Dear Professor Garnaut,

I note that your review has been commissioned to “examine the impacts of climate change on the Australian economy, and recommend medium to long-term policies and policy frameworks to improve the prospects for sustainable prosperity”.

As written, this is a straightforward if challenging task. Unwritten, however, is that the term “climate change” today carries connotations of human causation, thanks mainly to lobby group pressure and media propaganda. This transforms a straightforward task into one of immense complexity, because of the existence of both many unresolved, controversial scientific issues and the fierce environmental politics that becomes involved.

There is wide variation in scientific opinion as to whether any human impact on global climate can be measured, or is likely to prove dangerous in the medium term future. It is, however, the case that the preparation of four comprehensive IPCC reports since 1998, accompanied by the estimated expenditure of more than US$50 billion on climate research worldwide, has as yet failed to document a human signal above the level of the noise in the natural climate system.

In view of this, it is alarming that previous Australian governments have signalled publically that they were basing their climate policy on advice from the IPCC, which is now widely accepted to be a flawed and partisan advocacy body for the existence of dangerous human-caused global warming.

The IPCC’s advice – together with that of now numerous climate lobby groups and interests – occupies the extreme, alarmist end of the range of possible views on climate change. At the other end of the spectrum are the handful of (mostly unqualified) persons who deny altogether any danger from human-caused climate change. Much more attention needs to be accorded in the public debate to the balanced, and balancing, views of the many thousands of independent qualified scientists, engineers and economists who, whilst acknowledging that natural climate change is an important issue, remain unconvinced that strong evidence exists for dangerous human-caused change and are not involved in the IPCC process.

I attach four documents that exemplify the views of some of these moderate centrist scientists, who are perhaps best described by the term “climate rationalists”, and urge that you heed their advice. The centrist view can be summarized by the following quotation from the third attachment:

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“Climate changes naturally all the time. Human activities have an effect on the local climate, for example in the vicinity of cities (warming) or near large areas of changed land usage (warming or cooling, depending upon the changed albedo). Logically, therefore, humans must have an effect on global climate also. This notwithstanding, a distinct human signal has not yet been identified within the variations of the natural climate system, to the degree that we cannot even be certain whether the global human signal is one of warming or cooling. Though it is true that many scientists anticipate that human warming is the more likely, no strong evidence exists that any such warming would be dangerous.”

“The gentle global warming that probably occurred in the late 20th century falls within previous natural rates and magnitudes of warming and cooling, and is prima facie quite unalarming, especially when consideration is given to the likelihood that the historic ground temperature records used to delineate the warming are warm-biased by the urban heat island and other effects. Once corrected for non-greenhouse climate agents such as El Niños and volcanic eruptions, the radiosonde (since 1958) and satellite (since 1979) records show little if any recent warming and certainly none of untoward magnitude.”

“Atmospheric carbon dioxide is indeed a greenhouse gas, but the empirical evidence shows that the warming effect of its increase at the rates of modern industrial emission and accumulation is minor, given an assumed pre-industrial level of about 280 ppm and noting the established logarithmic relationship between gas concentration increases and warming. As one such empirical test, it can be noted too that no global increase in temperature has now occurred since 1998 despite an increase in carbon dioxide concentration over the same 8 years of about 15 ppm (4%). Putative human influence aside, it is certain that natural climate change will continue, sometimes driven by unforced internal variations in the climate system and at other times forced by factors that we do not yet understand.”

“The appropriate public policy response is, first, to monitor climate accurately in an ongoing way; and, second, to respond and adapt to any changes—both warmings and the likely more damaging coolings—in the same way that we cope with other natural events such as droughts, cyclones, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Neither the Stern Review itself, nor the additional papers that our critique has stimulated, address the above cautious and widely held assessment of the situation. Instead, straw-man arguments are erected and attacked, detail is endlessly obfuscated and IPCC orthodoxy is relentlessly repeated.”

“In dealing with the certainties and uncertainties of climate change, the key issue is prudence. The main certainty is that natural climate change will continue, and that some of its likely manifestations—sea-level rise and coastal change in particular locations, for example—will be expensive to adapt to. But adapt we must and will. Moreover, reducing vulnerability to today’s climate-sensitive problems will also help the world cope with future challenges from climate change whether that is due to natural variability, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions or other human causes. The most prudent way of ensuring that happens is to build wealth into the world economy and to be receptive to new technologies. This will not be achieved by irrational restructuring of the world’s energy economy in pursuit of the chimera of “stopping” an alleged dangerous human-caused climate change that, in reality, can neither be demonstrated nor measured at this time.”

Finally, and given the strong and polarized views that have come to exist on the topic of human-caused climate change (including amongst prestigious science organizations and academies), an objective assessment of the matter in Australia can now only be achieved by government through the mechanism of a Royal Commission, operating under appropriately neutral terms of reference. For, to ascertain the truth, it has become necessary that expert witnesses on all sides of the argument be heard under oath, under a neutral, scientifically competent chairperson and under stringent conditions of cross examination.

Yours sincerely,

Bob Carter

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Attachment 1: Letter-of-103 to the United Nations Secretary General regarding the inadequacy of the UN’s climate change policy
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/un-sec-general.pdf [PDF, 31KB]

Attachment 2: Summary of signatories to UN letter
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/un-letter-signatories.pdf [PDF, 27KB]

Attachment 3: World Economics review and critique of the Stern Report, by Carter, R.M., C. R. de Freitas, Indur M. Goklany, David Holland, Richard S. Lindzen, Ian Byatt, Ian Castles, Indur M. Goklany, David Henderson, Nigel Lawson, Ross McKitrick, Julian Morris, Alan Peacock, Colin Robinson & Robert Skidelsky
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/stern-review.pdf [PDF, 243KB]

Attachment 4: AusIMM review of the context of possible human caused global warming, by Carter, R.M.
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/ausimm.pdf [PDF, 1.6MB]

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Professor R.M. Carter, Hon. FRSNZ
Marine Geophysical Laboratory (Node C)
Sporing Road South, James Cook University
Townsville, Qld. 4811, AUSTRALIA

Phone: +61-(0)7-4781-4397 Home phone: +61-(0)7-4775-1268 Mobile phone: 0419-701-139
Fax: +61-(0)7-4781-4334 Home fax: +61-(0)7-4775-2776 Messaging: 0419-701-139
Email: bob.carter@jcu.edu.au Secure email (please notify first): glrmc@iinet.net.au
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Professor R.M. Carter
Marine Geophysical Laboratory
James Cook University
Townsville, Qld. 4811
AUSTRALIA

Phone: +61-7-4781-4397
Fax: +61-7-4781-4334
Home: +61-7-4775-1268
Mobile: 0419-701-139
Web home page: http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/