Agmates member John Mikkelsen writes:
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IT’s good to see sanity prevail with the deferral of the Federal Governments controversial Emissions Trading Scheme for 12 months in light of probable further job losses.
You could see the backflip coming, with mounting opposition from all sectors even though Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Environment Minister Penny Wong kept insisting it would be introduced as planned in July next year.
Mr Rudd finally saw the writing on the wall and announced a deferred and modified plan last Sunday. Oops, did he forget to tell Ms Wong? Her letter promoting the urgent need for the ETS to actually save jobs, under the heading of ‘Can’t sit on our hands on climate change’ was published in The Observer on Monday.
A footnote from the editor stated the ministers letter had been received on the previous Friday, May 1.
Ms Wongs letter pushed the familiar claim stated as fact, that ‘carbon pollution’ was causing climate change, which was threatening jobs.
But she didn’t use the often-repeated term, ‘the science is settled’ , possibly because it is becoming increasingly clear it is not settled at all.
Let me make this clear – I hate pollution in the form of poisonous chemicals, litter and noxious emissions. Who wouldn’t? And I don’t deny ‘climate change’ is real.
Neither do the growing ranks of international scientists questioning any link between the atmospheric trace gas carbon dioxide and climate.
You would have to be a real dill not to acknowledge the obvious fact climate has always been changing since the days of the dinosaur.
The scientists questioning the role CO2 emissions play in all this are certainly not dills. Their ranks include one of Australia’s leading geologists Professor Ian Plimer, Queensland’s own ancient climate expert Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University, and Dr David Evans, who actually spent years working with the Australian Greenhouse Office developing carbon modelling projects such as those the ‘true believers’ in man-made global warming rely on.
Dr Evans recently described himself as ‘the rocket scientist’ who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. But further research and knowledge has made him change his mind.
“The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990 and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. None.”
Now that it matters, we should debate the causes. Townsville’s Prof Carter has been speaking out on the topic for years:
‘Climate change has always occurred and always will, the appropriate action is to have in place reactive response plans to manage the change when it occurs.’
He recently told the Senate Select Committee on Climate that the ETS would cost Australian families an estimated extra $3,500 a year to gain a theoretical temperature reduction of less than one-thousandth of a degree C.
Adelaide’s Prof Plimer has just released a book ‘Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, The Missing Science‘ which has been hailed as the sceptics Bible. He said that to link carbon emissions with climate change would require ‘many non-scientific leaps of faith.’
There are now thousands of international scientists joining the ranks of the sceptics. Noted UK botanist and TV presenter David Bellamy, claims he has been banned by the BBC for his outspoken views that climate change is part of a natural cycle.
‘The world is now facing spending a vast amount of money in tax trying to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist,’ he said.
So no, the science is far from settled, despite what we have constantly been told. And repeating a non-proven, hotly disputed claim doesn’t necessarily make it a fact.
Now the ETS has been deferred, a proper public inquiry should be conducted to allow scientists on both sides of the climate debate to present their views.
The truth is out there. We deserve to know if climate change is real problem or just political hot air.
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First published as a comment by John here.
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