David Packham is a former principle research scientist with Australia’s CSIRO, a senior research fellow in a climate group at Monash University in Australia, and an officer in the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, as well as author of numerous scientific papers, who dissented in 2008. “I find that I am uncomfortable with the quality of the science being applied to the global warming question,” Packham, who now consults in fire management, told EPW on May 3, 2008. “This lack of comfort comes from many directions: A lack of actual measurements for terrestrial radiation and the use of deemed values for particulate radiation absorption; The failure to consider the role of particulates from biomatter burning; The lack of critical thought and total acceptance of the global warming models as conclusive evidence; The lack of transparency and obscuration of the critical weaknesses in the GCMs,” Packham explained. “Along with these discomforts goes an observation that research funding for environmental research in Australia, in my case mercury and wildfires, is almost impossible unless it is part of yet more greenhouse data gathering. There is also an atmosphere of intimidation if one expresses dissenting views or evidence. It is as if one is doing one's colleagues a great disservice in dissenting and perhaps derailing the gravy train. The effect of the group think is creating a corporate data gathering mind set amongst our young researchers that I think is dangerous,” he said. “As you can see there are many reasons that I would like to join my dissenting colleagues, some scientific and some social and political but all of them are sincerely held,” he added. “The global warming monopoly is seriously bad for science,” he concluded. (LINK)
