A climate catastrophe or a carbon agenda?

If the alleged consensus of the IPCC scientists regarding global warming is so certain then one is left to wonder why the CPRS Exposure Bill is needed to remove these long-established legal precedents, and why the government did not inform the citizenry of the necessity for these radical legal changes. Is it the situation, in fact, that the AGW consensus is less certain than has been reported and that the necessity to revert the basic tenets of our legal system has more to do with Gordon Brown’s statement regarding statutory carbon budgets being managed “with the same prudence and discipline as financial budgets”? In each case the Australian federal government has some explaining to do.

By design the alarmist findings contained in the IPCC 4th Assessment Report Summary for Policymakers has deeply penetrated the public mind and body politic, assisted by the mainstream media in framing what may be (but rarely discussed) natural temperature anomalies and weather events with AGW or catastrophic climate change. It is therefore not surprising that by politicising the scientific process those people who support the AGW hypothesis will brook no dissension, principally by silencing sceptics through ad hominem attacks, for an unsubstaniated hypothesis to drive political discourse requires belief, and adherance to that belief.

With the general public’s lack of basic physical geographic knowledge global warming purveyors have, through exaggeration of the threats or using qualifiers such as “may”, “could”, “likelihood of” and so on, effectively wedged both scientists and environmentalists, a significant setback for not only the scientific process but also the effectiveness of governments and environmental movements to deal with our real and observable environmental problems.

Scientific method, like good journalism, is founded on scepticism, repeated independent measurement and analysis, and open communication. The AGW debate does not follow these principles. If we wish to pursue a policy agenda then surely the most effective means is to bring people onboard through truthful and honest debate rather than through unsubstantiated science and a polity built on deceit and obfuscation.