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18
May 2008
Who
Pays?
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Last
week the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment came
out in support of the Government’s Emissions Trading Bill as
the gateway to a ‘carbon-constrained future’: “We should
not forget the principle at the core of the emissions trading
scheme of ‘polluter pays’. ’Polluter pays’ is actually
a variant of ‘user pays’; we are using the atmosphere as a
dumping ground for waste gases.”[i]
The
Commissioner has let New Zealanders down by abandoning the
impartiality required of her Office, to buy into the political
mantra of the Green movement by inferring that carbon dioxide
is a pollutant.
Carbon
dioxide, the gas at the centre of the so-called “global
warming crisis”, is not a pollutant; it is the source of
life on earth. Without carbon dioxide, the planet would be
lifeless and barren. Plants use carbon dioxide, along with
water, as the raw materials to convert the sun’s energy into
food. Life-giving oxygen is the byproduct. Carbon dioxide is
therefore at the heart of the earth’s food chain.
Radical
environmentalists and their fellow travelers demonise carbon
dioxide, claiming it to be the primary exhaust product of
modern civilization. They have succeeded in engaging
politicians around the globe to join their
“de-industrialisation” movement, for de-industrialisation
will be the end result of global warming mitigation policies
like biofuels, emissions trading, and an over-reliance on
variable wind and solar power.
However,
opposition to their approach is now growing, not only due to
the public’s realisation that these policies will come at a
huge cost, but because new scientific evidence is emerging to
challenge the most basic assumptions of the global warming
movement.
Just
last week the Wall St Journal, in an article entitled “Kiwi
Climatology”, concluded that by pushing ahead with our
planned emissions trading scheme “other countries will now
have a chance to see what the ‘anti-carbon crusade’ does
to an economy”. The article states that our government
claims “New Zealanders will be willing to take lower
wages”[ii],
but the reality is quite different. As the opinion polls are
showing, householders are not that willing to pay an estimated
$3,000 a year in costs, nor allow 22,000 jobs to be lost for a
threat that they are not yet convinced really exists.
Meanwhile,
the scientific community, which continues to examine the
so-called evidence upon which the global warming doomsday
predictions were based, have found that the models do not hold
up: while man-made carbon dioxide emissions are estimated to
have increased by around 5 percent over the last ten years,
world temperatures have cooled, not risen as the alarmist’s
models had predicted.
This
has caused the star of “An Inconvenient Truth”, the movie
promoting an impending global warming crisis (that was found
to be full of errors by a High Court Judge[iii]),
to launch a $300 million advertising campaign to raise
awareness of global warming. Al Gore, who is the chairman of
the $5 billion Generation Investment Management, recently
became a partner in a venture capital company KPCB, which has
invested $1.3 billion into start-up “green growth”
companies. These companies “that could profit from
government policies designed to fight global warming” will
find the going tough if governments back down from imposing
their biofuel, renewable energy, and emissions trading
schemes.[iv]
Driving
the ‘anti-carbon crusade’ is the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As New Zealand IPCC
“expert reviewer” Dr Vincent Gray explains, “The IPCC
was set up in 1988 to assess scientific information on climate
change and its impacts and mitigation. The Framework
Convention on Climate Change in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 defined
‘climate change’ as changes in climate caused by human
interference with atmospheric composition. All the signatories
to that Convention (which included NZ) accepted this
definition. The task of the IPCC, therefore, has been to
accumulate evidence to support this belief that all changes in
the climate are caused by human interference with the
atmosphere."[v]
According
to Canadian scientist Dr Tim Ball, in a series of informative
articles about the global warming movement, “Sir John
Houghton, first co-chair of the IPCC and lead editor of the
first three Reports, signaled that the objectives were
political and not scientific. He said, ‘Unless we announce
disasters no one will listen.’ The IPCC has done this with
ruthless efficiency while pretending what they are doing is
science not politics”.[vi]
The
compilation of IPCC reports is a case in point. The
Summary for Policy Makers, written by government
representatives are released some three months ahead of the
technical reports on which the summaries are meant to be
based. While around 2,500
people are involved in the IPCC, only a
handful ever see the final technical reports which are then
carefully “massaged” to “ensure consistency with the
Summary for Policy-Makers” so that there is nothing in
conflict with what the politicians agreed.
Dr
Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology at MIT described the
IPCC process in a Testimony to a Senate Committee: “It uses
summaries to misrepresent what scientists say; uses language
that means different things to scientists and laymen; exploits
public ignorance over quantitative matters; exploits what
scientists can agree on while ignoring disagreements to
support the global warming agenda; and exaggerates scientific
accuracy and certainty and the authority of undistinguished
scientists”.[vii]
Over
the years, thousands of scientists have spoken out against the
IPCC and its reports. Following the publication of the 2005
report, Dr Frederick Seitz, President Emeritus of Rockefeller
University and past President of the US National Academy of
Sciences stated: “I have never witnessed a more disturbing
corruption of the peer-review process that the events that led
to this IPCC report.”
In
the Foreword to the Report of the Nongovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the
Climate”, which provides an independent examination of the
evidence on climate change that is available in peer reviewed
literature, Dr Seitz states: “The IPCC is pre-programmed to
produce reports to support the hypothesis of anthropogenic
warming and the control of greenhouse gases, as envisioned in
the Global Climate Treaty. The 1990 IPCC Summary completely
ignored satellite data, since they showed no warning. The 1995
IPCC report was notorious for the significant alterations made
to the text after it was approved by the scientists – in order to convey the
impression of a human influence. The 2001 IPCC report claimed
that the twentieth century showed ‘unusual warming’ based
on the now discredited hockey-stick graph. The latest IPCC
report published in 2007, completely devalues contributions
from changes in solar activity, which are likely to dominate
any human influence”.[viii]
The
NIPCC report is the brainchild of Professor S. Fred Singer,
Professor Emeritus at Virginia University and former director
of the US Weather Satellite Service. One of the most
distinguished scientists in the US, Prof Singer, who, as a
former IPCC reviewer shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al
Gore, is this week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator. In his article
“The Great Global Warming Debate”, Prof Singer explains:
“In
the past few years there has been increasing concern about
global climate change on the part of the media, politicians,
and the public. It
has been stimulated by the idea that human activities may
influence global climate adversely and that action is required
on the part of governments to do something about this problem.
My purpose here is
to show that this concern is misplaced, that human activities
are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible
way, and that, in any case, very little can be done about
global climate change. It
is unstoppable; we should not even try to influence it.
Climate will continue to change, as it always has in
the past, both warming and cooling on different time scales
and for different reasons, completely unrelated to any human
action. I
will also argue that - should it occur - a modest warming is
on the whole beneficial”.
In
his article he warns, “There is however a serious problem.
In the mistaken idea that something needs to be done, policies
are arising that have the potential of distorting energy
policies, severely damaging national economies, make us
poorer, and hurting standards of living. Such a misdirection
of resources will adversely affect human health and welfare in
industrialized nations - and even more so in developing
nations. It can lead to social tensions within nations and to
conflict between nations. If it were not for this potential of
inflicting serious economic damage, one might consider the
present concern about climate change nothing more than just
another fad or human aberration.
But once it affects energy policy, it becomes essential
to understand the issue to avoid inflicting any severe
harm”. To read the full article, please click
here >>>.
The
global warming juggernaut, driven by our politicians (aided by
the IPCC) is charging ahead in New Zealand. Our Prime Minister
promised that we would lead the world by becoming the first to
be carbon neutral. We are therefore the only country in the
world to include all greenhouse gases in a Kyoto
agreement, a situation that could cripple our farming
industry. We are the only country to even contemplate exposing
the economy to the full cost of the volatile world price of
carbon in the proposed emissions trading scheme. And we are
the only country in the world to set renewable energy
targets as high as 90 percent, even though the consequences in
terms of threats to the security of supply and power price
hikes are well known.
The
issue is: Are consumers prepared to bear that cost?
This
week’s poll asks: Do you
believe the Government's propose emissions trading scheme
should:
a)
Proceed as planned
b) Be delayed to align with Australia's scheme, or
c) Be scrapped.
Go
to Poll >>>
If you
would like to comment on this issue please click
>>>
FOOTNOTES:
[i]
Emissions Trading Scheme Must Proceed - http://www.pce.govt.nz/news/pce_news_media08_05_14.shtml
[ii]
Kiwi Climatology - http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121062809435686285.html
[iii]
Dr Muriel Newman, Politics
in Schools on Trial -
http://www.nzcpr.com/weekly102.htm
and
Lord Christopher Monckton, 35 Inconvenient Truths - http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/press_releases/monckton-response-to-gore-errors.pdf
[iv]
CNS News, Gore Financially Invested in Climate Change
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200805/NAT20080514a.html
[v]
Dr Vincent Gray, IPCC Wins Nobel Prize for Peace - http://www.nzcpr.com/guest72.htm
[vi]
Professor Tim Ball, How UN structures were designed to prove
human CO2 was causing global warming - http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2840
[vii]
Dr Richard Lindzen, Testimony to the Senate - http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/Testimony/Senate2001.pdf
and
Climate of Fear: Global-warming alarmists intimidate
dissenting scientists into silence - http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220
[viii]
Dr Frederick Seitz, NIPCC Report - http://www.sep.org.nz/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf
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