Global warming activists are as misguided as they are alarmist

From and extract of John Howard’s Global Warming Policy Foundation Annual Lecture delivered in London on 5 November, available at The Spectator Australia:

Former prime minister John Howard.
(Photo: Australian Conservative.)

In the past five years, the dynamic of the global warming debate has shifted away from exaggerated acceptance of the worst possible implications of what a majority of climate scientists tell us, towards a more balanced, and questioning approach. There have been a number of reasons for this.

The Global Financial Crisis played a decisive role.

The collapse of the Copenhagen Summit, in December 2009, dealt a heavy blow to the cause of a worldwide agreement on global warming, which is an essential prerequisite to the effective operation of emission trading schemes.

The flood of emails coming from the University of East Anglia, the admitted errors regarding the Himalayan Glaciers, as well as the nakedly political agendas of some of those allegedly giving impartial scientific advice have degraded the image of the IPCC as the unchallengeable body of scientific experts on global warming.

As public opinion has turned, the more zealous advocates of action on global warming have sought to establish an automatic link between it and particular weather events.

Two weeks ago NSW had severe bushfires which destroyed more than 200 homes on the lower Blue Mountains, west of Sydney.

Led by Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, an attempt was made, by what can only be described as alarmists, to exploit these fires for the purposes of the global warming debate. She said the fires were an example of the “doom and gloom” the world may be facing without vigorous action on climate change”. They proved, she claimed, that the world was “already paying the price of carbon.” Although she did try to have an each way bet by saying that a link between global warming and the NSW bushfires had not been established “yet”.

[PM Tony Abbott] rejected the link. Then an even bigger gun was brought to bear. The former US Vice-President, Al Gore was interviewed on the ABC’s flagship current affairs programme. He said there was no doubt about the direct link. According to him Abbott was wrong.

With exquisite timing, which I am sure was accidental, the following night the ABC commenced running a three part series on the Art of Australia. One of the paintings featured was William Strutt’s iconic “Black Thursday”. With impressive detail it depicts a huge bushfire in Victoria, which burnt out a quarter of the land mass of that State, destroyed one million sheep, and killed 12 people.

According to the programme’s narrator, press reports at the time said that the fire was so intense that burning embers from it fell on a ship some twenty miles out to sea. That fire occurred in 1851, 163 years ago, during a period, so we are told, when the planet was not experiencing any global warming. You might well describe all of this as an inconvenient truth.

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