More than 50 Australian academics have signed a letter to Fremantle's Notre Dame University urging it to cancel a lecture by controversial British climate change sceptic and journalist Lord Christopher Monckton

Academics want climate sceptic's lecture cancelled

by Gareth Parker, The West Australian,June 30, 2011

       Monckton. Photo © Sandie Bertrand.

More than 50 Australian academics have signed a letter to Fremantle's Notre Dame University urging it to cancel a lecture by controversial British climate change sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton.

Lord Monckton, who was this week forced to apologise to the Federal Government's chief climate change advisor Professor Ross Garnaut for likening him to a nazi, is set to deliver the Lang Hancock Lecture at Notre Dame tonight.

His speech is sponsored by billionaire mining mogul Gina Rinehart, Mr Hancock's daughter.

The letter, organised by University of Western Australia postgraduate student Natalie Latter, says the academics - which include UWA Professor Ullrich Ecker, Sydney's University of Technology Professor Cynthia Mitchell and Dr Iain White, from the University of Manchester - says the academics are "deeply disturbed" that Notre Dame intends to host the lecture.

It accuses Lord Monckton of "propounding widely discredited fictions about climate change and misrepresenting the research of countless scientists."

"With zero peer-reviewed scientific publications, he has declared that the scientific enterprise is invalid and that climate science is fraudulent," the letter says.

"He stands for the kind of ignorance and superstition that universities have a duty to counter."

Notre Dame Business School Dean, Chris Doepel, said that while Lord Monckton's views had attracted attention, the university had been assured there would be nothing offensive in his presentation.

Professor Doepel said the lecture's format would allow questions and he expected Lord Monckton to be "vigorously challenged."

Curtin University Professor of Sustainability, Peter Newman -- a signatory to the letter -- said it was a disgrace any university associated itself with "someone who has clearly got no academic credibility."

Another signatory, Australian Professorial Fellow at UWA's School of Psychology, Stephan Lewandowsky, said he strongly endorsed Lord Monckton's right to free speech "for example in a pub or on a soapbox or in a circus arena." [Good on ya, Stephan!]

While Ms Rinehart's company Hancock Prospecting sponsored the lecture, titled The Climate of Freedom, it did not fund Lord Monckton's three-week Australian tour.

South Australian farmer Leon Ashby, president of the Climate Sceptics Party, said his organisation had contributed $30,000 in donation to Lord Monckton's trip.

Lord Monckton could not be contacted.


http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/9756509/academics-want-climate-sceptics-lecture-cancelled/