by Professor Bob Carter
Control the language, and you control the outcome of any debate
Ten dishonest slogans about global warming, and ten little facts.
Each of the following ten numbered statements reproduces verbatim, or almost verbatim, statements made recently by Australian government leaders, and repeated by their media and other supporters. The persons making these arguments might be termed (kindly) climate-concerned citizens or (less kindly, but accurately) as global warming alarmists. 
Despairing of ever hearing sense from such people, some of whom have already attributed the cause of the devastating Japanese earthquake to global warming, a writer from the well regarded American Thinker has badged them as “idiot global warming fanatics”.
Be that as it may, most of the statements below, self-evidently, were crafted as slogans, and all conform with the obnoxious and dishonest practice of political spin – in which, of course, the citizens of Australia have been awash for many years. The statements also depend heavily upon corrupt wordsmithing with propaganda intent, a technique that international Green lobbyists are both brilliant at and relentless in practising.
The ten statements below comprise the main arguments that are made in public in justification for the government’s intended new tax on carbon dioxide. Individually and severally these arguments are without merit. That they are intellectually pathetic too is apparent from my brief commentary on each.
It is a blight on Australian society that an incumbent government, and the great majority of media reporters and commentators, continue to propagate these scientific and social inanities.
1. We must address carbon (sic) pollution (sic) by introducing a carbon (sic) tax.
The argument is not about carbon or a carbon tax, but rather about carbon dioxide emissions and a carbon dioxide tax, to be levied on the fuel and energy sources that power the Australian economy.
Carbon dioxide is a natural and vital trace gas in Earth’s atmosphere, an environmental benefit without which our planetary ecosystems could not survive. Increasing carbon dioxide makes many plants grow faster and better, and helps to green the planet.
To call atmospheric carbon dioxide a pollutant is an abuse of language, logic and science.
2. We need to link much more closely with the climate emergency.
There is no “climate emergency”; the term is a deliberate lie. Global average temperature at the end of the 20th century fell well within the bounds of natural climate variation, and was in no way unusually warm, or cold, in geological terms.
Earth’s temperature is currently cooling slightly.
3. Putting a price on carbon (sic) will punish the big polluters (sic).
A price on carbon dioxide will impose a deliberate financial penalty on all energy users, but especially energy-intensive industries. These imaginary “big polluters” are part of the bedrock of the Australian economy. Any cost impost on them will be passed straight down to consumers.
It is consumers of all products who will ultimately pay, not the industrialists or their shareholders.
4. Putting a price on carbon (sic) is the right thing to do; it’s in our nation’s interest.
The greatest competitive advantage of the Australian economy is cheap energy generated by coal-fired power stations.
To levy an unnecessary tax on this energy source is economic vandalism that will destroy jobs and reduce living standards for all Australians.
5. Putting a price on carbon (sic) will result in lower carbon dioxide emissions.
Economists know well that an increase in price of some essential things causes little reduction in usage. This is true for both energy (power) and petrol, two commodities that will be particularly hit by a tax on carbon dioxide emissions.
Norway has had an effective tax on carbon dioxide since the early 1990s, and the result has been a 15% INCREASE in emissions.
At any reasonable level ($20-50/t), a carbon dioxide tax will result in no reduction in emissions.
6. We must catch up with the rest of the world, who are already taxing carbon dioxide emissions.
They are not. All hope of a global agreement on emissions reduction has collapsed with the failure of the Copenhagen and Cancun climate meetings. The world’s largest emitters (USA and China) have made it crystal clear that they will not introduce carbon dioxide tax or emissions trading.
The Chicago Climate Exchange has collapsed, chaos and deep corruption currently manifests the European exchange and some US states are withdrawing from anti-carbon dioxide schemes.
Playing “follow the leader” is not a good idea when the main leader (the EU) has a sclerotic economy characterised by lack of employment and the flight of manufacturers overseas.
7. Australia should show leadership, by setting an example that other countries will follow.
Self-delusion doesn’t come any stronger than this.
For Australia to introduce a carbon dioxide tax ahead of the large emitting nations is to render our whole economy to competitive and economic disadvantage for no gain whatsoever.
8. We must act, and the earlier we act on climate change the less painful it will be.
The issue at hand is global warming, not the catch-all, deliberately ambiguous term climate change.
Trying to prevent hypothetical “dangerous” warming by taxing carbon dioxide emissions will be ineffectual, and is all pain for no gain.
9. The cost of action on carbon (sic) pollution (sic) is less than the cost of inaction.
This statement is fraudulent. Implementing a carbon dioxide tax will carry large costs for workers and consumers, but bring no measurable cooling (or other change) for future climate.
For Australia, the total cost for a family of four of implanting a carbon dioxide tax will exceed $2,500/yr* – whereas even eliminating all of Australia’s emissions might prevent planetary warming of 0.01 deg. C by 2100.
10. There is no do-nothing option in tackling climate change.
Indeed.
However, it is also the case that there is no demonstrated problem of “dangerous” global warming. Instead, Australia continues to face many self-evident problems of natural climate change and hazardous natural climate events. A national climate policy is clearly needed to address these issues.
The appropriate, cost-effective policy to deal with Victorian bushfires, Queensland floods, droughts, northern Australian cyclones and long-term cooling or warming trends is the same.
It is to prepare carefully for, and efficaciously deal with and adapt to, all such events and trends whether natural or human-caused, as and when they happen. Spending billions of dollars on expensive and ineffectual carbon dioxide taxes serves only to reduce wealth and our capacity to address these only too real world problems.
Preparation for, and adaptation to, all climate hazard is the key to formulation of a sound national climate policy.
Professor Bob Carter is a geologist, environmental scientist and Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs.
Notes:
*Assuming a tax rate of $25/tonne of CO2, and Australia’s emissions being 550 million tonnes, indicates a total cost of $13.8 billion. Spread across a population of 22 million persons, that equates with $627/person/year.
This essay originally appeared in Quadrant online and was reposted here at the invitation of Dr. Carter
For more information:
Australian Climate Science Coalition
Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)
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I just posted this on another thread but is also seems appropriate here.
———————-
Let’s look at C02 ‘reductions’ since Kyoto Protocol according to the Guardian:
This scam is not about reducing c02 it is about greens getting all they ever wanted using one magic bullet. The Romans survived the Roman Warm Period without alleged ‘climate emergency’ and in fact they thrived. This was the time that:
So much for ‘sinking’ coral island atolls.
Thank you Professor Carter. I have tried in vain to persuade our Energy and Climate Secretary, Chris Huhne, via my MP, to take note of your expert opinion. Also the opinions of other scientifically qualified realists. All to no avail. In fact I wonder if he is now commenting under the name Wombat!
I admire Bob Carter for planting a few seeds of doubt in my mind and help me turn from a mild believer of CAGW to a climate agnostic. That was on ABC radio’s Counterpoint program with Micheal Duffy way back in 2005.
I admire Bob Carter as a scientist, though, not as yet another scientist-cum-politician, like James Hansen. So, I’m not happy seeing him acting like a Liberal Party stooge opposing the Carbon Tax.
Imposition of taxation is essentially a political matter not scientific. Governments can tax thin air, if they so wished, because governments are first and foremost concerned with managing political interests, not scientific ones.
It is not pretty seeing Bob Carter turn into another politician like so many other CAGW scientists.
Cirius Man
A must read/listen when talking about the Greens, their ideology and the effect they will have on the poor.
“Former ALP Senator John Black suggests that green voters don’t conform to the popular stereotype. His research company has studied the demographic data and he offers a radical reappraisal of their attitudes and voting preferences. The richest voters in Australia he says are not Liberals but Greens.”
This interview was first broadcast on Monday 21st June 2010 before Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister
“the Greens are a party of the inner city, of the professionals, of the higher incomes, and that’s all a function of basically no kids.”
Transcript and Audio of interview
Professor Bob Carter says:
Earth’s temperature is currently cooling slightly.
No it’s not! I’m used to seeing this long ago discredited meme from idiots who perhaps don’t know that the very short timescales where this is sometimes, but not currently, true cannot be used to evaluate climate trends, I’m disappointed to see an academic fall into the same trap.
Tonight, (15th March,) Prime Minister Gillard expounded many of the above fallacies on the ABC to a far from compliant audience. She stated her intention of getting across to audiences through talkback radio the ‘fact’ that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.
Hey Bob – thought of running for PM? You’d get my vote!
Steve says:
March 14, 2011 at 12:41 am
“Interesting about Norway’s carbon tax, which is relatively high. Strangely enough since its implementation in 1991 its had 70% economic growth and is by all accounts still a very wealthy nation. The point being, given the case of Norway and other European countries that have carbon taxes, doesn’t it seem a little alarmist to imply, perhaps, that such a tax will crash economies?”
Norway is hardly a typical case. Where has a big chunk of that economic growth come from? Natural gas. Topography and geology have been very kind to the Norwegians – they can get a lot of their own electricity needs from sensible renewables (hydro – not much impact of carbon tax on that) while growing rich on the proceeds of selling fossil fuels (or however you wish to categorise natural gas) that lie under the North Sea. Lucky them!
So what? They’re worse alarmists than climatologists. See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/04/where-are-the-corpses/
It has a large windfarm planned, but its “lead” is mostly talk–or a misunderstanding. Where it’s ahead is in its manufacturing of solar panels and windmills, because of its low labor costs (and unenforced environmental laws).
Bob Carter wrote: “Despairing of ever hearing sense from such people, some of whom have already attributed the cause of the devastating Japanese earthquake to global warming, a writer from the well regarded American Thinker has badged them as “idiot global warming fanatics”.”
Now, if I were to call you folks “idiot global warming deniers” I’d get snipped. So, why are you publishing Carter’s rant?
ms gillard was asked in parliament last week if the government (under Rudd?) had done a deal to give 10% of the carbon tax to the UN. She fudged the answer by saying the proceeds would be used for ‘compensating low income earners … and climate projects’ (or something similarly vague). A new tax is bad enough, but I would be really p!$$ed off tofind out that the government has done such a squirrelly deal and covered it up. What else are these mongrels hiding?
Johnfrombrisbane
An otherwise generally useful comment is unfortunately marred by one exaggerated claim, namely:
“Economists know well that an increase in price of some essential things causes little reduction in usage. This is true for both energy (power) and petrol, two commodities that will be particularly hit by a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. Norway has had an effective tax on carbon dioxide since the early 1990s, and the result has been a 15% INCREASE in emissions.”
It is true that the elasticity of household demand for energy and petrol is low, so a higher cost of these will cause cause little reduction in household demand. That said, the longer run elasticity is higher as households change their purchases of capital equipment toward more energy efficient types.
All of this is largely beside the point, however, since the main adjustment would not come from households. Indeed, the point Bob makes elsewhere in the essay that such a tax would devastate key Australian industries implies that the tax would reduce Australian emissions of CO2. Since these industries would simply move to other jurisdictions, world emissions will not be much affected, but Australian emissions would fall. That is not a good thing, however, but a consequence of Australia voluntarily reducing its natural advantage in energy-intensive activities, and thus uts standard of living, as Bob elsewhere notes.
Finally, the comment about Norway ignores the fact that not all else was kept constant as the price was changed. It is not a clean experiment. More than likely the tax did reduce emissions below what they otherwise would have been, but a more sophisticated analysis than a simple correlation between energy price change and emissions would be needed to correctly assess the matter.
The more general point I would make here is that we should be careful not to overstate our case — just as we accuse the AGW crowd of overstating theirs. There are enough valid, non-controversial arguments against this policy that we do not need to overstate the case.
I don’t know how this happens, but it appears that;
John Wright says:
March 13, 2011 at 11:45 pm
left his his off and it continues.
MODS;
Now that action surprises me. I guess I need to state it in writing.
John Wright says:
March 13, 2011 at 11:45 pm
John apparently left his HTML italic closing tag off.
Patrick Davis:
This seems to be the new strategy they think will scare everyone into begging for an ETS.
I’m increasingly seeing AGW proponents recommending the linking of all these severe weather events to CO2-induced global warming as a useful tactic, since we’re all proving to be difficult to herd in the direction of carbon trading.
On Real Climate, there’s an admonishment of the moderators by one blogger for allowing such a suggestion by another blogger, on the grounds that it would damage the cause.
Real Climate did post the comment though—which goes as follows—-
“A whole bunch of big storms, floods, droughts and fires are things that can invoke the fear necessary to get action on GW.”
I’ve seen similar comments elsewhere, so I think we can expect to see a lot more of this , mad though it is, as a tactic of desperation.
It does appear to work in changing some minds though, judging from some blog comments—and a relentless barrage of it will be hard to counter.
Sorry, forgot to close my HTML markup (or whatever you call it) and it seems to have caused all comments to be in em – . Have I managed to stop it now?
shx @ur momisugly 4:03 am:
You need a dose of reality amigo.
The Carbon Tax which indeed is political, however, is base on the scientific premise of limiting ‘Anthropogenic ‘advances in the Global temperature record. It was the so-called climate scientists themselves that prepared and licensed the politics of climate science (viz) the IPCC.
At the Australian political level the so-called climate scientists have welded themselves in politics, with for example, Professor Will Steffen “was the inaugural director of the Australian National University (ANU) Fenner School of Environment and Society. From 2004 he has served as science adviser to the Department of Climate Change, Australian Government.” and is currently serving as “an expert on the federal government’s multi-party committee which is investigating ways to price carbon.”
Once the climate scientists crossed this science/political line it is not unreasonable to expect, and some may demand that scientists like Professor Carter should be given equal time to speak out on the political weather/climate policies that are clearly lacking in scientific and commonsense symmetry.
WOMBAT:Neither will there be an net effect on the consumer. Some products will become more expensive, but only because of money collected by the government – which releases the same amount from the budget for reductions in GST and/or income Tax.====
ah you sound like a pollie! thats doublespeak.
we have a 50% Petrol Tax too and how much of that actually goes to roads as its meant to?
Wombat get down your hole and stay there!
as for Bobs concise article the msm and govvy biased broadcasters wont play his interviews, wont print his articles and keep the denier verbiage to the fore,
they have to cos he speaks the truth and thats a non no.
I see Nick Minchin who is retiring spoke out in no uncertain terms that the world isnt at risk of carbon, and in fact its been cooling.
tony abbott then, with a idiot yes man, refuted it and said they did agree man had caused climate affects.,
damn fool! if he had the balls to stand up and say what Minchin did his cred would soar!
I am now less likely to support his mob, Barnaby is the saving grace there, but may not be able to stop tonys foot in mouth problems.
Wombat:
Norway has huge export income from its oil, hydro and natural gas reserves.
It doesn’t have the problem with distance from markets that is an Achilles heel for us in Australia—- it has huge markets for its energy right on its doorstep.
If the warmists kill coal and oil stone dead, Norway still has hydro, and they’re planning to build thorium reactors.
Germany imports huge amounts of gas from Norway—has done for more than thirty years—and Denmark gets hydro power from Norway—so it has no problem with export income.
Are you too trying to surreptitiously link the severe weather and forest fires to CO2, Wombat??
It’s strange the way warmists who so often lectured us that weather was not climate, are suddenly, in their desperation , linking every bit of weather they see to CO2.
Which are the renewable energy sources that are ready to power the emerging industries , when an ETS kills off our coal industry?
We already can’t compete with Asian countries in manufacturing, because of our labour costs—so what will replace manufacturing when an ETS increases costs every year as is intended?
Wombat,
“I am surprised that Mr [Professor] Carter has not heard of the Greenhouse effect, or is not aware that CO₂ is a greenhouse gas;”
I am sure Professor Carter has heard of the greenhouse effect, and it was very amiss of him not to mention it. Still, as the main point of his article was about spin and spinmeisters, I am sure Mr. Carter could have turned to Mr Wombat and say, ‘Here is what I’m talking about.’
Did you happen to forget to mention that by basic physics, the temperature sensitivity to doubling CO2 levels is only about 1.2c? That in order to get to catastrophic warming and ‘tipping’ points, models have to assume large positive feedbacks? Professor Carter is quite correct when he writes “However, it is also the case that there is no demonstrated problem of “dangerous” global warming.”
Wombat,
“The point of a price on carbon is that some methods of producing energy are favoured over others. It is not a blanket cost on all energy.”
If you mean that when the price of fossil fuels are forced to become very expensive, then wind and solar will become a less expensive option, then you are correct. If you mean that that this will somehow increase productivity and create wealth, then you are completely wrong.
Mike @ur momisugly 5:49 am:
You say – “Bob Carter wrote: “Despairing of ever hearing sense from such people, some of whom have already attributed the cause of the devastating Japanese earthquake to global warming, a writer from the well regarded American Thinker has badged them as “idiot global warming fanatics”.
“Now, if I were to call you folks “idiot global warming deniers” I’d get snipped. So, why are you publishing Carter’s rant?”
Now tell us again exactly what Bob Carter said and then tell us exactly what “a writer from the well regarded American Thinker” said.
On the other hand don’t bother because I can see that the hat fits pretty well on you.
Wombat,
“But the world must move to a low carbon economy, and Australia should be positioning itself in the emerging industries, not in dying ones.”
Why, other than that it is the ideology of the green industry? And what are these emerging industries that you are referring to? Surely not the industries of the medieval age (wind)? If you thing that China is gearing their economy to medieval technology, then explain why they are building one coal fired power station each week? Their only interest is in building and exporting these archaic and useless technologies to the gullible West.
Wombat says:
March 13, 2011 at 10:31 pm
“While it is true that CO₂ is not supernatural, so therefore it must be natural, and while it is true that it is vital for plants, I am surprised that Mr Carter has not heard of the Greenhouse effect, or is not aware that CO₂ is a greenhouse gas; nor that it when CO₂ dissolves in water, the result is a weak acid called Carbonic Acid (pKa 6.352).”
Dear Wombat…you seem to be talking about Carbon MONOxide, which is poisonous to us; or did your little square symbol stand in for a 2? Carbon Dioxide is not poisonous to us in the amounts found in the atmosphere, and it is, in fact, essential to our survival. Check your school lessons about photosynthesis.
As Australia has had a much cooler and wetter Summer than for years; I’m not inclined to worry overmuch about warming. Our little place Down Under is wondrously green for this time of the year! It’s usually baked brown in February.
The dissonance in the warmists arguments never ceases to amaze me. A glaring example of this can be seen in points 6 and 7:
“6. We must catch up with the rest of the world, who are already taxing carbon dioxide emissions.
7. Australia should show leadership, by setting an example that other countries will follow.”
So Australia is supposed to follow the rest of the world, but they have to lead as well. When your arguments are based on a faulty premise, rationalization and circular logic are your only rhetorical weapons.
Contradictions do not exist. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.