Australia's chief scientist wants the scientific community to stand up in the national climate change debate against vested interests and bogus views carried by the media.
Scientists needed to "stand up and be counted" to lift public understanding of climate change science, Professor Ian Chubb told a parliamentary inquiry on Monday.
As the federal government prepares to push its carbon tax law through parliament, Prof Chubb emphasised the debate should be a "contest of ideas" and not an agenda-driven conflict.
"The scientific community as a whole has a great deal of responsibility to ensure science is elevated to where it once used to be, and not to be subject to attacks by people with all sorts of agendas," Prof Chubb told the joint select committee inquiry in Canberra.
The government earlier this month introduced to parliament 19 bills to support its planned $23 a tonne carbon tax, due to come into effect from mid-2012, despite strong opposition from the coalition and some business and community groups.
The bills are due to go to a lower house vote on October 12 before being presented to the Senate, where they are set to pass with the support of the Greens.
Australian Greens senator and committee member Christine Milne had asked Prof Chubb for his view on sceptics' success in painting climate change science in quasi-religious terms, with believers and non-believers.
Prof Chubb described media coverage of climate science as "ordinary" and said he was disappointed by the weight given to non-credible views.
"It's raised doubts where doubts should not exist," Prof Chubb said.
"Science will always have some level of uncertainty, but if you're 95 per cent certain your house is going to burn down, do you do nothing? I don't think so."
Prof Chubb called for all scientists to be more proactive on the issue of climate change.
"The majority of scientists should be out there explaining to the public - why they do science, how they do science and how they accumulate scientific evidence," he said.
A contest of ideas was central to scientific progress and was important to raise public understanding, Prof Chubb said.
He said personal attacks on climate change scientists, including death threats and calls for scientists to be jailed, were "deplorable".
"There are people being attacked for saying something people don't want to hear."
Climate change legal expert Martijn Wilder from law firm Baker & McKenzie it was important countries such as Australia focused on domestic plans to reduce carbon emissions, as international law was difficult to enforce.
"One has to be realistic here. If we wait forever for a global agreement, we'll never start to get emissions reduced," he said.
"In an ideal world it might be best to have a global agreement, but that has its challenges."
Earlier on Monday, Treasury officials rejected claims the department's carbon price modelling would collapse if the US did not introduce an emissions trading scheme.
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