Inner necessity

Dear Editor,

Perceptions of the written word are intrinsically interesting to a publisher. So it was with curiosity, if surprise, that we read the review of Alan Gould’s The Seaglass Spiral. In her review, Jane Sullivan suggested the book’s introduction ‘seems cautious, even diffident about its product’, and asked why the book shouldn’t be left to speak for itself.

As is stated in the introduction, questioning the convention of leaving fiction to speak for itself was a central reason for writing it. As a non-profit press, we take delight in adding to the discourse about books, free from the burden of the ‘hard sell’. This brings us to another purpose of this introduction – our view that money holds too great a sway over our creative industries.

Finlay Lloyd enjoys arguing another approach. We believe a vital society relies on money being put to interesting and inventive purposes, and not simply to reproducing itself. The introduction was written both to make clear our repudiation of the preoccupation with profit in the book industry and our enthusiastic support for writers like Gould, whose work dances to its inner necessity rather than to an imposednotion of what a book should be, a notion also contradicted in this case by good reviews and positive reader response.

Sullivan is a journalist and writer we respect, and we take no issue with her right to make a rather critical assessment of the book itself, but we want to make clear our unequivocal pleasure in publishing The Seaglass Spiral.

Julian Davies and Phil Day
(for Finlay Lloyd Publishers), Braidwood, NSW

Jane Sullivan replies:

While it’s true that I detected a diffident note in the introduction to The Seaglass Spiral, this is clearly a matter of interpretation. So I am happy to accept Finlay Lloyd’s assurance of its wholehearted support for the novel.

I am also happy to add my support to the notion that publishing is not just about making a profit, that there are times when money ‘should be put to interesting and inventive purposes’, and that this should indeed happen more often than it does.

Oversight

Dear Editor,

Don Aitkin’s review of my book A Short Introduction to Climate Change (November 2012), by his own admission, has been written by a dissenter. Aitkin reveals that he has scant respect for the vast majority of scientific opinion, which he chooses to term ‘the orthodoxy’. On this basis he proceeds with an opinion piece, not a review, for there is very little about the book and much about his doubt of the science of climate change. He also gives his views on the climate debate, on political decision-making and on people’s reaction to these issues. They are not the subject of my book, and I do not understand why Aitkin brings these topics into a book review.

Aitkin’s first paragraph does mention the book. The second paragraph is largely about the IPCC, while at the end comes the sentence ‘Professor Eggleton follows this line of thought in his book.’ Then back to himself: ‘I have reservations about the orthodoxy, and thus about his conclusions.’ Neither of the next two paragraphs refers to the book; they only reflect Aitkin’s views. In the fifth paragraph, the book gets seven lines. After that Aitkin gives up any pretence of reviewing and lists three reasons for his denial of climate science ‘orthodoxy’ as he calls it, but for none does he give any evidence, only his opinion.

First, he denies the accuracy of the global temperature reconstruction for the last 120 years. He admits the Earth has warmed, but writes ‘we cannot be sure by how much’. This is incorrect. Global-mean temperature changes over the last century have been well established by four independent groups (HadCRUT, NCDC, NASA GISS, and BEST)*. These studies do indeed tell us by how much the earth has warmed – the southern hemisphere by 0.6°C, the northern by 0.9°C.  He continues with: ‘The notion that we can know that last year was hotter than its predecessor, to three decimal places, is nonsense.’ That is correct, it is nonsense; but only Aitkin claims such accuracy. While global average temperature records are generally given to one or two decimal places, an inter-annual difference of 0.3°C would be required for the difference to be regarded as significant at the ninety per cent level of probability. Aitkin’s claim is a straw man argument.

‘Second,’ he writes, ‘the warming may or may not be unprecedented, but we have no real knowledge’. That is not correct. There is now very clear knowledge of the climate variations of the past thousand years, and of temperature changes over the past million years. The present global warming is unprecedented. Much of the evidence is presented in my book, but Aitkin chooses to ignore that.

Aitkin’s third point is: ‘We still don’t know what causes climate’s “natural variability”.’ That also is incorrect. Climate science has a very clear and well-documented understanding of the many factors causing climate’s natural variability, again described in detail in the book, as are those topics where there is debate and uncertainty within climate science.

Tony Eggleton, Canberra, ACT

*The Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office, National Climate Data Center USA, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature.

Don Aitkin replies:

Whether or not our climate has changed in our own lifetime, and whether or not, if it has, that change has been caused by the activity of human beings, are matters about which there is great controversy. In my review of Professor Eggleton’s book, I said that it was ‘well written, clear in its argument, quite even-handed, and comprehensive’. I didn’t say that it was correct in every particular. It isn’t. Like everyone who writes on this subject, he sees some data and argument as truth which others reject, just as he rejects data and argument which others see as truth. He thinks we know enough to be sure that the IPCC position is the correct one. I think we have a lot more to know before we are in a position sensibly to start levying charges on the use of fossil fuels or engaging in geo-engineering.

His is a good book, but it has a strong bias toward supporting the orthodoxy. I suggested in my review that ‘one should make sure that one’s reading diet in this area is balanced’. I stick with that suggestion.