An Australian university has put up a giant mural on one of its walls, depicting one of its climate scientists. Curtin University, based in Perth, has erected a mural depicting Professor Richard Warrick studying crops, with a large plaque underneath declaring: “Inside our walls Professor Richard Warrick is continuing the climate change research that led to a Nobel Peace Prize.”
The Jo Nova blog reports that Richard Warrick claims to be a “co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize” and that “he shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and other selected IPCC authors in 2007.”
As well as creating a giant mural in his honour, the university website also depicts him with a halo round his head, declaring that his research is “leading the way.”
The claim to be a Nobel Laureate is based on the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with whom Professor Warrick worked, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 in conjunction with Al Gore. This led to some confusion over whether individual scientists with the IPCC could describe themselves as Nobel Laureates.
The IPCC itself, however, has admitted: “it is incorrect to refer to any IPCC official, or scientist who worked on IPCC reports, as a Nobel laureate or Nobel Prize winner.”
It states that the 2007 Peace Prize was awarded to the IPCC as a whole, and that individual members of the IPCC therefore cannot refer to themselves as Nobel Laureates.
JoNova writes: “What’s most disturbing about this is that this pandering obsession with turning scientists into Gods is profoundly unscientific. It’s a mark of how weak the intellectual standards are.”
“Not only did the Nobel committee award a political organization with peace prize for achieving exactly no peace, they lauded a group who call themselves scientists but behave as political activists.”
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