Today, Crikey kicks off a new series we like to call Climate Change: The Long View.
Haven’t we done this? Well, yes. Aren’t we beyond it? Seems not.
This is an attempt at stepping back from question time-type arguments over who’s lying, who’s taxing what, and who’s doing the Hokey Pokey. In order to lift the level of debate above, say, doing the Time Warp (again), the series will examine how government, industry, politics, public sentiment, the media and, most importantly, science is tracking on climate change and the issues surrounding it.
In conjunction with our coverage, Crikey will run a series of extracts from the Australian Academy of Science’s peer reviewed publication The Science of Climate Change – Questions and Answers. Published in August 2010, the document was distributed to schools, local government and every member of Parliament in an attempt to “contribute to the public understanding of the state of the science and to attempt to tread a path through the often contradictory public commentary on the science”.
Pay attention. There will be a test.
So let’s stand back and reassess all the angles on what former prime minister Kevin Rudd once dubbed … oh, never mind.
Thanks for this Crikey.
May I ask that, for the benefit of those amongst us who a) have opinion-fatigue, and b) are a bit unsure about who is speaking factually and who is telling big pork pies – could you please keep this coverage as opinion free as possible?
You know.. just the facts, Ma’am?
This is a good idea, spell it out, the debate should be informed and clear.
Who gives a stuff about the circus currently taking place in the House of Reps, it’s preventing the public being able to make an intelligent assessment of the facts. Abbott is particularly adept at dumbing down any debate – although, to give our politicians their due, they all have a natural talent for it.
The idea is to focus on the evidence and the reasoning. And never let anyone take the focus off evidence and reasoning. The only reason this racket continues is because people are always talking about everything else but the science of it. When I first heard about this matter I thought the apriori case was a good one. The further you investigate this matter the more it becomes clear that its not just a matter of the empirical evidence going against them. They don’t have an apriori case.