Antinuclear

Australian Climate Denialism from Mont Pelerin Society to Tony Abbott

In Australia, climate science contrarian columnists can barely touch their keyboards without typing out the words “global warming faith” or explaining how human-caused global warming is some sort of “new religion”.

This “climate religion” narrative often goes hand-in-hand with another favourite denialist talking point where climate scientists are only doing what they do because there’s a dollar in it.

Presumably the laws of physics, the melting ice sheets, the increasing risk of bushfires, the hottest decades on record and the acidifying oceans are also waiting for their cash.

Maurice Newman, the man hand-picked by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to be the government’s top business advisor, loves both of these debating points.

Newman has described climate scientists as being a “global warming priesthood” and belonging to a new “religion”. In a second opinion column in two weeks in The Australian, Newman repeats his cynicism over the IPCC and climate scientists, describing them as a “cartel” that “will deny all contrary evidence”.  Newman even repeats the myth that in the 1970s scientists were certain the world was heading for global cooling, when in fact, as this study shows, a healthy majority of scientific papers were predicting the opposite. ……

In Australia, Mont Pelerin Society members include John Roskam (list excerpt here), executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs; Greg Lindsay (list excerpt here) , executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies; and mining magnate Ron Manners, executive director of the pro-mining think tank the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation.

All three organisations have actively pushed climate science scepticism and denial or heavily understated the risks of continuing to burn record amounts of fossil fuels.

Lindsay is a former president of the Mont Pelerin Society. In his 2008 “Presidential Address,” published in a Mont Pelerin newsletter, Lindsay claimed that climate change research had become an “industry” which lacked integrity.

His conspiracy theory was that scientists “have a vested interest in supporting the theory, so that the funding drip becomes a torrent.”

Lindsay also used the popular denial talking point that people who accepted the science of climate change were blinded by belief.

He said: “As many critics have pointed out, their belief in the theory, in too many instances, borders on the superstitious and mystical. The fact that so many minds are closed to any doubt strongly suggests that we are dealing with a new species of the kind of religious dogma which the Enlightenment developed to counter.”

The argument put by Lindsay back in 2008 is identical to that put by Tony Abbott’s chief business advisor Maurice Newman in recent columns, the latest only a few weeks ago……..http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/01/15/exclusive-mont-pelerin-society-revealed-home-leading-pushers-climate-science-denial

January 16, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, spinbuster