A loud and ignorant climate-change denier

I don’t believe Thomas Turk would know a fact if it slapped him in the face like the wet fish he speaks of. I cannot understand how he is so consistently printed in your newspaper, spouting his ignorant and dangerous message that Global Warming/Climate Change is a hoax. This is becoming a more and more popular viewpoint, it has been put forth, almost religiously by all the candidates for this year’s Republican nomination. It is a viewpoint financed and dispersed throughout the world by the oil industry and large corporations. And it is dangerously disingenuous and ignorant.

How is it that the entire scientific community, tens of thousands of reports and surveys by well-meaning, intelligent observers can be given equal weight in a debate to the outrageous conspiracy theories of a very few, very loud bunch of ignorant fools.

Although I am all behind free speech and the right to disagree, it is incredible that The Nation continues to give equal space to such a point of view, with no serious evidence to back it up, just conjecture and pseudo science. It is as if you think there is still some debate in the scientific community (and this is a scientific question, not an economic or moral one); as if science was still undecided about it; as if the issue was not resolved. This is not the case. 

Scientists have positively concluded with massive consensus that the problem of climate change is real, is getting worse and needs addressing. Thomas Turk’s continual denials do not bear up to any kind of scrutiny.

His argument is summed up perfectly with the comment that a loss of 20 per cent of the penguin population would surely benefit fish stocks, and therefore help to nourish mankind. What nonsense.

Bruce Anderson

Bang Sue