Argues that the virtual nature of much environmental science and the application of non-
science principles such as the precautionary principle facilitate the virtuous corruption of
environmental science. This book illustrates that the problem is widespread than this area
alone would suggest and is common in the important field of climate science.

The public inquiry has been a familiar investigating tool in Australian public administration at
least since the 1819 appointment by the then British government of John Thomas Bigge as a
commissioner to inquire into the condition of New South Wales (which then included Van
Diemen's Land as a semi-autonomous dependency). Government was of course then
allpervasive. But the Australian colonies happily followed the British royal commission/board
of inquiry tradition after they became selfgoverning through the later 19th century, as did the …