http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23991257-25717,00.html
[Zeppnote: What's interesting is that the Herald-Sun, apparently not a
paragon of journalistic integrity, tried to foist this rant off as a
straight-up news story. Drudge, of course, picked it up.]
Doomed to a fatal delusion over climate change
Andrew Bolt
July 09, 2008 12:00am
PSYCHIATRISTS have detected the first case of "climate change
delusion" - and they haven't even yet got to Kevin Rudd and his global
warming guru.
Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry,
Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children's Hospital say this
delusion was a "previously unre****ted phenomenon".
"A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at
Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of
depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events."
(So have Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, Profit of Doom Al Gore and
Sir Richard Brazen, but I digress.)
"The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate
change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths
of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies."
But never mind the poor boy, who became too terrified even to drink.
What's scarier is that people in charge of our Government seem to
suffer from this "climate change delusion", too.
Here is Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday, with his own apocalyptic
vision: "If we do not begin reducing the nation's levels of carbon
pollution, Australia's economy will face more frequent and severe
droughts, less water, reduced food production and devastation of areas
such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu wetlands."
And here is a senior Sydney Morning Herald journalist aghast at the
horrors described in the re****t on global warming released on Friday
by Rudd's guru, Professor Ross Garnaut: "Australians must pay more for
petrol, food and energy or ultimately face a rising death toll . . ."
Wow. Pay more for food or die. Is that Rudd's next campaign slogan?
Of course, we can laugh at this -- and must -- but the price for such
folly may soon be your job, or at least your cash.
Rudd and Garnaut want to scare you into backing their plan to force
people who produce everything from petrol to coal-fired electricity,
from steel to soft drinks, to pay for licences to emit carbon dioxide
-- the gas they think is heating the world to hell.
The cost of those licences, totalling in the billions, will then be
passed on to you through higher bills for petrol, power, food,
housing, air travel and anything else that uses lots of gassy power.
In some countries they're even planning to tax farting cows, so
there's no end to the ways you can be stung.
Rudd hopes this pain will make you switch to expensive but less gassy
alternatives, and -- hey presto -- the world's temperature will then
fall, just like it's actually done since the day Al Gore released An
Inconvenient Truth.
But you'll have spotted already the big flaw in Rudd's mad plan -- one
that confirms he and Garnaut really do have delusions.
The truth is Australia on its own emits less than 1.5 per cent of the
world's carbon dioxide. Any savings we make will make no real
difference, given that China (now the biggest emitter) and India (the
fourth) are booming so fast that they alone will pump out 42 per cent
of the world's greenhouse gases by 2030.
Indeed, so fast are the world's emissions growing -- by 3.1 per cent a
year thanks mostly to these two giants -- that the 20 per cent cuts
Rudd demands of Australians by 2020 would be swallowed up in just 28
days. That's how little our multi-billions of dollars in sacrifices
will matter.
And that's why Rudd's claim that we'll be ruined if we don't cut
Australia's gases is a lie. To be blunt.
Ask Rudd's guru. Garnaut on Friday admitted any cuts we make will be
useless unless they inspire other countries to do the same --
especially China and India: "Only a global agreement has any prospect
of reducing risks of dangerous climate change to acceptable levels."
So almost everything depends on China and India copying us. But the
chances of that? A big, round zero.
A year ago China released its own global warming strategy -- its own
Garnaut re****t -- which bluntly refused to cut its total emissions.
Said Ma Kai, head of China's powerful State Council: "China does not
commit to any quantified emissions-reduction commitments . . . our
efforts to fight climate change must not come at the expense of
economic growth."
In fact, we had to get used to more gas from China, not less: "It is
quite inevitable that during this (industrialisation) stage, China's
energy consumption and CO2 emissions will be quite high."
Last month, India likewise issued its National Action Plan on Climate
Change, and also rejected Rudd-style cuts.
The plan's authors, the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change,
said India would rather save its people from poverty than global
warming, and would not cut growth to cut gases.
"It is obvious that India needs to substantially increase its per
capita energy consumption to provide a minimally acceptable level of
wellbeing to its people."
The plan's only real promise was in fact a threat: "India is
determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at no
point exceed that of developed countries."
Gee, thanks. That, of course, means India won't stop its per capita
emissions (now at 1.02 tonnes) from growing until they match those of
countries such as the US (now 20 tonnes). Given it has one billion
people, that's a promise to gas the world like it's never been gassed
before.
So is this our death warrant? Should this news have you seeing
apocalyptic visions, too?
Well, no. What makes the Indian re****t so interesting is that unlike
our Ross Garnaut, who just accepted the word of those scientists
wailing we faced doom, the Indian experts went to the trouble to check
what the climate was actually doing and why.
Their conclusion? They couldn't actually find anything bad in India
that was caused by man-made warming: "No firm link between the
do***ented (climate) changes described below and warming due to
anthropogenic climate change has yet been established."
In fact, they couldn't find much change in the climate at all.
Yes, India's surface temperature over a century had inched up by 0.4
degrees, but there had been no change in trends for large-scale
droughts and floods, or rain: "The observed monsoon rainfall at the
all-India level does not show any significant trend . . ."
It even dismissed the panic Al Gore helped to whip up about melting
Himalayan glaciers: "While recession of some glaciers has occurred in
some Himalayan regions in recent years, the trend is not consistent
across the entire mountain chain. It is, accordingly, too early to
establish long-term trends, or their causation, in respect of which
there are several hypotheses."
Nor was that the only sign that India's Council on Climate Change had
kept its cool while our Rudd and Garnaut lost theirs.
For example, the Indians rightly insisted nuclear power had to be part
of any real plan to cut emissions. Rudd and Garnaut won't even discuss
it.
The Indians also pointed out that no feasible technology to trap and
bury the g***** of coal-fired power stations had yet been developed
"and there are serious questions about the cost as well (as)
permanence of the CO2 storage repositories".
Rudd and Garnaut, however, keep offering this dream to make us think
our power stations can survive their emissions trading scheme, when
state governments warn they may not.
In every case the Indians are pragmatic where Rudd and Garnaut are
having delusions -- delusions about an apocalypse, about cutting gases
without going nuclear, about saving power stations they'll instead
drive broke.
And there's that delusion on which their whole plan is built -- that
India and China will follow our sacrifice by cutting their throats,
too.
So psychiatrists are treating a 17-year-old tipped over the edge by
global warming fearmongers?
Pray that their next patients will be two men whose own delusions
threaten to drive our whole economy over the edge as well.
Join Andrew on blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt
Also in Andrew Bolt's
* Andrew Bolt: Bluster won't protect Olympia
* Andrew Bolt: Doomed to a fatal delusion
* Andrew Bolt: Climate too hot for Clive
* Andrew Bolt: Invitation to a birthday bash
* Andrew Bolt: Big Brother turns wowser
* Andrew Bolt: Snobs point flawed finger
* Andrew Bolt: Rudd starts to run rough
* Andrew Bolt: Carbon pain is priceless
* Andrew Bolt: Polygamy - the right to put down women
* Andrew Bolt: Exposed by cover-ups
* Andrew Bolt: Children of the damned
* Andrew Bolt: The love that's in a smile
* Andrew Bolt: Hypocrisy is becoming hard to bear
* Andrew Bolt: Johns born a ramblin' man
* Andrew Bolt: New leaks spring from Brumby's water plan
--
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government
talking
about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order.
Nothing has
changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists,
we're
talking about getting a court order before we do so"
-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004
Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!
Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com
For news feed, http://yahoogroups/subscribe/zepps_news
For essays (please contribute!)
http:yahoogroups/subscribe/zepps_essays
--
What do you call a Republican with a conscience?
An ex-Republican.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=8827
(From Yang, AthD (h.c)
"Prosperity and peace are in the balance," -- Putsch, not admitting that
he's against both
Putsch: leading America to asymetric warfare since 2001
Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!
Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.
For the finest in liberal/leftist commentary,
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com
For news feed (free, 10-20 articles a day)
Zepps_News-subscribe@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
essays (donations accepted, 2 articles/week)
Zepps_essays-subscribe@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
#2211 -- Bryan Zepp Jamieson
|
