Former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull has used a speech in Sydney to deliver a vigorous defence of climate change science.  The video of his speech can be found here.

Delivering the Virginia Chadwick memorial lecture last night, Mr Turnbull said a war was being waged on scientists by “those opposed to taking action to cut emissions, many because it does not suit their own financial interests”.

Mr Turnbull lost the Liberal Party leadership in late 2009 over his decision to support the Rudd government’s carbon pricing scheme and his successor Tony Abbott once described the climate change science as “crap”. Continue reading →

Graham Readfearn, Crickey.com, July 22 2011

‘Climate change denier Lord Christopher Monckton has threatened to sue the ABC and described its chairman Maurice Newman as a “shrimp-like
wet little individual”.Lord Monckton, who is towards the end of a near month-long tour of Australia, told a Melbourne audience he had met with Newman at a breakfast and requested he intervene in the broadcast of the Radio National documentary Background Briefing.Experienced ABC journalist Wendy Carlisle interviewed Lord Monckton and several of his supporters for the documentary, which first aired on Sunday. The documentary also highlighted links between Lord Monckton and mining magnate and supporter Gina Rinehart, chairman of Hancock Prospecting. Continue reading →

When it comes to obtaining research data, Canadian academic Steve Easterbrook said it best:

“Any fool knows you don’t get data from a scientist by using FOI requests, you do it by stroking their ego a little, or by engaging them with a compelling research idea that you need the data to pursue.”

“And in the rare cases where this doesn’t work, you do some extra work yourself to reconstruct the data you need using other sources, or you test your hypothesis using a different approach (because it’s the research result we care about, not any particular dataset).” Continue reading →

The Scottish peer Lord Monckton has been raising hell against the carbon tax in barnstorming rallies and public meetings around the country. But just who is Lord Monckton and who are the forces behind him? Chief amongst them a mysterious group called the Galileo Movement and mining magnate and now media player Gina Rinehart. Reporter Wendy Carlisle

From ABC Background Briefing.  This is quite extraordinary.  Galileo must be rolling in his grave.   Have a listen.

JO Chandler, The Age, June 29 2011

The myth of Climate-gate has endured because of media failings.

GEOLOGIST and long-time climate change denialist Bob Carter materialised on this page on Monday, reprising a weary routine – tiptoeing through the scientific archive to find the morsels of data that might, with a twirl here and a shimmy there, contrive to support his theory that global warming is a big fat conspiracy.

Meanwhile, in real news, the journal Nature Geoscience published a paper by American and British scientists that found West Antarctica’s Pine Island glacier is now melting 50 per cent faster than in 1994 (see below). Continue reading →

Sydney Morning Herald, June 27, 2011

West Antarctica’s biggest glacier is melting 50 per cent faster than in 1994, adding to a global increase in sea levels, US and UK scientists found.

The Pine Island glacier is losing about 78 cubic kilometrs (30 cubic miles) of ice per year, the researchers at Columbia University in New York and the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England, said today. That’s up from 53 cubic kilometes in 1994. The study in the journal Nature Geoscience is based on data from a 2009 expedition. Continue reading →

Recently, John Parkinson sent me a threatening and abusive email not too dissimilar to those recently collated by journalist Graham ReadFearn.   In a later exchange, the same individual tried to take the line that this behaviour was not threatening or abusive, and that the scientific community was being too sensitive.  Similar sentiments have been circulated by Tim Blair.  My only response to John Parkinson was “What part of these emails is not abusive and threatening?”.

Here is an illuminating discussion of this issue by Graham Readfearn, released on ABC Drum Unleashed yesterday.

GRAHAM READFEARN, ABC Drum Unleashed, June 10, 2011

You will be chased down the street with burning stakes and hung from your f****** neck until you are dead, dead, dead.

The above note was contained in an email sent to one of these academics, but it is just one example. There are many scientists who over recent years have been receiving notes and communications like this. Continue reading →

Gold Coast Mail (June 8 2011)

CLIMATE change sceptics are an endangered species in Australia, a national survey shows.

The survey of almost 3100 Australians found 74 per cent believe the world’s climate is changing.

When asked a different question about the causes of climate change, which removed the reference to personal beliefs, 90 per cent of respondents said human activity was a factor.

Just five per cent said climate change was entirely caused by natural processes.

Overall, less than six per cent of respondents could reasonably be classified as true climate change sceptics, the study by Griffith University researchers found.

“It’s clear that people want the government to do something about climate change and they also feel they have a personal responsibility to act,” environmental and social psychologist Professor Joseph Reser told AAP. Continue reading →