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journalist, his IPCC involvement wasn't even mentioned. Shortly afterward, however, he
suddenly became a Nobelist.
In 2008, an activist group issued a press release about a report written by Jaccard.
The release described him as 'a winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize'. In 2009, a poster
advertising an event at a public library featured his photograph alongside large text that
identified him as an 'author and Nobel Laureate'.
When he submitted written testimony to a regulatory agency in 2011, Jaccard said
he'd 'been honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize' as an IPCC contributor. His employer,
Canada's Simon Fraser University, has told the world that he is a Nobel laureate. So have
journalists.
Because the IPCC is an international body, there are many Jaccards in many countries.
University of Melbourne meteorologist David Karoly has similarly been described by
absence of the crucial word 'peace' in that phrase. The problem isn't merely that Karoly
hasnovalidclaimtothathonour.It'sthat,whenwe'retoldthata
scientist
haswonaNobel,
most us of us don't think of soft focus Peace Prizes.
The public is being urged to pay special attention to Karoly's views because he's a
Nobel laureate. But Peace Prizes are not endorsements of a person's scientific acumen.
TheyareconferredbyadifferentbodythantheonethatawardsphysicsNobels.Moreover,
the IPCC shared its Peace Prize with a politician—Al Gore—whose dismal grades in
university-level science courses are a matter of public record.
3
For years, Karoly has delivered presentations with titles along the lines of 'Lies, Damn
Lies and Climate Change Skeptics'. In a podcast available on iTunes, he discusses 'the lies
that are told in the [climate] debate'.
It's awkward, therefore, to discover that the Science Club of Melbourne High School,
an elite all-boys academy, described Karoly as 'a Nobel prize winner' when talking about
his May 2014 visit—and that the website of the Australian Medical Students' Association
awkward still is the Victorian church group, the Church of All Nations, whose website
with the Yarra Climate Action Now Community Solar Project. It wrongly described the
host as 'climate scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner' Karoly.
Elsewhere, Julie Arblaster, now an employee of Australia's Bureau of Meteorology
(and a former Karoly-supervised PhD student), declares on her CV that she became a
'Nobel Peace Prize laureate' six years prior to completing her 2013 doctorate.
6
On its website, the government of New South Wales continues to incorrectly advise
the public that Mark Howden—an agricultural specialist and career public servant—is a
