Author: Graham Readfearn

It’s known as the Kochtopus – the extensive network of think tanks, institutes, university departments, political funding arms and “grassroots” activist groups funded by oil billionaires Charles and David Koch. The multi-tentacled network has pumped tens of millions of dollars into groups that deny the risks of human-caused climate change.

THERE’S a popular talking point coming from climate change denialists that all people who accept the science and the need to act on it are somehow blinded by faith. In Australia, climate science contrarian columnists can barely touch their keyboards without typing out the words “global warming faith” or explaining

There were a handful of clues which should have caused wind energy-hating American billionaire Donald Trump to pause before tweeting what he thought was an anti-wind power infographic to his 2.4 million Twitter followers. One clue might have been the inclusion of a quote about research which suggested that health-related

THERE were two logos on the grey felt conference bags offered to delegates at the recent COP19 United Nations climate change negotiations in Warsaw. One was the official COP19 logo, embroidered onto the flap of the document bag inside which negotiators, observers and UN staff could carry around the draft

At about 2pm, they started to stream down corridors and sift down escalators, weaving through the halls leading to the negotiating rooms and out through the main security gate – hundreds of them. The United Nations climate change talks had not been going well – perhaps an understatement – and

LEADING global environment and civil society groups have dramatically walked out of the United Nations COP19 climate change talks in Warsaw in an unprecedented move in UNFCCC conference history. The talks in Warsaw have been dogged by uncertainty and a lack of progress, with campaign groups complaining daily of blocking

AUSTRALIA finally has a vocal cheerleader at the COP19 United Nations climate talks currently taking place in Warsaw – a climate denial activist think tank which rejects the science of human-caused climate change. The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT, a fossil fuel-funded group which denies that emissions from

“YOU have an important decision to make,” wrote Diane Bast from the conservative Heartland Institute in a memo posted to science teachers across the US last month. “Will you tell your students the “science is settled” on global warming, as the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims

CONSIDER the following two statistics together. Research into the peer-reviewed science of climate change found that between 1991 and 2011, 97 per cent of studies agreed that climate change is caused mostly by humans. Research into the reporting of climate change science in Australia’s biggest selling newspaper, the Herald Sun

A LEADING association for climate scientists has called on one of Australia’s highest profile business leaders to apologise for accusing their profession of lacking integrity. David Murray, former head of Australia’s Commonwealth Bank and the Future Fund, told the ABC Lateline television news programme earlier this week that “there’s been a

WHEN speaking to script, Australia’s new conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott will say that he accepts that human emissions of greenhouse gases are having an impact on the world’s climate. Yet the Liberal Party leader appears to be surrounding himself with ministers and advisers who reject the science of human-caused

SHELVES in popular book stores can be undiscerning little buggers, as can the book stores themselves. For example, I recently had cause to wander through the tightly-bound and bulging aisles of my local Dymocks book store in Brisbane, Australia. They have some really quite “special” offerings both online and in-store.

“At Thomson Reuters, we’re in the business of turning change into opportunity,” say the owners of one of the world’s biggest and most influential news agencies. But the commitment of Reuters to reporting on arguably the most pressing issue in human history – climate change – is now being questioned.

A PROMINENT and influential French physicist who had voiced support for a climate change sceptic fired from his Australian university has withdrawn a threat to report the case to a prestigious international science council. Dr Marie-Lise Chanin had previously told The Australian newspaper that she was “scandalised” by the sacking

A CLIMATE sceptic professor fired from his Australian university for alleged policy breaches had previously been banned for three years from accessing US taxpayer-funded science research money. Dr Murry Salby, sacked in May by Macquarie University in Sydney, was the subject of a long investigation by the US National Science

CLIMATE science denialist radio host Chris Smith – of the shock-jock variety – got a little upset recently at a decision made quietly more than six months ago by James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. “What a bunch of weak pu**ies – James Cook, your management is an absolute disgrace,”

THERE’S a section on the Heartland Institute’s website pointing readers to “Stuff We Wish We Wrote”. After events over the last year or so, the chaps at the fossil fuel-funded “think tank” might want to add a new section with the title “Stuff We Wish We Hadn’t Wrote”. The Heartland

So just in case anyone wasn’t sure, a major study of almost 12,000 scientific papers on global warming between 1991 and 2011 finds less than one per cent disagree that humans are the main cause. Published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the study led by John Cook, the Australia-based

IF there was a prize for the most esoteric and stratospherically “out there” theory against human caused climate change, then surely Thomas Watson would be in line for this particular gong. In an interview in January for the US-based internet radio show “It’s Rainmaking Time“, this 83-year-old Australian from Victoria