Until recently I, like most Australians, simply accepted without question the notion that global warming was a result of increased carbon emissions. However, after speaking to a cross-section of noted scientists, including Ian Plimer, a professor at the University of Adelaide and author of Heaven and Earth, I quickly began to understand that the science on this issue was by no means conclusive. At the conference I attended on Tuesday hosted by the Heartland Institute, I heard views that challenged the Rudd government’s set of “facts”. Views that could not be dismissed as mere conspiracy theories, but that were derived using proper scientific analysis. The idea that climate change is a result of the variation in solar activity and not related to the increase of CO2 into the atmosphere is not something I can remember ever being discussed in the media. The question of whether global warming is a new phenomenon or something that is just part of the naturally occurring 1500-year climate cycle was never raised in any of the discussions I have had with the Rudd government. Has the government considered these questions, or has it just accepted the one scientific explanation for climate change at face value?

These are the sorts of questions that I believe need to be answered before any emissions trading scheme can be properly considered.

Well said.

Read it here.

A little Queen’s Birthday alarmism from The Age, to get your day off to a good start.

CLIMATE change is causing heatwave records to be smashed in ways that would have been considered fantasy just a few years ago, a leading climate scientist has warned [It’s still fantasy: Fairfax fantasy, that is – Ed].

Monash University’s Neville Nicholls [lead author of the Summary for Policymakers for IPCC WG1 assessment – so that says it all – Ed] said the increase in the number and severity of extremely hot summer days in Victoria was unprecedented, making it impossible to estimate accurately the impact it would have on people’s health. The State Government recently estimated 374 Victorians may have died because of extreme heat in the final week of January.
…
“Climate change is happening now and will happen all through the rest of our lifetimes,” he told a State Government conference on adapting to climate change. [Unbelievably misleading comment from a “professor” of climate. Climate change has happened since the dawn of time and will continue happening until the sun swells up and swallows the earth whole in about 4.5 billion years – Ed]

As usual, the article refers to “records” four times, without ever pointing out that official “records” only go back to 1851, and in that year, even though the planet was emerging from the Little Ice Age, the temperature in Melbourne reached 47.2. And as for everything being faster, badder, bigger than our worst fears:

Read it here.

Batten down the hatches, get out your thermal underwear and dust off the snow chains for the car. Al Gore is visiting Australia next week, and will no doubt bring the infamous “Gore Effect” with him. The Goracle will be here to launch a new organisation, Safe Climate Australia, founded by “concerned scientists and business and community leaders.” The article, in The Sunday Age, says that one of the group’s founding members, Ian Dunlop, said that “Safe Climate Australia was not a new advocacy group, rather an apolitical organisation that wanted to produce a practical plan.”

“The problem is that the scientific debate and the political debate are like two ships passing in the night, there’s no connection between them,” Mr Dunlop said.

So true, so very true. But unfortunately not in the way you mean.

Read it here.

A letter in the Australian Magazine wins today’s ICOTD gong:

There isn’t a lot of certainty in our world, but one thing even more certain than the sun coming up tomorrow is that we have come close to destroying our own planet. Thank God, Buddha, or whoever, for a gutsy woman like Penny Wong, who stands tall among the leaders of this country.

Peter Hollis
Brisbane

Not entirely surprising, given the poor fellow’s probably been fed on a diet of undiluted alarmism, thanks to the work of Fairytale-fax’s Brisbane Times. He should maybe learn about the history of the planet over the past 4 billion years to realise that the time we’re living in is nothing special, and is in fact remarkably benign compared to some of the climate upheavals of the past, rather than thinking a gentle warming is “destroying our planet”. Tragic.

Namely, all the questions that our so-called “leaders” should be asking – in particular, Rudd, Wong and Combet, all of whom are blinded by the glittering Nobel Prize glow emanating from the IPCC. From the same Age article:

Senator Fielding said he wants the science “cleared up” before he decides how to vote. [That’s not possible, but at least he may realise there is sufficient doubt about the causes of climate change that regulating a harmless trace gas and taxing our economy out of existence is madness – Ed] He supports a Coalition push to delay [the] vote until after an international climate summit in Copenhagen in December.

He said he was open-minded on climate science, but “there seemed to be merit” in claims that global warming had stopped and solar activity had a greater influence on temperature.

A majority of climate scientists say the long-term warming trend due to greenhouse emissions is clear: that six of the warmest years since industrialisation were between 1998 and 2006 [Yep, that old chestnut again – we are, sorry, were, in a period of warming after the Little Ice Age so it is natural that later years are warmer [duh], and it was warmer still in the Medieval and Roman warm periods, and “since industrialisation” is a blink of an eye in geological terms – Ed].

“I now need the science to be resolved,” Senator Fielding said. “I would be derelict in my duties and I think I’d be letting down the Australian people if I didn’t properly research the issues and relied on one side of the debate.”

Bravo.

Read it here.

This quote, from The Age, perfectly sums up the Obama administration’s attitude to climate change, and that of all main governments, including our own. It relates to Steve Fielding’s trip to the US to attend a climate realist conference. Senator Fielding emailed graphs to Obama officials showing that the planet had not warmed for nearly a decade, and asked them why he should not believe them:

Senator Fielding said he found that Dr [Joseph] Aldy [Obama’s special assistant on energy and environment] and other Obama Administration officials were not interested in discussing the legitimacy of climate science.

The talks focused on the Democrats’ Waxman-Markey climate bill, expected to go before Congress in August.

This demonstrates perfectly what we have always suspected, namely that those in government don’t care whether they are right or wrong on the science. They aren’t going to pass up the opportunity like this to tax people out of existence on the pretext of “saving the planet”, and exert even more control over people’s lives.

Climate madness.

Read it here.

As always a great read!

The parallels between climate hysteria and a fundamentalist religion become ever more clearer, with yet more calls for those who disagree with the “consensus” to be punished, in the same way that blasphemers and heretics were burned at the stake in the Middle Ages. Is this really science we are talking about here, in the 21st century?

No, the culture of climate alarmism isn’t science, at least not as I was taught to understand it. It is a faith-based system in which believers invest huge amounts of emotional energy, and they are unable to cope with those who do not subscribe to it, therefore advocating punishment for dissenters. I am beginning to wonder if the Enlightenment ever happened.

From Marc Morano’s Climate Depot:

The Talking Points Memo article continues: “So when the right wing f***tards have caused it to be too late to fix the problem, and we start seeing the devastating consequences and we start seeing end of the World type events – how will we punish those responsible. It will be too late. So shouldn’t we start punishing them now?“

A public appeal has been issued by an influential U.S. website asking: “At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers.” The appeal appeared on Talking Points Memo, an often cited website that helps set the agenda for the political Left in the U.S. The anonymous posting, dated June 2, 2009, referred to dissenters of man-made global warming fears as “greedy bastards” who use “bogus science or the lowest scientists in the gene pool” to “distort data.”

The article also claims the “vast majority” of scientists agree that man-made warming “can do an untold amount of damage to life on Earth.”

Did you lose count of the number of ad hominems in that short extract, like I did? If the alarmists’ cause is so strong, why does it require punishment for dissenters? Why can’t the claims stand on their merits? If the sceptics are just “right wing f***tards” then their arguments should be easily debunked, shouldn’t they?

And while we’re talking about apportioning blame, then by analogy we should have trials for those (mainly environmentalists) who successfully advocated restrictions on the use of DDT, which has resulted in literally millions of preventable deaths from malaria – and these are real deaths, not the flaky computer-modelled deaths of climate alarmism.

The longer this ugly spectacle continues, and the more such comments we hear about “climate blasphemy” and its punishment, the more we damage the public reputation of science today, and the more we desecrate the great scientific advancements of the past and the memory of those who made them.

Marc also provides a handy reference of all similar threats to sceptics, including James Hansen’s famous call for trials of sceptics as “high crimes against humanity.”

Read it here.

Of course we haven’t, because the alarmists are scared of debate. Here’s a perfect example of what happens when people get an opportunity to hear the other side of the climate debate:

The Victorian MP, who branded the Greens “fanatical” believers in climate change, yesterday spent 45 minutes drilling White House climate change adviser Dr Joseph Aldy on the subject during his self-funded trip to Washington DC.

“I wouldn’t call myself a sceptic or an extremist,” Fielding said after the meeting.

“The Greens are in the extreme camp and like any fanatical group, they’re locked into ideology,” he said.

“I’m an engineer so when someone asks what is my view, I look at both sides and like many Australians, I’ve gone along accepting that one side of the story is the complete story,” he said.
…
“So far I don’t think there’s been a real debate about the science,” Fielding said.

No wonder Fairfax and the ABC are reluctant to depart from the alarmist editorial agenda – people might actually start thinking for themselves. Good on you, Senator.

UPDATE: Just to demonstrate the swing in Senator Fielding’s views, he actually won an ACM ICOTD Gong back in February – how times change!

Andrew Bolt comments here.

Read it here.

A deeply unappealing character at the best of times, it’s really no surprise that Michael Moore is a climate alarmist of the worst kind. Speaking in the wake of General Motors’ bankruptcy in the US, and demonstrating heartfelt concern for the thousands of employees likely to be out of work as a result:

“The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps.”

Yet another worthy winner. That reminds me – I need to take our weapon of mass destruction in for an oil change…

Read it here.