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 →

STEPHAN LEWANDOWSKY

ABC DRUM

Much confusion and spin infects current public discussion of “peer reviewed” research: first we had Maurice Newman, the Chairman of the ABC, who suggested that “distinguished scientists” challenge the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change by “peer reviewed research”, although he oddly failed to name such research.

Now we have John McLean, an author of a lone article that was celebrated by some media scribes as overturning the scientific consensus on climate change, cry“censorship” because his response to a devastating deconstruction of his work in the peer reviewed literature was not accepted for publication.

So what exactly is peer reviewed research? How does it work? Continue reading →

Contribution by Dr Chris McGrath

A useful update on climate science relevant to the Australian policy debate was released today by the Climate Commission, authored by Professor Will Steffen, Executive Director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University, Canberra.

The report is titled, “The Critical Decade: Climate science, risks and responses”. It provides a short summary of recent climate science and is filled with graphics and key pieces of information for informing the current policy debate.

There are many news reports about it, including the ABC, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian.

In an unexpected move, retiring Liberal Senator Nick Minchin quickly denounced the report as “nonsense” and because it was co-authored by the anti-Christ, Hitler, and Osama bin Laden combined in one.* Continue reading →