Below are letters by Bill Kininmonth and myself in response to the pathetic ad-hominem attack on Professor Bob Carter in a disgraceful article by journalist Mike Steketee published in the Week-End Australian (copy attached). Today’s Australian has a range of material on climate change, including:
These and other developments reinforce the need for an independent inquiry into the science and economics of the dangerous warming thesis. It is disappointing that, if elected, the Coalition will establish an Audit Commission only on the Federal budget. Why limit it to that?
Des Moore
Climate debate must be unfettered by obfuscation
letter published in The Australian, 19 March 2012
LAMENTABLY, attempts to generate meaningful discussion on the science of climate change continue to be frustrated by attacks on those who question the dangerous human-caused global warming scenario.
Typical is Mike Steketee's critique of the motives of Emeritus Professor Bob Carter ("Scientists who trade in doubt", 17-18/3).
Citing leaked documents from the Heartland Institute, Steketee conveniently ignores that his evidence is a mixture of fabrications and stolen papers, a fact admitted by the perpetrator, Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute.
The substance of Steketee's charge is that Carter appears to be receiving pay for a fair day's work. Or is it the nature of the work that is so heinous: collecting and presenting evidence that refutes the alarmist claims? After all, Steketee has not similarly denounced the academic authors of the Climate Commission report from which he quotes favourably, a report prepared specifically to support prevailing government policy.
Until there is unfettered debate on the science of climate change the many uncertainties and unknowns about future climate will continue to be veiled by a curtain of obfuscation and feigned confidence.
William Kininmonth, Kew, Vic
IT is absurd for Mike Steketee to imply that a scientist who rejects the dangerous warming thesis does so because he is paid for advice to an organisation that also rejects that thesis.
As most scientists who are warmist believers are being paid by governments or universities, is that the reason for their continued support of a thesis in the face of mounting contrary evidence? And does Steketee also apply his logic to all the many thousands of scientists and numerous organisations that reject the thesis?
Des Moore, South Yarra, Vic