In her emotional and somewhat prejudiced article (The Age, 3/11) Sharon Beder seems to condemn all who question the accepted environmental doctrine on global warming and the need to take urgent and drastic action regardless of the cost to society. She offers not one whit of evidence to counter the arguments of those who question the dogma but chooses to condemn the messengers (of whom I am one) because of the livery she believes they wear. To impugn the integrity of scientists and economists with whose views she disagrees because a component of their resources comes from industry is insulting. It would be equally silly and presumably untrue if I were to question her integrity because she needs to keep up a refractory environmental image to advance her career.
Let me make just three rebuttals of her unfair implications. She fails to mention that one of the scientists she demonises, Professor Richard Linden is a highly respected fellow of the US Academy of Science; he buttresses his criticism of unwarranted climate change alarms with very sound science. She ignores the fact that Brian Tucker was writing articles on the scientific uncertainty associated with global warming while still in CSIRO. And she ignores the widely accepted advice of the economic modellers in the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics that extra funding should be sought externally to ease the drain on Treasury.
One danger in Dr Beder's article is her tendency to polarise politically the global warming issue. If climate change is indeed as important as she (and I) aver, then the policy to cope should be feasible, effective and based on rational argument -- not wild assertions aimed at criticising a Government that has Australia's interests at heart.
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