Plea to fight climate deniers, The Advertiser, 25 April 2008

An Adelaide professor says scientists must do more to stand up to “anti-intellectual” climate change deniers, by explaining the difference between good science and spin.

Director of the Research institute for Climate Change and Sustainability, University of Adelaide, Professor Barry Brook, said in climate science and policy a few, apparently well-educated, people continued to deny the vast body of scientific knowledge and analysis.

He said they were variously called sceptics, “denialists”, contrarians”, delayers or delusionists. “Whatever the label you attach to them, they are all cut of the same anti-intellectual cloth,” Professor Brook said in Australasian Science Magazine.

“Their business is the dissemination of disinformation, doubt and unscientific nonsense. One of their most regular ploys is to leverage the widespread lack of public appreciation of how science operates.”

Professor Brook said because science was inherently complex and often technical, climate change deniers were often able to present a plausible case to a general audience.

“Some people will attempt to hijack science for political or ideological reasons and in doing so besmirch science’s public image,” he said. “They are good at doing this and they often exert a disproportionate influence on policy. Groups with vested interests in business-as-usual will attempt to push so-called scientific evidence to support their claims. They are, at best, drawing selectively on a small part of the evidence or, at worst, relying on junk science – outdated, discredited or fabricated data and ideas.”

Professor Brook said if confronted with good science, deniers sidestepped valid critiques and ignored counter-evidence.

“They are hard to pin down because they don’t want a serious scientific debate,” he said.

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Yes, professor: I’m a climate change denier, The Advertiser, 26 April 2008

I refer to “Plea to fight climate deniers” (The Advertiser, yesterday).

Professor Barry Brook, as one of the “sceptics, denialists, contrarians, delayers or delusionists” and a person apparently cut from “anti-intellectual cloth”, I’d like to thank you for your kind words and point out that, in my case, the University of New South Wales, Sydney Teachers’ College and the University of Technology, Sydney, all owe yourself and those others of “intellectual cloth” an apology for so fraudulently bestowing upon my “anti-intellectual” self the degree, diploma and postgraduate degree I somehow earned in various disciplines.

So, I will, as an anti-intellectual “delusionist” who does not believe in the catastrophic human-produced greenhouse effect, hereby publicly promise to immediately resign from my posts at UNSW and Sydney University Foundation as soon as the catastrophic human-produced, greenhouse effect occurs.

Larry John Mounser, Waverley, NSW.