Jeff Byrne

    IF you were an employer and had a vacancy for a specific job, you would advertise the position and interview the best candidates.

    And, if that job involved a particular branch of science, you would employ a scientist to provide you with the information to guide you toward an informed decision. If that person did not come up with the information you wanted, you would sack him and look for someone who would give you what you wanted, right? Of course. You have a business to run, money to make.

    But, here’s where it gets a bit tricky, especially if you are a tricky politician. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard needed an adviser on climate change, so she appointed one Professor Ross Garnaut to tell her what she wanted to know so she could impose a carbon tax. Garnaut is the government’s chief adviser on climate change, but he is not a “climatologist.” He is not a scientist. But he does know how to fiddle about with figures. He is an economist. A member of that ubiquitous fraternity that doesn’t know much about science but knows a lot about fiddling around with figures.

    But Gillard needed someone to support her 180-degree turn on carbon tax. Before the most recent election, she declared there would be no carbon tax imposed under a government led by herself. How things changed when she was forced to form a coalition with the Greens Party along with a handful of independents.

    Gillard and her cohorts screech that those opposing a carbon tax are climate-change deniers conducting a scare campaign to sway the electorate. This is utter nonsense. The scare campaign is being pressed by the government with near hysterical rants by Garnaut, Treasurer Wayne Swan and Climate Change Minister Greg Combet. They say if we don’t care about our children’s future, sea levels will rise and other countries will impose sanctions on Australia if it doesn’t impose a carbon tax. What utter rubbish! Combet warned that rising sea levels “potentially” could inundate the entire east coast of Australia in 90 to 100 years causing chaos. He’s a genius! Not even expert weather observers can tell us what the weather will be like next year, let alone in 90 years.

    Gillard and company declare the science on climate change has been settled. Well, only if you are listening to the people you have paid to tell you what you want to hear. The trouble is that there is a host of scientists who disagree but whose opinions are discarded — because they don’t fit the agenda.

    No one from the Gillard government or its predecessors has yet sought to debate the science of climate change with eminent scientists who have found the claims by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change downright dubious. A point to remember is that there are no scientists on the IPCC.

    But, Garnaut let the cat out of the bag just recently when he started talking about the importance of the “carbon economy” and has so far ducked the question of what effect a carbon tax would have on the environment. Only ifs, ands or buts.

    Four scientists with impeccable international reputations have responded to a recent report by the Climate Commission, entitled “The Critical Decade,” tearing it to shreds. They are geologist Bob Carter, carbon modeler David Evans, hydrologist-climatologist Stewart Franks and meteorologist-climatologist Bill Kininmonth.

    No one in the Australian Government has stepped up to refute the work of these scientists. But what is disturbing is that the mainstream Australian media has not bothered to conduct their own research to counter the hysteria being whipped up by Gillard et al. But then, this is just another illustration of neutered media kowtowing to the powers that be.

    The truth is out there. We just have to look for it ourselves.

    (The author is a Shenzhen Daily senior copy editor and writer.)