Readers of The Manly Daily – one of Rupert’s better suburban rags – would have enjoyed reading the letters to the editor, where one Manly resident referred to a leading climate scientist’s statement that “there has been no global warming for the past 15 years”. The scientist in question is one of the world’s leading climate scientists, erstwhile director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Professor Phil Jones. What he actually said was the opposite – but don’t let the facts stand in the way of a good dose of climate denial – and far be it from a tabloid in the Murdoch stable to worry about checking facts if a good controversy is to be had. And there is no better controversy in the minds of Murdoch editors than climate change.

There is no controversy so far as the world’s scientists are concerned. And this discrepancy is of great concern around here, because it continues to allow fools at The Australian (such as the Editor at Large, Paul Kelly, and his Many Minions of Denial) to influence government policy and consumer choices that the problem either isn’t real, or isn’t urgent, or isn’t ours to solve. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

See GetUp!’s full page ad in tomorrow’s Australian (Wed Feb 9).