Remember when Nick Minchin started frothing at the mouth on Four Corners over the left wing conspiracy that is climate science? At the time the Coalition’s official position was to negotiate amendments with the Labor Party on the ETS, and Malcolm Turnbull was leader (though Minchin’s remarks were the first shot in the real push for his removal, and if memory serves, it was about this time that Tony Abbott revised his previous view that the CPRS should be passed).
Tony Abbott on Four Corners last night:
TONY ABBOTT (at press conference): As leader, I am not frightened of an election, and I am not frightened on an election on this issue.MARIAN WILKINSON: Tony Abbott believed scientists on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC were, ‘alarmist’ and tapped into headline grabbing attacks on the climate science in the media.
But despite those attacks the scientific consensus on climate change remains firm, says Kurt Lambeck, the outgoing President of Australia’s Academy of Science. This afternoon, the Academy released a new report written by some of Australia’s top climate scientists, backing the key findings of the UN’s IPCC.
DR MICHAEL RAUPACH, PRESIDENT, AUST. ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 2006-2010: One is that global warming is occurring, ah, that’s the temperatures in the last century or so have been going up. I think there is no ah, debate about that point anymore. The role of um, CO2 in that is also widely accepted and the fact that the ah, human input of CO2 into the atmosphere is a major contributor of that is a well accepted fact by the committees.
MARIAN WILKINSON: Co-chair of the report is Dr Michael Raupach, a senior CSIRO scientist.
DR MICHAEL RAUPACH: One way of posing a challenge is that if we continue business as usual emissions, then it’s very likely that the world by the end of this century ah, will be somewhere between three and five degrees warmer than it is now.
MARIAN WILKINSON: Tony Abbott brought his party together on climate change by promising he would act, but without putting a price on carbon. He says he will match the government’s commitment to cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020. But he remains fundamentally sceptical that human activities are largely responsible for climate change.
TONY ABBOTT: I accept that climate change is real. I think government needs to do, ah to take meaningful measures ah, to combat it and that’s…
MARIAN WILKINSON: You’re dispute is the role of man’s intervention is that correct?
TONY ABBOTT: Sure, but, but that’s not really relevant at the moment. Ah, we have agreed ah to get a 5 per cent emissions reduction target. That’s, that’s a bipartisan position. Ah, I think we can get it, ah, by the direct action measures that I’ve outlined and the interesting thing is that the only major political party with a credible policy in this area is the Coalition. Um, the government says that climate change is ah, the greatest moral challenge of our time, but they don’t have serious policy to deal with it.
MARIAN WILKINSON: Do you still believe that the views of the IPCC scientists are alarmist?
TONY ABBOTT: Um, I, I certainly think that there is a credible scientific counterpoint, but in the end, um, I’m not going to win ah, ah, an argument over the science, I’ll leave that to the scientists.
MARIAN WILKINSON: One last question on that because ah, you have said very publicly ah, before this that you believe the earth is cooling not warming and you have cited the work of ah, Professor Ian Plimer on this. Do you still think there is a credible case for that?
TONY ABBOTT: Um, I, I have pointed out in the past, ah that ah, there was that high year um, a few years ago, ah, and the warming ah, if you believe the various measuring ah, organisations, ah, hasn’t increased, but again ah, the the point is not um, um, the science, ah the point is how should government respond and we have a a credible response that will achieve a 5 per cent reduction by 2020 and the government doesn’t.
It’s astonishing to me that these remarks didn’t make a splash in today’s media, and surely a marker for how far backwards we’ve moved in the political debate over climate change. No doubt part of the reason Abbott’s comments slipped through to the keeper was Labor’s own weakness in this area.
Together with smaller crowds at Climate Action rallies on Sunday, Abbott’s dismal responses on “carbon doxide” do seem to indicate ‘moving backwards’. Even Julia Gillard seems confused on whether it is carbon or carbon dioxide that poses a problem moving forwards. Also not much media analysis of Zero Carbon Australia blueprint released last week.
Labor wants to bury climate change as an issue every bit as much as the Coalition. Both sides are giving it lip service and little more.
Outside of Malcolm Turnbull, a few bleeding hearts in the Libs, a smattering of ALP lefties, and the Greens, pretty much everyone in Parliament wishes climate change would just go away.
Scary, isn’t it. Monbiot says that the only way to the deal with this may be through civil disobedience. Maybe he is not extreme enough. Perhaps it is time for the left to re-engage with violence and terror.
Like John Howard’s ETS, the UK conservatives fully supported AGW and action recently, but now they’ve backed down on regulating coal-fired power pollution. Is this “windsock politics”?
Of couse then there’s the more (arguably fixed) left labour position with the Queensland Government opposing a carbon price and American Democrats in coal-states fiercly protective of their “extractive states” who won’t countenance any action.
And today Julia visited a coal mine in Emerald.
Gotta love it.
He is no ‘tech head’, he isn’t going to ‘um, win ah, ah, an argument over the science’.
So what exactly does he bring to the table?
Oh yeah, his moral convictions.
Kim is it really all that different to Gillard ‘believing in’ climate change without trying to explain the scientific grounds for her belief? The denialists have triumphed in the political forum, with their hockey sticks and confected Climategate ‘scandals’ and their perpetual roadshow starring clowns like Monckton and Plimer. The result is that no politician is game to express any kind of view about the science lest they be overwhelmed with a flood of smartarse questions drafted by the likes of Tim Blair next time they give an interview.
The risk of looking out of their depth is just too great – the ‘leave science to the scientists I’m just a politician’ gambit is the only sensible one in the circumstances. And at the end of the day does it really matter what they believe? The important thing is what they intend to do and at the moment, both parties intend to do practically nothing.
@2 Hilarious. Anyone here happy to identify with this jerk? Anyone still wondering why average citizens find “the left” so repulsive?
Should be @3. Sorry
@8 – I agree re @3, too. The suggestion of resorting to violence and terror to resolve a political situation we are all deeply concerned about does not even make a very funny joke!
However the mystery to me is quite clear. Clear as Coal.
The answer to why nobody responded with outrage to #3 until you got your snit on, Bean Counter, is that some of us know better than to feed a troll.
Here, have a field guide.
@6
But I don’t see too many politicians being terribly shy about instituting policies while being breathlessly inept about explaining their implications. Take Tony Abbott re broadband for example. The fact is, no politician is game to set in motion the policies, chiefly because they are bound hand and foot by the 6 billion dollar coal export industry – unions for Labor and the mining entremanures for the Liberal Party.
Entremanures. Hat tip, Megan @ 11.
It was either a total troll or a cri de coeur but either way … very stupid …
Let’s face it too tigtog … if violent opposition to existing inaction could be waged on a scale that could make a difference against the assembled coercive power of the political classes of the world, then one would expect that long before that, one would see a far more orthodox political challenge to existing policy. Asymmetric violence is what happens when the challengers are marginalised.
The fact of the matter is that the power to achieve policy ends through violence is almost exclusively in the hands of states or the elite classes underpinning them.
The kind of violence proposed by ETR, would simply be, at best, an exercise in futility in which committed people suffered for no good reason and the state in turn abridged the freedom of everyone else to protest policy.
Antrollpology 101, ha, ha.
If any of that related to me I’d be smirking uncomfortably, shrugging it off, smirking again and posting.
thanks for the field guide Tigtog, i shall have a better look later.
So Tony will leave arguing about the science change to the scientists; he is no tech head; he is not great on the economy, lets face it it took him two weeks to get briefed up enough on the economy so that he could risk half an hour of gentle questioning. what does he know? i am really starting to wonder what his speciality is other than marginalising people.
Oh yeah… after Wayne, comes Julia: Gillard rules out imposing carbon tax.
“[T]he ALP had been “scared off” climate change action by the LNP’s campaign over rising electricity prices” – ;ink.
So much to look forward to.
@15 look i’m as anti abbott as the next person but do we really expect politicians to be at the cutting edge of all scientific and political issues ? is the minister for transport really an expert on all modes of transport and relative costs or do we want them to act on advice testing alternative hypotheses ? do we expect the minister for education to really write national curricula ? beyond a basic understanding of supply and demand and lower interest rates = increased demand and vice versa do we really expect the treasurer to appreciate the elasticity of demand for different forms of labour in a modern open market economy ?
the issue is not whether one or the other believes in something but whether they act on credible advice.
i actually dont want a politician to tell me stuff i know about – and most who visit this website will know more about their specific areas of interest than any politician – i just want to know broadly what policy directions they wish to take things
Fran Barlow wrote:
Be interesting to see just how much drought, famine and storm activity it took before people did start getting violent. In some ways the chronic shortage of rice in 2008 causing food riots overseas was something of a foretaste of what to expect, perhaps here and perhaps not as far away as we might think. There are large parts of the world that depend on Australias ability to produce a surplus of food, something that’s hard to do with the projected effects of climate change on agriculture.
The irony is that Labor dropped in the polls when Rudd dropped ETS without providing an alternative and dropped again when Gillard offered her Clayton’s climate policy. The coalition then dropped in the polls when Abbott offered his Clayton’s broadband policy. The message is that the public is more interested in some real action than cunning plans to reduce taxes, set up procrastination forums or indulge in other gimmicks.
The whole small target strategy is actually political poison and the real thing that may save Labor is the forward thinking broadband policy.
We can be optimistic and hope that the post election government suddenly realizes it has to act if it wants a future.
Climate Inaction is rife around the world. It’s not just Tony and Julia. It’s our primordial reluctance to release our claws from the steaming carcass even as the road-train bears down upon us.
We have right here in Australia, a perfectly good political party called the Greens who is desparate to lead us out of danger; but 85% of us will choose Tony or Julia in three days time.
I mean look at Kerry O’Brien tonight hectoring Abbott about who did or didn’t squib the leaders debate scheduling farce. Didn’t seem to occur to him that asking a question about climate change might have been an idea.
John D:
All Julia has to do is announce a carbon tax will be introduced in the next term and she will really romp it home. She can reall show us all the conviction politican she is.
Abbott is a straight denier, but without the conviction of a denier. Political expediency trumps principle for him. A true weathervane.
Gillard, I think, believes without any understanding. At least that can come, with a bit of luck, and time which we don’t have.
carbonsink @ 2 is right, Turnbull’s the man, but look what happened to him!
If the LNP goes down, presumably Abbott will also. Will Hockey then play the fig leaf role?
Ute man,17, I think it will a slow but eventually acceleration towards fragmentation.
16, You’d expect them have appropriate experts on hand, but often the critia seem to relate to their subjective rather than objective viewpoint. Rudd is said by some to have fallen because of the weakness of his staff and his lack of sufficent thought as to who to appoint and listen to, perhaps.
Brian, it’s certain the big end in its various manifestations doesn’t want governments who can think outside of the box, except in locking out the masses of people.
The ALP should get behind the nuclear option. It solves the emission issue, neutralises the great big tax style of attack and isolates the Greens. A shift to nuclear power would be a reform worth voting for.
carbonsink@2: pretty much everyone in Parliament wishes climate change would just go away.
Don’t we all?
TerjeP @24: so all Labour need is absolute majorities in the house and senate with enough of a buffer to allow people like Garrett to cross the floor, and they can alienate The Greens on nuclear and ignore the opposition’s refusal to vote for climate change mitigation. It’s brilliant!
melbournehammer – Poor old Hewson got done for not knowing how his consumption tax would effect the price of a cake, pollies get briefed on the price of milk and bread all the time, not knowing it is a gotcha moment for the msm. Abbott’s desire to leave the the tech stuff to the experts is in direct contradiction to his refuting of the experts whenever his weathervane tell him to.
There was a fascinatingly revelatory moment on ABC radio on Saturday, where someone from the Conservation Council (? or similar) was responding to a typically gushing ABC “tell us how wonderful it is question” on Climate Action Day, and said in a posh accent “we’re hoping for a wide turn out – doctors, lawyers, accountants, civil servants”. Full stop, that’s the list of “wide”.
Climate change is now solely an issue for the chattering classes, and recognised even by its proponents as such. It pretty well always was in terms of commitment, frankly, but others have now lost even rhetorical interest.
@21 “All Julia has to do is announce a carbon tax will be introduced in the next term and she will really romp it home.”
Yeah, like Latham did after announcing he’d save the Tassie forests… oh wait…
Glad I wasn’t the only one wincing, Wozza. Where do they GET these people from?
As long as it’s fully funded by private enterprise, Terje @24. Have fun in Bennelong; will watch for your name on Saturday evening.
Wozza and Rebekka comments are spot-on.
Makes me warm on the inside thinking about human behaviour.
Spot on Wozza!
Even if Gillard, (or Abbot), had a policy to kill everyone in Australia, it would cut temps in 2050 by a few hundredths of a degree. (Thats if you believe in those models, personally I dont).
The perfect issue for the “chattering classes”
Wozza
Climate change specifically and “environmentalism” generally are the only political movements led by the wealthy.
To Ken Lovell.
Name calling shows your complete lack of class.To just imagine that the miniscule amount of co2 that man produces can alter climate is breathtaking in naivety.Time to grow up Ken.
Having looked in vain for an example of Ken Lovell name-calling in this thread, I suddenly realised that the terrible “name” you are referring to is “denialist”. Dearie me, Simon – methinks your education is severely lacking if you’re seriously trying to pull the old calling-climate-change-deniers-deniers-is-equating-them-to-Nazis tactic.
Denialism: it’s a tactic, not an ideology
I heard Bob Brown say at the National Press Club that even Argentina has (or is planning) a fast rail network. I wish he would have gone on and said even Argentina now has two nuclear power stations.
S y bbblng clwns wnt t pr bllns f dllrs nt smthng tht th Sn cn dstry wth slr ctvty, bcs y thnk C-2 s th cs f vrythng?t’s n thng t tk cr f th Plnt, bt nthr thng t trt Glbl wrmng s nw rlgn. Whn scntst wh r bnt n prvng thrs nd djstng dt t st thr nds, thn wld sy, Glbl wrmng s nt Sttld. Y st tmprtr ggs n tp f prkng grgs md f cncrt nd sphlt nd hv n ggs n th mddl f nwhr, y r sndng t fls dt. Whn y d nt ccnt fr slr ctvty nd wthr pttrns, y hv fls dt.
Ds th dt ncld C-2 prdcd frm vlcnsm? prbbly nt. Gt lf, th plnt s strngr thn y thnk.
Goodness, it appears that somebody out there has pointed the flying monkeys in this thread’s direction.
Don’t leap to the derail bait, folks.
It concerns me that many Australians appear ready to vote for the Greens or Labor on the basis that these two will be more progressive on emissions reduction.
In fact a tax on carbon is just that, a tax on carbon, but no more. It is not a means by which any emissions reductions can be achieved in the near to medium term.
This because 85% of all emissions come from big stationary emitters – virtually the sum total of all the industrial infrastructure our economy and investments are built upon.
Yes, we can invest in greater amounts of solar and geothermal and so forth, but lets be clear, Australia and the rest of the world will remain heavily dependent on fossil fuel for decades to come.
The most likely outcome of a Labor / Greens government is a carbon tax and rising energy and household costs – without any significant declines in stationary emitter emissions.
At least the Coalition has a plan for regulating the emissions from stationary emitters – much the same pragmatic approach now being taken by China and the US, both of whom have ruled out a carbon tax for the foreseeable future.
Copenhagen failed for a reason: savvy world leader recognised that a tax on carbon is a tax on carbon, but not a means of cutting emissions. They stopped because they realised that a carbon tax was a recipe for bedlam without immediate established means of actually delivering stationary emitter greenhouse gas emissions cuts.
Solar, wind, geo, even nuclear – they all have a role to play; but let’s get real. All our superannuation money and share investments is tied up in carbon dependent infrastructure, some of it recently built, some of it under construction. And let’s not forget that our fire-walling from the full effect of the GFC is thanks to burgeoning energy and minerals exports.
Much of our exported fossil fuel energy, of course, is used to process the minerals and the result is greenhouse gas emissions. How hypocritical we can be. Labor and the Greens would have had a lot more credibility on emissions reduction if they’d noticed and done something about the fact that air pollution standards and licensing in Australia is reliant on patchwork of State and Territory controls, each that little bit different, and none ‘best practice’ in terms of the benchmarks that available technology now allows regulatory standards to be set.
Australia, in my view, should have a single national stationary emitter pollution standards monitoring and licensing authority to lift the bar and hold all the big polluters to account. We succeeded in regulating vehicle emissions, we no longer dump toxins in our oceans, why can’t we apply this proven model to our big stationary emitters.
The truth is that there is a raft of available and affordable emissions abatement technologies that are affordable and can be retrofitted without recourse to turning our economy upside down with a premature carbon tax.
The really disappointing aspect of this election debate is that for the most part it hasn’t been had.
The hysterical green left has been preoccupied with carping ‘climate change sceptic’ – when surely the only substantive issue is emissions reduction and the technology means by which to achieve cuts to the infrastructure we have, not simply envisioning a carbon free world so very different to the real one we actually live in.
Ken Lovell says:
August 17, 2010 at 7:20 pm
No ken, it’s all your own doing. The use of your sexually gratifying term “denier or denialist” as a form of ridicule and deep personal insult has mean’t we have had no other choice but to defend ourselves at all costs. You religious nuts just can’t see how you keep nailing yourselves down. It’s time to admit your own failures.
Love the freedom of press here, love having all the vowels removed fromm my post, must be a leftie thing!
And declaiming the falsehood that freedom of the press applies to anybody other than the owners/agents of any particular press must be a disingenuous rightie thing! This blog is private property, not a public space, and we are under no obligation to publish abusive content.
You can always say whatever you want on your own
pressblog.I agree wholeheartedly with Peter’s wise comment above, he knows what he’s talking about!