Author: Graham Readfearn

In the space of six days, Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper has published five news stories and an opinion piece attacking the credibility of the Australian government’s weather and climate agency, the Bureau of Meteorology. I’ve covered the guts of the early stories over on my Planet Oz blog for The Guardian.

CLEAN COAL, it’s the two-word catch phrase the coal industry has used for years as it tries to convince the world its climate changing energy source has a future. While the term “clean coal” is rightly met with ridicule and derision by many, up until this week it has been allowed

Put up your hand if you’ve been a follower of news about climate change in recent years and haven’t heard of the “hockey stick” graph. Nobody?  No, didn’t think so. These graphs get their name because of their shape.  They are reconstructions of the temperatures on Earth over several centuries to several millennia

The headline on The Australian newspaper’s story about a leak of a major United Nations climate change report read “We got it wrong on warming, says IPCC”. But an investigation by Australia’s press watchdog has found that in fact, it was the Murdoch-owned national newspaper that “got it wrong”. The Australian

In early 2012, it seemed like the future of Bjørn Lomborg’s influential think tank was in serious doubt. The Danish Government had changed its political stripes and the millions in public funds that had poured into his Copenhagen Consensus Center had come to an abrupt halt. Lomborg told The Ecologist magazine he

AN Australian Federal MP is planning to join some of the world’s noisiest deniers of the science of climate change at a conference in Las Vegas in a few weeks time. George Christensen, the National Party member for Dawson in the coal-friendly state of Queensland, will be hanging around the Mandelay

One of the most consistent of all the attacks from climate science sceptics and deniers is the one which tries to convince the public that expert scientists are divided on the causes of climate change. Those attacks have come from ideologically motivated think tanks and the fossil fuel industry, often working

THERE’S an old proverb that suggests it’s always the lie that gets half way around the world while the truth is still pulling its boots on. But if evidence from the latest conservative media beat-up on climate science is anything to go by, even if the truth is only a couple

“Some are calling it the new Climategate,” said Fox News’ Washington reporter Doug McElway. McElway was reporting on a story published in the UK’s The Times newspaper that claimed climate change research had been “deliberately suppressed” by a leading journal because it “wasn’t helpful”.  While the central claim in the story now

With his thumbs pointing almost permanently skywards, the copyrighted mascot Hector the Lump of Coal wants to talk to kids about the arts, dental hygiene, bullying, sun safety and pretty much anything else the PR people at one of the world’s biggest coal export facilities can think of. In one segment

Both online and on television, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers is telling Australians that it cares more about the environment than energy. How this message might go down with the shareholders of Chevron is anyone’s guess. But then those people are possibly not the target for Chevron’s “We

It’s amazing what qualifies for a tax break in Australia these days. The climate science misinformation promotion unit at the Institute of Public Affairs, a Melbourne-based “free market” think tank, are currently passing the hat around to raise cash to publish a book on climate change. The IPA has been pushing and

Three university professors are resigning as editors at a scientific publisher in protest at its decision to retract research linking climate change scepticism to conspiratorial thinking. Professors Ugo Bardi, of the University of Florence, Italy and Björn Brembs, of the University of Regensburg, Germany, launched scathing attacks on the Switzerland-based publisher Frontiers.

A university has criticized conservative media for a serious misrepresentation of one of its academics that sparked a torrent of abuse from climate science deniers. As revealed by DeSmogBlog, Rochester Institute of Technology assistant professor Lawrence Torcello received hundreds of e-mails after conservative media incorrectly claimed he had called for climate

“DIE you maggot,” reads one of the hundreds of emails from climate science deniers that have dropped into philosopher Lawrence Torcello’s inbox in recent days. “Fortunately, your kind will be marched to the wall with all the other leftist detritus,” says another. Others accuse Torcello, an assistant professor at Rochester Institute of

A psychology journal is said to be preparing to retract a scientific paper that found a link between conspiratorial thinking and the rejection of global warming science after climate sceptics claimed the paper was defamatory. DeSmogBlog has learned the paper’s four authors, led by Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, the chair of cognitive

Prince Charles is a “global warming Nazi” and, apparently, so is U.S. President Barack Obama. That’s according to Dr. Roy Spencer, one of the world’s most often cited deniers of the risks of human-caused climate change. In a blog post titled “Time to push back against the global warming Nazis,”

ONE block east of Grand Central station, in a skyscraper on 42nd St, is the office of Australia’s Consul General. It’s a high profile diplomatic role and one that gives business leaders, thinkers and politicians the chance to see what drives the Australian Government of the day. In April, Australia

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) seems a confusing and confused organisation of major coal miners and burners – even if you only consider its oxymoronic title. When the industry group was launched in 2008, the message was that coal — the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from

WHAT follows are some thoughts about coal from a report just published in Australia. A longer-term concern relates to the environmental impacts of large-scale coal use, especially its climate consequences…. Coal is a carbon-intensive fuel and the environmental consequences of its use can be significant, especially if it is used