Right of reply on climate change

As a long-retired geoscientist, I was fascinated by Mike Seccombe’s “How the religious right stall climate action”. It is well known that over the aeons of geological time there have been a number of climate variations, many of them severe. I accept the scientific evidence for this. However, in recent decades it has become obvious that there is now a massive anthropogenic contribution from the ever-increasing industrial burning of fossil fuels. I also accept the compelling scientific evidence for this. Two things puzzle me; first, that rather too many of my now elderly erstwhile colleagues, whose professional lives have been based on the logic of science, are utterly impervious to this same logic when it comes to climate change. And second, that it has, in Australia and America especially, become an article of faith for the political and Christian right to deny the anthropogenic factor.

It is as though the normal logical thought processes we associate with humankind are absent on this particular topic. Seccombe goes on to say that this is not the case in Europe. I recall writing in a published article in 2012: “Unlike in Australia, where whether 2 + 2 = 3 or 5 is a matter of one’s voting tendencies, in Europe man’s cumulative effect on climate is accepted and thus not seen as a political issue.” Governments can be changed; the (un)Christian right is an insidious virus doing untold damage to our society.

– Ian Nowak, Subiaco, WA