global warming debunked - fairfax

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    This scathing article is in today's Fairfax SMH. It pulls no punches and the very fact that Farfax has published it means a seismic shift in public opinion.

    It was promoted as the voyage to study the melting of ice sheets in the South Pole as well as to retrace Douglas Mawson's perilous expedition a century ago.

    Yet the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, led by UNSW climatologist Chris Turney, has become a comedy goldmine.

    The climate-change Cassandras are increasingly marginalised here and abroad.

    "It fell to Professor Turney's ship to play the role of our generation's Titanic," Canadian satirist Mark Steyn noted. "Unlike the original, this time round the chaps in the first-class staterooms were rooting for the iceberg."

    And Parish-based writer Anne Jolis quipped: "Maybe the climate-change researchers even raised a glass, if they had any liquor left. They certainly had enough ice."

    Humour aside, events such as this indicate dark days for green enthusiasts.

    The anti-carbon agenda is being subjected to the most intense scrutiny, and is found wanting.

    The Kyoto treaty effectively expired a year ago. Rich nations are rejecting climate compensation for the developing world. Europe is in a coal frenzy.
    Germany, a former green trend-setter, is slashing unaffordable subsidies to the renewables industry.

    The European Parliament is losing confidence in the EU emissions trading scheme.

    No Asian nation has an emission trading scheme in operation.

    China's and India's net emissions are growing dramatically and governments, most recently Japan's, are abandoning earlier pledges to reduce their nations' carbon footprints.

    Even US Democrats won't pass modest carbon-pricing bills in the Congress.

    Add to this those debunked predictions and it is clear that Tim Flannery's moment has come and gone.

    Meanwhile, 2013 marked the 15th year of flat-lined global surface temperatures, despite record levels of carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere since 1998.

    And as the US shale "fracking" revolution shows, the most efficient way to cut emissions is not via command-and-control regulation but by allowing private drillers to expand natural gas production.

    Of course, the environmental doomsayers remain apocalyptic. You try going on the ABC's Q&A and raise doubts about global-warming alarmism. You will still see the inner-city studio audience treating you not merely with hostility but with open-mouthed incredulity.

    The climate-change Cassandras are increasingly marginalised here and abroad.

    When they abuse, intimidate and victimise anyone with the temerity to criticise the fanaticism of their movement, the inclination of ordinary Australians is either to shrug their shoulders with a profound lack of interest or to grimace at this moral grandstanding.

    Historians will probably look back at the years 2006-09 as the time when the climate hysteria reached its peak in Australia, when rational debate was at its most restricted and politicians at their most gullible.

    These were the days of drought, unseasonal bushfires, An Inconvenient Truth, the Garnaut Report and, of course, Kevin Rudd's "greatest moral challenge".

    Crikey, even Rupert Murdoch was "giving the planet the benefit of doubt".

    Contrary to media stereotypes, many so-called sceptics - such as Abbott, John Howard, Maurice Newman and this writer - recognised that the rise in carbon dioxide as a result of the burning of fossil fuels led to moderate warming.

    But because we questioned the doomsday scenarios and radical, costly government-directed plans to decarbonise the economy, we were denounced as "deniers".

    Those days are over.

    Thanks to Abbott's forceful critique of Labor's ETS/carbon tax, and the persistent failure of the carboncrats to reach legally binding global agreements, Australians have risen up against this madness.

    Last year's Lowy Institute survey said that only 40 per cent (down from nearly 70 per cent in 2006) think climate change is serious and requires action.

    And yet, despite this changing (political) climate, Opposition leader Bill Shorten still opposes the repeal of the carbon tax.

    If Labor's divorce from the Greens is genuine, he should support the PM's legislation, lest he meet the same fate as his fellow deniers and become a laughing stock.





    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/game-finally-up-for-carboncrats-20140113-30qqo.html#ixzz2qJ3VsGvs
 
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