Academic enrollments are falling, placing some universities and departments under some stress. If you want to focus your displeasure at continued deliberate obfuscation (there can be no other term) then a letter to the VC of Charles Cook or Adelaide Uni might have a small influence. Target the bottom line – enrolments. Draft letters and contact details are provided below.
There are two prominent academic “skeptics” in Australia, Dr Ian Plimer and Dr Bob Carter. Interestingly both from the fields of geology, both highly praised and both at the ends of their respective careers. Dr Plimer is not a disinterested party personally when it comes to climate change as he is in fact on the boards of several mining companies.
Both are also members or affiliates of that well known defender of the public good the IPA (Plimer, Carter).
Dr Carter recently had another opinion piece in The Age. It’s a sadly amusing read.
While both are free to express “their” opinion as they wish, so to are you. Should you need an avenue to do so I suggest the Vice Chancellors of the venerable institutes at whose publicly funded teat they are still attached – kind of hypocritical given the views of IPA.
Neither of these gentlemen need necessarily be “muzzled” from voicing their opinion, but on every such occasion that they do speak a disclaimer should be attached. They should be required to state publicly that their opinions are not supported by the universities that they represent nor the overwhelming majority of research on the issue. My thinking follows from Milgrams classic experiment on the acceptance of “authorities”.
Carters views were rebuffed later in the same paper.