Awarmists Deny the Failure of Their Fraud

Prof. Bob Carter, in The Age, writes “An Inconvenient Fallacy”:

Now, just last week, we discover that the new Chief Scientist, Ian Chubb, believes too that “scientific consensus … provides the best guidance we have for decisions that are informed and rational”, and that “the science is in on climate change”.
Wrong on both counts.  Where a scientific issue is involved, the best way to approach the formulation of public policy is not to base it on a contrived consensus of self-interested parties, nor to “ask the UN”, but to pay attention to the facts and keep an open mind.
Since 2007, then, the government’s chosen climate communicators have failed to confront the real climate change issue (which is natural climate hazard).  Second, and as opinion polls clearly show, they have failed to convince the public that a global warming crisis exists, or that a carbon dioxide tax will have any beneficial influence on future climate.  Labor's woe-is-me moment has clearly arrived.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet announced the government’s solution on June 16.  It is to spend $12 million on “informing” the electorate about the need for a carbon dioxide tax.
It is certainly true that voters need to understand better the most important facts relevant to allegedly dangerous, human-related global warming.  So let us list the five most salient facts the minister might try to communicate in his advertisements.
Fact 1.  A mild warming of about 0.5 degrees C. (well within previous natural temperature variations) occurred between 1979 and 1998, and has been followed by slight global cooling over the past 10 years.  Ergo, dangerous global warming is not occurring.
Fact 2.  Between 2001 and 2010 global average temperature decreased by 0.05 degrees, over the same time that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increased by 5%.  Ergo, carbon dioxide emissions are not driving dangerous warming.
Fact 3.  Atmospheric carbon dioxide is beneficial.  In increasing quantity it causes mild though diminishing warming (useful at a time of a quiet sun and likely near-future planetary cooling) and acts as a valuable plant fertiliser.  Extra carbon dioxide helps to shrink the Sahara Desert, green the planet and feed the world.  Ergo, carbon dioxide is neither a pollutant nor dangerous, but an environmental benefit.
Fact 4.  Closing down the whole Australian industrial economy might result in the prevention of about 0.02 degrees of warming. Reducing emissions by 5% by 2020 (the government's target) will avert an even smaller warming of about 0.002 degrees.  Ergo, cutting Australian emissions will make no measurable difference to global climate.
Fact 5.  For an assumed tax rate of $25 a tonne of carbon dioxide, the costs passed down to an average family of four will exceed $2,000 a year.
So the cost-benefit equation is this:  “Your family pays more than $2,000 a year in extra tax in return for a possible cooling of the globe by two one-thousandths of a degree”.  Remember, too, that [Prof. Ross] Garnaut’s recommendation is that the tax rate should be increased at 4% a year, which would result in a cost doubling in less than 20 years.
In the light of these facts, little wonder the government’s four horsemen of the climate apocalypse have been unable to convince the public of the desirability of carbon dioxide taxation.  Labor has indeed tried hard and valiantly, but it is time to admit failure and to adopt an alternative policy.
Voters now recognise that in the absence of an international agreement no action that Australia takes can “stop global warming”.   But natural climate hazard in Australia is so dangerous that nonetheless a need remains for a politically feasible, environmentally sensible and cost-effective climate policy.  That policy should be to prepare for and adapt to all climatic hazards, as and when they occur and whatever their cause.

See also Tim Blair:

A couple of comments from government climate change adviser Ross Garnaut and government chief scientist Ian Chubb last week hint at the irritation felt by those on the climate change panic team, many of whom are beginning to lash out in angry and amusing ways.

This is entirely understandable.  After all, it must be frustrating when you wade into a public debate armed only with the combined forces of the federal government, the United Nations, the European Union, thousands of activist groups, the vast majority of the media and general elite opinion worldwide, only to find your concerns broadly rejected.

UPDATE (28 June):  As of Tuesday morning, The Age still refers to Prof. Carter as a “climate change denialist”.