The Climate Commissioners on their days off…

Tell us something we don’t already know. The Climate Commission has got nothing whatsoever to do with impartial, free-thinking scientific enquiry. It’s sole purpose is to regurgitate government climate policy, couched in pseudo-science and alarmism.

Monday’s “Critical Decade” report, which claimed that there is a one-in-two chance that there will be no humans left on the planet by 2100, has been rightly exposed as extremist environmental propaganda:

Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Mitch Hooke said the report, which called for an end to most coal mining, crossed the line from scientific analysis into environmental campaigning.

The report warns that unchecked climate change would hit hard at Queensland’s biggest industries: mining, cattle and potentially tourism, through impacts on the Great Barrier Reef and Wet Tropics.

Climate Commissioner Will Steffen said an orderly transition had to be made from most fossil fuel use such as coal if the climate was to be stabilised this century.

Mr Hooke said extreme green groups had promoted an end to the coal industry in a secret campaign called Stopping the Coal Export Boom.

The document outlined a plan to eliminate the industry and he wanted to know why a taxpayer-funded agency with a charter that demanded scientific rigour was following the same approach.

Professor Steffen hit back, saying there were no conspiracies [Conspiracy? Quick, where’s Loon-dowsky when you need him? – Ed], he had not heard of the campaign and his organisation had no contact of any sort with conservationists.

“If he’d cared to read the report [Sarcasm, lowest form of wit – Ed], he would find pages of [alarmist] scientific references in it [and none that challenged the consensus],’’ Professor Steffen said. “(The report) is based on the [fudged and fiddled] science and consistent with what the International Energy Agency says, what the Grantham Institute says and what (economist) Lord Stern says.

“It’s well understood in investment and science communities [both of which are making shed-loads of cash from the climate scare].’’

The stopping coal document, which is sponsored by Greenpeace, Coalswarm and the Graeme Wood Foundation [remember to boycott Wotif.com] and is available on the internet, says its strategy is to disrupt and delay key projects while eroding support for coal mining.

Mr Hooke said there would be severe economic consequences if coal mining ended but no tangible environmental dividend.

“Eliminating the Australian coal industry would reduce Australia’s GDP by between $29 billion and $36 billion per year,’’ he said. “It would reduce Australian jobs by almost 200,000 and reduce income to the Commonwealth by $6 billion.’’ (source)

But that’s OK, because the activists’ quasi-religious duty to ‘save the planet’ trumps everything, including common sense, apparently.