On this day, August 18 in 1996, Brian Tucker, who had headed up the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research, and attended some important scientific meetings, reveals himself incapable of understanding that the world does not conform to how you would wish it to be.
[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 361.55 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]
“Brian Tucker, previous Chief of the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research, is now a Senior Fellow at the IPA where he trades on his scientific credentials to push an ideological agenda. In 1996 in a talk on ABC’s Ockham’s Razor he stated that ‘unchallenged climatic disaster hyperbole has induced something akin to a panic reaction from policy makers both national and international”
[From a Sharon Beder article in 1999]
Tucker, B. 1996. A Rational Consideration of Global Warming. Ockham’s Razor, ABC Radio National, 18 August.
Tucker was also busy writing screeds in the IPA’s magazine that, looking back, were frankly an embarrassment
Why this matters.
Beder notes that
Tucker’s article The Greenhouse Panic was reprinted in Engineering World a magazine aimed at engineers. The article, introduced by the magazine editor as “a balanced assessment,” argues that “alarmist prejudices of insecure people have been boosted by those who have something to gain from widespread public concern.”[42] This article, which would have been more easily dismissed as an IPA publication, has been quoted by Australian engineers at conferences as if it was an authoritative source.”
And thus is a counter-common sense “engineered.” Once bullshit is republished in other venues, it gains a halo effect from those other places, and gets repeated again, until finally it seems a solid piece of fact.
The CIA used to call it ‘surfacing’ (maybe still do?). Plant stories in local newspapers in the countries you’re trying to subvert, then quote those as “evidence” when trying to get more money out of the US government…
What happened next?
We kept digging up and exporting coal. Of course we did.
