At Least Listen to the Sceptics

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An unfortunate characteristic of most of the public discussion on global warming is the name-calling peppered with false claim suggesting that there are very few so-called “sceptics”.

Last week Liberal Senator, Nick Minchin, was identified as not only a climate change sceptic but labelled a “denier” because of his stand against the emissions trading legislation which was being debated in the federal parliament.  
In fact, there are sceptics in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s own Cabinet but for the sake of politics they are keeping quiet, or gagged.    

And indeed it has never been true, as former vice US president, Al Gore, claims, that there are only a few insignificant scientists who deny the global warming crisis.   

In New York in March 2008 over 500 sceptics attended a climate conference in New York with over 100 of the delegates leading climatologists, astrophysicists, meteorologists or geologists. 

Published to coincide with the conference was a report entitled Nature, Not Human Activity Rules the Climate authored by 30 researchers from 15 countries citing some 200 technical papers and with a foreword by Professor Frederick Seitz, past president of the US National academy of Sciences.

Professor Richard Lindzen, the Albert Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and arguably the world’s leading atmospheric physicist, was not at the New York Conference in 2008 but did attend the conference that followed in March 2009 attended by over 800 sceptics. 

Professor Lindzen has been on the public record for many years explaining that the case for global warming is not only ‘controversial’ but also, in his own view, implausible.  

In 2007 he wrote, “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”

That’s a fairly scathing comment about our so-called modern, educated and environmentally enlightened society.

Of course, the upcoming Copenhagen conference on finding a united climate change strategy is really about politics and so some may argue the science doesn’t matter anymore.

It is now a moral issue with an overwhelming public consensus that governments must act.  

But if this is the case, why is it that so many books by climate sceptics including Ian Plimer’s Heaven and Earth: global warming the missing science are so popular with the book-buying public.

Professor Plimer’s book is now in its fifth print run in Australia and has just been released in the US. 

Other very popular books by climate sceptics include An Appeal to Reason: a cool look at global warming by the former British Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, and Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor by former NASA scientist, Roy Spencer.

Also popular are the sceptic’s blog sites with Climate Audit and Watts Up With That voted ‘Best Science Blog’ for 2007 and 2008 respectively, by the Weblog Awards – the world’s largest blog competition.  

Of course pointing out that there are many politicians, scientists, books and blog sites sceptical of man-made global warming don’t prove it to be a hoax.  But it should serve as a caution to our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and others who insist on avoiding discussion of the evidence in favour of name-calling.

Published in The Land

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