillman, 1980) to give effect to the exhortations of the World Climate Conference and guide the necessary initiatives within nations to better prepare society for the implications of variable and changing climate, through the establishment of National Climate Programs.

On the local scene, the 1976 Priestley Committee Report was followed by the 1978 Phillip Island Conference (Gibbs, 1978) sponsored by the Commonwealth Department of Science, CSIRO and the Social and Technological Sciences Academies. It was aimed at better equipping Australian governments and industries to prepare for, and manage, the impacts of climate on every sector of society.

The global and national interest in potential human impacts on climate exploded through the 1980s. WMO, ICSU and UNEP undertook their first joint scientific assessment of the carbon dioxide issue at Villach in Austria in 1980 but it had relatively little initial impact on governments. It was, however, followed by the much more influential 1985 Villach Conference (WMO, 1986), the comprehensive SCOPE 29 Report (Bolin et al., 1986), the 1986 launch of ICSU’s International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the climate change focus of the 1987 Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environmental and Development, 1987), the 1987 establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (WMO, 1987), the 1988 Toronto Conference (Pearman, et al., 1989), a series of international diplomatic conferences and Ministerial declarations on climate change over the period 1988-90, the 1990 Second World Climate Conference (Jäger and Ferguson, 1991) and initiation of negotiations for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (Mintzer and Leonard, 1994).

In Australia, the Academy of Science sponsored an influential conference and monograph on “The CO2-Climate Connection” (Tucker, 1981). Also, the CSIRO and the Commission for the Future initiated a public and political awareness program on the threat of global warming (photo opposite). In 1987, CSIRO commenced its series of “Greenhouse” conferences (Pearman, 1988). The Bureau of Meteorology coordinated the development of detailed plans for a cross-agency “Australian National

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The Minister for Science, the Hon. Barry O. Jones, examines the 1981 Academy of Science booklet on ‘The CO2-Climate Connection’ during a visit to the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research in the mid 1980s. From the left, the Hon. Bob Chynoweth (Federal Member for Flinders), Dr. Brian Tucker (Chief of Division), the Minister, and Dr. Graeme Pearman who led the CSIRO greenhouse science and policy effort in the 1980s and succeeded Dr. Tucker as Chief in 1992. Image: John Zillman.


Climate Program”, and the Bureau, the Department of the Environment and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade established coordination mechanisms for Australian participation in the work of the IPCC (Zillman, 2008). In 1989, the Environment Portfolio was funded to strengthen the core modelling capabilities of the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO (Department of the Arts, Sport, the Environment and Territories, 1992) and, the inaugural meeting of the new Prime Minister’s Science Council focussed on the issues for Australia posed by global climatic change (Commonwealth of Australia, 1989). Shortly afterwards, in 1990, the Bureau was transferred from the Administrative Services to the Environment Portfolio to support the development of the national policy response to climate change (Bureau of Meteorology, 1991).

The establishment and early modus operandi of the IPCC were particularly influential in shaping the international and national development of the science-policy interface. Most of the participating countries initially nominated scientist-led delegations with environmental policy and politics in the background (photo below left). But, with the IPCC’s original terms of reference including both scientific assessment and policy development and with early expectations that it would provide the intergovernmental framework for negotiation of a “law of the air”, several governments, including the US, soon felt the need for deep engagement at a high political level (photo below right). By the time it had completed its first scientific assessment (Houghton, Jenkins and Ephraums, 1990) for consideration by the 1990 Second World Climate Conference, climate and climate change were already fairly high on the policy agendas of most national governments.

Although a few key figures in the climate community (eg. White, 1990; 1991) continued to urge caution on building policy on a still insecure scientific foundation, the international negotiating process was soon well underway. Over the period 1990–92, governments negotiated the text of the UNFCCC in parallel with the much broader preparations for the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (Stephen, 1991) and, by 1995, the UNFCCC had been ratified by the necessary number of countries and had come into force (Barrett, 2003). The early sessions of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC focussed almost entirely on the mitigation objectives of what was to become the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (Boehmer-Christiansen and Kellow, 2003).

On the Australian scene, the Commonwealth Government convened an important Climate Change Science Forum in May 1992 (Department of the Arts, Sport, the Environment and Territories, 1992), opened by the Minister for Science (The Hon. Ross Free) and closed by the Minister for the Environment (The Hon. Ros Kelly). A comprehensive National Greenhouse Response Strategy (NGRS) was endorsed by all State Governments in December 1992 (Council of Australian Governments, 1992a) and detailed work began on a range of government and industry implementation mechanisms.

In 1993, the Bureau of Meteorology issued the first of a long series of biennial reports on “Climate Activities in Australia” summarising Australia-wide activities linked to the various components of the World Climate Programme (Bureau of Meteorology, 1993). In addition to their role in information exchange on the Australian scene, these were tabled at the following sessions of the Conference of the

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Left: The Australian delegation to the second session of the IPCC in Nairobi in June 1989. The Principal Delegate was Dr. Greg Tegart (front right), Secretary of the Australian Science and Technology Council and former Permanent Head of the Departments of Science, Science and the Environment, and Science and Technology. The other members of the delegation were Dr. John Zillman, Director of Meteorology (left), Mr. Colin Griffith of the Department of the Arts, Sport, the Environment, Tourism and Territories (back right) and Mr. D S Campbell., Australian High Commissioner to Kenya (who attended the opening meeting of the session).

Right: U.S. President George H. Bush addressing the opening meeting of the third session of the IPCC in Washington DC on 5 February 1990. On the left is the IPCC Chairman, Prof. Bert Bolin and on the right the President’s Chief Science Adviser, Dr. Alan Bromley.

Images: John Zillman.


Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC and became something of a model for national reporting on scientific activities relevant to climate change policy development.

The Australian climate science-policy interface remained extremely active through the closing years of the Hawke-Keating Governments and the 1996 transition to the Howard Government. The Australian Learned Academies prepared an assessment of climate change science and its uncertainties for the information of government and business (ATSE, 1995a) and Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO and university scientists were included, as scientific advisors, in Australian delegations to the early sessions of the COP. By the mid 1990s, the Australian climate science policy process was working fairly well although, in the view of some in the science community (eg. Tucker, 1995), the policy process was already beginning to become decoupled from, and run ahead of, the science. From the perspective of those who saw the science as supporting (rather than informing development of) abatement policy, the science had now made its contribution, the Precautionary Principle applied, and it was time to get on with the abatement process, through implementation of the 1997 Kyoto protocol or however else that might be done. Others, with different values and different interests, saw it differently and became suspicious of both the policy agenda and the science (Kininmonth, 2004). The early sense of shared commitment to a balanced response to the findings of climate science broke down and, in Australia, polarisation increased rapidly along both scientific and environment-industry lines.

I will not attempt to detail the chronology of the science-policy interface since the mid 1990s except to observe that, both internationally and in Australia, it became extremely complex and, as it entrained the full range of social science and other disciplines and interests, increasingly resource-intensive, turbulent and controversial (Dessler and Parson, 2006; Bolin, 2007; Gore, 2007; Stern, 2007; Paltridge, 2009; Metz, 2010; Pielke, 2010; Perlmutter and Rothstein, 2011; Darwall, 2013; Gail, 2014; Moellendorf, 2014).

On the Australian scene, the complex policy and political processes inside the Howard (1996-2006) and Rudd/Gillard (2006-2013) governments have been chronicled, albeit from a fairly ideological pro-mitigation perspective, by Pearse (2007) and Chubb (2014) respectively. For the most part, however, the debate within government has not been about the science but about the economic, political and other considerations that followed inevitably from the science (Garnaut, 2011). It has presented difficult philosophical and ethical challenges for those on both sides of the science-policy interface.

THE MAIN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND EVENTSWith the partial exception of the international political response to the “hole in the ozone layer” (Benedick, 1991), the climate change issue has been without precedent in international affairs in the manner and speed with which it progressed from scientific speculation to near the top of the global policy and political agenda. To gain some understanding of how this happened, it is necessary to examine the role played by a few of the key international organisations and events through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

1 The World Meteorological Organization

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), as the UN Specialized Agency for meteorology and operational hydrology, has a long history, dating back to the work of its non-governmental predecessor (the IMO), of developing the application of weather, climate and water science for community benefit (Davies, 1990). But, until the early 1970s, and notwithstanding the active role of its Commission for Climatology, WMO priorities were focussed mainly on the short term weather forecasting needs of agriculture, aviation and shipping.

Following the establishment of GARP in 1967, and the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, WMO became much more deeply engaged in global environmental issues (Zillman, 1996). From the time of its decision to organise the 1979 (First) World Climate Conference until the commencement of negotiations for the UNFCCC in 1991, it served as the primary international mechanism for addressing the full range of issues associated with climate and climate change. But the view developed in the mid 1980s that WMO had been too slow to act on scientific evidence on the hole in the ozone layer. There was thus considerable support within the WMO community for prompt response to the increasing scientific concerns about greenhouse warming. This was reinforced by the Chairman of the Villach Conference (Mr Jim Bruce, former Assistant Deputy Minister for the Atmospheric Environment Service of Canada) who was, by then, serving as Acting Deputy Secretary General of WMO and who subsequently took charge, in late 1987, of negotiations with UNEP on the proposed WMO-UNEP co-sponsorship of the IPCC (below).

Though, to some extent, subsequently overshadowed by the high profile of the IPCC, the WMO played a key role, during the second half of the 1980s and the 1990s, in drawing international attention to the need for better understanding of the science and policy implications of climate change. It focussed particular attention on strengthening the role of National Meteorological Services in support of effective national response to climate change (Zillman, 1999; 2009b). It continues as the official UN System authority on climate science and its application

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and as lead agency for the World Climate Programme and the Global Framework for Climate Services (WMO, 2012).

2 The World Climate Conferences

The three World Climate Conferences (in 1979, 1990 and 2009) have played a fundamentally important role in linking the world of climate science with global environmental and economic policy.

Conceived as a “conference of experts on climate and mankind”, but with participants mainly at the non-political level, the 1979 (First) World Climate Conference first brought the potential implications of a changing climate to the attention of the UN System, and formally proposed the World Climate Programme as an international, interagency, interdisciplinary framework for addressing all aspects of observing, understanding, predicting and adapting to climate and especially for exploring the risk of adverse human impacts on the climate system (White, 1979; WMO, 1979a). Its “appeal to nations”, quoted earlier, played a major role in alerting governments to the importance of climate science and information to the economic and environmental challenges of the closing decades of the 20th century.

The 1990 Second World Climate Conference (SWCC), organised at a much more political level than the 1979 Conference, with the involvement of a substantial number of Ministers and six Heads of State or Government, including UK Prime Minister Thatcher (front cover photo), included both scientific review of the first decade of the World Climate Programme and consideration of the First Assessment Report of the IPCC. By triggering the start of negotiations for the UNFCCC, it served as the official international vehicle for moving human-induced climate change from scientific assessment to political action (Jäger and Ferguson, 1991).

The 2009 Third World Climate Conference (WCC-3), organised at an even higher political level, with the participation of 13 Heads of State or Government and more than 80 Ministers (WMO, 2009; Zillman, 2010a), went the important further step of formulating, and obtaining intergovernmental agreement to, a Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) as an overall international framework within which to facilitate the use of climate science for public policy development and societal benefit (See the GFCS discussion below).

3 The World Climate Programme

The establishment of the World Climate Programme (WCP) in 1979 (WMO, 1979b; Zillman, 1980), its restructuring in 1991 (WMO, 1992), its reinforcement via the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) in 1992 (Houghton et al., 2012) and the Climate Agenda in 1993 (Zillman, 1993a) and its further restructuring following WCC-3 (WMO, 2009) have provided a comprehensive

international framework for dealing with climate issues for the past 35 years (Zillman 1995; 2009; 2012a).

The most successful component of the WCP has been the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) sponsored jointly by WMO, ICSU and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO (Asrar and Hurrell, 2013). It brought together the efforts of both the governmental and non-governmental climate research communities in support of an integrated strategy for advancing our understanding of the climate system and, by any measure, enormous progress has been made. That is not to say that there has always been unanimity within the WCRP leadership on the significance of human influence on the climate system or on its policy implications. Several key figures in the WCRP community in the 1990s became concerned that the science was being excessively politicised to support broader geopolitical agendas. I was moved to quote, at an Australian science-policy workshop more than 20 years ago (Zillman, 1991), from a submission to the WCRP Joint Scientific Committee by its Director, Professor Pierre Morel, who, more than any other single individual, drove the international climate research agenda through the 1980s, along the following lines (in summary):

“The increasingly direct involvement of the United Nations ... in the issues of global climate change ... bears witness to the success of those scientists who have vied for ‘political visibility’ and ‘public recognition’ of the problems associated with the earth’s climate. Intergovernmental consultations have taken the form of a diplomatic game ... the negotiators have little use for further inputs ... from scientific and technical agencies (or) for the complicated statements put forth by the scientific community which are perceived as an evasion of the main issue of compensating the developing countries. One may therefore conclude that efforts to communicate scientific views and concerns to ... professional diplomats and government negotiators have reached the point of vanishing returns and are a waste of time ... abstention is proposed from further participation in such exercises.”

In fact, of course, the scientific participation in the UNFCCC negotiation process did continue and the WCRP research has been fundamental to almost everything that the international policy community now understand about the working of the climate system and the scientific basis for projections of climate change.

It is important to acknowledge the practical contribution to climate change policy and practice made by the two other scientific components of the WCP:

• World Climate Data and Monitoring Programme (WCDMP); and

• World Climate Applications and Services Programme (WCASP);

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These provided the framework, especially in the early years in the developing countries, for the translation of climate data, information and understanding to widespread community benefit (Boldirev, 1991).

Ironically, probably the least successful of the original components of the WCP was its environmental policy component, the World Climate Impact Assessment (and Response Strategies) Programme (WCIRP) which, under UNEP leadership, made only a modest contribution, during the 1980s and 1990s, to formulation of the international policy response to the science of climate change (Dooge, 1991).

4 Villach Conference, Brundtland Commission and Toronto Conference

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of the 1985 Villach Conference (WMO, 1986) in alerting governments around the world to the possible implications of greenhouse-induced climate change. Its forthright characterisation of the policy implications of climate change was picked up in the 1987 Report of the Brundtland Commission (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) as a potential centre-piece for the proposed UN Conference on Environment and Development (the 1992 Rio Earth Summit) and underpinned the aggressive Canadian policy agenda for the 1988 Toronto Conference. The Toronto Conference went even further than Villach in characterising the ultimate consequences of human-induced climate change as “second only to a global nuclear war” and in calling on the UN System and governments “to take specific actions to reduce the impending crisis caused by pollution of the atmosphere” (Pearman et al., 1989; WMO, 1989).

The Villach and Toronto Conferences were the first overtly political attempts by sections of the climate science community to shape an international policy response to greenhouse warming with Mr. Jim Bruce of Canada playing a key role in both events as well as in the establishment of the IPCC (below). The nomination of the somewhat arbitrary “Toronto Target” of a 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2005 (WMO, 1989), though not strongly based on science, had a major influence on the series of international diplomatic meetings and UN General Assembly Resolutions that took up the climate change issue over the following years (Mintzer and Leonard, 1994; Barrett, 2003).

5 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

There are several different versions of the origin of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) but there is little doubt in my mind that it was the 1987 World Meteorological Congress review of an advance presentation of the Brundtland Commission Report which provided the final trigger for the WMO decision to invite UNEP to join in co-sponsoring the establishment

of what was to become the IPCC (WMO, 1987; 1988; Zillman, 1997a; 2007a).

At its first session in November 1988, the IPCC elected Professor Bert Bolin of Sweden as Chairman in his personal capacity but assigned chairmanship and membership of its three working groups by country in the expectation that the Member governments would then nominate relevant national experts to join forces to draft the working group reports (Tegart, 1988). At its first session, however, the science working group (Working Group I), chaired by Sir John Houghton of the UK, adopted the slightly different concept of expert “Lead Authors”, chosen in their personal capacities, to draft text for consideration by the intergovernmental working group. This approach was followed by Working Groups II and III. The science working group also led the way with the concept of scientist-drafted, governmentally-approved Summaries for Policy Makers (SPMs) which soon became a defining feature of the IPCC assessment process.

The IPCC has now been operating for more than 25 years and it has been both warmly praised and sternly criticised (Zillman, 2012b). The procedures for preparation of its Assessment and Special Reports and for drafting and approval of their SPMs have become increasingly refined (Zillman, 1997b; 2001), but also increasingly difficult and demanding, with each successive Assessment (Zillman, 2010b). The gradual evolution of the IPCC assessment process over the period 1988–2005 can be traced in the Australian Delegation reports on sessions of the Panel and its working groups distributed to the Australian and Southwest Pacific climate community by the Bureau of Meteorology.

At the international level, the IPCC has served as a comprehensive institutional interface between the climate science of the WCRP and GCOS on the one hand and the international policy development function of the UNFCCC on the other (Zillman, 1998). But, in my observation, one of its greatest achievements has been its contribution to science-policy dialogue at the national level, in both developed and developing countries, through bringing together in national delegations to its intergovernmental sessions, both the climate scientists who are familiar with the research and guide the assessments and the diplomats/policy-makers charged with negotiations in UNFCCC fora.

The IPCC’s vulnerability to criticism derives, in my view, not so much from any serious flaws in its modus operandi or its conclusions but from the way that both the assessment process and its findings have been misunderstood and/or misrepresented by those wishing to argue that the threat is more serious than its reports suggest on the one hand (eg Flannery, 2005) or to discredit the entire concept of human-induced climate change on the other (eg Carter, 2010). Many in the climate science community welcomed the IPCC’s shared receipt of the 2007 Nobel Peace


Prize as prestigious recognition of their contribution to international greenhouse policy development. Others, including me, saw it as an embarrassing sign of a perceived, if not actual, trend towards increasing politicisation of the science.

Although the stress on the scientific integrity of the assessment process has clearly increased in recent years, I believe the IPCC has been a remarkably successful mechanism (Zillman, 2007a) and one of the best examples the world has seen of the rigorous assessment and communication of science for policy purposes. The challenge for its leadership will be to maintain the integrity of the scientific assessment without becoming completely bogged down in the legal and administrative processes that have become necessary to demonstrate that integrity (Zillman, 2010b).

6 The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

It was initially envisaged that the IPCC might provide the forum for negotiation of the proposed UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). But, once the UN General Assembly, at the behest of the developing countries, had established its Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), the negotiations were separated from the scientific assessment and the IPCC reverted to a “policy-relevant but policy-neutral” advisory role to the political process.

The 1991–92 negotiation of the UNFCCC was a remarkable achievement in science-policy interaction (Mintzer and Leonard, 1994) and its signing by 155 nations at the Rio Earth Summit (photo above) marked the high point of the second wave of global environmental resolve (Zillman, 1992). But, while I remain extremely concerned by the public, political and scientific confusion that has resulted from the UNFCCC definition of “climate change” as only that part of the change that is

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due to human activities (Zillman, 2003d,e,f), I believe that both the scientific and political mechanisms of the Convention have greatly facilitated effective science-policy dialogue and understanding. Having scientists present as advisers in national delegations to sessions of the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) headed by policy negotiators (in mirror image to the inclusion of policy experts in primarily scientist-led delegations to the IPCC) has contributed greatly to effective science-policy dialogue at both international and national levels.

While the first session of the COP (photo above) got the UNFCCC process off to a reasonably good start via the “Berlin Mandate”, it was also the source of emerging tensions over the relative roles of the IPCC and the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA). These, were however, soon largely resolved through IPCC-COP coordination mechanisms (Bolin, 2007) and, since the late 1990s, the now well-accepted role of the Chairs of GCOS, the WCRP and the IPCC in updating the COP sessions on the state of the global climate and the state of the science has worked extremely well. And, notwithstanding the perceived political failure of the Kyoto process (Boehmer-Christiansen and Kellow, 2003) and the 2009 Copenhagen session of the COP (Darwall, 2013) and considerable peer and lobby group pressure on the IPCC Chairman to venture into policy advocacy at COP sessions, I find it difficult to fault the way that the IPCC assessments of climate science have been taken on board by the COP negotiators. The overall effectiveness of the UNFCCC negotiation process is, of course, an entirely different question.

7 The Global Framework for Climate Services

The Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) was established by governments following the Third World Climate Conference (WMO, 2009) in order to strengthen the availability and use of climate information and services

The Australian Minister for the Environment, the Hon. Ros Kelly (left) after signing the UNFCCC on behalf of Australia in Rio de Janeiro on 4 June 1992. With her are H. E. Ms. Penny Wensley of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade who led the Australian delegation for negotiation of the Convention (and later served as Governor of Queensland) and Mr. Michael Zammit Cutajar, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC. Image: John Zillman.

German Chancellor Dr. Helmut Kohl addressing the Ministerial Segment of the first session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC in Berlin on 5 April 1995. As then German Minister for the Environment and host of the session, the present Chancellor, Dr. Angela Merkel, is amongst the presiding officers at the rostrum. Image: John Zillman.


in every sector of society. The mechanisms subsequently put in place for its implementation (WMO, 2011) revolve strongly around increased communication and mutual understanding between those with information on climate and those whose activities would benefit from better use of that information including those responsible, at the national level, for climate policy. Though it is far too early to pass judgement on the GFCS or its various formal and informal implementation mechanisms such as the Climate Services Partnership (CSP), it is clear that it presents a range of innovative new processes for strengthening the science-policy interface at both international and national levels (Zillman, 2012a).

THE MAJOR PLAYERS ON THE AUSTRALIAN SCENEGiven the current state of climate change policy in Australia, it is informative to review, briefly, the roles played by some of the key institutions and influences on the Australian climate scene, especially during the emergence of human-induced climate change as a major policy issue in the 1980s and early 1990s. Now, of course, many different university groups and a host of specialised governmental and non-governmental climate, environmental, business and economic organisations are involved in some way or other in shaping national climate and greenhouse policy but it is historically important to single out:

• The Bureau of Meteorology;

• The CSIRO;

• The responsible Commonwealth Ministers and Departments;

• The Learned Academies;

• The greenhouse zealots and sceptics; and

• The mass media.

1 The Bureau of Meteorology

Even before the establishment of the Bureau as a Commonwealth agency in 1908, climate information provided by the colonial meteorological departments had played a major role in government decision-making for agriculture and water resources planning—the influence of Goyder’s Line in South Australia (Sheldrick, 2005) being a prime example. In the early years of Federation, enormous emphasis was placed on the use of climate data accumulated during the colonial period to guide settlement patterns and resource development (Day, 2007). The climate chapter in the first (1908) Year Book of Australia was soon elaborated in the Bureau classic “Climate and Weather of Australia” (Hunt, Taylor and Quayle, 1913) which has been updated in various formats

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(eg Bureau of Meteorology, 1988; 1989a, 2008) over the past century.

Bureau climatology played a major role, also, in the design of the Snowy Mountains scheme and other major national development programs especially following the establishment of the Australian Water Resources Council in 1962 (Johnson and Rix, 1993). With the full implementation of the Bureau’s Drought Watch system in the late 1960s, routine climate monitoring became operational as input to government drought declaration and relief policy (Gibbs, 1975).

Partly in response to establishment of the World Climate Programme in 1979 and partly under pressure for improved and expanded national climate services across the board, the Bureau consolidated all its climate-related functions, except basic climate research, in the newly established National Climate Centre in 1985 (Bureau of Meteorology, 1986) and commenced work on the development of an Australian National Climate Program (Meteorology Policy Committee, 1988). The challenge of providing a sufficient scientific basis for climate forecasting was assigned to the Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre (BMRC). Although it had been under intense pressure for “long range weather” (ie. climate), forecasts since its establishment, challenged especially by the activities of private long range forecasters such as Inigo Jones (Sherratt, 2007) and Dr. EG (Taffy) Bowen of CSIRO (Bowen, 1953), had invested heavily in seasonal forecasting research, especially in the immediate post War years (Day, 2007), and had provided several reports to government on the scientific basis for long range forecasting, the Bureau did not commence routine seasonal climate outlooks until 1989 (Bureau of Meteorology, 1991; Nicholls, 2005).

Following the 1985 Villach Conference and the 1988 Toronto Conference, the Bureau found itself under pressure for authoritative advice within government on the scientific basis of climate change and its implications for Australia. In February 1989, it provided all interested Commonwealth and State Government Departments and Ministerial Councils with a 76-page briefing document entitled “The Climate Issue: A review of the international and national background to current concern about greenhouse-induced climate change and of the considerations relevant to the future planning and coordination of climate-related initiatives in Australia” (Bureau of Meteorology, 1989b). This became, for a time, “the bible”, within the relevant government policy departments, for those responsible for advising Ministers on institutional arrangements for dealing with the potential implications of climate change. A similar document (Zillman, Downey and Manton, 1989), focussed on the Southwest Pacific, was provided to the National Meteorological Services of the region to assist in briefing their national governments on the climate change


issue in preparation for the 1990 Second World Climate Conference.

With the Environment and Foreign Affairs portfolios beginning to gear up for Ministerial representation at the 1990 Second World Climate Conference, the Prime Minister moved the Bureau of Meteorology from the Administrative Services to the Environment Portfolio in July 1990 “to ensure that the environment portfolio gets full benefit from the expertise of the Bureau particularly on climate issues such as greenhouse and ozone depletion” (Hawke, 1990). Following initial coordination meetings between the Bureau and the Policy Division of the Environment Department, the Departmental Secretary, Mr Tony Blunn, proposed that the Bureau assume responsibility for the entire climate change issue at the Commonwealth level, including managing the national policy response. The Bureau declined the offer on the basis that it was important to keep the provision of scientific advice separate from the responsibility for policy development and that the Bureau could better serve the government through the provision of objective policy-neutral scientific advice (Zillman, 2003e).

In its climate advisory role and in conjunction with CSIRO and the by-then-established National Greenhouse Advisory Committee, the Bureau provided scientific support for Australian delegations to negotiating sessions for both the UNFCCC and Agenda 21 in preparation for the Rio Earth Summit (Zillman, 1992). In 1994, it took over leadership of the Australian delegation to sessions of the IPCC from Dr. Greg Tegart, who had played a key role on the IPCC Bureau since 1988 (Zillman, 2007b; 2008). In addition to its increasingly close collaboration with CSIRO and a growing number of University groups, through the 1990s and the following decade, on both climate change research and its application, the Bureau continued to provide scientific advice on climate change matters to the various policy organs of government and ‘scientific expert’ membership of Australian delegations to sessions of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (Bureau of Meteorology, 2003).

2 The CSIRO

Following its establishment in 1946, the CSIRO Division of Meteorological Physics (later Atmospheric Research) initially focussed primarily on micrometeorological research (Priestley, 1972) and steered clear of climate issues except for an occasional foray into speculation on the reality and mechanisms of climate change (eg Deacon, 1953). But, following the 1967 establishment of GARP and especially following the 1979 establishment of the WCRP, with Dr. Brian Tucker as a member of its Joint Scientific Committee, the Division, under Brian Tucker and Graeme Pearman, became the primary source of cutting-edge climate change research and scientifically based greenhouse advocacy in Australia. Brian Tucker’s monograph for the Australian Academy

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of Science on “The CO2-Climate Connection” (Tucker, 1981) played a major role in drawing the early attention of both Commonwealth and State Governments to the greenhouse issue. Following the 1985 Villach Conference, at which Graeme Pearman was a key participant, the long series of CSIRO-sponsored “Greenhouse” Conferences, started in 1987, served as the major vehicle for alerting and informing the broader Australian impacts and policy communities on the potential implications of greenhouse-induced climate change.

The CSIRO Greenhouse 87 Conference, under the title “Planning for Climate Change” (Pearman, 1988), was organised in conjunction with the Hawke Government’s Barry-Jones sponsored, Philip-Adams chaired Commission for the Future. It was aimed at raising awareness of the post-Villach consensus on scientific expectations of greenhouse-induced climate change amongst policy makers and the potentially impacted sectors and at encouraging research into those impacts. The success of Greenhouse 87, the following Greenhouse 89 on “Greenhouse and Energy” (Swaine, 1990) and subsequent CSIRO conferences in raising public and political awareness was, in significant measure, due to the broad base of sponsorship and involvement from industry and government, as well as from the climate research community itself. CSIRO developed strong links with both the Commonwealth environment policy departments who needed scientific backing for their greenhouse policy proposals to Ministers (eg. Landsberg, 1989; Pearman and Faragher, 1990) and various State Government departments who were looking for detailed information for planning for the changed climate that they had been lead to expect. During the 1990s, CSIRO became a respected source of greenhouse gas inventory methodology world-wide (Garratt, Angus and Holper, 1998) and a major provider of climate change scenarios, especially for State Government, and impact assessments as an input to both mitigation and adaptation policy around Australia.

3 Ministers and Government Departments

Until the 1970s, the main Commonwealth portfolios with interest in climate matters, apart from the parent portfolios of the Bureau of Meteorology, were those focussed on national development (especially in relation to water resources) and primary industries (especially in connection with drought relief). There were separate science and environment portfolios in the Whitlam Government (1972–75) with both taking an interest in climate change but the Minister for Science (whose portfolio included both the Bureau and CSIRO) assumed responsibility for advising the Prime Minister on the policy implications of scientific speculation about a new ice age. The two portfolios (science and environment) were brought together for a period during the middle years of the Fraser Government (1975–83) but then separated


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again with the separation continuing for the duration of the Hawke Government (1983–91). The Bureau and CSIRO, however, stayed together in the Science Portfolio under the Hon. Barry Jones (who had previously served as Shadow Minister for Science and the Environment and had developed a strong commitment to the need for a pro-active policy response to greenhouse warming) until the Bureau was moved from the Science to the Administrative Services Portfolio in 1987 (Jones, 1992).

When the IPCC was established in late 1987, and especially when it held its first session towards the end of 1988, the key Commonwealth portfolios with climate change related responsibilities were Administrative Services (the Bureau); Arts, Sport, the Environment, Tourism and Territories (environment policy, the Australian Environment Council and UNEP); Foreign Affairs and Trade (the link to developments at the UN); Industry, Technology and Commerce (CSIRO); and Prime Minister and Cabinet (especially the Australian Science and Technology Council (ASTEC)). The Prime Minister (Hawke) became personally involved in the decision that the Secretary of ASTEC, Dr Greg Tegart, should head the Australian delegation to the first session of the IPCC with coordination through Foreign Affairs, Environment and the Bureau (Tegart, 1988).

In April 1989, partly in response to representations from CSIRO and partly in response to Environment Portfolio assessment of the significance of the 1988 Toronto Conference, the Commonwealth Government agreed to a submission led by the Minister for the Environment (Senator Graham Richardson) to strengthen the core climate modelling capabilities of the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO and to work with industry and environment groups to ensure Australia contributed its share to global greenhouse gas reduction. By late 1990, following the Second World Climate Conference and as part of its early preparations for joining in negotiation of the UNFCCC, the Commonwealth adopted an Interim Planning Target of stabilising greenhouse gas emissions by 2000, based on 1988 levels, and of reducing them by 20% by 2005. Under Environment Portfolio leadership but in tandem with its broader ESD (Ecologically Sustainable Development) process (Council of Australian Governments, 1992b), and with advice from its National Greenhouse Advisory Committee (NGAC), the Government worked through the various Commonwealth-State Ministerial Councils and a National Greenhouse Steering Committee (NGSC) of Commonwealth and State officials to develop a National Greenhouse Response Strategy (NGRS). Within six months of Australia’s signature of the UNFCCC at the Rio Earth Summit (photo on left on page 114), the NGRS had been adopted by all levels of government (Council of Australian Governments, 1992a).

I think it is fair to say that, by the time of the entry into force of the UNFCCC and the first session of the COP in

Berlin in March-April 1995 (photo on left on page 114), the Australian climate science-policy interface was well established, most of the Government’s key economic agencies were fully involved (eg Fisher, 1995) and industry was essentially accepting of the underpinning science and on-side (Buckingham, 1995; Salmon, 1995). The National Greenhouse Advisory Panel (NGAP) was routinely monitoring progress on the NGRS and numerous greenhouse reduction initiatives such as “The Greenhouse Challenge” were underway (Downer, Hill and Parer, 1997). By the time of the Kyoto session of the UNFCCC COP in 1997, the policy focus of government had moved from “climate change” to “greenhouse gas reduction” and was in the hands of the Atmospheric Protection Branch of Environment Australia (the re-titled Environment Department), soon to make the further transition to the Australian Greenhouse Office to underscore the priority to be given to greenhouse gas reduction (Howard, 1997). The Minister for the Environment in the Howard Government (Senator Robert Hill) led the Australian delegation to Kyoto with strong support from the Australian scientific community. The subsequent (largely non-scientific) machinations on greenhouse policy within the Howard Government are chronicled, from a pro-mitigation insider perspective, by Pearse (2007).

4 The Learned Academies

Australia’s learned Academies (especially the Australian Academy of Science (AAS), the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) and the various predecessors to the present Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACoLA)) have played a key role over the decades as an interface mechanism between the climate change research community and government.

Perhaps the most significant early contribution was the AAS response to the 1975 request from the Whitlam Government for advice on “claims recently made in the media, and apparently also by competent scientists, that the earth’s climate is changing and that a new ice-age could be on the way”. In its comprehensive ‘Report of a Committee on Climate Change’ (Australian Academy of Science, 1976), the Academy Committee, chaired by Dr. Bill Priestley, dismissed the concerns about an imminent climate change, stressed the need for better understanding of, and adaptation to, Australia’s climate and called for more study of the scientific basis for concern about greenhouse warming.

In follow-up to the emerging concern about carbon dioxide warming identified in the 1976 Priestley Committee Report, the Academy of Science sponsored a national symposium in 1980 on “The Carbon Dioxide-Climate Problem” with the implications for policy-makers subsequently brought together in the widely influential Academy monograph by Dr. Brian Tucker (Tucker, 1981).


Building on its earlier National Committee for GARP and its National Committee for Atmospheric Sciences (eg. Paltridge, 1984), the Academy of Science established (jointly with the Bureau of Meteorology) an Australian (Sub-) Committee for the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) to provide coordinated scientific advice on climate research (Streten, 1982; Brook, 1983; Coughlan, 1987). Then, following ICSU’s establishment of the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP) as a complementary “global change” program to the WMO-ICSU WCRP in 1986, the Academy established a National Committee for the IGBP, under the chairmanship of Professor Bruce Thom. After wide consultation with the rapidly growing Australian “global change” community, the Committee prepared ‘Global Change: A Research Strategy for Australia 1992-96’ with one of its four overall objectives “to assist the Australian Government to make policies including policies that contribute to international and regional issues of global change from an Australian perspective” (Thom, 1992). The Academy distinction between its ‘climate’ and ‘global change’ activities, at that stage, reflected the international relationship between the WCRP and the IGBP (Zillman, 1993b) and the different interests of the physical and chemical/biological science communities. The National Committee for Atmospheric Sciences was merged with its own WCRP Sub-Committee to become the National Committee for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (eg. Henderson-Sellers, 1993) which was itself later joined to the National Committee for the IGBP to become the National Committee for Climate and Global Change.

The Academies contributed significantly, institutionally and through several of their individual Fellows, to the development of the National Greenhouse Response Strategy over the period 1990–92 including through co-sponsorship of the 1991 Sustainable Development Australia Workshop on the Use and Misuse of Science in the Environment Debate. In 1994, Environment

Australia and a number of industry partners agreed to jointly sponsor the major joint Academies study on ‘Climate Change Science: Current Understanding and Uncertainties’ (ATSE, 1995a) which was led by Dr. Greg Tegart and aimed at drawing on the full range of Australian expertise to produce an integrated national assessment that would have the credibility and sense of ownership to ensure its acceptance by all key parties—environmental, business, government, community and scientific. It was launched in early 1995 by the incoming president of ATSE (and former Chairman of BHP and Western Mining), Sir Arvi Parbo (photo left), and tabled at the first session of the UNFCCC-COP by the Australian delegation led by Senator John Faulkner. It also provided the scientific point of departure for the 1995 ATSE Symposium, opened by the president of the Business Council of Australia, on “Greenhouse Abatement Measures: No Regrets Action Now” (ATSE, 1995b).

The November 1995 ATSE Symposium was followed closely by two joint academies forums in November 1996, and April 1997, the first on “Australians and our Changing Climate: Past Experiences and Future Destiny” led by AAS (Farquhar, 1997) and the second on “The Challenge for Australia on Global Climate Change” led by ASSA (Harris, 1997). Both forums involved a number of natural and social scientists and key government and other participants in the greenhouse policy response process.

The summary of the 1995 joint Academies assessment of the science was updated in 2002 under ATSE sponsorship (Ellis and Zillman, 2002). Then, as a further contribution to linking the science and policy perspectives, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia produced a monograph under the leadership of the former Head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Dr. Michael Keating, on “Uncertainty and Climate Change; The Challenge for Policy” (Zillman, McKibbin and Kellow, 2005).

In 2010, with financial support from the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, the Academy of Science produced a Question and Answer booklet on “The Science of Climate Change” as an aid to better public understanding of climate change science and its implications (Allison et al., 2010). This has recently been updated (Alexander et al, 2015).

Over the years, Australia’s learned Academies have played an important role in providing governments with up to date expert advice on the state of the science of climate change, including its uncertainties and implications. Their reports have been widely taken on board by governments as authoritative scientific input to the policy process.

5 The greenhouse zealots and sceptics

Since the first emergence of human-induced climate change as a potentially serious policy issue, when individual climate scientists began drawing attention,

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The president of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Sir Arvi Parbo, launches the joint academies report on ‘Climate Change Science: Current Understanding and Uncertainties’ (report at left) at the Australian Academy of Science in Canberra on 24 March 1995. Image: John Zillman.


in both scientific and political fora, to the possible implications of enhanced greenhouse warming, there has been a minority sub-set of the legitimate climate community who have differed, to varying degrees, with their colleagues on scientific grounds and to whom the “climate change sceptic” label was appropriately and honourably applied. For the most part, in the early years, however, the scientific differences remained within the scientific community. But, as individual scientists and institutions became more forthright in their assertions and started to engage in public advocacy for greenhouse gas reduction, the scientific differences became sharper and more publicly visible and others in the community, who saw their interests threatened or advanced by the proposed policy action, became actively involved in the public debate.

Initially, I thought the increasing polarisation was unambiguously harmful to both the science and the policy process and I aligned firmly with the initiative of the 1987 World Meteorological Congress to create the IPCC as a mechanism to avert further polarisation and ensure governments, including ours, were provided with authoritative and objective consensus advice from the expert scientific community. I embraced the Priestley philosophy of keeping the scientific debate within the scientific community (Zillman, 1993b). On the local scene, I thought we did well in the late 1980s and early 1990s, through deep involvement of Australian scientists in the IPCC process, as well as through the joint academies and other mechanisms, in limiting the confusion in policy circles from the sharpening polarisation in the scientific community. But, as several scientists and a number of key figures in the environmental movement became more zealous in their advocacy for greenhouse gas reduction, I began to accept that, with the stakes so high, across-the-board polarisation was inevitable and, to the extent that it could be kept focussed on unresolved scientific issues and legitimate differences of perspective on the public interest, not necessarily entirely bad.

I thus came to believe that the ongoing debate between what may be loosely referred to as the greenhouse zealots (those climate scientists and non-scientists arguing for strong political action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) and the climate change sceptics (those scientists and non-scientists who are not convinced of the likelihood of dangerous human-induced climate change or of the need for action to combat it, or both) is a useful, if time-consuming and emotion-generating (eg. Enting, 2007), component of the overall climate science-policy process. I have myself been described as a “closet sceptic” (Hamilton, 2007). I am, in fact, a firm believer in the basic physics of greenhouse warming but I am also acutely conscious of the many uncertainties in our broader scientific understanding of the climate system (Zillman, 2005a). Thus, while not agreeing with quite a lot of the content of the Australian sceptic books such as Kininmonth (2004),

Paltridge (2009), Plimer (2009), Carter (2010) and Moran (2014), I believe the sceptics have played a useful role in protecting the public and the policy process from the risk of excessive “group think”, “confirmation bias” and over-confident assertion from some of the mainstream climate community.

6 The mass media

From the beginning, the mass media have played an important, mostly constructive, but occasionally confusing and unhelpful, role in bridging between the scientific and policy-maker communities.

In addition to their indirect policy-influencing role in informing the voting public on developments and controversies in the science, media reports and editorials have often triggered direct science-policy dialogue as policy department officers and Minister’s offices sought urgent briefings from science agencies on media reports about “new scientific findings” and the like. Australian media coverage of climate change literally exploded during the 1980s and preparing urgent briefs for Ministers on greenhouse reports in the morning’s newspapers became a demanding and time-consuming task for organisations like the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO.

For the most part, in the early years, the media were receptive to authoritative scientific advice and discouraged sensationalism. As a former Editor-in-Chief of The Australian, the late Les Hollings stressed the importance of “a scientific community that can give us and our political representatives firm impartial advice…..” (Hollings, 1990). He noted that “climate as an issue is now driven by public opinion” and he saw “an overwhelming need for scientists to talk to and relate to the general public in terms they can understand”. He called on organisations like the Bureau and CSIRO to “cultivate staff who can speak effectively to the public on these issues, on both radio and television”. But what he deplored was scientists offering scary scenarios and making dramatic statements with little mention of doubts or uncertainties. On balance, I thought that The Australian newspaper, radio and television coverage of climate change science in the 1980s and most of the 1990s played a constructive role in informing political consideration of the policy response. Admittedly the media appeared to cultivate and enjoy controversy within the scientific community but, by and large, they respected the integrity of the scientists and did their best to reflect the science accurately to the public.

Unfortunately, I think the effectiveness of the Australian mass media as an interface between science and public policy declined a little after Les Hollings’ time. I put this down to a number of factors:

• media confusion resulting from the different IPCC and UNFCCC definitions of climate change;

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• the almost universal media tendency to want to simplify emission-scenario-dependent IPCC “projections” to actual “predictions” of climate change;

• the pressure, for the sake of a “story”, to emphasise worst case scenarios and disagreements within the science community;

• more scientists assuming a political advocacy role and so goading more of their sceptical colleagues to respond in kind;

• the vested interests of the potential winners and losers from various forms of policy response becoming a stronger influence on the media framing of the issues; and

• climate change becoming more an ideological and economic than a scientific issue.

There have been several reviews of the role of the Australian media (eg. Manne, 2011) in the climate change debate, mostly from a pro-mitigation perspective, and much push-back from members of the scientific community, both zealots and sceptics, who feel that their perspectives have not been properly represented in the media. While organisations like the Australian Science Media Centre have done their best to help ensure the integrity of the scientific message, I sense that the media themselves have become much more sharply politicised and polarised along ideological lines since the 1990s. Certainly, policy makers inside and outside government have no shortage of climate change information and alternative sources of advice in the mass media on which to draw.

TOWARDS A MORE EFFECTIVE SCIENCE-POLICY INTERFACEIn my observation, over the years of my involvement, the atmospheric science community has served the world extremely well, not just through the quality of research but in the way it has contributed to its communication and application for societal benefit throughout the world (Munn et al., 1996; Zillman, 1997a). Although virtually every field of science has important implications for government policy-making, I believe that meteorology has strong historical claims to pre-eminence for the breadth of its contribution to public policy and societal well-being (Zillman, 1997c; 2006a). And I think that the mechanisms put in place for linking climate science to public policy development since the 1960s have worked extraordinarily well (Zillman, 2006b; 2007a). While I regret the acrimony that has developed from time to time in the climate change debate, I believe we have learned a great deal, over the past 50 years, about the effective use of science in the policy process (Zillman, 2005b; 2010b).

There is now a substantial international literature on the role of climate science in the economic, social,

environmental, ethical, philosophical, legal and political debates involved in formulation and implementation of climate change and greenhouse policy. Pielke (2010) analyses the various roles that science and scientists can play in policy development and concludes, inter alia, that “fixing climate policy depends in no small part on fixing the role of climate science in the debate”.

While accepting that views still differ widely on ways of improving the global and national response to the findings of climate change science, my own impressions, at the end of my period of active involvement, included the following:

• Funding of climate observations and research. It is important that the core funding of long-term climate observing networks and basic research into climate processes be recognised as a fundamental policy-neutral, public-good responsibility of government. Some targeted policy-supporting research is essential but, to ensure both its integrity and perceived integrity, the main funding for basic climate research should not come from climate change policy departments or other (business or environmental) sources with a vested interest in the outcome of the research;

• Debate within the scientific community. The climate research community can best serve society by conducting vigorous scientific debate, as they always have, within scientific circles but, as far as possible, avoiding public, especially personally acrimonious, debate of scientific issues in the mass media or other non-expert fora;

• Scientist-policymaker interaction. The best mechanism for enhancing the effectiveness of the science-policy interface is personal interaction facilitated by short-term out-posting of scientists to policy institutions, science-policy workshops, shared membership of national delegations to international climate change fora and the like;

• Public communication of climate change science. Those scientists with good communication skills have a strong obligation to help inform the public (and governments), especially through the media, on the summary findings of climate change science in simple (but not over-simplified), objective, non-political, policy-neutral terms;

• The big picture on policy development. We, as scientists, need to remember that, no matter how confident we are of the science or how strongly we feel about its implications, scientific advice is only one of the many inputs to the extremely complex set of considerations involved in developing societally acceptable and practically effective greenhouse policy;

• Scientists as policy advocates. Scientists wishing to use their status as climate experts to serve as policy

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advocates need to weigh the potential benefits of their public advocacy against the possible damage done to the credibility of, and respect for, the science amongst those who do not agree with their policy agendas. Scientists engaging in public advocacy should make clear when they are speaking as scientific experts and when they are speaking on the basis of personal values or political ideology;

• Balance of the mitigation and adaptation agendas. Having provided an increasingly firm scientific basis for greenhouse mitigation policy, climate science now faces the major challenge of contributing usefully and effectively to policies and practices for helping society to adapt to future climate (including the human-induced component of future climate change);

• Future of the IPCC. The government-oversighted scientific assessment role of the IPCC remains valid as a mechanism to inform national and international policy development but great care will be needed to prevent it becoming increasingly ponderous, politicised and policy prescriptive; and

• Global Framework for Climate Services. There is huge scope for, and great potential benefit from, more informed use of climate science for policy purposes on the basis of concepts and mechanisms developed through the Global Framework for Climate Services, the World Climate Programme and the Climate Services Partnership.

As foreseen by Dr. Priestley in 1975 (Pittock et al., 1978), climatology did, indeed, experience a dramatic increase in importance in the final decades of the 20th century but the contribution of climate science to international and national public policy has almost certainly far exceeded anything that he envisioned at that time. The climate science community are entitled to feel great satisfaction with their part in what has been achieved towards addressing the challenges of climate change and cautious optimism at the prospect for a less turbulent and more effective science-policy partnership in the decades ahead.

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