Stewart Franks

Stewart Franks Quote: "[The IPCC] It is actually run by a very small group of about six to eight leading members of the IPCC who all agree that scaring people about climate change is very good for their careers." Stewart Franks, 2009, talking to a Parliamentary Committee on Climate Policy in Australia.

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Stewart William Franks is a professor of engineering at the University of Tasmania, Australia. He is a global warming sceptic and denier who regularly appears on television and radio to put the sceptics' and denialists' case. Franks is a hydrologist, not a climatologist, although he likes to style himself as a "hydro-climatologist" because, as he himself says, "nobody knows what that is".

Franks is a "proud member" of a right-wing, corporate funded think tank called the Institute for Public Affairs.

Coal industry funding

Despite repeatedly denying that he has received any funding from polluting industries, Franks in fact received AU $85,000 in 2006/7 from Macquarie Generation, a state-owned corporation selling electricity on the National Electricity Market in Australia and one of the largest CO₂ emitters in Australia. This corporation operates two of the largest coal-powered stations in New South Wales (consuming a combined total of 13 million tonnes of CO₂ producing coal per annum) and is part of the national energy industry.

On at least two occasions, in a major newspaper and on national TV, he denied receiving any funding from polluting industries, despite receiving money from Macquarie Generation.

He was forced to admit this funding when questioned by a parliamentary committee, but immediately claimed the money went to a "student" and not himself.

Climate change denial

Franks uses the familiar arguments of the denialist camp:

• Climate change is due to La Niña and El Niño, not CO₂
• We cannot be sure the warming will be dangerous, so we should do nothing
• We need to know more about planetary albedo and how it changes before we can take any action on CO₂
• The computer models used by climate scientists are abused by them for their own ends. "They just plug the gaps to give them results that they want. That is that CO₂ is bad for the planet—according to the models, not according to the observations thus far."
• There is insufficient data on climate change and CO₂ to establish any cause and effect
• Many climate scientists have not tested the hypothesis of CO₂-induced global warming and are only going along with the majority opinion to further their careers
• Action on climate change should be delayed because it may lead to more expensive energy for developing nations, which will impact on global poverty
• Australia has always had climate extremes and reducing CO₂ will make no difference to that, and people have been brainwashed into believing it will.

Related GEM.wiki articles

• Global warming skeptics
• Mining industry

External resources

• Frank's Academic page

External articles

• Article authored by Franks claimed the Australian droughts had nothing to do with climate change — published by the News Corporation-owned conservative broadsheet, The Australian