Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Richard Aedy of the Aussie ABC wants to know why there has been no progress addressing climate change despite 30 years of green activism. The answer, of course, is staring him in the face.
Climate change talk has been around for 30 years. Where’s the action?
By Richard Aedy for Hot Mess
I can’t tell you what I was doing on June 23, 1988, though I can take a guess.
I was a week or so from finishing my journalism course and — how times have changed — I’d already been offered a job.
That’s what would have been occupying my time — along with my girlfriend and my friends and going out. I definitely wouldn’t have been thinking about climate change.
But some people were. Because on June 23, 1988, James Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA, appeared before a US Senate hearing with a warning for the world.
…
In 2001, the IPCC released its third assessment report. This one was more certain and spelt out the consequences of climate change this century.
Unfortunately it came out nine days after September 11 and disappeared completely.
…
Over the next few years, something else became apparent.
It wasn’t just that the government wasn’t acting on climate change — increasingly, there was pushback against the science.
…
Kevin Rudd defeated a tired Howard government, and gave me hope.
For more than two years I thought he and then-environment minister Penny Wong were going to get emissions trading to happen.
When he abandoned it, I wrote a furious letter to my then-MP, Maxine McKew. I never heard back.
…
And yet we’ve done very little. I want to know why. That’s why I’ve made this series.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-17/climate-change-action-has-been-missing-hot-mess-richard-aedy/12200196
Why has there been no action in 30 years, despite countless conferences and high level expressions of concern?
The answer to this paradox is there has been plenty of action, but nothing attempted has worked. Greens long ago won the political debate, but they squandered their victory on failure.
30 years of non-achievement is surely compelling evidence that Renewables do not work. Generous government subsidies and forced purchases of “green” energy have failed to spark a renewable revolution. The billions of dollars poured into the renewable revolution have achieved nothing worthwhile. There is no conspiracy to suppress renewables, a point Michael Moore made very clear in his documentary Planet of the Humans. They just don’t work.
What caused the pushback Richard mentions?
ABC reporter Richard Aedy quoted former NASA GISS Director James Hansen’s 1988 warning to Congress right at the start of his article, but Richard left out a few important details.
Long before Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans”, Hansen was upsetting environmentalists by telling them nuclear power was the solution to staving off the coming climate catastrophe. A few years ago Naomi Oreskes called James Hansen a “Denier” because of Hansen’s repeated claim that renewables alone cannot decarbonise the economy rapidly enough to prevent Hansen’s predicted climate disaster.
If greens had embraced a viable solution to reducing CO2 emissions from the start, I suspect many climate skeptics like myself would never have questioned the science. What first prompted me to question the science was that the proposed solution didn’t make sense. The math is not complicated. Anyone with an ounce of engineering skill can perform the calculations for themselves using publicly available data, use their own expertise to confirm that renewables are a joke.
The green push for useless renewables is a big red flag. If the proposed solution doesn’t make sense, maybe the problem is nonsense as well.
You don’t have to dig very deep to find big problems with climate science.
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“The answer to this paradox is there has been plenty of action, but nothing attempted has worked. ”
I disagree. What has worked is the extraction of untold trillions of dollars being taken from the poor and being poured in to the pockets of those who setup the s@cm. That has worked extremely well, ask Al Gore.
Disagree for a slightly different reason, or perhaps a different take on the same reason.
“And yet we’ve done very little. I want to know why.”
As always, ask: who is this ‘we’?
As Patrick says, one reason why ‘we’ have done very little is that what we in the West have done has had minimal effect on emissions. And could not have had because its primarily been about installing huge quantities of intermittent electricity supply, which in itself does not reduce emissions, and anyway only could reduce electricity sector emissions which are less than one third of all emissions.
But the second reason is that we in the West are only doing about 25% of global emissions, and no-one else is reducing, in fact they are increasing as fast as they can manage to build the coal-fired power stations.
So ‘we’, that is the we in the West, are attacking less than 10% of global emissions with measures that have no material impact on them, at the same time as the rest of the world builds in more emissions as fast as it can.
Is it it at all surprising, then, that ‘we’, whoever is meant by ‘we’ are not reducing global emissions? Or even our own!
Or perhaps a better way to say it is, ‘climate change talk has been around for thirty years. Where’s the crisis?”
This!
Please don’t take this too seriously.
The Australian ABC is a 3rd class outfit with 3rd class left-wing journalists.
It’s a pity, because until about 40 years ago the Australian ABC was a world class outfit with world class journalists.
They may be 3rd class but they are paid 1st class, taxpayer funded, salaries. Then they moan about salaries paid to journalists in the private sector.
The ABC is repeatedly found to be Australian’s most trusted news source.
http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8064-abc-remains-most-trusted-media-201907220424
That’s like the CBC here in canada
The most trusted…….by 1% of the population
You nailed it – just because something can claim to be the “most trusted” doesn’t in any way mean that most, or even very many people trust it!
Obviously Australians like to watch news sources that they don’t trust so much, as more watch other news outlets. I think the ABC only asked people who watch the ABC who they trust most for their news.
Peter…This …most trusted news source factor…is often brought up about OUR ABC Down Under yet when it actually comes to eyeballs on the Telly it becomes a different matter.
TV Tonight is our ratings service here and 9 and 7…the commercial channels dominate the news time slots all week with the ABC getting a top 5 position on weekends….Channel 10, which is the other commercial channel is pathetic at ratings.
The big 2 commercials get 1 to 1,2 million each most nights while ABC gets about 800000 -900000….
The Current Affairs comp is a close battle between ABC 7.30PM and A Current Affair on 9 with Channel 10 and its blatant woke The Project well back in 3rd place.
Although it is possible:.
Trusted often not the same as trustworthy.
Which is why only about 30% of the population consume it?
Seems there’s a disconnect there somewhere.
Especially since it’s all free,
Exactly. I pay to watch Fox news rather than the free biased ABC.
It’s not free!
True Patrick.
It’s really very very costly.
For taxpayers.
But I suspect a large % of the ABC audiences are net negative tax contributors.
So free for many, if not all.
It’s free I view it, at least. Obviously, like all media, we end up paying for it somehow. This one we have to pay for whether we watch it or not, which irks me as a non-viewer your over 30 years.
At least in the UK I had a choice not to pay for it, which I exercised. Here, I have no choice, and in Italy it’s a part of my property taxes too.
True, I guess we still pay for it via taxes.
From your site Loydo, ”In April 2018 and April 2019 we conducted additional surveys of approximately 1,200 Australians asking which MEDIA they TRUST and DISTRUST – The Media Net Trust Survey”
1,200 Australians, wow that is a compelling figure from out of 25 million people. And I bet the surveys were conducted just in the major cities centres full of lefties.
The ABC is becoming more and more a biased left leaning media outlet and is becoming more and more on the nose to average Aussie.
If there is some evidence that fails to confirm a bias it is just ignored; no fact checks done, no research undertaken, no attempt to refute and the zombie misapprehension is mindlessly repeated – as if its fact. Try gnashing your teeth, that might help a bit too.
Loydo, thank you for your confession.
Try using your brain.. loy-doh.
Asking ABC viewers if the trust the ABC.. DOH !!!
ABC is a joke, they are hard-left greenie bias
Around 80% of the ABC journos vote Greens .
They thrive on the ignorance and gullibility of people like you.
Well I am still currently waiting for a complaint response I lodged to ABC about using a Greenpeace twitter post (which was incorrect) as a news source. I am giving them a couple more weeks and then I get to launch a formal complaint to ACMA.
Once again, Loydo fails to actually address the arguments given. Instead she once again resorts to throwing insults.
‘If there is some evidence that fails to confirm a bias it is just ignored; no fact checks done, no research undertaken, no attempt to refute and the zombie misapprehension is mindlessly repeated – as if its fact. Try gnashing your teeth, that might help a bit too.’
Boy – talk about projection.
Evil can’t see it’s own reflection – ask any vampire.
No one asked me.
Five free to air tv stations in Australia.
Re News
Sunday night news is biggest audience.
Nine and Seven interchange first and second place with about 1.1 to 1.2 million viewers.
ABC is currently fifth with about 800,000 viewers.
LEGO masters and Masterchef are currently third and fourth.
But
Survey was 1200 people only.
Only a rabid leftist would even consider that as remotely possible.
Ah, it’s Loydo. OK.
From your link…
”“Australians told us that their trust of the ABC is driven by its lack of bias and impartiality, quality journalism and ethics”
They must have taken this poll in Northcote…
im a 24/7 abc rn listener for 30 yrs almost
why?
because i hate the even thicker msm and the music n ads
do I LIKE? or TRUST? abc
NO I do NOT at all trust or like the majority of their programming
theres the odd good show but theyre rarer by the year
knowing what theyre rabbiting on about and what the sheeple in the whitecollar and unis etc are hearing n believeing however IS important so I can throw the odd cracker in amongst em, and inform people about whats planned or being lobbied for so we can speak out against it;-)
knowledge being power and all that etc
Loydo
Based om ABC’s polls the ABC is Australia’s most trusted news source except that it isn’t
Forget ABC instigated polling tripe of less than 2,000 carefully selected respondents, Australia’s TV rating agencies which sampled over 20 million viewers delivered a totally different result. For the week beginning 10 February 2019 the ABC had a network share of 16.9% with the ABC News attracting significantly less than TWO percent of all viewers, which is consistent result going back to 2010.
As much as the ABC promotes itself with its taxpayer funded budget of $1.2 million a year, it is definitely not Australia’s most trusted news source, It is certainly not Australia’s most watched.
Typo I believe, budge of 1.2 BILLION a year
OOOOps ABC budget $A 1.2 billion a year and it wants more to promote its anti Australian propaganda.
I agree with Pat, Loydo seriously who trusts the ABC? They are nothing more than a leftist propaganda machine, why else would Getup support them?
Now we know why the Australians have a problem – they place their trust in the worst.
Loydo, that is not saying much at all. Journalists are down with used car salespeople and politicians in the trust department to start with. As for the ABC it still has a number of baseline national broadcaster shows typically to do with rural matters that are generally apolitical and they probably form the trust basis.
People in rural areas listen to the ABC because often that is the only radio you can get. It’s not even a matter of trust. The Sky Channels are available free to air in many rural areas so at least we are able to get a balanced view.
Well a bit like the BBC, but that went downhill in the 1960s.
“… there was pushback against the science.”
What science? There’s not one shred of actual science supporting the climate alarmists. Science was no longer relavent to the effect of CO2 emissions once the IPCC got involved who needed a large effect to justify their existence and their agenda of redistributing western wealth to third world despots.
As to the problem itself, we should “listen to the science”.
The science tells us that the current CO2 level of 416 ppm.has never been this high in at least the last 400 thousand years.
However the science of geology also tells us that our current geologic period ( Quaternary) has the lowest average CO2 levels in the history of the Earth.
The average for the past 800,000 years was 230 ppm.
(h/t Gregory Wrightstone, ‘Inconvenient Facts’)
This “settled science”is very unsettling.
“has never been this high”
According to the dry extraction method, which underestimates co2 concentration by 2-3 times.
Never been this high..
Ah yes, the CO2 fudge… Very selected data.
“230 ppm.” Just 50 ppm above keeping plants alive. That’s close.
“230 ppm” Just 50ppm above keeping plants alive. That’s close
Just a thought. How about a running metric of how much, all in, has been spent in the US, per person, on the failed “green” solutions. And to top it up, the estimated cost to dispose of the waste the failed technologies have created, which at this point is basically unfunded. I’m sure this group can provide that analysis to the people of the US.
Every solar panel is a future hazardous waste problem. BTW, it’s not low cost labor that makes Chinese solar panels cheap, as the manufacturing process is highly automated.
He wrote to his then left wing Member of Parliament Maxine McKew, that’s really funny because she herself was a long time ABC “journalist”. She was also married to Bob Hogg, former president of the Australian Labour Party. You can imagine how impartial she was as a “journalist” for the ABC.
And of course in this piece he talks about “the science”. Didn’t professor Brian Cox recently tell us that there is no “the science” when talking about scientific advice to government on covid19. But of course Brian was happy to refer to “the science” when talking about climate only a few years earlier. Seems that there is good “the science” and bad “the science”.
The majority of Australians taxpayers are sick and tired of government pending just over $1 billion a year on this Ultra Looney Leftist cesspit called the ABC.
If you’re describing Australia’s most trusted news source as “Ultra Looney Leftist cesspit”, what does that say about all the other news sources? I guess it means they’re even worse.
”what does that say about all the other news sources? I guess it means they’re even worse.”
No, it means other news sources aren’t as biased to the left.
Loydo isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed .. yep most other news sources probably besides Guardian and BBC would simply be more right.
“Loydo May 16, 2020 at 8:00 pm
If you’re describing Australia’s most trusted news source…”
Most reasonable thinking residents of Australia think it is biased, with a massive dose of left!
Loydo, the argument is that while they may be “most trusted’ they are NOT most watched and that by definition casts some doubt on the most trusted moniker. The reality is that “market research” like all research is highly susceptible to having the results influenced by the starting assumptions, the sample size and selection process, the style of questions and how they are worded as well as “errors” and outright chicanery in the data collection and processing methods at the very least. In other words, just because research is done by some university academic or some trusted research company doesn’t remove the impact of all the usual human failings and biases thereby delivering fantasy rather than fact.
“what does that say about all the other news sources”
Since they are not quite as looney leftist as the rabid ABC,
you wouldn’t want to watch them Loy-doh !
You’ve said that at least twice, Loydo – the classic appeal to authority – which isn’t even an authority. Lefties are pretty easy to sucker – all you have to do is appeal to fear and bigotry.
– increasingly, there was pushback against the science
This simplistic, moronic, Communist sloganeering has got to stop. There is always a pushback WITHIN science … peer review, for example. Legitimate peer review. Hiding your data … as “proprietary” is NOT REAL science. REAL science stands up to scrutiny. Stands up to skeptics.
I’m really not surprised that some twit who graduated in 1988 with a degree in *snicker* Journalism doesn’t understand what science actually is. I expect he hasn’t taken a real science class since his sophomore year in High School.
I agree.
30 years is a convenient cut-off. Expand it to 50 years, and the lack of action on Global Cooling would have to be included. Go back a century, and only those suffering from schizophrenia would be able to keep up with the regularly-switching crises.
One of the fundamental reasons that there has been no action on Climate Change….is that there’s been no Climate Change. Quite a few weather cycles–nearly every one of which has spawned yet another Climate Crisis in the minds of those prone to regarding every change as a crisis.
Thankfully no action was taken on the 70’s Global Cooling scare, because things seem to have warmed slightly by themselves and cancelled the need. If we’re lucky and action by ‘experts’ continues to be not taken, we just might be able to continue to adapt to the swings and get out of this alive.
“Thankfully no action was taken on the 70’s Global Cooling scare, because things seem to have warmed slightly by themselves and cancelled the need. ”
Yeah, but the ‘action’ they were demanding back then was… more taxes, more regulation and less fossil fuels. So if we had acted back then, we’d have prevented Global Warming by stopping Global Cooling.
It’s science, man.
Glad you mentioned ‘global cooling’. I covered this impending crisis as a journalism student back in the 70s. It was a very big deal back then. ‘Global cooling’ was front page news. It was slightly fake but was news. Below is none other than Leonard Nimoy telling us about the perils of ‘global cooling’ in 1979.
Fortunately, ‘global cooling’ (if/when it hits) will be a phenomenon that is caused by natural forces. So there will be no need to raise taxes, abolish gas-powered cars, and create new government agencies to undermine human freedom. Keep in mind that we moderns are living in a temporary ‘interglacial period’ that will inevitably come to a close, perhaps sooner rather than later. Global cooling is coming, eventually.
there’s been plenty of action…..we made the guys at Solandra rich as sh** for one thing..
..and for another we brought the largest percentage of chinese out of poverty buying all those China scams
So this guy has just figured out what most people already know, including a 17-year old high school dropout – that gobsh!ting about “tackling climate” is easier than actually doing anything, and it wouldn’t have any effect anyway. Plus, of course, the only thing that leftists can do is gobsh!te about anything and everything. Why else would they be clinging onto this dead horse so vehemently? They know they can’t function in the real world – that’s why.
Just vote.
The green environmentalist movement is like those feral environmentalists you see in places like England, having their country gatherings, and trying to go back to basic medieval times.
And meanwhile, not too far away from their tents and camp fires are their petrol and diesel vehicles they drove to get to the site… and in their hands are their mobile phones… products created by fossil fuel intensive industries.
Yep, 30 years and nothing has happened. No catastrophic global warming.
“Climate change talk has been around for 30 years. Where’s the action?”
There’s plenty of action down in the Maldives
https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/05/14/maldives-sinking/
The list of alarms for the Maldives are almost verbatim as the alarms of the 1930s for the Maldives.
“Richard Aedy of the Aussie ABC wants to know why there has been no progress addressing climate change despite 30 years of green activism. ”
Hello Climate Change. How are you? I’m fine.
There, it’s been addressed.
My local laundromat has a pile of old National Geographic magazines.
volume 176 no 4 October 1990 has an extensive article with all the players.
Under the Sun – Is our world warming?
It has a “Fever Chart of a warming planet”
2020 should be between 0.5 and 1.7degC warmer than the 1950-1979 average from the University of East Anglia historic temperature graph
I can’t find this graph but eyeballing current Had CRUT4 graphs look like 0.6deg C rise.
Anyone can hit a barn with a scattergun.
Trouble is alarmists always have the gun with the dangerous end pointed at their feet.
“National Geographic magazines.
volume 176 no 4 October 1990 has an extensive article with all the players.
Under the Sun – Is our world warming? It has a “Fever Chart of a warming planet”
2020 should be between 0.5 and 1.7degC warmer than the 1950-1979”
To go back through history and find forecasts that turned out to be right is a form of circular reasoning called the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. It does not provide useful information.
Here is a longer list of all the things that were said back then.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/02/22/old-climate-fears-revisited/
Anyone with knowledge of the chemical and mechanical engineering subjects heat transfer and thermodynamics knows that the idea of CO2 affecting atmospheric temperatures should be able to work out that it is nonsense. The second law of thermodynamics is a good start.
From the article: “It wasn’t just that the government wasn’t acting on climate change — increasingly, there was pushback against the science.”
No, there was pushback against the lack of science.
That’s still the case today. There is no evidence for Human-Caused Climate Change. None. So when someone comes along and claims there is evidence, there is pushback demanding that evidence for the claim be presented.
No evidence for the claim has ever been presented. Not once.
Do you notice how alarmists and American Democrats obsess over injecting the word “science” into their conversations. They think presenting themselves as taking the side of science makes them look like they are on the right side of the issue, and anyone who doesn’t agree with them is denying “the Science”.
Most of these people wouldn’t know what science was if it walked up and bit them. They use it as a club to beat their opponents. At least, they think they are beating someone using “the science”. More stupidity.
Where was the “science” in the model of the Covid19 outbreak?
15000 lines of flaky computer code.
“Where was the “science” in the model of the Covid19 outbreak?
15000 lines of flaky computer code.”
This is how “flaky” the computer code is: Original estimate of mitigated deaths (UW) = 100,000 to 140,000.
Actual mitigated deaths to date = 89,486
So how long do you think it is going to take to reach 100,000 actual deaths? That’s how long you have before you have to admit you are wrong about the model President Trump uses to guide us through this mess, the University of Washington estimates. I would say you have less than two weeks before you can no longer claim the model is “flaky”..
That might have some weight, if the lockdown mitigation achieved anything, but we can now see that lockdowns do not reduce the total death toll.
There have been many approaches from all but no lockdown to extreme lockdowns, but there is no substantial difference in the number of deaths per million no matter what response has been adopted. In fact the countries with the most extreme lockdowns (such as italy and Spain) have fared the worst, and those with all but no lockdowns such as Sweden (presntly standing in 10th place on deaths per million) and Brazil (about 23rd place on deathsper million) have fared among the best. .
“That might have some weight, if the lockdown mitigation achieved anything, but we can now see that lockdowns do not reduce the total death toll.”
Really? How’s that? Please explain.
Lockdowns are figued into the estimates, including the original estimate, which has almost been equalled by the actual death toll.. A subsequent estimate from the University of Washington was for 134,000 deaths from Wuhan virus by Aug., and now the latest estimate is 137,000 deaths. The last two estimates took less social distancing into consideration in their estimates because the States are starting to open their economies. So you may not be taking lockdown mitigation into consideration and dismiss it, but the modelers are not.
I’m not convinced. Our death rate in Western Australia is tiny. Almost all our cases came from cruise ships and we locked down and closed the borders to prevent community transmission. Granted we are lucky we are so isolated, but still, we could easily have let it get a grip. We were on an exponential curve (from incoming travellers, and recording our first community transmissions when we started enforcing strict self-isolation for incoming travellers. We rapidly closed the borders and locked down and from that moment on the exponential growth ceased. Trouble is we can’t live in a bubble for ever – much as I’d like to, we have everything we need here.
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/359bca83a1264e3fb8d3b6f0a028d768
You’d think they/world would realize that the CO2 theory is wrong by now but they have so much personal worth invested that they can’t admit the truth.
The reason there’s been no action is that everyone knows there’s no problem.
Gee, it sounds like you should be able to remember global cooling from the early 80’s. it too was a scam by people using “science “, I mean the word, not actual real science- and not much has changed. Now we have Bill Nye the actor guy and Greta teenage dropout with 0.00 qualifications along with the obvious scammers like Al Gore.
It is truly amazing that nothing has changed- but what is most amazing is that the scammers re still trying to scam us into believing in CO2 induced global warming and they keep on lying…
~200 years of geothermal denial by climate “scientists”.
http://phzoe.com/2020/04/29/the-irrelevance-of-geothermal-heat-flux/
‘Renewables’ do not work to power civilisation and over that 30 years there has been no deleterious climate change. The increased CO2 has benefited forestry and agriculture. The other element of society that has benefited is the noisy Elite who have sucked off the trillions of dollars wasted on ‘Renewables’.
Well, we did get Michael Mann, Al Gore, AOC and Greta Thunberg, among other notables, in the balance.
Was it worth the 30 year effort?
30 years ago the ECS was purported to be 1.5C to 4.5 C.
And after all this time (~ half of a 3-sore and 10 lifetime), and $,000,000,000s spent researching this “answer” to the question of AGW, what is the IPCC now reporting ECS to be?
(No points for answering – “pass”)
I think it was notrickszone who graphed the estimated ECS values from various studies done since the Charney report and found that the average value was approaching zero. Some outliers even came up with a negative value.
“I think it was notrickszone who graphed the estimated ECS values from various studies done since the Charney report and found that the average value was approaching zero. Some outliers even came up with a negative value.”
Yes, people should keep this in mind when they hear some scientist claim they know how much warmth CO2 adds to the atmosphere. Nobody knows. CO2 may actually cool the atmosphere, not warm it. Nobody knows.
We shouldn’t spend Trillions of dollars based on this much uncertainty. We shouldn’t take any actions based on this much uncertainty.
Science by Assertion is not equivalent to certainty.
Regardless of warming or cooling, isn’t an awful lot of work being demanded of these 1 out of 2500 air molecules?
The warming potential of CO2 is largely saturated above 350ppm/v, so adding more does zip!
“Science” used to be a neutral word. Now it’s the key word in various political slogans, most often used as a means of denying reasonable dissent. When an environmentalists says, “I believe the science,” he means, people who disagree with him are ignorant and dishonest, and should not be heard in public.
Read the Climategate emails, and know that the lads who wrote them have no more regard for the scientific method or peer-reviewed expressions of it than Thomas Jefferson had for the proposition that all men are created equal. Even the review committees that exonerated them of wrongdoing were forced to critique them for suppression of data.