Sunday morning laughs. Bob Carter, a particularly voluble member of the NZ Climate “Science†Coalition, is in New Zealand doing a “lecture tourâ€. He’s addressing a number of Rotary groups around the North Island. But the slick PR machine* inside the Câ€Sâ€C obtained a top TV gig for Prof Bob, and he was interviewed on Shine TV recently. I won’t embed the YouTube video here (I think a young Mick Jagger is better for the blog’s image), but I would like to draw your attention to the breathtaking chutzpah of the man as he defines the “climate debateâ€. At about 0:35s he says (roughly transcribed):
On the one hand you have what are called the deniers, the people that deny climate change happens at all. It’s a very small group, and I don’t know any who are really significant scientists. On the other hand you have the alarmists, who say that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, it’s our CO2 emissions that are the problem, and we need to do something about it. Now, both of these groups have shrill voices, and it’s fair to say that the press has dominantly picked up the alarmist shrill view. The great majority of scientists sit in the middle. I’m in New Zealand, as you know, giving a lecture tour, and I occupy the balanced middle of this debate.
Astonishing. He’s not so much attempting to shift the Overton window, as move it to the house next door. And he says it with such assurance. No doubt there will be an upswing in scepticism in Rotarian circles in the rural North Island. I’ll have to organise a tour of Probus groups to counter the great man’s efforts.
* That’s only half a joke. They’re very good at getting themselves noticed.
