Dear Editor

The Sunday Star Times‘ editor Tracy Watkins went to some breast-beating length in last Sunday’s edition to explain why her paper is “staying neutral”.  On politics, that is.

But in another equally topical and important field, Stuff’s attitude is this:

“Stuff accepts the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and caused by human activity. We welcome robust debate about the appropriate response to climate change, but do not intend to provide a venue for denialism or hoax advocacy.” 

This in spite of statements by such as Michael Crichton: 

“There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”

aei.org/carpe-diem/for-earth-day-michael-crichton-explains-why-there-is-no-such-thing-as-consensus-science/

Or the UK’s influential Financial Times:

“Science is the pursuit of truth, not consensus”.

ft.com/content/

I am one of those that editor Tracy Watkins accuses of “denialism or hoax advocacy”. I do not deny that climate changes: it’s what climate does, and has been doing since Earth was formed all those billions of years ago, in natural cycles largely determined by the Earth’s orbits around the Sun. But I do agree current climate propaganda is a hoax, enriching the Al Gores of this world, and inflating the egos of political alarmists like Minister James Shaw, when there is not one single paper, by the proper scientific method, that shows that emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) can or do cause variation in temperatures outside natural cyclical limits long observed and recorded. (Our Coalition’s Augie Auer prize of $10,000, still unclaimed, awaits anyone who can cite such a paper).

Sunday Star Times editor Tracy Watkins would serve her readers more truly, and fulfil the principles enunciated by legendary Manchester Guardian editor C.P. Scott: “Comment is free, but facts are sacred”, by joining our call for an independent expert review of climate science before we wreck the primary production economy on which New Zealand is so dependent, and revert our modern comfortable lifestyle and preferred transport modes more to what the cave people had to ensure.  After all, the precautionary principle works in both directions.

Terry Dunleavy MBE,

Honorary Secretary
New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

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