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Scientists call for Royal Commission* into climate change science

Released today. Four independent scientists respond in detail to the evidence that government scientists claim shows that carbon dioxide causes significant global warming. The real debate continues. After the return fire from the skeptical experts, there was not a single point left standing.




Carter, Evans,
Kininmonth, Franks

“Our conclusions are:

  1. that whilst recent increases in greenhouse gases play a minor radiative role in global climate, no strong evidence exists that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing, or are likely to cause, dangerous global warming;
  2. that it is unwise for government environmental policy to be set based upon monopoly advice, and especially so when what monopoly is represented by an international political (not scientific) agency; and
  3. that the results of implementing emissions trading legislation will be so costly, troublingly regressive, socially divisive and environmentally ineffective that Parliament should defer consideration of the CPRS bill and institute a fully independent Royal Commission of enquiry into the evidence for and against a dangerous human influence on climate.
  4. We add, with respect to point 3 that the scientific community is now so polarized on the controversial issue of dangerous global warming that proper due diligence on the matter can only be achieved where competent scientific witnesses are cross-examined under oath and under strict rules of evidence.”

This is the question of the day: who audits the IPCC?

Can we rely on the peer review process by anonymous unpaid ‘peers’, who are often colleagues on Team-AGW, and who share the same financial incentives as the authors to find that carbon dioxide is the culprit? Can we expect a system that heavily funds scientists to ‘find a link’ between two factors to quickly and efficiently come to a counter conclusion if there is only an insignificant link?

Fossil fuels give human civilization around 85% of all our energy. We have depended on carbon based fuels almost exclusively since someone rubbed two sticks together, even before Homo Sapien became ‘sapien’. If fossil fuel emissions causes major environmental problems, yes, of course, we must act, with major force and substantial effort. But to undertake such a massive shift at such major cost based only on the opinion of an unaccountable, unaudited international committee would be negligent.

The Rudd Government must find a way to assess the science. Is a Royal Commission the answer? Is there a better way to independently cross check the analysis, and get a second opinion? What steps can we take to ensure that we actively foster competition between scientific theories?

A patient would ‘get a second opinion’, the Australian Reserve Bank would do it’s own economic analysis before it recommended a major change, so why would our government adopt UN-IPCC dictates without question?

The Rudd government likes to paint itself as a world leader—but on climate change the only ‘leading’ they threaten to do is to be the first in the queue of lap-dogs rushing to adopt the wish list of an unelected and unaudited committee.


The four scientists:

Professor Robert (Bob) M. Carter – Geologist/Environmental Scientist Bob Carter, Hon. FRSNZ, is an Adjunct Research Fellow at James Cook University (Queensland). He is an expert on Cenozoic marine sediments and sea-level changes in the last 65 million years.

Dr David Evans – Carbon Modeller David Evans worked for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Dept. of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, building FullCAM. Evans is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University in Electrical Engineering.

Associate Professor Stewart Franks – Hydro-climatologist University of Newcastle. Expert in reducing uncertainties in modelling land surface – atmosphere interactions for atmospheric/climate models.

William Kininmonth – Meteorologist/Climatologist with 45 years professional experience with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and 12 years until 1998 as head of its National Climate Centre. Author of the book, Climate Change: A Natural Hazard (2004, Multi-Science Publishing Co, UK).

The full response is here: 50 pages and 50 scientific references.

All the questions, press releases, responses, reports and so on are here: Wong Fielding Meeting Documents.

*For those without a Monarchy, a Royal Commission is one of the most major kind of government public inquiries possible. It has considerable powers, usually even greater than those available to judges. Once a commission has started even the government cannot stop it. So governments are very careful about framing them…

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