Bob Carter

According to the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, Carter was "on the research committee at the Institute of Public Affairs, a think tank that has received funding from oil and tobacco companies, and whose directors sit on the boards of companies in the fossil fuel sector" and believed, SMH said, that "the role of peer review in scientific literature was overstressed."

Denialist affiliations
Carter is Chief Science Advisor to the International Climate Science Coalition, funded in part by the Heartland Institute , which is funded by the industries involved in producing greenhouse gases. Carter is also an advisor on a number of other right wing and denialist "think-tanks" and groups the Institute for Public Affairs (Aus), The Galileo Movement (Aus), the Science and Public Policy Institute (US), the International Climate Science Coalition (US/Canada), the Australian Climate Science Coalition, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (UK) and Repeal the Act (UK). He was a founding advisor to the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. Carter is a founding member of the Australian Environment Foundation, a front group set up by the Institute of Public Affairs.

Carter's own website (see image below) claimed, as recently as 2012, that he received no funding from "special interest organisations", but this was shown to be untrue with the release of private Heartland Institute documents in February 2012, which showed Carter was funded by this one front group alone to the tune of approximately $20,000 annually. Carter brushed off the revelation with the statement that being truthful about one's funding is "a very quaint and old fashioned practice".



Speaking at Heartland Institute events
Carter was a speaker at the International Conference on Climate Change (2009), organized by the Heartland Institute Carter is also listed as a speaker for the Heartland Institute's June 2009 Third International Conference on Climate Change. In all, Carter has been a speaker at six of Heartland's climate change conferences.

Claims
Carter's climate reasoning is selective and raises questions:
 * "Carter goes to some length to claim that the surface temperature record (according to institutions like NASA GISS) is unreliable. In fact he implies that it’s downright useless. Yet he also states that the satellite record is reliable...[But] if the satellite record is so reliable but the surface record is so useless, why do they agree so closely?"

In March 2007, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Carter asserted that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had uncovered no evidence the warming of the planet was caused by human activity. He said the role of peer review in scientific literature was overstressed, and whether or not a scientist had been funded by the fossil fuel industry was irrelevant to the validity of research. 'I don't think it is the point whether or not you are paid by the coal or petroleum industry,' said Professor Carter. 'I will address the evidence.'" Carter has also asserted that "atmospheric CO2 is not a primary forcing agent for temperature change," and claimed that "any cumulative human signal is so far undetectable at a global level and, if present, is buried deeply in the noise of natural variation".

Other Select Climate Quotes

 * "The basic physics is this. The more carbon dioxide you emit, the less the incremental warming for the extra carbon dioxide."
 * Since then (1998) it's been very gently cooling. No evidence at all that any of these canges have anything to do with human activity or influence. These are natural climatic changes.

Background
Carter is a geologist who writes in the field of geology. .

Ocean Drilling Program; ended in 2002
Some of Carter's work has involved what is known as "paleoclimatic research," including participation in the Ocean Drilling Program Leg 181 try to create a benchmark of the 4 million year-long, mid-latitude climate record. . Funding for this program reportedly "came to its planned and natural end" around 2002.

Outreach to journalists, denying global warming
Journalist Robyn Williams wrote that with the end of the drilling program "...many of us began to receive helpful items from Carter, clearly meant for publication, most knocking the orthodoxy, the bleak line on global warming. The first, a scripted talk, I duly put to air. Then a similar piece turned up in The Australian newspaper; then he was on Counterpoint, ABC Radio National, twice, all with the same position. This was becoming not so much the availability of a helpful boffin, more pressing a line.... I...discovered that Professor Bob Carter, geologist from Townsville, was a vocal member of the Institute for Public Affairs (IPA)."

Other
In 2005, Carter was appointed by the Australian Minister for Environment, Ian Campbell, as a judge for the Australian Government Peter Hunt Eureka Prize for Environmental Journalism. He is an advisor to the Campaign to Repeal the Climate Change Act ( repealtheact.org.uk )

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Global Warming Policy Foundation
 * Global warming skeptics
 * Heartland Institute
 * International Conference on Climate Change (2009)
 * SourceWatch:Project:Creating Articles on Sponsors and Speakers at The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change

External resources

 * Bob Carter's personal homepage
 * Tim Lambert, et al, "Bob Carter", Deltoid. (This is an archive of posts excoriating Carter's communications).
 * Bob Carter, A Rundown of the Skeptics & Deniers Logical Science.

External articles
Climate change sceptic Bob Carter continues to ply his trade http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/nov/30/climate-change-sceptic-bob-carter

Articles and Presentations by Carter

 * Bob Carter, "The Great Barrier Reef is doing just fine: a precautionary tale", On Line Opinion, March 12, 2002. (First published in the Courier-Mail on 27 November 2002.)
 * Bob Carter,"Modern 'global warming' may turn out to be just a lot of hot air", On Line Opinion, November 7, 2003. (First published in the Australian Financial Review on 3 November 2003.)
 * Bob Carter, "Cool rationality shatters greenhouse hype", On Line Opinion, August 4, 2005. (Originally published in the Australian Financial Review July 14, 2005).
 * Bob Carter, "Climate Change is Not About the Weather", Perspective, ABC Radio National, August 6, 2004.
 * Bob Carter, "Global Warming Hysteria and the Deadly Disease of Hansenism", Melbourne Rotary Club address, June 15, 2005.
 * Bob Carter, "All the signs of full-blown Mother Earthism", Sydney Morning Herald, September 29 2005.
 * Bob Carter, "There IS a problem with global warming - it stopped in 1998", Sunday Telegraph (UK), April 9 2006.
 * Bob Carter, "An inconvenient truth: climate change is indeed a moral issue", On Line Opinion, Sept. 20, 2006.
 * Bob Carter, "British report the last hurrah of warmaholics: The Stern warning could join Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb and the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth in the pantheon of big banana scares that proved to be unfounded", The Australian, November 3, 2006.
 * Bob Carter, "Flacks for alarmists", The Courier-Mail, September 6, 2007.
 * Bob Carter, "Facts debunk global warming alarmism", The Australian, January 20, 2009.
 * Bob Carter, "The Problem is NATURAL Climate Change, Stupid!", Presentation to the Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change (2009), March 10, 2009. (Video)
 * Professor Robert Carter Climate: The Counter Consensus Published by Stacey International

Interviews with Carter

 * Michael Duffy, "Climate Change Response: Bob Carter, Research Professor of Geology, James Cook University, Townsville, answers your queries arising from our Climate Change show of Monday 4 April.", Counterpoint, ABC Radio National, April 11, 2005.
 * Robyn Williams, "Bob Carter", Science Show, ABC Radio National, September 1, 2005.
 * Panel Discussion chaired by Professor Anders Flodstrom, "Warming - Scientific Controversies in Climate Variability:" (click on Part 1 or Part 2''), KTH University, Stockholm, September 11-12, 2006.

Other articles

 * Anna Saleh, "Glacial mud reveals earth's history", ABC News in Science (Australia), June 11, 2004.
 * Deborah Smith, "Climate of opinion", Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), June 12, 2004.
 * Ian Frazer, "Cool response to a hot topic", Townsville Bulletin, July 7, 2004.
 * John Quiggin, Duffy And Carter on Counterpoint, April 18, 2005.
 * "Ice cores show warming 'natural'", The Australian, January 7, 2006.
 * Robyn Williams, "Fair weather friend?", New Matilda, May 24, 2006.
 * Wendy Frew, "Minchin denies climate change man-made", Sydney Morning Herald, March 15, 2007.