Hypocrisy alert: polluters "fear tactics" on climate

6 November, 2009 by

Fairfax is on form today, with yet more hypocritical nonsense in the Sydney Morning Herald about “polluters” under the triumphant headline “REVEALED: polluters’ fear tactics on climate”:

BIG greenhouse polluting companies around the world, employing thousands of lobbyists, are exerting heavy pressure on governments to weaken climate change laws at home and slow progress on an international climate agreement in Copenhagen, a global investigation reveals.

In Australia, 20 companies who have already won the most concessions from the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme employ 28 lobbying firms with well over 100 staff, many of them former politicians, political advisers or government officials.

The reality, which appears to escape the journos in question, is that billions and billions of dollars is spent by the real climate fearmongers, i.e. the catastrophists, every year in order to brainwash the public into believing that there is a climate crisis. But that’s all OK of course, because we’re saving the planet, right? But when corporates, who are likely to be hit hard by emissions trading schemes around the world, try to redress the balance a bit, it’s shock horror and outrage!

Then we discover where this investigation comes from, and suddenly it all makes sense:

The report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists examined the climate lobby in eight countries including the US, Canada, Australia, India, Japan, China, Belgium and Brazil. It relied on more than 200 interviews, lobbying registers and political donation records. The Herald collaborated in the investigation for Australia.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

The Age kisses Gore's backside

6 November, 2009 by

Try running three 30" monitors on sunbeams, pal

Try running three 30" monitors on sunbeams, pal

To the editors of The Age and all the other Fairfax media outlets, Al Gore is a brave warrior for the planet, courageously flying all over the world by private jet in order to make more money out of an imagined climate crisis. I beg to differ – the man peddles misinformation and refuses to debate, in other words, he’s a snake oil salesman.

But that doesn’t stop The Age, who put together a sycophantic, fawning piece about Big Al’s new book, Our Choice: A Plan to solve the Climate Crisis. That there is a “climate crisis” is a given, of course, since Gore put the tick in the “science is settled” box by way of An Inconvenient Truth, if you ignore the nine fundamental errors and the scores of other misrepresentations. So this one is all about solutions.

Gore’s new book, the result of more than two years of consultations with leading scientists, technologists, economists and, yes, neuroscientists, is his attempt to lay out a detailed solution to the climate crisis [and line his pockets at the same time – Ed]. It is an attempt to spell out in a way that ordinary readers can understand the current state of technology and what still needs to be invented to bring a low-carbon world to reality.

There are passages where it becomes a little dense, but for the most part it is a worthy sequel to An Inconvenient Truth, full of optimism about the promise of science to solve this urgent crisis — although perhaps it skims over the possible changes that we all might need to make to our lifestyles.

While it explores all technologies from nuclear to “clean coal”, the book leans heavily towards the renewables such as wind, solar and geothermal energy, arguing that the economics of nuclear and the uncertain viability of carbon capture and storage make them less viable.

Maybe Gore could set the example by running his mansion (and his three monitors), which consumes about as much electricity as all of sub-Saharan Africa put together, on sunbeams and wind power, as he suggests for the rest of us.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,
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