Professor Bob Carter - a great intellect, leading advocate and wonderful human being

Here at Mannkal we were deeply saddened at the passing of Professor Bob Carter earlier this week.
 
Bob was a long-standing friend of Mannkal and even held the Perth launch for his magnificent book, Taxing Air, in our office. You can purchase your own copy HERE.

Bob earned his Honours B.Sc in Geology and his Ph.D. in Palaeontology. An Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and winner of the Outstanding Research Career Award of the Geological Society of New Zealand, he authored over 100 academic research papers in the fields of palaeontology, geology, marine science and climate change. His positions included Director of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University and Director of the Australian Office of the Ocean Drilling Program, but it was on the subject of climate change that he became one of the leading voices in the world.  

Bob referred to himself as a "climate rationalist", emphasising the importance of the scientific method. As he wrote for the Institute of Public Affairs in 2003 , "To the extent that it is possible for any human endeavour to be so, science is value-free. Science is a way of attempting to understand the world in which live from a rational point of view, based on observation, experiment and tested theory. Irritatingly, especially for governments, science does not operate by consensus and it is often best progressed by mavericks. The alternative to a scientific approach is one based on superstition, phobia, religion or politics."
 
Bob could eloquently describe, for audiences ranging from town hall meetings to Parliamentary committees, how modern temperatures are not unduly warm, how levels of carbon dioxide are currently low in the context of the planet's history and how the "warming" effect of CO2 suffers diminishing returns - that is, as more CO2 enters the atmosphere, the less effect it has. Bob never resiled from calling out the lies and academic failures of the climate campaigners as he was first and foremost a scientist, presenting facts based on researched evidence, and his passion for imparting knowledge was clear to all. 

As Bob pointed out, 99.55% of the greenhouse effect has nothing to do with carbon dioxide emissions caused by humans, and the addition of 50 ppm of CO2 between 1981 and 2010 fertilised an 11% increase in plant cover.

Bob was one of those rare individuals who combined a passion for informed science with a rare ability to communicate - all while maintaining a sunny disposition. Despite the spiteful nature of the attacks he endured from climate-change campaigners, he was not one to be cowed, nor was he angered - his enthusiasm for sharing scientific learning was as enduring as his cheerful demeanour.
 
He will be sorely missed.

 

Paul McCarthy
CEO

 

 

More on Bob Carter

The man himself, on Youtube: (climate demonstrators) "are railing against the modern world"
  
The Heartland Institute has collated some of Bob's most entertaining public comments:
 

John Roskam of The Institute of Public Affairs shares how Bob educated him on climate issues and recalls how angry The Guardian was when Bob dared to present "the other side" of the climate debate, with facts and figures, to a Parliamentary committee.
http://ipa.org.au/news/3413/celebrating-the-achievements-of-professor-bob-carter:-1942---2016
 
Celebrated climate blogger Jo Nova recalls Bob as a person, his successes and how he wasn't popular with Julia Gillard or Tim Flannery


Dr Jennifer Marohasy, founder of the Climate Modelling Laboratory
Please click here

 

 

Quote of the Month

"This demonstration against carbon dioxide - I really do wonder on this cold Paris day that when they go into stores and they have that lovely warmth, or when they go home and have that lovely warmth, that it comes from electricity, and of course the cheapest, cleanest way of generating electricity is coal-fired power stations, provided you filter the particulates. It's hard to know what motivates people like this because they're just railing against the modern world, basically. It's become a very fun thing to be part of a group... it's a very strange sociological phenomenon, but it's got out of control."



-Bob Carter describing demonstrators at the Paris Climate Conference, December 2015.
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