Contrarianism? (letter)

by Frank Pulsford

News Weekly, June 13, 2009
Sir,

One can feel some sympathy for your correspondent, Dr Brian Lloyd (Letters, News Weekly, May 30). Those pesky "single-issue contrarians" just will not be educated by the modern Illuminati.

I think Al Gore and his fraudulent movie may have unleashed such a rise in the sea level of scepticism that those carrying Gore's message are not listened to with the respect they think is their due.

Nearly everyone I know is a contrarian, but I have never known them to be "single-issue". In fact, their approach to climate change seems remarkably sophisticated.

They would never call carbon dioxide a pollutant. They recognise that climate is always changing. They know that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide follows a period of global warming rather than the other way about. They know that there have been other periods of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. They know that climate change is natural and that it is foolish to think that we can change that by fiddling with a gas which constitutes only a very minor proportion of the so-called greenhouse gasses.

They also know that Dr Lloyd's "objective scientists" have been caught out in so many deceptions that they seem no better than Al Gore.

Frank Pulsford,
Aspley, Qld