Climate change legislation wound back.

Cartoon; how Barnaby Joyce must feel.

The current economic crisis seems to be putting climate change on the back burner.

Dr Muriel Newman in an article called “Getting our house in order” made the following point: -

In light of the worsening state of world economies, USA President-elect Barak Obama is reported to be planning to delay many of the pledges he made during the election campaign so that he is not distracted and can focus on reversing the economic slide. Action on climate change is said to be one of the projects that he is expected to sideline.

This seems to be an ongoing theme at present with much of Europe backing away from the idea as well as India, China, and so on refusing to take part in the first place. Recently Vaclav Smil, the prolific environmental thinker at the University of Manitoba – he's written 25 books was asked by NYT about Barack Obama's chances of ending American dependence on imported oil.

The only way that Mr. Obama could significantly advance this objective, he said, would be with the help “of a deep and lasting recession.” Otherwise, he said, “there will be precious little of any rapid change.” As for Mr. Obama's promise to enact a cap-and-trade regime to discourage the use of fossil fuels, “it will only further cripple America's industries.”

“Energy transitions take decades to accomplish. Anyone who expects Mr. Obama to transform the world will be disappointed [and] the degree of disappointment that must follow such naiveté will be phenomenal.”

There is also a recurrent theme in that the climate change frantics are becoming desperate at the growing skepticism of their voodoo cult among a growing band of respected scientists, as reported recently: -

Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change. ……

Why is this happening in Ball’s view:

“Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened,” said the professor.

“I can tolerate being called a skeptic because all scientists should be skeptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal.”

Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, …. Recently claimed: “Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labeled as industry stooges. ….

Dr Myles Allen, from Oxford University, agreed. He said: “The Green movement has hijacked the issue of climate change. It is ludicrous to suggest the only way to deal with the problem is to start micro managing everyone, which is what environmentalists seem to want to do.” …..

Here in Oz the government is determined to continue with its draconian carbon emissions trading scheme, which although watered down somewhat from its original proposals will cripple industry even without our current economic woes. Here again there is deliberate deceit and hysteria being used.

In a recent interview on ABC the opposition, Barnaby Joyce, (the Liberals are intimidated by Rudd and back down on every principle they have ever held) was asked: "Your comments of course will lead some to brand you as a climate change denier. What do you make of those accusations?"

Senator Joyce replied: "Well, I find the whole term repugnant. Climate change denier, like holocaust denier, you know, this is the sort of emotive language that has become stitched up in this ETS issue. A climate change denier? One is not allowed to question anymore and one is not allowed to call to question? One has to sort of fall into sort of a lock step goose step and parade around the office, you know, ranting and raving that we are all as one."

The government has accused him of comparing environmentalists with Nazis, which is a deliberate falsehood. The government themselves injected the word Nazi into the argument. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of history is aware that it was not the Nazis who came up with legislation to make Holocaust denial an offence.

Senator Joyce would be wrong to call them Nazis, McCarthyists would be reasonable.