Guest post by Alec Rawls
Anthony posted the video earlier. Professor Lindzen as casually bemused dragon-slayer. Highly quotable, so I thought I’d create a transcript. Here is Lindzen’s damning conclusion (after demolishing any scientific basis for Australia’s new carbon tax):
If they can fool the people into thinking that they really want to pay taxes to save the earth, that’s a dream for politicians.
Transcript follows:
Full transcript
Andrew Bolt: Professor Lindzen, thanks for joining us from Paris. Now our government says we must have a carbon dioxide tax to help stop global warming, which it says is damaging Australia already. Can we start with some basics? First, how much is the planet actually warming?
Richard Lindzen: Well… over the century, or maybe 150 years, it may be somewhere between a half and three-quarters of a degree Centigrade. I don’t know what it is locally in Australia. Since ’95 , … 1995, there hasn’t been much warming, certainly not that can be distinguished from noise.
AB: Is that warming lower than what the climate alarmists have been telling us to expect?
RL: Oh yeah. You have a constant game going on. The IPCC once said that they thought it probable that man’s emissions had accounted for most of the warming over the last 50 years. A more correct statement might have been that according to current models man has accounted for between 2 and 5 times the warming we’ve seen in the last 50 years, and the models have cancelled the difference by arbitrary adjustments, and they call them aerosols, but they vary from model to model and they’re just fudge factors.
AB: Now if we see a rise in carbon dioxide emissions as we have, a very big rise, in this last decade or more, but no real warming, what does that say about global warming theory?
RL: What is says is that—and it doesn’t uniquely say anything—it says there are certainly other things going on that are just as big. These things like El Nino, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, are giving you as much variability as whatever man is doing, and because of that you can’t even tell if man is doing anything.
AB: Can I ask you? If we do get further warming caused by man, will that warming be good for us, or bad?
RL: That’s always hard to tell. It will be good for some people, a little worse for others. It will be completely within the range of what human beings have shown they are capable of adapting to and even prospering under.
AB: What effect would a carbon dioxide tax in Australia—the aim is to cut emissions by 5% by 2020—what effect would that have on the world’s temperature?
RL: I don’t think anyone could possibly detect it even with future technology. It would be nothing, for all practical purposes, and it would be nothing if the whole world did the same.
AB: So does it make any sense at all to adopt a tax, or to spend directly on programs to cut emissions?
RL: Depends on who you are. For governments, you know, they want taxes and they know people don’t like to pay them, and I think if they can possibly confuse people into thinking they’re doing it save the earth, they’ll do it more willingly.
AB: So you’d consider this more a sort of big government measure than anything that could really influence the world’s climate for the good.
RL: I think there’s no disagreement in the scientific community that this will have no impact on climate, so it’s purely a matter of government revenue. And, as I say, I mean if they can fool the people into thinking that they really want to pay taxes to save the earth, that’s a dream for politicians.
AB: Well, it’s a very depressing scenario you paint, but thank you very much Professor Lindzen for joining us from Paris. I appreciate it.
RL: Good luck. Good luck.
A more in-depth interview with RL from Paris is to be found here.
http://trainradio.blogspot.com/2011/07/professor-richard-lindzen-on-global.html
Depressingly, the NZ Labour Party is gong the same way as Australian Labor under Juila Gillard. NZ Labour’s Phil Goff says he will form a coalition with the NZ Greem Party – which of course favour high “carbon” taxes: http://t.co/kevo4V0
It appears that he is paying no attention to the Australian reaction to the carbon tax policy.
And therein lies the rub.
Whatever the rights or wrongs of the AGW debate – no-one (as far as I can see) seems to be saying that cutting co2 emissions or introducing carbon taxes will have any noticeable effect on the temperature. And that demonstrates how the precautionary principle works. The precaution becomes the issue and the issue about which one decides to be cautious becomes secondary. We see it in all acpects of public governance throughout the world – climate change; euro bail outs; bank bailouts; health & safety regulations designed to address risk in, say school outings, ends up prohibiting them or making them untenable/too expensive; regulation of the professions, laws and public policy passed based on knee jerk “precautionary” approaches to the behaviour of the “worst” tiny minority; and so it goes on, everywhere you look.
It is a template used by political classes the world over and we should not be surprised to see it used in relation to AGW/climate change/ocean acidification/biodiversity, etc. etc. There is little reason deployed in government.
Thanks for the transcript. Dr. Lindzen is one, of many, who do know what they are talking about.
Dr. Lindzen said a few years ago-
‘I think that humans may affect climate but after 40 years of searching I cannot find the human signal’.
Come on Australia the remedy is in your hands through the ballot box. Vote Gillard out!
The “carbon” tax revenue will fall short of the compensation (Bribes) being offered by Gillard to the tune of AU$4.5 billion. I guess if Gillard has to “sell” this tax to the voting public, then that suggests to me Aussie voters are not convinced a tax will reduce emissions and cool the planet.
Thanks Alec. Gone into perm storage in ClipMate.
There’s that calm, reassuring common sense again! Ah:-)
Its looking highly unlikely that Gillard will get her tax through. Australians hate leaders that think they can away with it when a large majority is against. Its now 71% who are against her
http://www.news.com.au/national/prime-minister-julia-gillard-hits-all-time-low-in-essential-media-poll-before-carbon-tax-call/story-e6frfkvr-1226092552058
Can you show us the evidence to support what you say? /sarc /sarc /sarc … /sarc
(not that they’d bother to acknowledge it…).
That has ALWAYS gotten me about Crimate Silence. Distinguishing ‘the signal’ from the noise. That half a degree or so is a very special half-a-degree. It really means 30 dgrees, for purpose of alarmist argument.
The really good thing about this is that people are now probably looking up the data and finding out how they have been conned by the AGW.ers. Its probably backfired on them by trying so hard.
I am in Oz for a wee bit and was able to watch The Bolt Report live this past weekend.
Below are links to the clips. Dr Lindzen is in Part 1 of the most recent episode.
http://ten.com.au/video-player.htm?movideo_p=44795&movideo_m=117200
I’m dumbfounded by the stupidity of this tax.
Gillard’s ‘carbon’ (dioxide) tax is intended to force Australian consumers to switch to more expensive ‘clean’ energy while simultaneously exporting enormous amounts of coal to (mainly) Japan with the government’s enthusiastic approval; these exports are expected to grow about 25% in the next five years more than canceling out any (putative) environmental benefit: “the coal industry has a bright future under carbon pricing [sic]” she declares in her glib and vacuous way.
Of course none of it has anything to do with AGW etc., but in keeping sweet with her coalition partners the Greens, who keep her in power and whose leader (a 67 year old onetime physician) twittered on the day of the tax announcement: “the earth just got a little happier”.
One of the more alarming parts of the carbon weekend here was the claim on a later Andrew Bolt show that closing coal mines will lead to an increase in employment. This will come, the man from Government said, from the larger numbers of people needed to generate each unit of power from alternative energy sources, as has been shown in Germany.
This is about a logical as saying that 5 people can be diverted to make a widget, faster than one person could. But, that it not the issue. The issue is whether we need a new widget in the first place, when we already have one that works.
Former Conservative Prime Ministerial contender & economist Dr John Hewson was on the panel. He failed to point out the stupidity of this claim. Perhaps he was not given a chance there, but he should make a statement afterwards, if economics is to retain respectability.
“Christopher Hanley says:
July 11, 2011 at 2:49 am”
That’s really funny. After all Brown has been suggesting way for people to save, by turning stuff off. I guess everyone else needs to “turn off” except him. Typical, but not a surprise. I wonder if we’ll get all the infrastructure, like roads, public transport, schools, hospitals etc if Australia implemented a carbon tax he was talking about BEFORE the election? With a shortfall of AU$4.5 billion, after compensation, I am not convinced.
The basic stupidity of politicians seems to be increasing, or perhaps I have less patience with people who want to pick my pockets as I get older.
Why does it take Andrew Bolt to get his own show before someone like Lindzen is presented in the Australian media? No wonder people think there is no scientific doubt.
The carbon tax in Australia has come about because the party who went to the last election stated in very plain English that ‘there will be no carbon tax’ if we win government. Well, they didn’t win government and are only in government due to a minor party. The Greens (with about 10-12% support in the population), with a few independents that blow which ever way the wind is blowing to feather their nest (but will be undoubtedly gone in the next election) as they represent nothing one can put their finger on. Australia’s wealth is based on its natural resources and now they are to tax that out of existence. It is like Saudia Arabia taxing gas (petrol) and putting out of business the very natural resource that gives them wealth. Australia will now tax the very source of its wealth to buy in renewable energy technology produced overseas and become a poor nation just to allow a political party to stay in power. Australia is now run by the leader of the Greens (Bob Brown); (a radical party by any definition) and an ex-doctor who decided that saving a wild river from a dam decades ago as an activist, and the thrill of power that that gave him, better than being a medical doctor – the degree of which was paid for from government (tax payer) funds as his university degree was free and hence the investment for the degree totally wasted. He is gay, and although his sexual orientation has nothing to do with politics, he has produced no family and has no idea on the pressure of living that creating the next generation comes with for they are the future so it is a bit like a Roman Catholic priest advising on marital issues and child rearing. Raising a family costs energy and, even with compensation, it still costs. He has no first hand experience and draws his views from a theoretical knowledge of what it should be like. The state (Tasmania) that the leader of the Greens comes from is an economic basket case and if it wasn’t for redistribution of wealth from the energy and resource states to his state, the standard of living in his state would be significantly poorer. His supporters?; mainly urban city folk who are now the primary consumers of the world and so disconnected from the realities of life that they think that their Green lifestyle is delivered to them by some magic and that energy, food, water, etc. comes from a slave class that should be punished for their wicked ways so they can live in luxury – as is their due. More than 80% of the fossil fuels that Australia produces that is untaxed is sent overseas to create wealth – to give the Greens their comfortable standard of living – is burnt overseas in the global atmosphere, then the tax that Australians pay on the 20% that may be burnt in Australia is bearing all the costs for next to absolutely zero impact on global warming (assuming that it is due to CO2). The minority puppet government of Australia has as its master the Greens and will dance to whatever tune they play to enforce their vision of what life should be like on its entire population even though a very small minority actually voted for the Greens, which by definition, are at the extreme of the main stream view of the population. If this is democracy then my sincerest apologies to all those families who lost loved ones that fought and died to defend democracy against tyranny.
Well good to see our Ozzy friends on the rush to the bottom with us here in the UK, I see another energy company has put it’s prices up again by 30% over here int he UK. Just a simple Google search on fuel prices UK 10 years makes me realise that the elites of the world have no idea what there doing, the telling sign is at the bottom the amount of people in fuel poverty.
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/key-issues-for-the-new-parliament/green-growth/energy-price-rises/
Wow, there’s the virtue principal for you. Please save the world. . . and we’ll ship more coal to Japan, so that *they’ll* be the one responsible for ruining the planet, not us.
And tonight the public funded Australian Broadcasting Commission, did their usual “unbiased best” by presenting “three Leading Australian Scientists” Professor Barry Brook the chair of Climate Change at Adelaide University, Professor Peter Cook, representing the “Centre for Greenhouse Gases, presently engaged in promoting Carbon Capture and Storage and Professor “Snow” Barlow of land and environment at Melbourne University, to comment on the Gillard Carbon Tax and of course the thrust was to support the Government, though Peter Cook was critical that there wasn’t enough mention of Carbon Capture and Storage.
In Australian parlance the old diggers would say WOT no exception, no balance!! But, perfect for the left biased ABC, who refuse to even think there could be differing opinions to their version of media consensus.
Then later they have Q & A where Gillard will answer all those hard questions – I’d like to see that, but with a carefully stacked audience and a biased presenter like Tony Jones, it may be wishful thinking that any alternative to the Julia repetition will be allowed unless carefully scripted. Will it be the hard as nails robotic julia, or the wistful soft I’m reaching out to all Australians who care Julia…..
RB says:
July 11, 2011 at 2:01 am
Good analysis RB. I would read your last sentence as “There is little WISDOM deployed in government.”
What is totally bizarre about this ‘carbon price’ is that they are taking the money with one hand and giving it back with the other .. By penalising Australia’s largest export industry, what happens if Australian Coal becomes too expensive? I bet there are plenty of other countries willing to take their place. India springs to mind, along with Africa and Russia – at the expense of the Australian Miners, Mining companies and ultimately the Australian economy. Aus Coal was its biggest export for 2008/9 at 55 Billion AU$
http://www.australiancoal.com.au/the-australian-coal-industry_coal-exports.aspx
What is this sheila smoking.
Why would it be so difficult to take the government to court to make them first prove that more carbondioxide causes warming?>
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Re; Hanley,
Of course that leader will think that “the earth just got a little happier”, since he thinks the earth of himself.