Professor Bob Carter is a former Chair of the Australian Research Council’s Panel on Engineering, Applied and Earth Sciences, and a former Director of the Australian Secretariat of the international Ocean Drilling Program. Townsville, Australia
In perusing the near-daily deluge of articles advancing global warming as an indisputable fact, one is constantly confronted by the lack of balance, commonsense and critical thinking, not to mention an endemic ignorance of elementary science and basic economics. A new book sets the record straight
Given the heavily technical nature of the global warming debate, how is the ordinary citizen to assess whether the balance of truth lies with the specialist minority of scientists who assert climate alarm, or with the wider scientific opinion that (natural) climate change is happening today at about the same rate, and in the same ways, that it always has?
Western nations are fortunate to have inherited from their Enlightenment forbears a system of democratic government that is rooted in the application of empirical science, sound engineering and logical reasoning to address the problems of society. It is no accident, therefore, that many of the majestic engineering projects of the 19th century still stand proudly today, nor that 19th and 20th century science experienced such breathtaking advances in knowledge, which included the discovery of the mechanisms of evolution and genetic inheritance, the explanation of continental drift, the splitting and harnessing of the atom and the development of the transistor and microelectronics – to name just some of the most obvious.
Nonetheless, early in the 21st century we find that some branches of science have become tainted by the nihilistic diseases of post-modern and post-normal thinking, and that even up to the high level at which scientific academies provide policy advice to government. In parallel, our governments have increasingly become divorced from accurate scientific advice. They have also become hostage to divisive party politics, to the incessant use of political spin and above all to capture by special interest groups – of which the radical environmentalist lobby is significantly the most dangerous.
_______________________________
About Face! Why the World Needs More Carbon Dioxide: The Failed Science of Global Warming.
Arthur Hughes, Madhav Khandekar & Cliff Ollier.
Two Harbors Press, Minneapolis USA, 313 pp.
Paperback available here. Downloadable eBook from Barnes & Noble at US $7.99, here.