Steele, both Mann and Carter are paleoclimatologists. Carter has an excellent world reputation and has given evidence on climate before the US Senate. He was also the expert witness on climate in a UK court case where he identified a number of the climate lies in Al Gores fraudulent film, “An Inconvenient Truth”
Mann has an unsavoury reputation as a “climate scientist”:
“… Daily Telegraph article was covered in the US by various outlets, including Fox News, which covered the Daily Telegraph story in an article entitled Top Climate Scientist Under Fire for ‘Exaggerating’ Global Warming”, complete with large photograph of Mann.
The article contained commentary that was critical of both Mann and the Penn State inquiries, including the following:
Britain’s top statistician absolved U.K. scientists following the climate-data scandal — and blasted U.S. researcher Michael Mann for exaggerating the size of global warming.
An inquiry by a panel of scientists into the behavior and methodologies of researchers at Britain’s East Anglia University found Britain’s climatologists scatterbrained and sloppy, but ultimately innocent of intentionally skewing climate data. But one of the top scientists selected for the panel slammed the methodologies used by Penn State climatologist Michael Mann to devise his infamous “Hockey Stick ” “
http://climateaudit.org/2014/02/17/mann-and-the-oxburgh-panel/

Do you still wish to pretend, Steele, that you are stupid enough to deny that Carter is a climate scientist? You have no rational basis to deny it.

Dear Leo Lane,

You wrote;

“Carter has an excellent world reputation”

Rubbish, I don't know what his reputation is like in the world of bi-valved molluscs but from my reading in the world of climate science the man is regarded as a joke and someone who is taking money from the fossil fuel industry to spruik his brand of crap.

Even that scurrilous organisation of which he is a lobbyist, the Heartland Institute, doesn't refer to him as a climate scientist.
http://heartland.org/robert-m-carter

“Australia’s climate sceptic movement - from Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones to the Sydney Institute and the Coalition’s skeptic rump - has relied on a small pool of academics who cast doubt on the science of anthropogenic global warming (i.e. climate change caused by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions). These academics are usually male, usually older, are often geologists and are sometimes semi-retired. Some have published little on climate in peer-reviewed academic publications.”

“Now that pool is two men smaller. Professor Murry Salby has been controversially terminated by Macquarie University, and Professor Bob Carter, who was an adjunct research fellow at James Cook University, has also been axed (the university says his term expired).”
http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/07/12/censorship-climate-sceptics-culled-from-universities/?wpmp_switcher=mobile

The only time he has been published on the subject of climate change in a scientific journal of note was as co-author on a paper that was roundly condemned.

My point about Carter being an anthropologist compared to Mann the MD stands. Mann has the mathematics and physics qualifications to model and investigate the 'living state'' of the current climate and the impact of GHGs. Carter does not.

Thankfully without his tenure it might be harder for the skeptics to get paid misinformers, lobbyists, like Carter into inquiries and the media.

Abbott already is looking like a genius, at least compared to the last couple of tenants in the Lodge.

That is why the left is so desperately trying to drag him down. They know that if he gets a second term, his success will become so obvious that he will be there as long as Menzies was.

It has been quite a joy watching the man grow into the job, after watching the last two twits sink deeper into failure by the day.

Steele, Miranda Devine answers your nonsense about Carter’s funding:
“Carter is paid for time-consuming professional work as co-editor of a Heartland publication that rivals the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment report. He reads scientific papers, summarises them, and collates them for Heartland’s nongovernmental international panel on climate change report. For this he is paid $1667 a month. Mammalogist Tim Flannery is paid 10 times more by Julia Gillard to make pop predictions about catastrophic climate change that never seem to eventuate, and he is hailed as a great savant.” And
“In any case, he(Carter) may have the last laugh; a cartoonist in The Age noted the irony of Carter’s position. In the cartoon, Gillard is berating Flannery, not for being “so wrong about water shortages now that we’re drowning in the stuff”, but because “I want to know why I pay you 10 times what Bob Carter gets and he wins the argument!””
Miranda also mentions the smearing of Heartland: “The demonisation of Heartland as some sort of powerful financier of climate terror is farcical.
Its entire budget is $7.7 million, only a quarter of which goes into climate projects. That is a drop in the ocean compared to the billions available to the Goliaths on the other side.
Carter estimates conservatively the climate alarm PR industry is worth about $11 billion each year.
The combined budgets of sceptic groups trying to inject balance into the climate debate would be no more than $20 million.
Heartland makes an impact, not because of money, but because of the power of its ideas, the logic of its arguments and the intellects of the experts it attracts.”

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/smears_and_fears_in_a_climate_of_dirty_tricks/

Mann is suing a climate scientist for a remark to the effect that Mann, for his work should not be in a university but in a penitentiary. He also sued Mark Steyn for telling the truth about him, and Steyn has counter-sued. Mann is a very busy fraud-backer, and certainly not of good repute.

Dear Hasbeen,

I note the 'when' seems to have been relegated to an 'if' Abbott gets back in. Congratulations on the realistic approach.

Dear Leo Lane,

Are you seriously touting the Heartland Institute as credible? That is the second laugh you have given me today.

Here is what a Texan Judge had to say about Tim Blast Heartland's CEO in August;

“"Mr. Joseph Bast, president and CEO of the Heartland Institute, testified for the Intervenors regarding the Texas Taxpayers’ Savings Grant Programs (“TTSGP”), a school voucher bill that failed in the 82nd Legislative Session. As a threshold matter, this Court finds that Mr. Bast is not a credible witness and that he did not offer reliable opinions in this matter. While Mr. Bast described himself as an economist, he holds neither undergraduate nor graduate degrees in economics, and the highest level of education he completed was high school. Mr. Bast testified that he is 100% committed to the long-term goal of getting government out of the business of educating its own voting citizens. Further, his use of inflammatory and irresponsible language regarding global warming, and his admission that the long term goal of his advocacy of vouchers is to dismantle the “socialist” public education system further undermine his credibility with this Court."
http://www.co.travis.tx.us/courts/civil/district/pdfs/school-finance-findings-conclusions.pdf

Seems for this lobbying firm at least overstating one's qualifications in a particular field is not only the habit of retired geologists from Australia.

@SteeleRedux. You are never going to persuade Leo Lane and his ilk. They are invincible in their ignorance. They will still be screaming words to the effect that climate change is a leftist fraudulent trick when sea levels are lapping at their front door.

Ironic isn't it that he and his mates happily label me a conspiracy theorist when they are advancing the proposition that 95+% of the world's recognised climate scientists (not stooges of the Christian fundamentalist fringe like the Heartland Institute) must all have conspired to reach the same general conclusions.

@Hasbeen. You obviously inhabit some parallel universe where Abbott is popular, successful and likely to win the next election. In truth the man is a chronic liar, an embarrassment in the international arena, and odds on favourite to be replaced by one of his ambitious but no more talented sidekicks before the election.