The forum, ‘Debunking the Great Global Warming Swindle’, was specifically targeted at exposing the scientific flaws and half-truths in the claims of climate change sceptics.

Scientists from the Australian National University, Stanford University and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies addressed the forum, specifically responding to claims made in the nationally televised program The Great Global Warming Swindle.

The central claim of the program was that global warming is not occurring due to greenhouse gas emissions, but rather other natural causes.

Professor Malcolm McCulloch of ANU and Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the University of Queensland described the information contained in the program as “scientifically misleading”.

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According to Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, the program served little purpose other than to confuse the public and policy makers about well-researched and locked-down scientific fact.

For example, the program ignored recent temperature data that shows that the beginning of this century has included the 2nd to 7th warmest years recorded - with 1998 and 2005 being the warmest on instrumental records.

Professor McCulloch said that the program’s scientific data “was at best distortions or in some cases blatant misrepresentations.”

The current era of global warming is being driven by increased atmospheric CO2 and is occurring almost 100 times faster than in the past – rates which have rarely, if ever, been previously encountered on earth.

Professor McCulloch says possibility of rare but catastrophic events should not be ignored, and that actions taken now can substantially ameliorate some of the worst effects of global warming.

“The reduction of CO2 emissions is a key challenge, (but) given the expertise and calibre of Australia’s scientific community and our technological capacity, there is a great opportunity for Australia to play a leading role in the development and implementation of a new energy regime, which takes advantage of our natural resources.

“In such critical times, scientists have a clear responsibility to not only get the science right, but also to educate, and not mislead, the public as this program does.”

Other speakers at the symposium included Dr Janette Lindesay of ANU, who spoke on ‘The Science of Global Warming: Instrumental Records’ and Professor Robert Dunbar from Stanford University, who discussed ‘Lessons from the past: manmade climate change versus solar, volcanic forcing’.