BREAZE

The Lord Monckton circus came to Ballarat last week with its pantomime of villians (Al Gore, the ABC - everybody hiss!), tirade against the corruption of climate scientists and 90 minute litany of misquotations and distortions. A truly challenging night.

Here is my response to the night, published in The Courier last Thursday.

Someone I respect once told me “you’re entitled to your own opinions but you can’t have your own facts.”

This is particularly true in discussions about climate change, where scientific fact is so regularly trumped by political opinion. It’s like politics is the schoolyard bully who takes the wimpy science kid behind the bike shed every lunch time for a beating.

The circus around Christopher Monckton that descended on Ballarat this week is a perfect example. His talk was designed to raise doubt about climate science in order to discredit the carbon price. His politics may be the winner but a clearer understanding of the science is bound to be the loser.

BREAZE is a supporter of the carbon pricing package but opinions in the community on it are mixed. But think what you like about the carbon tax, one thing we can no longer say is that there is no case for taking action on climate change.

Peer-reviewed scientists are in furious agreement that the world is warming and they are convinced beyond reasonable doubt that human activities are the cause. Yes, when it comes to projecting the consequences into the future there is a range of views, but in general these views range from bleak to catastrophic.

There isn’t a peer-reviewed scientist who thinks that climate change is not a problem we need to address and on this fact, even the politicians seem to agree as both sides of politics are proposing plans to tackle climate change.

Enter Christopher Monckton, long time denier of climate change scientific fact.

Monckton is not a scientist. He has no scientific qualifications, has never held a position on a scientific body or research institution and he has never submitted any of his ideas to criticism from the wider body of scientists through the peer review process. If he had, he would be politely informed that his evidence is incomplete, his arguments need work and his views would be ignored until he fixed the errors in his work.

The simple truth is that he hasn’t earned the right to have his own facts.

Instead, he wheels his unsubstantiated opinions out in public and relies on us being gullible enough to believe them. He couldn’t have taken us for bigger mugs on Monday night if he’d stood up and told us that one plus one equals three.

Monckton and his colleagues, Bob Carter and Ian Plimer, have been very successful in confusing us into thinking that scientists don’t know whether climate change is that much of problem.