How to Become a Global Warming Skeptic

By jennifer

September 19, 2006

In an early blog post titled 'Debate and Dissent is Healthy', part of my series on Al Gore's movie 'An Inconvenient Truth', I explained how tabloid e-news site Crikey had started a list of global warming skeptics and was suggesting that we were a small and misguided 'clique'.

According to their journalist Sophie Black I got on the list because I once wrote: "As a consequence of the burning of fossil fuels, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are currently increasing. There is no evidence, however, to suggest this will bring doom or that, by signing the Kyoto Protocol, Australia would make a significant difference to global carbon dioxide levels or to the rate of climate change."

So it's not so much that I deny global warming or climate change (and by the way I don't), or that I deny that increasingly levels of carbon dioxide may drive some warming, but rather I have been labeled a skeptic because I don't believe in Kyoto or that the current elevated atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide mean we are ruin.

Today Crikey has published the names of MORE so-called global warming skeptics. It includes: Miranda Devine (Sydney Morning Herald columnist), my colleague at the IPA Alan Moran, Prof Jon Jenkins, (NSW Parliament), blogger Tim Blair, radio broadcaster Alan Jones, the Prime Minister John Howard, Alan Oxley (Head of APEC Studies Centre at Monash University), Christopher Pearson (columnist with The Weekend Australian), The Australian Industry Greenhouse Network's John Eyles and Christian Kerr (Crikey journalist).

But Christian was given the opportunity to immediately deny that he is a skeptics with the comment: "I’m not a climate change sceptic. I’m not a Chicken Little, either. Science shows us that global temperatures have varied throughout the earth’s history. And science has also shown itself more than capable of overcoming remarkable challenges. Sorry if that disappoints the apocalyptically-minded."

Come on Christian Kerr! If I am a skeptic you're a skeptic. I also believe in science and technology and haven't written anywhere that the sky is falling in.

The original global warming skeptics list published by Crikey on Friday included William Kininmonth (former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation), Ray Evans (once executive at Western Mining Corporation), Chris Mitchell (Editor-in-chief of The Australian), Terry McCrann (News Ltd business writer), Andrew Bolt (Herald Sun columnist), Hugh Morgan (head of the Business Council of Australia until 2005), Alan Wood (The Australian's finance writer), Ian Castles (Former head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics), Ian Plimer (Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide), Bob Carter (A former director of the Australian Ocean Drilling Office, Professor of paleoclimatology at James Cook University) and me.

I am going to nominate a reader, commentator and contributor to this blog Paul Williams to the growing clique of global warming skeptics for his great contribution to dissent and debate by way of that blog post titled 'Hockey Sticks & Ancient Pine Trees'.

And also, On Line Opinion editor and blogger, Graham Young, for suggesting Tuvalu and Kiribati still exist as Pacific Islands in his blog post of 8th May last year entitled 'Antropophagai anyone'.

I invite others to nominate their favourite skeptic with a short justification by way of comment below.

You may also like to send your nomination and justification to Crikey with an email to boss@crikey.com.au.

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Today's Crikey list include the following contributions from the named skeptics:
Miranda Divine for 'Its the End as He Knows it' published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 10th August, and
Alan Moran for 'Alarm on Global Warming Just a Load of Hot Air' published in the Age on 8th September.