“The great global warming swindle”: Comments by the Australian Academy of Science

I received this e-mail from the Australian Academy of Science and thought that readers might be interested in reading it. (I’ve copied the text from this page.)

‘The great global warming swindle’ television program: Comments by the Academy’s
National Committee for Earth System Science

12 July 2007

It is both exasperating and unfortunate when the media either exaggerate stories, sometimes to idiotic degrees, or air poorly-vetted and inaccurate presentations that are purported to provide journalistic balance. It has been so for global warming ever since the topic burst into the media in the late 1980s with images of floods, droughted crops, storms, lightning bolts, cracked clay pans, carcasses in deserts, and people in deck-chairs on the beach up to their necks in sea water. This has created vividly false impressions. Now the TV program ‘The great global warming swindle’ (aired on Australian Broadcasting Corporation television on 12 July 2007) presents a counter story with even greater, but opposite, exaggeration and inaccuracy. What can the man in the street make of this? How can the publics’ right to be well informed be addressed by such polarizing and incompatible presentations in the media? Is human-induced climate change the biggest threat to the world this century, or is it just a fraudulent claim by climate scientists trying to drum up research dollars?

Richard Branson’s $32 million competition for work on climate change

Great news that Richard Branson launched a competition to come up with an innovation to remove carbon from the atmosphere with $32 million prize money.

AM - Saturday, 10 February , 2007  08:11:00

Reporter: Jane Hutcheon

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Billionaire businessman Sir Richard Branson and former US vice president Al Gore have launched a $32 million competition to come up with an innovation which removes carbon from the atmosphere.

While the so-called Earth Challenge is funded by the flamboyant entrepreneur, he’s gathered a panel of eminent experts, including Australian of the Year Tim Flannery, to judge the entries.

The prize was unveiled in London, and our Europe Correspondent, Jane Hutcheon, was there.

The opinion piece by Mirko Bagaric: Warming isn’t our biggest worry

In this opinion piece, Mirko Bagaric writes:

HOW worried do you reckon people in developing nations — who are dying from hunger and other causes at the rate of 30,000 a day — are about global warming? It seems like a stupid question because the answer is so obvious. But the answer is all important. It demonstrates why the supposed No.1 ethical concern of our generation (global warming) is in the main misguided self-interest dressed up as a moral crusade.

Hundreds of millions of people are already living in environmental conditions that are far worse than anything that will occur as a result of greenhouse warming, even according to the grimmest projections by green groups.

And our response? As a nation, we are now obsessed with fussing about speculative future harm while failing to come anywhere close to meeting the international benchmark of donating 0.7 per cent of gross national income to the developing world.

Sustainability Science

Last night Mr T and I went to hear Prof. Ian Lowe give the first Rick Farley Lecture at the Sydney Conservatorium. It was quite interesting, and good to hear the phrase “sustainability science” again, which I havn’t heard for a while.

Essentially, sustainability science seems to be about understanding the life support systems of the planet and then, hopefully, it’s up to societies to live in accordance with these life support systems. A few years ago I found this CSIRO paper  on sustainability focussing on Australia.

In the Q & A session I asked Ian about the oft-levelled charge at renewable energy sources: that electricity supply is not guaranteed. His reply drew on Australia being such a huge continent and that it was known to be possible.

Darfur dead higher than thought, Islands appear in the receding Arctic

From Scientific American I just noticed two particularly interesting stories: a very sad one: Darfur Dead Much Higher than Commonly Reported  and this one: Polar bears drown, islands appear in Arctic thaw.