UPDATE: A new ABC version of this story asks if it is a sackable offence for an energy company chairman to send an email praising The Skeptics Handbook years in the past before he was appointed? NSW Labor thinks so.
Click to download the PDF
The NSW Labor spokesman for Energy, Adam Searle, has described Mr Massy-Greene’s stance as “disturbing” and is calling for him to clarify his views or resign.
“If he is a climate change skeptic then his position as chair of publicly owned electricity businesses is untenable”, says Mr Searle.
“If Mr Massy-Green won’t resign, the Baird Government, which appointed him, needs to sack him.”
Amazing. Just to have ever sent an email praising the skeptics handbook years before he was appointed.
Are you now, or have you ever been a skeptic?
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Streisand Effect coming
Nearly 7 years ago Roger Massy-Greene sent an email around to around 200 VIP’s with a link to the Skeptics Handbook saying “the best piece I have seen on global warming, and helps to explain what has so far been a very confusing debate.” Mr Massy-Greene later became chairman of Endeavour Energy — a state owned company that officially describes global warming as “the single greatest environmental challenge”. The ABC are now digging up the old email as a sign that perhaps Massy-Greene might still have doubts about the religion. Oh the scandal?
The free booklet done by a volunteer (moi) was distributed to a quarter of a million people and translated into eighteen languages by volunteers. This is the booklet that was too dangerous to allow a former MP to carry into Parliament House. The Handbook, and the worldwide grassroots movement it represented, was not important enough for the ABC to mention to its audience but a six year old email about it suddenly is?
Massy-Greene and his wife, Sydney University chancellor Belinda Hutchinson, are such capitalist sods they’ve donated $1 million to Sydney University to help get better graduates of STEM courses teaching at Sydney schools. The ABC don’t mention that, but they do mention that one company of his, donated $5000 to a Liberal politician.
The ABC: where investigating is done with one eye
Angela Lavoipierre, ABC, found time to get a comment from Tim Flannery, but didn’t tell the audience the email was from 2009, didn’t ask me to reply, nor would she link to the Skeptics Handbook. Too afraid ABC readers might actually read it? The ABC is a billion dollar Labor-Green advertising scheme.
Comments under the article yesterday included ones that were critical of the poor journalism, and of the man-made climate scare. Most or maybe all those comments have now been removed, and the original story quietly updated. (Google cache copy, of the article, shows the original, but doesn’t show the comments that were removed, not even a “Snip”). Where’s the honesty?
Nearly eight years after I started the blog with The Skeptics Handbook, it has stood the test of time — there’s not much I would change. Indeed here’s John Cook’s attempted take-down “Guide“, and here’s where I explain all Cook’s Unskeptical mistakes in it. Such is the bizarre state of the climate debacle — he took two years and had help from four funded professors yet find no mistakes. I took four days to document his and didn’t leave a point standing. He had no reply.
Flannery calls the Handbook “rubbish” – Tell us more Tim!
Leading climate scientist, Professor Tim Flannery from the Climate Council, described The Skeptics Handbook as “absolute rubbish”.
“I’m astonished that anyone in any sort of position of responsibility could take it the slightest bit seriously,” he told Hack.
In 2013 I invited Tim Flannery to list all the skeptics mistakes on my blog and promised to publish them in full with all his favourite graphs and sources. Tim-I-will-not-be-silenced-Flannery stayed silent.
(The offer is still open Tim. Do tell!)
Flannery wants to get skeptics out from “shadows”
…because people who disagree with the permitted science doctrine hide in dark places, right?
Presumably Flannery and political activists at the ABC hope to roast them one by one. But wouldn’t they get a surprise if they found out how many chairmen, investors, and politicians also sent around an email of something skeptical? They have no idea how many there are.
Professor Flannery said it was good to know where Mr Massy-Greene stood.
“One benefit that’s come from this sorry tale is that some clumsy thumbs have revealed the true character of an important person,” he said.
“We don’t want people lurking in the shadows when they hold important positions and have views of that nature.
“This should be a call to arms to be asking all chairmen and business people where they stand on climate change.”
The ABC is out of control.
UPDATE on irrelevant “apologies”: Looking again at the first article, Angela Lavoipierre makes a big deal that Massy-Greene sent “not one but TWO apologies.” Yet in the email she discloses, he’s apologizing for the sin of the dreaded mass email without BCCing — which presumably set off the usual email firestorm because people hit “reply all”. This has got nothing to do with the climate debate. Why is it national news? Does Lavoipierre hope to fool people that anyone sending a skeptical email should apologize for the content?
h/t David, Willie.