Bernie Fraser was an undergraduate a few years behind me at the University of New England, and I remember him there mostly as a nuggetty Rugby Union player. He went on to join the Treasury, becoming in time its Secretary. The Hawke Government then appointed him to the Board of the Reserve Bank as its Chairman, and he had a subsequent career in the superannuation industry, appearing on television as a spruiker for member-owned super funds. His flat voice and boy-from-the-bush style (he grew up in Junee in NSW) added solidity and reassurance to his message.
The Gillard Government appointed him to the Climate Change Authority as its Chairman in 2012, and I wrote about it, and passingly about him, the other day. Yesterday he addressed the National Press Club on the subject of ‘climate change’, preceding that with a teaser in the Guardian, from which I drew for this post. Bernie is a ‘believer’, there is no doubt about it, and like other believers he simply ignores and rejects material that gets in the way of his faith. Not for him a dispassionate review of the evidence: he is the embodiment of the ‘church militant’, and his tone is of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’.
The good guys have lost the argument because they failed to contest untruths peddled by bad guys, including the federal government, he told Lenore Taylor, the Guardian’s Political Editor. The good guys are way behind and seem to be not making up ground. The public generally are getting bored with it all and switching off. The problem seems to be to be that the bad guys are spreading untruths and exaggerations and assertions without a lot of hard evidence and serious debate, cheered on by the big companies who make similar assertions and repeat those assertions without thorough debate.
This really is cowboys-and-Indians stuff. How do we tell the good guys from the bad guys? For Bernie that is easy.
The good guys are the mainstream scientific bloc and their analysis of why the planet is warming up. The bad guys are the mavericks, the kind we hear on the radio, who don’t accept the science and who attack the scientists, I ignore them and they deserve to be ignored … but it’s more serious when you get to people in positions of influence, in industry associations or companies, or in the government and the opposition who in some cases say they believe the science but then don’t act as if they do. That whole range of people I lump into the bad guy camp. He adds in … the present government and some of its biggest supporters, big companies and industry associations.
I read all this with astonishment, but my eyes opened widest at this: There is no one out there really presenting a coherent, informed, mature case on this … It seems to be a very important debate we should be having is going by default and those who speak loudest and most frequently, regardless of the merits of the argument, seem to be winning the day.
My natural modesty prevents my suggesting that Bernie could read this website with some profit, because I have been trying over the last eight years to develop ‘a coherent, informed and mature case’ on the possible threat from AGW. But there is an abundance of material out there — thousands of papers, critiques of the IPCC’s five assessment reports, and book after book. Is he aware of none of this?
The most vexing aspect is that every sceptic that I know, and they include his former colleague, the late Ian Castles, former Secretary of Finance and Australian Statistician, has been asking for exactly ‘the very important debate we should be having’ — and nobody from the orthodoxy is prepared to engage in it. Our present government is dismantling the AGW edifice put up by the previous Labor governments, but is not prepared to authorise a debate on the whole question, lest it antagonise some of the other believers.
My reading of the Fraser lament is that he takes as gospel everything the scientific advisers on the Climate Change Authority have told him, partly because that is their job, and partly because he ‘believes’ that they are right anyway. He is not talking about a debate of substance, in which the whole scientific edifice of ‘climate change’ is looked at closely, but a debate that takes the AGW gospel as fact, and gets down to how we are going to save the world from the dreadful menace of global warming, extreme weather, worse droughts and floods, and all the rest of it.
You have to ask: where is the acumen, the search for good data, the sheer intelligence, that Bernie Fraser must have displayed within the Treasury to rise as quickly as he did to become the Secretary of the toughest department within the Australian Government? It’s not in evidence here. Why? I go back to the beginning: for believers, facts are unimportant. They just know …
We need to be considering what lies in our human psyche, that we operate so subjectively. We humans like to think we’re objective, especially when our training has taught us that we should be so. Some AGW believers will indeed go to their graves repeating Bernie’s lament. Meanwhile, increasing numbers in the western world are recognising that apocalyptic visions are not coming to pass, so they’re moving on; these are the people who’ve occupied the middle ground, have been prepared to accept IPCC orthodoxy, but haven’t felt emotionally bound by it.
The more convinced a person is about the ills of society and our responsibility for those failures, the more one is likely to believe the AGW myths.
Peter I agree with you.
I find it very interesting how people on both side of the AGW debate emotionally engage with the “evidence”. A belief that the “end of the world is nigh” has been popular in various formations for a very long time. The alternative, a belief in providence, has also existed.
Scientific evidence sits in the middle somewhere, perhaps. ?
I’m not sure what David means by “a belief in providence has also existed”. The inference I draw is that he thinks most skeptics are wishful thinkers.
My experience is that most skeptics adopt the “null hypothesis”, ie that proponents of expensive courses of action need to PROVE the scientific case.
The proponents have singularly failed to do so. And indeed some have been caught out in very questionable activities, such as those exposed in the infamous Hockey Stick and Climategate sagas.
Moreover predictions made by the proponents based on their understanding of the science have all conspicuously failed.
This is strong evidence that their understanding is very incomplete. The null hypothesis is therefore a proper and sensible position.
Scientific evidence does not “sit in the middle somewhere”. Evidence is evidence. It either supports a hypothesis or does not.
Colin, you say
“My experience is that most skeptics adopt the “null hypothesis”, ie that proponents of expensive courses of action need to PROVE the scientific case.”
In my view a scientist does not “adopt” the null, a scientist “states” the null. There is a big difference. They then accept or reject based on their analysis of the evidence.
My last sentence was a bit of a thought bubble. I was just thinking that the truth about AGW will probably lie between “no effect” and “the world will end next Tuesday”.
Whoops, I meant to reply, not up-vote. David, I have seen many sceptics provide coherent scientific critiques of the AGW story, but I lack the scientific background to know whether they are correct. Most sceptics, however, seem to take the view that some warming may have occurred, there may be an anthropogenic element, but (a) this has never been clearly demonstrated or properly quantified and (b) even if the Earth does warm further, there is no convincing demonstration that this will be harmful, and some reasons to believe that it would be beneficial. Those who argued 15 years ago that “the science is settled” are increasingly having to admit their incomplete understanding of climate, e.g. in attempting to account for the lack of warming since 1998.
Hi David,
My understanding is that a null hypothesis is always the starting point in a scientific investigation. ‘No difference/change/effect’ is the default position around which one or more alternative hypotheses are formulated. ‘Skeptic’ is a rather broad category, but in the scientific sense a CAGW skeptic would see a null hypothesis as not falsified. I don’t think that ‘adopt’ or ‘state’ (except to formalize a null hypothesis) enters into it.
Cheers
And yes I do think that many skeptics are wishful thinkers.
David,
I’m very glad you contribute to this forum; unfortunately most seem to attract strong supporters of a site’s raison d’etre, or contrary ad hominem disparagement, leading to precious little discussion. So thank you.
I wouldn’t use the expression “emotionally engage with the ‘evidence'”, primarily because where emotions get in the way, there’s no real engagement. But I’m being rather pedantic, as I think we agree on the basic point. But one of the main factors that led me to start questioning the AGW hypotheses was the nature and temper of the statements in its support, not those in its refutation. In fact, until I started to investigate it, I had read none refuting it. I’ve certainly observed and read refutation that has been accompanied by emotion, but I try to look at whatever the substance is that lies behind it.
Now it seems to me that you sit somewhere in between the two positions; good. May I ask for your opinion on this question, then?
A colleague who is a “sceptic” has a series of temperature charts for a number of Australian sites. Her graphs show the data officially recorded by observers over time, and the adjustments to those records that were made by some person or persons on behalf of our Bureau of Meteorology, where those adjusted records have been incorporated in IPCC reports. The adjustments have in every case reduced prior temperatures. As a result, we appear to have had a greater rate of temperature increase than would be shown if we relied on the original temperature records.
My question to you is a simple one, but one to which you may not have an answer, not because there is no answer, but that you may not know any more than I do.
What could be the rationale behind such adjustments? What assumptions or formulae could have been used? Or what other evidence might have been drawn upon to provide a reasonable justification for such adjustments? You see, I can understand instrumentation errors, but they could be either up or down. But I also respect the consistency and integrity of many of those who kept those records; that sort of steady record keeping has usually been undertaken by people who have an interest in getting things right. We don’t seem to have had the same adjustments applied to tidal and ocean level records. So I’m puzzled. So this is my question to you: what do you think has been the reasoning behind these temperature adjustments?
You know as well as I do, that some conclusions we may draw about very recent climate change may be influenced by what we understand to be the extent and range of temperature changes. So it is an important question. Now if our Bureau were to state that the rationale has been lost in the mists of time over the last twenty years, then I think it would be very useful to re-do the exercise, and show by coming up with the same result, how thorough and sound has been the advice passed on to the IPCC.
Now I have a second question: is my question objective, and have I expressed it objectively?
Peter I could not say (a) if the temperatures were adjusted or (b) if so, why they were adjusted. While I would be interested to hear what you friend had to say, my starting position is to accept the data supplied by the BOM to be unbiased and to have been recorded in good faith.
Of course the AGW hypothesis is not only reliant on temperature supplied by the BOM. I have been very persuaded by the work done by Professor Muller from Berkley. Muller was once a sceptic. His team gathered and merged a collection of 14.4 million land temperature observations from 44,455 sites across the world dating back to 1753. That is an amazing dataset. Even if the BOM’s data was systematically altered (which I doubt) I don’t think your friend could argue that there has been a systematic worldwide adjustment of temperature records.
Hi David,
According to a quote attributed to Muller in the NYT (2012) at the bottom of the Wiki page on Berkeley Earth: ‘Muller said he still found “that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed.”‘ So, yes, he is would seem to be a CAGW skeptic (certainly that quote succinctly summarizes what I think) and continues to be one. Perhaps he should be gaoled as Ass Prof Torcello suggests?
If you remember, the original intention of the Berkeley Earth project was to test the temperature record, not to attribute a cause to any increase in temperature they might find. Muller later decided to convert to ‘it must be anthropogenic CO2’ that has caused the 1.4C increase in the estimate of the Earth’s temperature since 1750. I’m not sure why, but that is his decision. I have yet to see any convincing data that anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of the end of the Little Ice Age or that its signal can be teased out of the background noise today, so I don’t think the null hypothesis has been falsified.
I could be wrong and human produced CO2 may be a significant factor in our current temperature regime, but as a scientist I feel the need to be convinced by facts, not passionate arguments with distinctly religious/political overtones. Also, accepting an anthropogenic contribution to global temperature would not be the same as believing every ‘it’s worse than we thought’ diatribe based on shonky models.
Cheers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth
DavidW, here is the whole quote!
In an op-ed published in the New York Times on 28 July 2012, Muller announced further findings from the project. He said their analysis showed that average global land temperatures had increased by 2.5 °F (1.4 °C) in 250 years, with the increase in the last 50 years being 1.5 °F (0.8 °C), and it seemed likely that this increase was entirely due to human caused greenhouse gas emissions. His opening paragraph stated:
“Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.” [17]
He said that their findings were stronger than those shown in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. Their analysis, set out in five scientific papers now being subjected to scrutiny by others, had used statistical methods which Robert Rohde had developed and had paid particular attention to overcoming issues that skeptics had questioned, including the urban heat island effect, poor station quality, data selection and data adjustment. In the fifth paper which they now made public, they fitted the shape of the record to various forcings including volcanoes, solar activity and sunspots. They found that the shape best matched the curve of the calculated greenhouse effect from human caused greenhouse gas emissions. Muller said he still found “that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed.”[17]
HE IS NOT A SKEPTIC AT ALL!!!!
According to this quote he reports that he a stronger correlation than reported in IPCC_4 but rejects “the most alarmists claims”, etc. Of course he would. He is rational.
Hi David,
Your last paragraph includes no more direct quotes relevant to Muller’s claim to be skeptical of CAGW than my previous comment. Your choice to believe that there is no difference between AGW and CAGW is interesting, but only in terms of understanding your comments.
I actually don’t know any ‘skeptics’ that deny some relationship between people and apparent temperature increases. What they deny is any convincing evidence that any human effect is dominating the climate of the earth.
Muller claiming that his data is better than others should be taken with the same gain of salt as you should apply to anyone else with a vested interest. Muller may or may not be a ‘real skeptic’ but I think we have to take him at his word that he thinks most CAGW claims are crap. Muller’s claim that UHI has no effect because cities are less than 1% of land area seems worth a challenge: monitoring points are not randomly distributed but concentrated around human populations; adjustments do seem to reduce older temperature estimates.
Cheers
DavidW
You ask me if I differentiate between CAGW and AGW. In CAGW, the word “catastrophic” is an undefined adjective. So define catastrophic.
You say you accept some relationship between people and “apparent temperature rises.” Do you really mean an “apparent temperature rises” . That suggests you think there is no effect. Or do you mean real temperature rises?
If you meant to say real temperature rise could you provide some examples of some empirical studies, which quantify a relationship between CO2 and temperature that yo agree with.
Hi David,
I don’t know what dictionary you use, but mine defines catastrophic. Double click on the word and use the pulldown menu – it will give you a definition. I’d say that ‘global’ is the only word in CAGW that is nebulous. I don’t think that any of the temperatures bandied about actually calculate a global temperature. Instead, we are left with various estimates.
I think the UHI is well demonstrated and also local temperature changes associated with other land use changes by humans. As I think I’ve said before, there are no studies demonstrating a clear relationship between anthropogenic CO2 and ‘global’ temperature. Could be a relationship, but I haven’t seen it demonstrated. Even the correlation between estimates of all atmospheric CO2 and estimates of global temperature is weak over the last 250 years. In several decades it is non-existent.
When I say ‘apparent temperature increases’, I’m simply trying to maintain scientific objectivity. You are a true believer, so you may find that difficult to understand, but in science you have few solid rocks to stand on. I accept that an increase in global temperature since the Little Ice Age seems to be real, but there are at least two caveats. First, the calculations of temperature have been challenged and may have different actual values than those bandied about. Second, if the temperature changes that we seem to be experiencing are part of a natural cycle, then ‘increasing’ seems to have too much baggage, because those who use it demand a content rise. Why pick just the ascending part of a cycle and harp on it?
David
I am not asserting nor concluding that there has been a systematic worldwide adjustment of temperature records. I’m just referencing those of the Australian BOM. We can both assume for the present that the data supplied by the BOM to the IPCC is unbiased and recorded in good faith.
We can readily enough demonstration the adjustments that have been made. You seem to be one of very few who would in fact be prepared to review what we provide. I am simply wondering why they needed to be adjusted. The reasons may be quite sound, and if not, that doesn’t turn the whole of AGW on its head.
My non-sceptical friends and most of the tertiary educated people I speak with, broadly accept the AGW view. Why? Because statements about it and explanations supporting it are about the only things they hear through the media, and they certainly don’t do any reading on it. Not one of them seems prepared to consider observational data that I provide, and engage in a discussion. What is refreshing is that you are prepared to discuss.
Now to Prof Muller. Whichever side of the fence anyone is on, or has been on, is of course irrelevant to the subject at hand; we use that information as some way to assess authority. My position on AGW is that I’m not at all satisfied with that authority, but that’s really immaterial. So for me, what matters is the data and its interpretation and the argument, not the authority.
Why do I not accept the orthodox scientific view? Well, there are a few differences between IPCC projections and actual observations. Some are that there is apparently a broken link between carbon dioxide levels and observed temperatures over the last 15+ years and our ARGO floats are not finding any “missing heat”, that ocean level rises are not accelerating, that Antarctic sea ice is expanding in contrast to Arctic declines, that northern winters have been very cold and wet over the last few years, that there is no tropospheric hot spot – these are some of the reasons that lead me to accept no longer the orthodox authorities on AGW.
Meanwhile, would you like us to offer proof concerning those BOM adjustments?
Yes I am interested. If it is not too much trouble.
Cheers
Actually David, If you read Professor Mullers CV and academic history it is clear that he was not a skeptic with respect to CAGW. It is, indeed an old trick to set yourself up a a proponent of the opposite camp to make you new “conversion”seem all the more dramatic. There have been many reviews and re analysis of Muller work which shows him up to be less than rigorous in his use of dtat and his analysis of it. It is interesting that when an audit of the BOMs temperature series was mooted, after the NZ authority was found to be fiddling theirs, they suddenly rushed out with their own internal audit and found a few, just a few, anomalies.
I do have scientific qualifications in Chemistry and Physics and, although I am now retired, worked for many decades in these fields in private industry. I have seen many dodgy scientific papers put out and I saw a recent study that tried to replicate the findings of 52 published medical papers. 47 of these 52 could not be replicated and significant errors were found in them. I have seen similar studies in other fields with similar results.
I believe that a lot of this is driven by Governments and NGOs, particularly extremist political one like the WWF and Greenpeace, picking a result and getting tame scientist to support it, as well as the publish or perish mentality that forces more studies out of academia than is warranted.
Where does that leave me. I do not believe anything that follows the words: “The Scientists Say”. These words are usually followed by some politically manipulative proposal to either limit our freedoms, take more of our money in taxes that will be used to buy votes or pay off cronies, or impact our lives in some other negative way.
Cynical I know but that is where my experience and personal study of these matters has led me.
Hi CameroH
With all due respect you are wrong when you say Muller was not a sceptic as these two references from 2003 and 2004 clearly indicate.
Muller R. (2004) Global Warming Bombshell A prime
piece of evidence linking human activity to climate change turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics Technology Review MIT
https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/global-change-debates/Sources/05-Hockeystick-global-temperature/popular-press/Muller_on_the_Hockeystick.pdf
Muller, R. (2003) Medieval Global Warming: A controversy over 14th century climate shows the peril of letting politics shape the scientific debate. By Richard Muller Technology for Presidents Technology Review
http://muller.lbl.gov/
QED
One can appreciate Fraser’s frustration. While the legions of climate righteousness enjoy a huge advantage in funding, favourable coverage by news media, access to the most advanced computer modelling, the backing of 97% of scientists and control of peer review, they are losing the public debate to a tiny disorganised rag-tag unfunded discredited fringe rabble of sceptics whose only weapon is empirical evidence. It just isn’t fair.
“they are losing the public debate”
This is manifestly untrue. Everybody I know believes in AGW and are quite worried about it.
Well one reason is the continual lying such as your ‘97%’ of scientists which is just not true. You and your supporters of AGW can’t stick with facts because you don’t have any. Every climate model is wrong for the simple reason nobody fully understands how the Earth’s climate really works. But all this is just not fair. Well suck it up and show us the evidence or admit you are wrong.
Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace has said that climate change
is a combination of “extreme political ideology and a religious cult”. Yes, he
is correct.
When I was a “believer” I thought, well these guys are “scientists” and it’s
great they have gone public about their findings and actively warning everyone
the imminent dire dangers we will be facing. The years passed, no doomsday (I kept going skiing and swimming at the coast – it all still looked good), then
climategate, one after another collapsed climate change conferences, hockey stick junk science, the IAC report on the IPCC etc, bit by bit doubt set in as the doomsday scenarios were constantly changing and being put back further and further into the future.
I started to read other scientist’s alternate views and reflected on my own
knowledge on Astronomy and Physics, further doubt set in. I attended public climate meetings, talked to many evangelical believers and noted their behaviour, it was so similar to evalangical religious belief. Their open eyes, absolute conviction, ignoring any request for discussion, clarification or challenging questions; their retinue of apostles who are quick to block any gentile’s approach and the accusation, dismissal and insult were soon to follow. The penny dropped in my mind and it has, and is continuing to, drop in more and more minds everywhere – except for the true believers.
John
When I plug the name “Patrick Moore” into Google Scholar I get no hits. For a comment like that to be taken seriously this he needs to have published his argument on climate change in an academic journal.
I’m sorry but this guy fails the pub test. 🙂
David,
Perhaps you should read about him. Just Google him, rather than wonder whether he has written for peer-reviewed journals. Then you could decide whether or not he should have made such a comment (about Greenpeace, rather than ‘climate change’) with somewhat more knowledge. His story is interesting, though the current Greenpeace people distance him from themselves, and dispute some of what he says.
Don
I take your point and I will have a fresh look at him. He seems to have lead an interesting life. Salmon farmer etc.
And I am quite sure that there are people in Greenpeace who worship Gia and chase Japanese whalers in the Antarctic, etc.
But I am sure you will appreciate that I will disagree about those sorts of comments about climate science in general.
Finally, I would like to say that I do appreciate the effort you put into hosting this site.
🙂
But David, was not a Greenpeace media statement/release used as acceptable evidence for CAGW in one of the IPCC’s working papers?
Please make it a pint of Guinness for me David.
PS. Did you read my entry in “What makes a good society? how rapid climate changes bought an end to the Moche society in the 8th Century? I know CAGWs hate history, that why they tried to airbrush out the MWP (and don’t mention the hotter Roman WP and even the hotter Minoan WP).
Ooops… “Building a good society”
Also climate change was one of the factors that bought an end to stone age England.
While I am at it David here are some quotes from award winning scientists for you chew on at the pub, while I have my Guinness – thank you. You may notice that the term “new religion” is quoted.
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to
know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC
Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical
chemist.
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of
scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” – U.S Government
Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of
NOAA.
“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” – Nobel Prize Winner for
Physics, Ivar Giaever.
Don, I wonder if this outburst from a prominent (and publicly salaried, lucky chap) proponent is an opportunity.
Could we interest him in being the proponent in a public debate on any topic of his choice, with any non-ABC media channel of his choice?
(The ABC is excluded because of its stated position, which is firmly on one side of the debate. If it didn’t have that unique position, it would be in the running to host this important and ratings-improving event. Most unfortunate, but it is important that the moderator be seen to be impartial. The ABC could not honestly make a claim of impartial moderation.)
He seems to be saying that the good guys don’t get a turn. Amazing!! Well let’s offer them 50% time. With all their publicly funded resources and 50% time, you’d think that they would be a shoe-in to win over the doubters…
On such a debate: I don’t think that either BF or I are the right ones, though we do share the distinction of not being climate scientists! The proper debate is public, between teams of three, all with some claim to scientific expertise, with a neutral chair who also has read his/her way into the debate, to be followed by questions to all six from the floor. No vote at the end. Public place. Some crowd control so that hecklers are hijackers can be dealt with. To be televised or edited for TV later. Some impartial public body to sponsor, or an agreed coalition of sponsors from both sides.
‘hecklers and hijackers’
One thing I’d like to see: a debate on the 7.30 report on the subject ‘is the climate changing and if so why?’ between Bernie Fraser and Don Aitkin.
I knew Bernie when he was Treasury Secretary. He’s always been of the Left, but I don’t think that got in the way of him being a good Treas Sec. Since he left the Reserve Bank, however, his Left sympathies have been more obvious. Given that so many in the warmist camp are Left-wingers, and use the alleged threat of CAGW to push a Leftist agenda, Bernie may have taken the CAGW-meme on trust rather than giving it the scrutiny which you, I, and many others have. Many who are now sceptics were interested in the issue as a potentially serious concern, but found more and more flaws and uncertainties as they examined it. Bernie has the capacity to sensibly examine it, but appears not to have done so. I would hope he’d be beyond group-think, but apparently not. Unlike Ian Castles, whose work with David Henderson so discredited the IPCC modelling. Of course, I always found Castles an impeccable statistician, I had no inkling as to whether or not he had any political leaning.
In Response to David
(tried to post with “reply” but failed about 5 times so gave up…),
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
I think the null hypothesis is what it says: the hypothesis being tested is false.
The task of the proponent is to falsify the null hypothesis.
I have seldom heard such uncritical acceptance of a dogma as was displayed in Fraser’s speech the other day. One wonders just why he was appointed to the climate change authority if he knows nothing about the science of climate change.
The only recent speech to rival this was the one by Professor Ian Chubb, supposedly the ‘Chief Scientist of Australia’; he had at least 10 basic scientific errors in his very short piece in The Australian; “Surely CO2 is a climate culprit”. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/surely-co2-is-a-climate-culprit/story-e6frgd0x-1226803580620#
We also have someone who claims to be a ‘Dr’ and a
schoolteacher who also knows next to nothing about the subject, yet apparently
is teaching our year 9 kids. I refer to ‘Dr Peter Wilson’ whose article; “Carbon
has nowhere to go, so we’re stuck with it”. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/letters/plants-cant-keep-up-with-amount-of-co2-we-make/story-fn558imw-1226805396640
He states that if we have pumped 2 trillion tonnes of
‘carbon’ into the air, then it has gone; “Nowhere”. He also claims; “Every atom
we have mined from the ground and put into the atmosphere is still hanging
there”. Incredibly, after spouting this complete and utter nonsense, he admonishes Maurice Newman for speaking on climate, saying he “should be tested for his
understanding” before debating climate.
I just wonder what science degree Wilson has, if any; if
he has one he should certainly return it. And if he is teaching our kids this
complete and utter tripe, he should be fired from his position
immediately.
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