In the United States he is the Science Advisor to the President and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, currently John H Marburger, III, full time.

In Great Britain he is Sir David King, Chief Scientific Advisor to H. M. Government and Head of the Office of Science and Technology, currently four days per week but note: according to the UK Office of Science and Technology, "The Chief Scientific Advisor has always been a full time (five-year fixed term appointment) post in principle. However, part time arrangements are put in place to help the post holder to discharge his or her individual commitments to research within academia."¹.

In Australia he is Robin Batterham, the Chief Scientist, part time (2days per week), and Chief Technologist, Rio Tinto Limited.

In Canada he will be the National Science Advisor, Dr. Arthur Carty, beginning April 1^st, full time. The post has just been newly created by Canada's new Prime Minister, Paul Martin.

Both Professors Marburger and King come from strong and immediate academic backgrounds while Dr Carty is currently completing his second term as president of Canada's National Research Council. Robin Batterham on the other hand is the only one of this group who, although sporting a title rather grander than the rest, is part time and derives a substantial part of his annual earnings from his corporate connection, the mining and minerals giant whose slogan is "Minerals and Metals for the World".

    The strong and current connection of Australia's Chief Scientist with one of Australia's largest corporations which states, "Major products include aluminium, copper, diamonds, energy products (coal and uranium), gold, industrial minerals (borax, titanium dioxide, salt, talc and zircon), and iron ore," has led to published perceptions of possible conflicts of interest as regards the advice he gives to the Australian Government particularly in the case of deep subterranean sequestration of CO₂ from the burning of fossil fuels. This was the essence of material aired by ABC-TV's 7:30 Report on August 12, 2003. It left Dr Batterham in less than a favourable light. More recently, Australasian Science in its March 2004 issue has revisited the question through a "conScience" opinion piece by Greens' Senator Bob Brown "Chief Scientist's Double Role Must End" while Peter Pockley in the same issue of the magazine comments, "The government's protection of Batterham and his advice from any form of public scrutiny has become a running issue."

    And in fact Dr Pockley has focused on a key issue. The appointment by John Howard's conservative coalition government in 1999 and the reappointment in 2002 for a second three year term of Australia's first part time Chief Scientist and one with direct financial connections to Australia's mining sector. To believe that such is anything other than deliberate governmental policy is to be away with the fairies. Had Robin Batterham not existed, the coalition government would have "invented" him; and in fact certain similarities between the Howard government's appointment of Dr Batterham to the post of Chief Scientist and the appointment of Dr Geoff Garrett as CEO of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) (see former CSIRO Chief of Entomology Max Whitten's assessments*^{, †}) suggest an overweening interest in supporting market driven economic rationalism at the expense of longer term benefits for the nation.

    It is interesting to contrast Dr Batterham's apparent single minded championing of CO₂ sequestration to the virtual exclusion of alternative approaches to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions with recent comments by Great Britain's Chief Scientific Advisor, David King. King writing in the journal  Science (January 9, 2004) observed, "In my view, climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today--more serious even than the threat of terrorism." The comment rapidly escalated prompting, ScienceNow to report on February 17^th ,"On 3 February Blair tried to tamp down the controversy during a Parliamentary committee meeting by saying that although terrorism and global warming are both of 'critical urgency, I think you can get into a rather cerebral debate about which is more important than the other.' But the issue was sufficiently flammable that Blair's principal private secretary Ivan Rogers advised King in a 10 February memo to 'decline [interview requests from] the U.K. or U.S. national media' during his visit to Seattle [where he gave the plenary lecture to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)]. King in fact didn't amplify on his global warming/terrorism comparison while at AAAS he did however, according to ScienceNow, "criticize the Bush Administration for its failure to sign the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce industrial emissions," and in his January 9^th Science article he was blunt in his assessment, "The Bush Administration's current strategy relies largely on market-based incentives and voluntary actions. The market will certainly be valuable for choosing among mitigation approaches. We need to investigate all means of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide: sequestration, fusion, fuel cells, renewables, and so on. But the market cannot decide that mitigation is necessary, nor can it establish the basic international framework in which all actors can take their place. That requires a political decision based on sound scientific evidence, and the U.K. government firmly believes the time to make that decision is now."

    It would be absurd for anyone to expect Dr Batterham to utter comparable public statements and were he to do so he would lose any influence he currently may have on broadening the Coalition's science policy. And it may be pertinent to cite a paper prepared by Margaret Blakers for Senator Brown dated October 2003, "The 2002 selection round [for CRC grants] attracted 57 applications, 30 of which were successful.  The announcement, on 10 December 2002, included $68 million in government funding for four CRCs in the Mining and Energy Sector.  Rio Tinto was a 'core participant'² in all four Mining and Energy CRCs;  BHP Billiton and Western Mining were core participants in two each;  no other company was a core participant in more than one.  By contrast, the Renewable Energy CRC failed to gain new funding."

1. Professor Sir David King, advises the UK Prime Minister directly on scientific issues. He was appointed to his present post on October 1, 2000. Prior to this appointment, he was head of the Department of Chemistry and Master of Downing College, University of Cambridge. He continues as the 1920 Professor of Physical Chemistry and Fellow, Queens College, University of Cambridge, where his research is maintained.

2.  Core participants in a CRC are those “whose contributions provide a major support to the activities of the CRC and that have signed the Commonwealth Agreement” (standard contractual agreement specifying and governing the grant and activities) (Guidelines for Applicants 2002 Selection Round, CRC web page).

Alex Reisner

The Funneled Web