2) I agree that Senator Fielding is a bit of a worry for believing in all that god stuff, but then so is Kevin Rudd, and the whole tribe who traipse into the Chambers and have a chat with their invisible friend (Prayers in the senate and reps) before governing the country.

3) You have touching faith in what scientists say (not that they speak with one voice anyway). The process of getting papers published is one of back scratching ones peers, and if the majority find it respectable to hold a particular view, that view will tend to prevail, through citations, grant applications and review for publication. Scientists depend upon this system for their livelihood. The days of the gentleman scientist of independent means ended around the time of James C Maxwell (a very notable holder of dissident views in his time).

4) Play the ball, not the man

I usually enjoy your contributions to the Canberra Times, but today’s was an exception. I have yet to see you dismiss all Kevin Rudd’s statements of “facts” on climate change or anything else because he is a practising Anglican, yet you dismiss everything Fielding says on Climate Change because he is a practising Pentecostalist.

Then you say there is “high probability … that the planet is in fact (sic) warming”. But is it? Both Hansen’s GISS and the UK’s Hadley say yes. Hansen claims his global temperature “data” go back to 1850 – ah yes, I forgot Livingstone’s astonishment as he traversed central Africa c 1850-1870 how in every native village he found a fully functiong met. station transmitting its daily weather data by email to the much younger Hansen at NASA. Seriously, NOAA (not Hansen) does provide maps showing world coverage of met. stations since 1850; until 1900 there were none anywhere in Africa except Egypt. Morocco, and the Cape. Then and now Africa is and was hot, from Cape to Cairo, so all global temp. data using 1850-1900 as base presents as COOL. That means the GISS claim of a rise of 0.7 oC rise from 1900 to now is b/s. There has in all likelihood been NO rise, perhaps even a fall. Who knows? – not you or Hansen.

You then rubbish the Heartland Institute for the data it provided to Senator Fielding by alleging that it promotes the view smoking is not harmful to one’s health. Actually it is known for questioning the view that passive smoking is as bad – or nearly – as smoking itself, for which the evidence is much less convincing. Its Non-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) Report (2009) is a mine of peer-reviewed information, most notably the 200 pages it has on the biospheric uptakes of CO2 emissions (by land and sea vegetation), on which the IPCC could find room for only a couple of pages out of over 2,500 in its AR4 (2007). Should I dismiss your views when the CT runs ads. for say alcohol and gas guzzling cars?

The FAO has been reported today as saying that 1 billion of the world’s population is going hungry. You have forgotten if you ever knew that reducing CO2 emissions (currently over 10 GtC) by as much as 90% from the 2000 level (Garnaut) (to less than 2 GtC) takes them below today’s 6 GtC of absorption of emissions by the global biospheres; that uplift accounts for nearly 60% of current emissions, and explains much of the large if apparently still inadequate growth of world food production since 1960. But applying a fraction of the funds proposed by Rudd & Wong & Obama for CCS to raising cereal yields in most of Africa above the current 10-20% of the North American norms would not only raise the uplift to above 60% of current emissions and but also feed some of the FAO’s billion. Ah! I forgot that WWF, ACF, Greenpeace, et al. (and you?) prefer to see people starve in favour of their and your Pentecostal belief in a caveman lifestyle.

Again, thank you for the article!