The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

26 May 2009

For Immediate Release

Climate change is about science – not celebrity

“Celebrities without scientific qualifications are the latest technique employed by Greenpeace in its campaign to support the unproven notion of man-made warming," says the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.

"With the exception of Jim Salinger, formerly of NIWA and now seemingly turned activist advocate for Greenpeace, not one celebrity has any known skills in climatology or related disciplines,"

“This issue is not about fame or numbers; it’s about science and observed evidence. In spite of what too many people have been misled into believing, there is no valid scientific evidence for claims that human emissions of so-called ‘greenhouse’ gases, including carbon dioxide can or will cause dangerous global warming,” says a statement from the coalition.

“People are entitled to assume that if Greenpeace had hard scientific evidence to back their claims of dangerous global warming, we would have heard about it. Instead, they have resorted to using well known public figures from fields as far away from science as it’s possible to get. Like the band of monkeys that kidnapped Mowgli in Kipling's Jungle Book, their mantra is ‘We all say so, it must be true’. This is not science, it is simple propaganda.

“People should also remember that actors in particular earn their living from portraying fiction. Before accepting the invitation of these celebrities to ‘sign on’ to this latest Greenpeace campaign, people should ask them to cite the validated scientific evidence that emissions of so-called ‘greenhouse’ gases, including carbon dioxide, has caused or will cause dangerous global warming. Then people should ask them to quantify the benefits in temperature reduction that will result from the costs estimated to be $2340 per annum based on a carbon price of $30 a tonne, that will fall on every New Zealand household, if an emissions trading scheme is enacted.

“In economic and scientific terms, emissions trading is all pain for no measurable gain,” the coalition statement concludes.

ENDS

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