Crikey received a flood of emails in response to our Global Warming Sceptics Club list — one disgruntled reader threatened to withdraw his subscription, a couple of cheeky subscribers asked to be added, and the rest were full of new names to add to our list. 

A few readers pointed to a Clive Hamilton (Director of the Australia Institute) speech that listed the ‘Dirty Dozen’: Hamilton says that the names on his list are those most responsible for the lack of response by Australian governments to the dangers of climate change. They include the PM and Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane.  

Here are the latest additions to the club:

Miranda Devine — The Sydney Morning Herald columnist wrote in her recent piece on Al Gore ‘It’s the end as he knows it’:  “Funnily enough, the other eco catastrophes so confidently predicted 30 years ago — acid rain, nuclear winter, species extinction, the population bomb — never did eventuate.”

Alan Moran — director of the Institute of Public Affairs deregulation unit, recently wrote ‘Alarm on Global Warming Just a Load of Hot Air’ in The Age: “For Australia to get in front and lead on programs of emission reduction is futile and extravagant. Our economy depends on low-cost energy. The cost of saddling ourselves with another tax impost undermines our future prosperity.”

Prof Jon Jenkins, MLC, who requested to be added — a new feature on the NSW parliamentarian’s personal website lists Top Ten Global Warming Lies!

Blogger Tim Blair — wrote recently “Tens of thousands of people ignored frigid temperatures Saturday to lead a worldwide day of ­protest against global warming.”

Alan Jones — The broadcaster recently told the Today show that the documentary The Inconvenient Truth was based on “pretend science.” Jones asserted that instead of visiting Australia, Gore should visit China and India where the real problem was.  

Prime Minister John Howard — Recently told Four Corners that it’s pointless for Australia to take expensive steps to curb its own emissions: “If we stopped them tomorrow, it would take all of nine months for China’s additional emissions to equal what we’ve withdrawn by stopping ours.”

Alan Oxley — Head of APEC Studies Centre at Monash University, but Australian agent of Tech Central Station, a website sponsored by ExxonMobil, General Motors Corporation, Gilead Sciences, McDonalds, Merck and PhRMA. Also founded the website www.climatechangeissues.com. TCS is a division of DCI Group, DCI Group, a public relations and lobby firm whose client list also includes ExxonMobil.

Christopher Pearson — Recently wrote in The Weekend Australian in ‘Rising Tide of Bad Science’ that Pacific Island atoll nations are sinking as a result of a normal geological process, not rising seas. Similarly “the tidal measuring station at Port Adelaide is sinking, thereby recording a sea level rise”.

The Australian Industry Greenhouse Network — AIGN, once run by Alcoa secondee John Eyles and now John Daly have run an anti-Kyoto campaign over the last decade. States that “the AIGN seeks to promote the development of Australia’s manufacturing, agricultural and industrial resources by…providing information, advice and a forum for the analysis and formulation of public policymaking process on the climate change issue…”

Christian Kerr — reader Richard McGuire, among others, pointed out that we didn’t include Crikey’s national affairs editor on our list. Here’s Kerr’s response to his addition to the club: “I’m sorry to disappoint Richard McGuire, but I’m not a climate change sceptic. I’m not a Chicken Little, either. Science shows us that global temperatures have varied throughout the earth’s history. And science has also shown itself more than capable of overcoming remarkable challenges. Sorry if that disappoints the apocalyptically-minded.”