Garnaut and climate change.(Letter to the editor)

SIR: Ray Evans' article "The Chilling Costs of Climate Catastrophism" (June 2008) was quite disappointing. I am disturbed about his criticism of Ross Garnaut. Evans criticises Garnaut, as a policy adviser, for using the IPCC report as a source. How could Garnaut do anything else? Even Steven McIntyre, perhaps the best-known critic of the IPCC report, has said that if he was advising government, he would base his advice on the IPCC report.

Ray Evans should have picked up on two key aspects of Garnaut's work. In one of Garnaut's first statements he pointed out that the IPCC conclusions were not 100 per cent certain. The other key statement by Garnaut is the need for Australia to act on measures in concert with other countries, and not to act precipitately. The issue of uncertainty in the IPCC conclusions should be the focus for action. When you are faced with serious policy decisions based on uncertain data, putting resources into reducing uncertainty is well advised. After many years and billions of dollars the uncertainty levels of scientific climate predictions are still about the same.

Perhaps Ray Evans could turn his attention to Australia's CSIRO. Why are CSIRO scientists sitting in air-conditioned offices playing with computer models, ...