On this day, May 1996, a climate denialist professor gave a speech to fellow climate denialists in Australia.
Climate denial outfits like the IPA and Tasman Institute had been inviting various (US) climate denialists to Australia for speaking tours (this was a repertoire that would continue). They’d started in the early 1990s and, of course, kept going.
“On 27 May 1996, Prof Patrick Michaels delivered a lively and entertaining presentation, outlining empirical difficulties with the Enhanced Greenhouse Global Warming Hypothesis. Through Tasman, Prof. Michaels also published an article on greenhouse issues in the Australian Financial Review of 30 May 1996. The article was subsequently cited by Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fisher”.
Tasman Institute 1996 Annual Review
Why this matters.
You can see in that quote the sequence – get someone over on a speaking tour. Lean on your mates in the media (with whom you are in a symbiotic relationship anyway) to get an opinion piece in a prestigious newspaper. THEN get one of your parliamentary goons (in this case Deputy Prime Minister – how cool is that?) to mention it in parliament.
All the way along, you’re creating more “credibility” and heft for your views, which are aimed at creating doubt, delay, uncertainty, so your friends can keep raking in the big bucks.
What happened next?
The denial campaigns continued. Australia extorted an extremely sweet deal at the Kyoto COP in December 1997, and still didn’t ratify it.
And the carbon dioxide? Oh, it accumulated…