The organisation downplays the risk of the effects of global warming, rejects the scientific conclusion that human activity causes it, and opposes policies designed to curtail it.
"[1] The group was named after French scientist Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794), the father of modern chemistry who disproved the Phlogiston theory of combustion.
Its founders claimed that there had been "very little ongoing public debate about these proposals... are of the view that the science behind global warming policy is far less certain than its protagonists claim, and we also believe that the economic damage which Australia would suffer, if a carbon tax of the magnitude canvassed in AGO documents were imposed, would be far, far greater than is currently appreciated in Canberra" [2] Following an inaugural conference in May 1999,[3] the group was founded in April 2000 by former Finance Minister Peter Walsh,[4] Ian Webber, Ray Evans, Harold Clough (current Director of Institute of Public Affairs),[5] Robert Foster and Bruce Kean, with an opening address by supporter Hugh Morgan.
[6] Secretary Ray Evans describes the 90-odd Lavoisier members as a "dad's army" of mostly retired engineers and scientists from the mining, manufacturing and construction industries, such as Garth Paltridge and Ian Plimer.
The group claims that many scientists choose to endorse prevailing theories of global warming to protect their research funding by the government, a view that is held by French climatologist and author Marcel Leroux,[7] and was the subject of the book Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media by Patrick Michaels.