Building a monument to climate insanity
TERRY MCCRANN
The Daily Telegraph
October 31,2013
Pg.60
I STILL have a dream. Of that one day when we start pulling down the utterly useless, landscape-blighting, bird-killing, people-punishing wind farms.
We’ll leave a few, some stripped of their turbines, some left with a blade to turn lazily and even more uselessly in the occasional breeze; all, like fragments of the Berlin Wall, as a reminder of the time when insanity engulfed the intellectual and policy making elites.
The Climate Change Authority’s 177 pages of sheer drivel, released yesterday, comes close to ranking as the high-water mark of this insanity.
The authority was not content with just doubling down on the climate stupidity, it tripled down in its draft report.
Thanks to Julia Gillard and Bob Brown — endorsed so memorably by that in-chamber kiss from the squibber, Kevin Rudd — Australia is legally committed to cutting emissions of carbon dioxide by 5 per cent by 2020.
Well, the authority says we’ve got to shoot for at least 15 per cent; and it left little doubt that it really wants 25 per cent.
That’s hardly surprising given the troika of professorial climate hysterics, Clive Hamilton, David Karoly and John Quiggin, at the authority’s core. It’s surprising they didn’t persuade their fellow members to shoot for something more tangible — like closing down all our real power stations by 2020.
The authority’s central argument for bigger carbon dioxide emission cuts was that “evidence is also mounting’’ that several other comparable countries were preparing to reduce emissions even more aggressively by 2020.
This was followed by the usual “what will they think of us” bleat that a 5 per cent target would leave Australia lagging.
Greg Sheridan, in The Australian, shredded that claim two weeks ago, as far as action via an emissions trading scheme is concerned.
Of the 195 members in the UN Framework Convention on Climate, only 34 had anything resembling an ETS and 27 of those were in the European Union.
Japan had effectively abandoned its ETS plans, Sheridan wrote. South Korea had one but was going to issue all permits free. Some of the biggest emitters, like Indonesia and India, subsidised carbon fuels.
Yes, the US has an impressive target. But it does not have either a carbon tax or an ETS and never will.
But it comes back to the carbon elephant in the room: China, which buys a lot of coal and iron ore from us and turns that into steel, a little bit of power and a lot of carbon dioxide.
The report claimed China was trying harder to reduce emissions. And that it was “investing heavily in renewable energy projects, closing inefficient coal power plants’’.
The first is simply untrue. As the fine print notes, China aims to cut only carbon dioxide emission intensity — not emissions per se — by cutting emissions per unit of GDP by 40-45 per cent by 2020. That might sound impressive, but given China’s growth, its 2020 emissions will be significantly higher than today’s.
The other claim is a deliberate constructive lie. It is replacing old coal-fired power stations — to reduce real pollution, the dirty bits of grit that really do kill people — with modern plants that pump out as much carbon dioxide, cleanly.
The report proposes wilful pain on all Australians and serious damage to the economy. It could well have been written by Bob Brown and Christine Milne. It certainly channels all their fantasies.
Christine Milne
Environmental Scientist and Campaigner David Suzuki performs a bellyflop
Terry McCrann
Hearld Sun
September 25,2013
Heating God, David Suziki
IMAGINE an economist, so respected, so informed, with such a seemingly razor-sharp mind - at least, that is, to the ABC - that the TV network bestows on them the privilege and exposure generally reserved only for prime ministers, opposition leaders and globally significant figures like Bill Gates.
That is, a full hour to be questioned, all on their own, to share their ABC-perceived wisdom and unique insights, on the ABC’s Q & A program. The first question to this economist asks him or her to comment on the significance for the economy of the government’s big budget deficits.
To elicit the response: what deficits? What is the source for your claim, that there’ve been deficits? To which the somewhat startled questioner might respond: well, the government’s official budget papers.
That is waved away by the esteemed economist with; I don’t know what some raving shock-jock has managed to calculate. Do you think a hopefully even slightly embarrassed Tony Jones would be forced to 'do a Kerry'. To abruptly terminate the program due to 'technical difficulties'. For if an economist literally didn’t know the budget in Australia has been in deficit in recent years, why on earth would you consider anything else she or he had to say, had the slightest value.
Well, exactly that happened, in real life - well, OK, ABC-life- on Q & A on Monday night. Canadian self-promoter and all-round blowhard, David Suzuki - albeit, described by the ABC as "Renowned Environmental Scientist and Campaigner" - had been given the full-hour.
In due deference to his secular sainthood, the program was titled: "An audience with David Suzuki". The first question up, asked him to comment on the pause in global warming since 1998.
"Yeah, well, I don’t know why you are saying that," was Suzuki’s response. When the questioner, explained that it was based on all the datasets that measured global temperatures, identifying them by name, Suzuki’s puzzled response was: "sorry, yeah, what is the reference?"
After they were spelt out; datasets that are recognised, accepted and used even by the UN’s climate campaigning IPCC; Suzuki again: "well, there may be a climate sceptic down in Huntsville, Alabama, who has taken the data and come to that conclusion".
At which point host Jones, should have interjected, that if Suzuki didn’t know that global temperatures had been broadly steady since 1998, what on earth was the point of continuing 'the audience'. Sure, we can have a discussion about why temperatures had been steady since 1998.
The IPPC, is going to do exactly, desperately. that in its big report that starts to be dribbled out tomorrow.
Desperate doesn’t even begin, incidentally, to describe the frightening position, that the IPCC and all the tens - nay, hundreds - of thousands of people around the world, who ride the great global warming gravy train, from one extravagant luxury conference to the next extravagant conference each year, face. For if the globe has stopped warming, how can you keep discussing, at great personal benefit and comfort, well, "global warming.’’
Suzuki is himself a perfect example- charging $30,000 for one-hour speeches to university students. Plus $11,000 in 'expenses'. It’s a good thing he just does it "to save the planet".
Why, if he was after personal reward, he’d have to charge serious money. No wonder, he’s come out here; given almost unlimited access to wall-to-wall fawning, even ululating coverage on `your ABC.’ To warn against the threat posed by prime minister Abbott’s intent to abolish the carbon tax poses to his wellbeing.
Err, that is to say, to his `well-being’ as a member of gaia, that is, of course. The timing of his visit, though, is exquisite, with the abolition of the Climate Commission, and the Suzukilike laughably fatuous claims made for it and its work. It’s now ex-chairman Tim Flannery - I wonder if he was envious to discover that Suzuki only had to give six speeches adding to all of six hours effort to pocket as much as the $180,00 he had been paid a year as chairman? - claimed the CC had "stuck to the facts."
That it had been the source of "authoritative, independent and accurate information on climate change".
Oh yeah, Tim, excuse me while I dry-retch. For all the CC has done is pour out global warming propaganda and hysterical overblown disaster nonsense. Under inflammatory, meaningless titles such as: "The Angry Summer." And report after report that included the words: the "Critical Decade." Designed to convey facts?
Designed to promote hysteria. Suzuki’s appearance on Monday night was exquisitely came straight after a classic, biased ABC Media Watch `Gotcha’ on some media misreporting on exactly the subject that floored Suzuki; the warming pause. In the normal pompous Media Watch way, leftist warmist believer Paul Barry was all over the trees - the fact that The Australian and Britain’s Daily Mail had overstated the fall in the pace of long-run global temperature rise. And completely missed the inconvenient wood.
That even the correct figure Barry pompously alluded to occurred as a consequence of the fact that global temperature had all but stopped going up for what is now 15 years. It was inadvertently the perfect night. Barry’s blinkered bias merged with, as my colleague Andrew Bolt put it on his blog more fully exorciating Suzuki, the Canadian blowhard’s pig ignorance on the global warming issue.
