Antinuclear

Polluting industries’ front groups – Australia’s Climate Sceptics

(includes video) Rogues or respectable? How climate change sceptics spread doubt and denial,  Independent Australia, 14 Sep 2011, Professor Ian Enting  takes a look at the front groups and published texts of Australia’s climate sceptics. He says, “most prominent pseudo-sceptical scientists are…gathering together to provide apparent respectability to front organisations that are designed to spread confusion”..…

The reality is that the most prominent pseudo-sceptical scientists are …..gathering together to provide apparent respectability to front organisations that are designed to spread confusion.

This is the message from Merchants of Doubt : How a Handful of Scientists Obscured Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.

Authors Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, backed up by documents obtained in the course of tobacco litigation, show that not only was greenhouse denial using the same misinformation techniques as the tobacco industry, but that it was often the same groups and the same people. These anti-science activities hide behind names such as “Friends of Science”.

In Australia we have a similar phenomenon, with the additional twist of often using names that aim to capture a “martyr for science” image. They present themselves as being ignored by an entrenched establishment, when in reality they are ignoring or distorting the accumulated scientific knowledge.

An early starter was the Lavoisier Group  — a single issue organisation similar in structure and name to organisations like the Bennelong Society (on indigenous affairs), the HR Nicholls society (on industrial relations) and the Samuel Griffith Society (on constitutional matters and support for the monarchy). But for the Lavoisier Group, the “martyr for science” ethos is a bit of a stretch — Lavoisier was executed for his activities as a tax collector.

The latest entry is the Galileo Movement , again co-opting the name of a “martyr for science” for an anti-science activity. The Galileo Movement’s founders funded the previous visit to Australia by Viscount Monckton. The movement’s “Independent Climate Science Group” includes Monckton, Bob Carter, S. Fred Singer and Ian Plimer as well as Garth Paltridge.

Monckton’s extravagant claims were described by John Abraham earlier in this series. Monckton’s recent testimony to the US Congress has been extensively refuted by a larger group of scientists…. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2011/environment/rogues-or-respectable-how-climate-change-sceptics-spread-doubt-and-denial/

September 14, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming | climate change - global warming