Climate change misinformation in regional publications
The offending advert
Refutations:
John Mosig, Kew
If the advertisement placed by the Climate Study Group is any indication of their scientific knowledge, they should go back and do some more study. (“Carbon dioxide and plant nutrition”, GA, 30/4)
Plants don’t die from lack of CO2. Combined with water and sunlight, they use photosynthesis to produce oxygen and cell structure. The statement that the current levels of CO2 are just above plants’ starvation is ludicrous. Ice core readings put 18th Century CO2 levels as around 280 ppm.
Arthur Phillip and his convicts would have landed on a desert island in 1788.
Their reference for the claim, William Happer, is a renowned climate sceptic and his views have been widely challenged by climate scientists.
What plants die of is lack of water and sunlight beyond their evolved temperature tolerances. The rest of the advertisement is equally flawed in its cherry-picked claims.
Maisie McAlpine, Glenorchy
I strongly object to the publication of climate misinformation in an advertisement (Mercury, April 30) paid for by The Climate Study Group. The advertisement makes the same false claims as an advertisement in The Australian newspaper by the same fringe group. That advertisement has been judged by AdStandards to be “misleading and deceptive”. The decision can be found on AdStandards’ website. The Climate Study Group gave an undertaking to AdStandards to discontinue the ad.
MARGARET HURTLE, Manilla
The half-page advertisement on p4 of last week’s The Land is puzzling. It makes numerous claims regarding atmospheric gases, among them that the level of CO2 is decreasing.
Well, when I was at high school in the 1960s, we were taught the level of CO2 in the atmosphere was 0.027 per cent, or 27 parts per million. Now it’s 0.04pc, or 40 parts per million. That’s in increase of 13ppm, or close to 50%, in 60 years.
The advertisement claims the present level is just above that where plants begin to die of CO2 starvation. Pity about all those plants back in the 1960s, gasping for their final breath. This incorrect information (paid for by The Climate Study Group, which appears to specialise in discrediting widely-accepted science) undermines the rest of its claims.
Keith Anderson, Kingston
Study on climate
I hope the advertisement by “The Climate Study Group” receives the rebuttal it deserves. (Mercury, April 30). I’m not an expert in this subject, but it isn’t necessary to be an expert to spot “Schoolboy Howler” nonsense. If a schoolboy tries to tell me Hannibal rode his elephants across the Alps to attack Persia, I know that he has no idea how far Persia is from Rome.
This advertisement is cluttered with similar misleading statements.
The graph at the bottom left corner of the advertisement is a classic example of “How to lie with graphs”.
• The scale might be appropriate for studying events like the beginning of the Cambrian explosion, the time and duration of the Carboniferous period, and the five mass extinction events, but information relevant to our current situation is squashed into the tiny one square millimetre at the bottom far right of the graph, where it conceals more than it reveals.
I’m sure that some scientist somewhere has provided the numbers quoted, but raw numbers are just data, not information, and to become information, they need to be understood, not misunderstood.
Ray Peck
The ad is in 5 News Corp papers today: Cairns Post, Geelong Advertiser, Hobart Mercury, NT News, Townsville Bulletin. Sadly one ACM paper, The Land ran a Climate Study Group ad in November. Shame on them.
The Climate Study Group has been exposed here https://www.desmog.com/climate-study-group/
It is led by two former directors of the Institute of Public Affairs, Tom Quirk and Bob Officer.
Given the Select Committee inquiry on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy, it is a good opportunity to try again to get letters published combatting this disinformation.
While neither Quirk nor Officer nor the Climate Change Group are listed in submissions to the inquiry the IPA is.
Shame on Murdoch press for promoting the CSG disinformation. It would be good if many of us wrote to editors in this context. I would not be surprised if Advance is now funding these ads.
As Amy has said, it is challenging getting debunking letters published. I have found four recent ones from the Geelong Advertiser, The Hobart Mercury and The Land. They are pasted (above).
It is likely that more will appear in Murdoch papers over the next few days.
The Murdoch papers are
| Paper | Email addresses |
| Adelaide Advertiser | advedit@theadvertiser.com.au |
| Daily Telegraph | letters@dailytelegraph.com.au |
| Herald Sun | hsletters@heraldsun.com.au |
| Hobart Mercury | mercuryedletter@themercury.com.au |
| NT News | news@ntnews.com.au |
| Geelong Advertiser | yoursay@geelongadvertiser.com.au |
| The Australian | letters@theaustralian.com.au |
| Canberra Times | letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au |
| Courier Mail | letters@couriermail.com.au |
| Gold Coast Bulletin | letters@goldcoast.com.au |
| Cairns Post | letters@cairnspost.com.au |
| Townsville Bulletin | letters@townsvillebulletin.com.au |