If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.
Associated Press
Steve Fielding
Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.
In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.
The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)
The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.
Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.
The rise in skepticism also came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected like Mr. Obama on promises
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- thisismattholt
- added this
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@silvase on twitter says "Global Climate Change Climate Change"
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- twitterbot
- 5 months ago
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@787yghoi on twitter says "Fantastic RT! @Drudge_Report WSJ: Climate Change Climate Change; Number of skeptics swelling everywhere...."
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- twitterbot
- 5 months ago
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All I can say, is that my energy prices better not go up.
If all of the corporations buy up land with trees on it so that they can have carbon offsets and pay less money, then how am I ever going to be able to afford my house set deep in the woods? I don't think it is a surprise that the cap and trade legislation has been proposed in the US, as all the rich people own land which contains trees.
If energy prices go up drastically, then believe me the riots in the US will make Iran's look tame.
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- good_stuff
- 5 months ago
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oi vey!
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Either way using renewable resources will take money out of some of the greedy corporation's hands.
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The power of disinformation is remarkable. I realize that comment could go either way, but the way I see it, why would it be such a bad thing to use renewable resources? Why would it be so bad to pump less carcinogens into the air? Why would it be so terrible to have fewer wars for resource control? And just what if all of those scientists were right? The fact that there is a reasonable theory that has reached the point of widespread debate should make us think to err on the side of caution, but nobody wants to feel duped, no matter how many positive things can come from the change.
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Any theory as prominent as Global Climate Change that hasn't been debunked quite soundly by this point is likely sound enough that it should be taken serious.
Cold Fusion and similar bunk claims were ripped apart so fast it made people's heads spin.
Just like how all 4-5 itinerants of ID were all swallowed alive. There are minimum, hundreds of thousands of people who read and research these issues and if it isn't reasonable it almost immediately comes to light (relatively speaking).
The only exception is when corporations or faiths spend billions to confuse folks which is what cases like this are about.
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- theultimateend
- 5 months ago
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Steve Fielding looks way too much like Mathew Lesko, and therefore I cannot take him seriously. As for climate change, well, I'm no climate change scientist but the arguments against it sound a little to global conspiracy-ish.
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We need to stop polluting the planet. We need to obtain power from clean sources, not those that annihilate life.
Without the food chain, we would not exist. Humans totally depend on an intact food chain system. When we destroy the natural balance, we destroy ourselves. As Tom Lovejoy of the Smithsonian Institute stated, "We vertebras are just along for the ride. It's the plants, wigglies and squirmies that run the place". -
just because something is not man-made doesn't mean it shouldn't be man-fixed.
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Thanks to all of you above who are speaking with reason about preserving what's left of our beautiful planet.
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While I agree with the central premises of most of the comments on this thread, the mantra they teach medical students, "first, do no harm," strikes me as sage advice on this topic. There are so MANY things we can do that are no-brainers in the areas of conservation, efficiency, expansions of existing programs (I live in a community of nearly 50,000 that has NO organized recycling program, for example.) A few of the proposals being tossed around at the moment, like dispersing billions of tiny reflective particles in the upper atmosphere sound almost like they are INTENDED to refresh our memories about the laws of unintended consequences...sort of like the INCREDIBLE gas mileage anyone can get in their car...if they drive it off a cliff...
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Per usual, Jan4Gore would rather bash Obama and the Democrats for attempting legislation to stop global warming, than make comments against those who don't even believe global warming is an issue. Way to go Jan! Smart move!
Note this article comes from the Wall Street Journal; owned by Rupert Murdoch who also owns Fox News. He is doing the same to the WSJ he did to Fox which is turn it into a mouthpiece of the GOP and Corporate interests.
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Neo, I agree w/ you. I've often found that Jan4Gore makes perfect the enemy of progress. More than that, her consistent negative statements about anything Obama or positive serves only to strengthen those who would have us do even greater harm to this planet and our fellow man.
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I wonder if we'll even get to that point,... when the majority of people believe we're hurting Earth. 'Cause the actual dramatic change we need won't come full swing until more than 17% of us not only believe, but will act. I wonder.
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Green washing will not get you clean.
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- larrysnotes
- 4 months ago
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