A SCIENCE adviser to the federal government has described the debate in the media over the basics of climate change science as ''almost infantile'', equating it to an argument about the existence of gravity.
Speaking at a Melbourne summit on the green economy, Professor Will Steffen criticised the media for treating climate change science as a political issue in which two sides should be given a voice.
While there were uncertainties about the pace and impact of change, he said, the core of climate science - that the world was warming and the primary cause since the middle of the last century had been industrial greenhouse gas emissions - should be accepted with the same confidence as the laws of gravity and relativity.
''It's a no-brainer. If you go over the last couple of decades you see tens of thousands of papers in the peer-reviewed literature, and you have less than 10 that challenge the fundamentals - and they have been disproved,'' Professor Steffen said after an address at the Australian Davos Connection's Future Summit.
''Right now, this almost infantile debate about whether 'is it real or isn't it real?', it's like saying, 'Is the Earth round or is it flat?' [Climate change] is a hugely important question and yet we are not having a rational discourse in the media in Australia on this question. That is my biggest frustration.'' He called on the media to focus on areas where there was not a consensus, including the link between climate change and the south-east Australian drought and how rapidly sea levels would rise.
Professor Steffen, the executive director of the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute, was appointed a science adviser by the Howard government in 2004. He has advised Labor's Penny Wong and the Coalition's Ian Campbell and Malcolm Turnbull.
Asked about the scepticism of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, he said scientists respected leaders from both sides of politics who showed respect for scientific expertise.
''You can have a very partisan approach to the policy and how you deal with it - that's fair game - but I think a wise society would respect the judgment of its experts, bearing in mind that that judgment is continually debated within [the scientific community],'' he said.
Email a friend