Lavoisier Group

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The Lavoisier Group is an organisation based in Australia that promotes scepticism of current scientific consensus on global warming. The organisation questions the fears of the effects of global warming, the idea that human activity causes it, and the wisdom of policies designed to curtail it. They believe that political influence has trumped scientific truth, and that most of the scientists that support the theory that human activity is a cause of global warming do so because scientists that disagree with that prevailing belief lose access to government funding, the primary source of funds for any scientific study.

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[edit] Creation

The Lavoisier Group was created in response to submissions by the Australian Greenhouse Office to Cabinet to implement a carbon trading scheme. Its founders claimed that there had been "very little ongoing public debate about these proposals... are of the view that the science behind global warming policy is far less certain than its protagonists claim, and we also believe that the economic damage which Australia would suffer, if a carbon tax of the magnitude canvassed in AGO documents were imposed, would be far, far greater than is currently appreciated in Canberra" [1]

Following an inaugural conference in May 1999,[2] the group was founded in April 2000 by former Finance Minister Peter Walsh[3], Ian Webber, Ray Evans, Harold Clough, Robert Foster and Bruce Kean, with an opening address by supporter Hugh Morgan [4]. Currently headed by Walsh, the group's 90 members consist mostly of retired engineers and scientists from the mining, manufacturing and construction industries. The annual subscription fee is 50 dollars, and the annual budget is 10,000 dollars.[5]

[edit] Aims

The Lavoisier Group lists its aims as:

  1. To promote vigorous debate within Australia on greenhouse science and greenhouse policy;
  2. To ensure that the full extent of the economic consequences, for Australia, of the regime of carbon withdrawal prescribed by the yet-to-be-ratified Kyoto Protocol, are fully understood by the Australian community;
  3. to explore the implications which treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol have for Australia's sovereignty, and for the GATT/WTO rules which protect Australia (and other WTO members) from the use of trade sanctions as an instrument of extraterritorial power.

[edit] Current activities

The Lavoisier Group continues to hold annual conferences, and the group has promoted a variety of theories contradicting the scientific consensus on global warming, including the arguments of retired judge, climatologist and astrologer Theodor Landscheidt [2] whose work on solar cycles was used to argue that observed warming is based on solar cycles, and hence is not anthropogenic and will soon be reversed.

Walsh has blamed politics for the current consensus on global warming. The group claims that many scientists choose to endorse prevailing theories of global warming to protect their research funding by the government, a view that is held by French climatologist and author Marcel Leroux[6] and was the subject of the book by Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media Patrick Michaels. A supporter, former minister Tony Staley, has characterised global warming as a form of "political correctness".[2]

Critics of the group have pointed out its ties to greenhouse gas emitters.[7] The group's top members have denied receiving compensation from industry, unlike some global warming skeptics in the United States, who have admitted to receiving compensation by fossil fuel companies.[5]

The group was named after French scientist Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794), the father of modern chemistry who disproved the Phlogiston theory of combustion.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Lavoisier Group
  2. ^ a b Hamilton, Clive. "Green conspiracy theory; An anti-greenhouse group has been taking its message to the extreme, conducting a systematic campaign to muddy the waters on climate science." Canberra Times (Australia). Jan. 10, 2002.
  3. ^ Flannery, Tim Fridtjof. The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth. Atlantic Monthly Press. 2006. p. 244. ISBN 0871139359.
  4. ^ The Lavoisier Group: 'Opening Address' by Hugh Morgan
  5. ^ a b "The global warming sceptics." Theage.com.au. Nov. 27, 2004. Retrieved Jan. 27, 2007.
  6. ^ Agriculture & Environnement, no 18, October 2004 [1]
  7. ^ McSweeny, Linda. "Fed: Divisions on greenhouse deepen." AAP Newsfeed. May 24, 2000.

[edit] External links