The Clean Industrial Revolution

To start the new year off I was on a climate debate on Sunrise on Monday with a conservative UK political advisor - see the video (and crazy comments) here if you can bear it. For those wanting some sort of insight into where we are in Australia in 2010, this is my summary: evidence and reason is losing the public debate. Debating what we do about climate change in a policy sense is very much needed and debating the science within the realm of science is the exactly what scientific progress is about.  However somehow trying to discredit thousands of working climate scientists on national TV by a UK Lord with no scientific background is just slightly crazy - and there are many coming from the rafters that are given this platform of crazy.  Have a look at the video when Monckton says ‘I’m not an expert’ - I was speechless to be honest given I teach, research and coordinate scientific syntheses on climate science every day of my working life. This is not to say there are no debates in the climate science community - of course there are - but not about the fundamentals of climate change and how humans are contributing to it (Richard Lindzen is known to be the lone contrarian among the hundreds of other atmospheric physicists - although he doesn’t dispute that greenhouse gases will warm the planet by the way) . If you would like to see the latest synthesis of climate science by climate scientists go to ‘The Copenhagen Diagnosis’ which undertook this process in writing its report. Do you think I should get national media play debating whether junk food causes cancer - NO - I’m not an expert in cancer.  We have opinions but opinions do not shape scientific progress.  It seems anyone is free to comment on climate science - I remember a historian being on the front page of ‘The Australian’ last year explaining how the climate science is flawed. This is going to be a big year of this nonsense given the impending Australian election - how backward has the debate become - it’s up to our national leaders to see through this right? Will they?