Warming skeptics meeting Down Under
Pastor Dale Morgan
Warming skeptics meeting Down Under*
Book claims environmentalism is new religion
Katharine Murphy and Brendan Nicholson, Canberra and Richard Baker
February 28, 2007
AUSTRALIA - HARD-CORE global warming sceptics will descend on Canberra
today for the release of a book claiming environmentalism is the new
religion.
Former mining executive Arvi Parbo will launch Ray Evans' new
publication, Nine Facts About Climate Change, at a function at
Parliament House.
The book claims climate change is nothing new and declares Howard
Government investments in solar power and in cleaning up coal a
"complete waste of taxpayers' money".
"Environmentalism has largely superseded Christianity as the religion of
the upper classes in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United
States," Mr Evans says in the publication.
"It is a form of religious belief which fosters a sense of moral
superiority in the believer, but which places no importance on telling
the truth," he says.
"The global warming scam has been, arguably, the most extraordinary
example of scientific fraud in the postwar period."
The function is organised by the Lavoisier Group, founded in 2000 by Ray
Evans and former mining executive Hugh Morgan to test claims that global
warming is the result of human activity.
Mr Evans is a longstanding friend and colleague of Mr Morgan and a
committed activist on issues such as workplace reform through the HR
Nicholls Society, which he founded with federal Treasurer Peter Costello.
Former Labor minister Peter Walsh also will attend today's function, and
the group will hold a dinner to be addressed by climate-change sceptic
Chris de Freitas, Associate Professor in the School of Geography,
Geology and Environmental Science at Auckland University.
Liberal MP Dennis Jensen has organised the function on behalf of the
Lavoisier Group and expects about 50 people to attend the dinner.
Dr Jensen, a nuclear physicist, has said he is not convinced that human
activity is responsible for global warming.
In an interview with The Age last month, Mr Evans acknowledged that last
September's visit by former US vice-president Al Gore to promote his
Oscar-winning global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth had
helped generate a lot of publicity on climate change.
But he described Mr Gore's film as "bullshit from beginning to end".
"The science from the anthropology point of view has collapsed. The
carbon-dioxide link is increasingly recognised as irrelevant," Mr Evans
said.
"But the Government's frightened.
"Cabinet, from what I understand, is by and large still sceptical of
climate change, but it is scared of the drought and worried about how
Labor will make use of it."