If the Rinehart books are merely an opportunity missed, then Don Aitkin’s apologia for climate change denialism in his review of Tony Eggleton’s A Short Introduction to Climate Change (November 2012) is an opportunity suppressed. To dispense the scientific and policy bromide of ‘balance’ to the science of anthropogenic climate change also means junking the process of rigorous peer review, something which is unacceptable and, particularly for a former university vice-chancellor, surprising. Although not perfect, peer review is the best we have for the advancement of scientific knowledge, and is highly serviceable for evidence-based policy development.

When Aitkin’s climate change ‘sceptics’ and ‘dissenters’ (as he generously calls himself and other denialists) can stump up evidence that passes muster by other scientists and overturn the vast consensus for fossil-fuelled global warming, we can all relax and burn coal and petrol without a care. Until then, much more scepticism is needed about the vested interests of many climate change denialists such as Ian Plimer, a well-rewarded favourite of Rinehart, rather than glib contrarian dismissal of a hothouse planet as a ‘fashionable’ ‘bugbear’.

Phil Shannon, Pasadena, SA

Don Aitkin replies:

Science is about data, hypotheses, and argument. ‘Denialism’ and ‘deniers’ are terms that fit better in arguments about religion. I recognise that some people see global warming that way, but I am not one of them.

Precipitously yours

Dear Editor,

As one who played a role in the editing of Peter Fitzpatrick’s book The Two Frank Thrings, I was of course delighted by Ian Britain’s enthusiastic and thoughtful review (October 2012). However, I would point out, in relation to his amusing point about the use of ‘precipitous’ rather than ‘precipitate’, that the meaning ‘done suddenly and without careful consideration’ and ‘rash/hasty’ for the former word is given in the Oxford, Macquarie, and Webster dictionaries and that the Online Etymology Dictionary dates this use from the 1640s, slightly earlier than the use of ‘precipitate’ in this sense.

Gabrielle Baldwin, South Melb., Vic.