Climate activists urge people to pay attention to the science, not the climate-change deniers

MEDIA RELEASE
23rd June 2010

Community members speak out in response to the news that “Watts Up with the Climate?
Australian Tour” speakers Anthony Watts and David Archibald are coming to Hobart to
spread misinformation about the climate at the Stanley Burbury Lecture Theatre, UTAS,
Hobart, 6.30 pm on Wednesday 23rd June.
“While we believe in freedom of speech, we call on the public, the media and other organisations
not to get hoodwinked into believing the climate deniers. Real science is conducted through peerreviewed
publications in respected journals”, said Phil Harrington from Climate Action Hobart.
“If these people had any credible science to present, they would be presenting it through such a
journal as well as going on a national speaking tour.”
Margaret Steadman, from Sustainable Living Tasmania, said “There is an overwhelming body of
science that supports the need for emergency climate action and we would like to draw people’s
attention to that. Quite aside from the work of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, strong statements affirming the reality of human contribution to climate change have been
released by the National Academies of Science of many countries, including: Australia, Belgium,
Brazil, Canada, the Caribbean, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan,
Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the US and UK.”
Ms Steadman said: “A large number of professional scientific bodies and associations have also
affirmed the reality of human influence on the climate, including, in the United States, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency,
NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, the American Geophysical Union, the American
Institute of Physics, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the American Meteorological
Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as the Royal Society
of the UK, the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, and Australia’s CSIRO.”
“At the same time, climate science has been studied for almost two hundred years now, the basic
physics and chemistry of the greeenhouse effect being widely accepted and well understood, and
the climatic changes now being observed do indeed fit increasingly well with the predictions
previously made over the last seventy years about the effect of human induced carbon pollution of
the earth’s atmosphere (see “climateology timeline.pdf” available at
http://www.climateactionhobart.org/climate-change-info).”
“We hope people don’t pay their $20 so they can go in and be told that human-induced global
warming or climate change is a myth and that society can keep on polluting the air with
greenhouse gasses”, said MrHarrington. “This message, while relieving people of their anxieties
about the future, actually risks derailing the urgent transition we need to take to ensure a safe
climate for us, our children and our children’s children”.
Various books have been written about the endeavours of corporations, scientists and pseudoscientists
to prevent necessary policy or legislative changes in the face of overwhelming scientific
evidence of likely harm. For example, Clive Hamilton’s “Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate
Change”, Oreskes and Conway’s “Merchants of Doubt” or James Hoggan’s “Climate Cover-Up:
The Crusade to Deny Global Warming.” Both groups urged people to read them or check out
websites such as www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462 (Climate change: A guide for the
perplexed – 29 myths listed) and
www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/dealing-in-doubt.pdf .
Mr Harrington said: “When weighing the risk of doing nothing compared to that of taking action,
it is clear we are better off playing it safe and taking action – especially when the actions we are
calling for, such as a switch to 100% renewable energy, better public transport, energy efficiency,
protecting our native forests and sustainable agriculture, will make our lives better in any case.”
See Climate Action Hobart’s Ten Steps for a Safe Climate at www.climateactionhobart.org for
more information.
Phil Harrington, Margaret Steadman