has financed several Australians who are contrarians or active in alternative climate change research. In 2008, the institute facilitated a donation of by G. Bryant Macfie, a climate change denier, to the University of Queensland for environmental research. The money was given to fund three environmental doctoral projects, with the IPA suggesting two of the three agreed topics. In 2010, the IPA published a compilation of essays by prominent climate change deniers titled Climate Change: The Facts and edited by John Roskam and Alan Moran. An expanded version with 22 essays was published in 2015 through Stockade Books and a follow-up edited by Jennifer Marohasy was published in 2017. In 2019 the IPA published an essay by Clive James, Chapter 22 of the 2017 publication, on its website, which was critical of what it called "climate change alarmism in the upmarket mass media". In 2013, it was reported that several large multinational companies, including ExxonMobil, Shell and mining companies, had ceased their membership and financial contributions to the IPA, owing to its vehement campaign against climate change action. In 2017, Marohasy and IPA colleague John Abbot published a paper on climate change in the journal GeoResJ, also discussing the work on the IPA website, in The Spectator Australia, and in Marohasy's blog. The research concludes that much of recent warming could be attributable to natural variations, and that the "world was about as warm in 1980 as it was during the Middle Ages". This conclusion was heavily criticised by climate scientists who pointed to methodological flaws in the research and declared it unworthy of publication. Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has pointed out that some data were shifted in time by approximately 35 years, leading to the omission of warming that has occurred since 1965. Schmidt described the research as "worthless" and an example of "what happens when people have their conclusions fixed before they start the work". Notable people The following individuals are or were associated with the Institute of Public Affairs. Senior office bearers When the IPA Victoria was founded in 1943, it had a chairman (Sir George Coles); a chairman of the executive committee was chosen in 1944 (G. H. Grimwade) and a director (Charles Denton Kemp) in 1948. The executive committee was also referred to as the Industrial Committee or the Executive & Editorial Committee, and the role of chairman