The “environmentalists’ arguments about climate change” are being accepted across Australia: embraced by everyone from Mel and Kochie, presenters of popular TV program Sunrise, to the Prime Minister John Howard.
That was the message from Ben Oquist, political consultant and former Bob Brown adviser, writing yesterday in Australia’s tabloid e-news journal Crikey.
Oquist went on to caution that ” the war” will only really be won when, there is a legislative commitment to guarantee emissions will be reduced 60-90% by mid century and a commitment to address coal exports which are by far Australia’s biggest contribution to global greenhouse emissions.
In the same paragraph Oquist states that if we get emissions down by 60-90% we can stop dangerous climate change. Now that is some false claim, particularly given Australia is responsible for such a small percent of global emissions and falling!
But I doubt anyone noticed the ridiculousness of Oquist’s claim amongst the many other fashionable but false pronouncements being made yesterday in Australia.
Columnist Paul Sheehan writing in the Sydney Morning Herald in a piece entitled ‘We fiddle as the continent turns to dust’ insisted that the word drought be replaced by the word climate change: “Most people still talk about the “drought”. It is not a drought. It is climate change. We changed the landscape. We cut, stripped, gouged, channelled and laid it bare. And thus changed the climate. How can we solve a problem when we can’t even name it, and thus still can’t even face it?”
I am surprised Sheehan didn’t include carbon dioxide in that paragraph!
Glen Milne writing in The Australia explained the Prime Minister “today goes to the South Pacific Forum,where the islands are sinking into the sea. When he gets back, he will go straight on another drought tour to inspect our once mighty rivers, now disappearing though the parched maw of the earth. There are no more flooding plains. Apparently there is nothing left but drought.”
The article was entitled ‘Liberals musts catch up on climate change’.
Milne went on to explain that: “In another sign of the rising temperature of the climate change debate (if you’ll excuse the pun), Al Gore is to return to Australia. But this time he won’t be spruiking his global warming film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Instead, under the auspices of the Climate Project and the Australian Conservation Foundation, Gore will train 75 volunteer ‘climate changers’ to replicate here his famous PowerPoint presentation on which An Inconvenient Truth was based. Each volunteer will guarantee to deliver at least 10 seminars over the next 12 months. That’s 750 sessions across the country, minimum. And given the passion of these advocates, it’s likely to be at least twice that. That’s a lot of increasingly convinced minds, with an election looming”.
All of this on top of Australia’s Climate Institute stepping up their campaign to “educate us” including with advertisements on rural television explaining that “we can control climate change”.
Maybe this is where Oquist got the idea that we can some how stop climate change?
Add to all of this hysteria, consideration of the activities of celebrity scientists like Tim Flannery and David Suzuki. Suzuki was in Australia last week and I heard him on ABC radio explaining that we can stop climate change by signing Kyoto. Another porkie!
Add to this the relentless self-interested advice that comes from the professional scientific and bureaucratic groups involved in greenhouse studies in Australia.
And, of course, don’t forget the quick start to the current bushfire season and El Nino, which promise to deliver both a long, hard summer and a reinforced climate alarmism in Australia.
Finally, reflect that the Stern Report (which will boost the economic alarmism) is to be released in London shortly, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report (which will boost the science alarmism) is scheduled for release in February, 2007.
Yes, I think Ben Oquist is right… it’s a win, win, win for environmentalists!
——————————
This post is based on an email from Cathy.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.