Why worry mate ?

...from the Economist, on Australia and its approach to climate change...

...The topic is fraught. On becoming prime minister in 2007, Mr Rudd, who had in opposition called climate change “the greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time”, ratified the Kyoto protocol (disdained by Mr Howard) as his first official act, and put a trading scheme for carbon emissions before parliament. In the face of falling polls and rising opposition, however, he abruptly dropped it. His successor, Ms Gillard, having vowed during the 2010 election campaign that there would be “no carbon tax under the government I lead”, has now said she will introduce one...selective and situational morality in action - trying to develop political policy on an issue based on lies - results in even more lies... Her plan is to fix a price for carbon for three to five years, after which a trading scheme will take over. The details remain to be settled, but the idea is that transport, energy and industry will be included, though farming will not.
Whether it will ever come about is uncertain. The Liberal Party, under its previous leader, Malcolm Turnbull, supported a trading scheme, but that support cost him his job. The man who got it, Tony Abbott, had also once been a backer of such a scheme, but then decided it was a “great big tax on everything”. He is now adamantly opposed, knowing that many in his party are climate-change sceptics and sensing votes from those who would be hit by a carbon tax. What he himself believes is unclear: he has declared the science to be “crap”, but even so vowed last year to spend $3.2 billion over four years to secure emissions cuts. The fate of the scheme may lie with the Greens, who help keep Ms Gillard’s minority government in power. In 2009 they voted against Mr Rudd’s scheme, saying it was too feeble. They may find this one no better, yet to reject it would be to invite charges of irresponsibility...all up, a dog's breakfast of waffling and insubstantial pollie newspeak. What then are Kiwi's to do ? A pragmatist would say stay on course as we are, talk the talk, but don't scare the horses, and for pity's sake don't upset the electorate or the economy...more here...

Dr William Happer...

...is a physicist who has specialised in the study of optics and spectroscopy. He is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University. His academic career started at Colombia University where he became a full professor and director of the Columbia Radiation Laboratory. In 1980, he left to go to Princeton where he was later the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics. In 1991, he joined U.S. department of Energy where he was the director of its research budget of $3 billion. In 1993, he returned to his position at Princeton where he became the chair of the research board in 1995.

Writing recently in the US journal First Things "The Truth about Greenhouse Gases - the dubious science of the climate crusaders" he begins...

"The object of the Author in the following pages has been to collect the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes,” wrote Charles Mackay in the preface to the first edition of his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

I want to discuss a contemporary moral epidemic: the notion that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, will have disastrous consequences for mankind and for the planet. The “climate crusade” is one characterized by true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types—even children’s crusades—all based on contested science and dubious claims...The existence of the little ice age and the medieval warm period were an embarrassment to the global-warming establishment, because they showed that the current warming is almost indistinguishable from previous warmings and coolings that had nothing to do with burning fossil fuel...

...read the full article here...

A greenie recants... this is a must read...

....and a courageous confession from George Monbiot ...(who in the past was scathingly referred to as George Moonbeam by his many detractors.) Monbiot writes in the left-leaning UK Guardian...

Over the last fortnight I've made a deeply troubling discovery. The anti-nuclear movement to which I once belonged has misled the world about the impacts of radiation on human health. The claims we have made are ungrounded in science, unsupportable when challenged, and wildly wrong. We have done other people, and ourselves, a terrible disservice...I began to see the extent of the problem after a debate last week with Helen Caldicott. Dr Caldicott is the world's foremost anti-nuclear campaigner. She has received 21 honorary degrees and scores of awards, and was nominated for a Nobel peace prize. Like other greens, I was in awe of her. In the debate she made some striking statements about the dangers of radiation. So I did what anyone faced with questionable scientific claims should do: I asked for the sources. Caldicott's response has profoundly shaken me...Failing to provide sources, refuting data with anecdote, cherry-picking studies, scorning the scientific consensus, invoking a cover-up to explain it: all this is horribly familiar. These are the habits of climate-change deniers, against which the green movement has struggled valiantly, calling science to its aid. It is distressing to discover that when the facts don't suit them, members of this movement resort to the follies they have denounced.
We have a duty to base our judgments on the best available information. This is not only because we owe it to other people to represent the issues fairly, but also because we owe it to ourselves not to squander our lives on fairytales. A great wrong has been done by this movement. We must put it right. Read the full article here...

Ignore for a moment the passing reference to climate change deniers. This article kicks away one of the founding principles of the green political movement. It exposes the hypocrisy, disinformation and outright lying that we have known about for so long, but which has been ignored and countenanced by a green sympathetic and sycophantic news media. Not since the release of the climategate tapes has the green movement been so publicly shamed, exposed and humiliated. This expose is another very significant nail in the green coffin. It's well worth following the link above to the original debate between Monbiot and Caldicott to get a flavour of the exchange which led to Monbiot's column...Pass this link around !

Note too, that this is not the first time that Monbiot has done a public about face...

“This will not be an easy column to write. I am about to put down 1,200 words in support of a book that starts by attacking me and often returns to this sport. But it has persuaded me that I was wrong. More to the point, it has opened my eyes to some fascinating complexities in what seemed to be a black and white case...read more re Monbiot's reviewed position on veganism, here...

...and here, YouTube explains global warming panic...