Experts as ideologues - Climate Change: The Facts - page 100

Theproblem,unfortunately,isthatscientistslikePlimer,MichaelsandCarterarerarely
heard outside niche publications such as this one or specialist websites like Watts Up With
That ? And this isn't because they're not credible witnesses. Each has scientific credentials
as long as your arm but in the crazy world of climate science, knowledge, experience
and real world evidence count for less than being on-message. That is, if you support the
so-called 'consensus' on man-made global warming then academic tenure, prizes, lavish
grants and favourable interviews by Robyn Williams on the ABC are guaranteed; but if
you don't, your destiny is to be cast into outer darkness and dismissed as 'anti-science' or
a 'denier.'
Consider what happened to Bob Carter when, shortly after the release of the latest
IPCC Assessment Report by Working Group I in September 2013, he was interviewed by
the BBC's lunchtime radio programme World At One . 'Climate has always changed and
it always will—there is nothing unusual about the modern magnitudes or rates of change
of temperature, of ice volume, of sea level or of extreme weather events,' he said—not
unreasonablyorinaccurately,forthereisahostofdatatosupporteveryoneoftheseclaims.
So how did the climate alarmist establishment respond? As it always does, with a
streamofpersonalabuse.JohnAshton,aformer'topclimate-changeofficialattheForeign
Office', was given space in The Guardian to declare that the decision to give airtime to
Carter was 'a betrayal of the editorial professionalism on which the BBC's reputation has
been built over generations.' 4 Geneticist Steve Jones—who in 2011 wrote a report for the
BBC arguing that it should give less airtime to climate sceptics—said that inviting Carter
to give his views represented 'false balance'—and was a bit like inviting a 'homeopath
to speak alongside a brain surgeon.' This view was supported at government ministerial
level by Greg Barker (a conservative, surprisingly) who said 'I am not trying to ban all
dissenting voices but we are doing the public a disservice by treating them as equal, which
is not the case.' Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the
Environment, described it as a 'stunning display of false balance'.
Note the key element missing from all this invective: not once, at any stage, do any
of Carter's critics attempt to address the substance of what he said. Why not? Because the
facts as he stated them are incontrovertible. Climate has always changed. There have been
periods in the pre-industrial past when temperatures have risen and fallen more rapidly
and dramatically from natural causes than anything we have witnessed in this supposed
age of catastrophic man-made global warming. The polar ice caps are not disappearing.
Extreme weather has always been with us: every day, somewhere in the world another
weather record is being broken because that's what weather does. Sea levels have been
rising steadily at the same rate for at least the last 700 years, with no evidence of any
alarming recent rise ...