In comments Peter Fitzroy claimed Clive James was no skeptic:
There is lots about scepticism, but no thing to say the Clive himself was sceptical about Climate Change. It should be remembered that he was primarily a wordsmith, and would write about anything for money.
I did, he is sceptical, but he does not link that to a personal position. But you will, no doubt. You really need the context, and that is, that he would take any topic, and any view, if there was money in it. His autobiography is chock full of this sort of stuff, much to the angst of his compatriots who were never cast in a favourable light.
Digging himself totally in..
Yep, proves my point, he would write anything for money, and to stir the pot. All this article does is rehash 10 years of anti science media, there is not one ‘fact’ that has not been debunked, countered or proven to be an outright lie.
Let’s cremate this meme and spread the ashes of what was pure baseless speculation…
Jennifer Marohasy, editor of what may have been his last major work, tells me that Clive James was absolutely a skeptic, wasn’t paid a cent, took months to finalize the 5,000 word chapter he wrote on climate change and the two of them exchanged 161 emails.
To put a fine point on it — One of the most significant works he did in last years was a long skeptical work. He was fighting cancer, didn’t have to do it, didn’t earn anything, yet went out of his way to do this, and do it well, despite the only reward being big thank you’s from groups who are maligned and called names. He risked his good name and with nothing to gain.
Would anyone who wasn’t a skeptic bother?
Which brings me to my original point — The ABC modus operandi is a million lies by omission. Their story on Clive was another example of how the ABC is a political agency, not a news one. (Save the children: sell it now).
Clive’s words on how the power of hyperbole could send careers down a fork in the road with no way back:
Kevin Rudd said this was the greatest moral challenge . . . of our generation’ before he arrived at the Copenhagen climate shindig in 2009.
When he left Copenhagen, Rudd scarcely mentioned the greatest moral challenge again. Perhaps he had deduced, from the confusion prevailing throughout the conference, that the chances of the world ever uniting its efforts to ‘do something’ were very small. Whatever his motives for backing out of the climate chorus, his subsequent career was an early demonstration that to cease being a chorister would be no easy retreat, because it would be a clear indication that everything you had said on the subject up to then had been said in either bad faith or ignorance. It would not be enough merely to fall silent. You would have to travel back in time, run for office in the Czech Republic instead of Australia, and call yourself Vaclav Klaus.
Clive’s essay “Mass Death Dies Hard” was published in “Climate Change. The Facts 2017 Published by the IPA, edited by Jennifer Marohasy. Copies of the essay are available online (here) and in hard copy from [email protected]. To order a copy of Climate Change: The Facts 2017, click here.
Dear Peter F, now’s your chance to prove you can reason…