Climate change deniers

I have no problem with the opinions of a prominent climate change denier being published, as The Australian did today. It is important that all arguments and views are discussed openly and scientifically. However, I am dismayed that the article didn’t offer anything persuasive to make a case that anthropogenic climate change is not true.

It referred to several claims made by Christopher Monckton: that reactions to global warming have diverted food into biofuels and prolonged starvation across the world, that action to halt global warming will be very costly and potentially ineffective, that there have been cycles of rapid warming and cooling over geological time, and that the IPCC is a “venal, corrupt and incompetent organisation.”

There may be truth in some of these statements. Yet even if they all were true, none of them provides either evidence or logical argument against the hypothesis that is considered most likely by a large majority climate scientists today: that emissions of greenhouse gases by humans are causing irreversible climate change.

Why can’t we have sensible debates on climate change that avoid resorting to logical fallacies, diversions and emotive language?