Frank wrote on Jul 10
th, 2023 at 10:44am:
Geologist, Professor Ian Plimer, outlines the catastrophic consequences of Net Zero policies, in two and a half minutes...
An op-ed by Prof Ian Plimer in
The Australian, which
was condemned as blatantly false by climate
scientists, has been found to have breached
standards by the Australian Press Council. In
November, his column titled ‘“Let’s not pollute
minds with carbon fears” argued that there “are no
carbon emissions. If there were, we could not see
because most carbon is black. Such terms are
deliberately misleading, as are many claims.”
The article also referred to the “fraudulent changing
of past weather records” and “unsubstantiated
claims polar ice is melting”, as well as “the ignoring
of data that shows Pacific islands and the Maldives
are growing rather than being inundated”.
In a lengthy adjudication the Oz was forced to
publish on page two on Friday, the press council
said the article contained inaccurate and misleading
material in its claims that the Bureau of
Meteorology had fraudulently changed weather
records and that Plimer’s claims that there was no
evidence polar ice was melting were misleading.
The newspaper breached two of the general
principles of reporting: ensuring factual material is
accurate (principle 1) and ensuring facts are
presented with reasonable fairness and balance and
opinion is based on fact (principle 3).
The council found that while it would have preferred
Plimer’s links to the mining industry were disclosed
in the column,
The Australian did not breach
guidelines in not disclosing because Plimer’s “past
or present directorships of mining companies and
advocacy in the debate around climate change were
so well known” that it was not required.
In reviewing the article last November, University of
NSW professor Katrin Meissner wrote: “This article
is an impressive collation of the well known, scientifically
wrong, and overused denier arguments. It is ideologically
motivated and, frankly, utter nonsense.”
—
Excerpted from The Guardian Australia, 24 July 2020.