Aussie Labor party ‘is right to say global warming is dangerous. After all, it’s already fried two Labor leaders’

Now it threatens to torch the next, unless Bill Shorten proves he's got more guts than he's let on.

Shorten is the charmless ex-union boss chosen by Right-wing faction heavies this week to take over Labor's leadership after its devastating loss.

I think him overrated - mostly by himself, which is his fatal flaw. He lacks humility, so hectors when he should persuade and grates when he should ingratiate.

True, he's clever. But however nice he may be in private, in public he's like the man who put the smart in smarta--e.

I've long preferred his leadership rival, former Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who may be of the Left but at least knows the difference between an adversary and an enemy.

With Albanese, it's business, not personal, which is why even his opponents like him. This is a man trusted by both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. Shorten, near the end, was trusted by neither.

But here's a critical test for Shorten to show he really is a leader.

Does he dare drop Labor's religious belief in a "carbon price"?

Does he dare scrap the utterly useless tax that drives up our power bills to "stop" global warming?

Sadly for Labor, this test of courage and far-sightedness is one Shorten shows every sign of failing.

''I can say now, Labor believes in the science of climate change,'' he said on the weekend.

"We believe there should be a price on carbon pollution."

"We believe" is a catechism, not an argument.

It is pathetic, when the evidence mounts that man's effect on global temperatures has been wildly exaggerated, and cutting our emissions will make zero difference.

Remember five years ago when Tim Flannery, now our Chief Climate Commissioner, warned "that maybe in five years there'll be no Arctic ice cap", thanks to man-made warming?

The Age agreed, reporting scientists claiming there was "a very strong case that in 2012 or 2013 we'll have an ice-free Arctic".

The gullible ABC likewise reported claims "that the northern polar waters could be ice-free in summer by 2013".

Well, it's 2013 and we've just seen 60 per cent more Arctic summer ice than last year - or an ice sheet more than half the size of Europe.

More significantly, last month's global temperature continued to flatline, in a warming pause that's lasted 15 years.

So Shorten - if he's a real leader - must ask this tough question: what if there's still no more warming three years from now, when Labor goes into the next election?

Even leading scientists behind the global warming scare admit their theory would then look sick.

Hans von Storch, a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, admits there's been a warming pause for 15 years and "if things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models".

Labor would look stubbornly stupid in the 2016 election if it still demanded a "price on carbon" to fight a warming even warming scientists then said was over.

But even in the short term Shorten must wonder at the sense of Labor joining the Greens in the Senate to block the Abbott Government from repealing the carbon tax.

Why spend the next nine months defending a tax that the new Senate which takes over next July will almost certainly ditch?

The gaggle of minor party senators we've just elected will next year join the Coalition to destroy the Greens-Labor block for at least the next six years.

They include representatives of the Palmer United Party, Family First and Liberal Democratic Party who fiercely oppose the carbon tax and others who seem prepared to negotiate.

Does Labor really want to be blamed for forcing Australians to pay a useless tax for nine months longer than they need to?

Already Labor's mad warming faith has destroyed two Labor leaders - Rudd when he promised more action on this "great moral challenge" than he dared deliver, and then Gillard, when she imposed the carbon tax she promised not to.

Some Labor MPs are hinting they've taken enough pain already.

Frontbencher Richard Marles said yesterday Labor must "acknowledge the fact that Tony Abbott won the election and we lost" and the new Government had a mandate to axe the tax.

Nick Champion said it was not Labor's job to stop the Coalition from making a mistake.

But forget his spin. This is not about letting the Coalition make a mistake but saving Labor from making its own.

Ditch the tax. If Shorten is a leader, he'll say so now.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/shorten-must-find-courage-to-ditch-the-carbon-tax/story-fnj45fvb-1226717120701