''It is much more serious than anybody's admitting officially. Any big company that's following the science would know this full well. We complain about lack of certainty. We complain about proliferation of different sorts of legislation and regulation around the country. ''But for the last 15 years senior business people in this country have not been prepared to get out publicly and lay it on the line that this is a serious issue, and it's one where we want leadership and we want genuine results. ''It's too hard a problem really for the political system to deal with. We've set up a system that's incapable of actually handling issues which are long-term. The business community should be the ones taking the lead, because they're the ones who are going to have to solve it in the end. I just wonder whether there's not a whole arena in there which we are completely missing, which is that chairmen and chief executives of major corporations should be getting out there and demanding of government, that they start to treat this thing in a completely different context from the way we've been treating it, and we want completely different solutions coming through, because we're trying to solve at the moment the wrong problem, with the wrong solutions. ''Where is the leadership from senior corporate business people in this country? Where is it going to come from? Because if we don't get it fairly soon, we can't solve this. The problem is that what we do today manifests itself in terms of extreme weather on a continuing basis from now on, but we won't see the full impact for 20 or 30 years' time.'' Clang! Mortimer, who had been arguing, among other things, for a consumption-based rather than production-based carbon tax, answered that his take on the outlook for fossil fuel use was based on World Economic Forum statistics - which he accepted were probably realistic - and proceeded to fob the question off.

Dunlop's question drew on science from Europe's best climate research centres - including the Tyndall Centre in Britain and the Potsdam Institute in Germany - and you could have heard a pin drop as he asked it. But my bet is most of the audience that day thought he was being alarmist. Which shows how loose the ''climate sceptic'' handle really is. Sceptical of what? That climate change is happening? That we are the main cause? Or that billions could die this century as a result? Some scepticism sounds pretty reasonable. The president of the Business Council, Graham Bradley - the chairman of the developer Stockland, HSBC Australia and the coalminer Anglo American Australia - doubts the increased value and incidence of extreme weather-related insurance claims provides evidence of an increase in the incidence or severity of extreme weather events. Higher population, asset values and insurance coverage all mean a given weather event has more impact nowadays. Other scepticism seems outlandish. In an interview published online by Australian Mining this week the coal and iron ore miner Gina Rinehart argued Australians were ''not swayed by the global warming fear campaign''. She told the magazine: ''I have never met a geologist or leading scientist who believes adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will have any significant effect on climate change.'' What seems likely is that Australian business leaders, on average, are just as sceptical as everyone else, and right now the sceptics are fighting back. According to a Newspoll this week, 78 per cent of Australians believe climate change is happening and 72 per cent believe humans are partly or entirely the cause. That suggests roughly 28 per cent of the population, or 6.3 million people, see no problem.

They're not all fools or blinded by a vested interest. In a recent interview with my colleague Stuart Washington, Cochlear's chief executive, Dr Chris Roberts - whose first degree was in chemical engineering - complained about the lack of scientific literacy in this country: ''If you look at the nonsense about anthropogenic global warming where repetition is substituted for truth, for example. I mean it's bizarre, people's thinking … It's a function of how we educate people, quite frankly, and the quality of the debate. ''I'm highly sceptical that global warming is driven by humans. I'm underwhelmed by the science that supports anthoropogenic global warming. ''The previous prime minister, Kevin Rudd, at one stage came out and said anthropogenic global warming is fact. Well, come on, it's a hypothesis, and we should at least be able to talk about the data behind that hypothesis. Don't come out and say it's a fact.'' The broking consultancy East Coles has just hosted an online discussion of the carbon tax for clients, which began with a blast from Resmed's executive chairman, Dr Peter Farrell, also a chemical engineer. Farrell, an out-and-out sceptic, argued ''even if one were foolish enough to believe that carbon dioxide had anything other than a minor impact on climate'', the carbon tax ''doesn't pass the smell test''.

When a sustainability manager - most responses were anonymous - said ''I am really surprised that a chairman of an ASX-listed company could espouse such ignorant views on climate change'', Farrell fired right back, telling his critic to ''deal with data, not with opinions''. ''There are no quantitative data to connect CO2 to climate change,'' he wrote, and went on. Farrell was not alone. Mike Mangan, who runs 2MG Asset Management, didn't believe human activity was having a material impact on the weather and launched off on a climate history starting 10,000 years ago. In fact, asked if they agreed with Farrell's views on climate change, more than a third of respondents ticked ''Yes''. OK, the sample was tiny - nine people out of 25 who answered - but that is not the point. These guys are driving the market. No wonder we can't steer straight. paddy.manning@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Twitter: @gpaddymanning