Essay by Eric Worrall
Ever since former conservative Aussie PM Tony Abbott announced “I am a climate skeptic” at CPAC 2022, there has been indications climate belief might not be rock solid amongst other politicians.
‘Clumsy joke’: NSW Liberal candidate for Swansea filmed saying ‘I don’t believe in climate change’
Exclusive: Labor calls for Coalition to ‘guarantee’ candidates support climate action after Megan Anderson’s remark
Tamsin Rose
Tue 14 Mar 2023 01.00 AEDT
Last modified on Tue 14 Mar 2023 11.15 AEDTThe New South Wales Liberal party’s candidate for Swansea, Megan Anderson, has downplayed a comment she made denying climate change last week, calling it a “clumsy joke”.
With the state election less that two weeks away, Guardian Australia has seen footage from a community event about the Hunter offshore windfarms in which Anderson can be heard remarking to a person beside her, “I don’t believe in climate change”.
When contacted by Guardian Australia about the comment, she said it was not a declaration of her beliefs.
“I made a clumsy joke in response to the previous speaker, but that was not a declaration of my beliefs,” Anderson said.
“I understand that our climate is changing and the NSW government has great policies that preserve our environment for future generations, which I support.”
The comments come after it was revealed Nationals candidate for Port Macquarie, local mayor Peta Pinson, told a meeting her scepticism about climate science had “solidified” after reading a paper. She is running in one of just two seats being contested by both a Liberal and National candidate.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/14/clumsy-joke-nsw-liberal-candidate-swansea-filmed-saying-dont-believe-climate-change
Good on Peta Pinson for being straightforward about your beliefs.
We like Peta Pinson at WUWT. Peta has been consistently climate skeptic, she featured in 2022, after she revoked the Port Macquarie Climate Emergency, declaring it was a “misuse of council resources”. Port Macquarie is one of my favourite places to stop when driving the NSW coast road, well run, lots of shops, clean streets. So please consider voting for Peta, if you live in Port Macquarie.
As for you Megan Anderson, maybe it’s time you stop joking. I mean, what have you got to lose? You are running for a seat which conventional wisdom declares is unwinnable. Your only chance of challenging this pessimism is to impress your voters with your honesty and willingness to stand on principle, to be their candidate rather than just another faceless cog in the party machine.
Australia needs a Jan6 Committee staffed with GW ideologues
Anyone expressing even the slightest reservations about climate change, etc, will be called before the Committee, will be automatically found guilty, will lose his freedom for a few years without a trial, then his livelihood, and blacklisted, unemployable.
That’s what greens seem to want.
If I understand you right it would have been better to finish with /sarc
😀
It’s not sarc. It’s fact
The CCCP was good at canceling people back in the ’30s.
Climate scepticism = not knowing sh#t
Either you know, or not. We have all the knowledge on why CO2 is not significantly changing the climate, and what other (anthropogenic) agents are in play. As long as the “critical side” gets it wrong, refuses to understand and brings up nonsense arguments, society will go down the drain without need. Tragic!
https://greenhousedefect.com/
Yep, climate disaster all around us – not.
Yep, Goldilocks all over again, too hot, too cold, just right.
Eric, Consider a fence dividing skeptic and alarmist and tell me which side you sit on. Your post seemed to me to have so many ambiguities that I can not discern your viewpoint. Please restate your point for the benefit of the semantically challenged like me
Being sceptical as a mindset is good, being sceptical as a position is pointless. Either you know something, or you have nothing to tell.
If we imagine this to be a trial with CO2 as a defendant, the question is what strategy the lawyer is going to choose. If he has nothing up his sleeve, then casting “reasonable doubt” might be the only way forward. Regrettably this is not going to work here.
In reality however there is overwhelming evidence totally exonerating CO2, just like a DNA test. But the lawyer does not take it on, because he does not know what DNA is. And that is the state the “critical side” is in. It is appalling.
Obviously you are in the not knowing sh#t club
society will go down the drain without need. Tragic!
fear mongering apocalyptic thinking.
scepticism is a religion
”scepticism is a religion”
LOL, that one takes the cake. How many false doom and gloom predictions have sceptics made Mosh?????
past month on WUWT dozens
If only they’d come out as “climate realists” they might be surprised by the publics positive reaction.
We can mitigate where necessary, we don’t need to collapse society.
You can be a skeptic and still say you believe in Global Warming. It’s the word “catastrophic” that needs to be the target of skeptics. And the data is heavily in the skeptics favor.
I think most people agree CO2 is a greenhouse gas. What happens next is the big question. As Willis has pointed out, the amount of energy trapped by CO2 is so small compared to the varying impact of water vapour and the water cycle, its likely any excess energy trapped by CO2 is being ejected by an unnoticeably small uptick in storm activity.
And there lies the fundamental root of the problem.
Science is not determined by consensus.
The Role of Dust Opacity in the Atmosphere of Mars
It’s a scientific fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Unfortunately there are a small number of people who can’t accept that.
CO2 might be a “greenhouse gas” however it’s only used in greenhouses to increase plant production no the planet
Thats it Eric, climate change is unnoticeable, it’s only the models that predict significant changes, and they have already been debunked due to their use of too high ECS values, that do not match recent observations and calculations from atmospheric physics in the range >0.5-2C. So CAGW is just green fantasy.
“I think most people agree CO2 is a greenhouse gas.”
Eric, I agree that CO2 does have some warming effect, although probably quite small. Much of the warming is almost certainly due to the planet recovering from the Little Ice Age.
CO2 is definitely not a greenhouse gas. That’s because greenhouses don’t work by trapping radiation – they work by trapping warm air. It’s very appropriate that the name – AGW – is based on wrong science.
Of course, there is a connection between greenhouses and CO2. Farmers routinely feed in extra CO2 because it enhances plant growth.
Chris
This is very much true.
“Catastrophic” means we must act. We MUST act
It doesn’t say how we must act but there’s no time to think about that now. Just do something!!!
Which is very, very silly.
And yet, every use of the Precautionary Principle assumes “catastrophe” and demands panic into action.
We should also target the Precautionary Principle (the child of “catastrophic”).
Greta says “I want you to panic!”. Not a convincing argument.
Go tell it on the mountain , under the rising ( or falling ) seas and every where. Open your eyes . Look and See. You were born smart . Stay that way.
SMS
How many times does this need to be said?
Science is NOT a belief system.
Jordan Peterson DISMANTLES The Climate Agenda (Again)
obedience to the party machine is the price of a party ticket. It has always been that way and always will be. if the party does not have the obedience of its acolytes then it has nothing with which to buy votes. If the voters want honesty and free thought then they must vote for only independents who think like they do. Its really simple.
Yes and no, nobody has kicked Abbott out for saying he is a climate skeptic, there are even some senior members of the party who want him back, and quietly admitted it to me at CPAC. But yes, for a new candidate its quite a risk.
If personal integrity is a risk within a system then the system is rotten and should be thrown out like garbage.
On the other hand if a candidate is radically opposed to party positions people who voted along party lines might feel deceived, when they see how their new MP behaves in parliament.
Problem kindof goes away if candidates join a party which aligns with their personal beliefs, or run as an independent.
Now as a member of the UK labour party what do I say to my -head in the sand- moronic local committee to make them open their eyes and listen to a modicum of common sense when the party is committed to lemming-like cliff jumping. Lemmings were not as daft as Tories and Labourites, and never actually did jump off cliffs – unlike walruses, who were pushed by Attenburgers, camera drones and polar bears.
Try to find the basis of your fellow party members’ belief in CAGW. I listened to a speech once by George Galloway, in which he appeared to suggest he was worried about climate change, not because he had a view on the science, but because it fit into his view “if corporations have f*cked up the economy, makes sense they f*cked up the planet as well”.
I think the lie that renewables = cheap energy bills is well on the way to dying, maybe as awareness grows that green corporations have f*cked up the energy supply, sympathies for the renewable push might falter.
“local mayor Peta Pinson, told a meeting her scepticism about climate science had “solidified” after reading a paper”
What was that “paper”?
“Peta Pinson, has told a public meeting that her scepticism towards climate science has “solidified” since seeing a document saying that NASA had admitted that global warming was caused by changes in the Earth’s orbit.”
Says the SMH:
“During a candidate forum late last month, Pinson read from the document that she says was sent to her by a resident.
She said it showed that the US space agency, one of the world’s leading climate research institutions, now conceded that planetary warming “was not caused by SUVs, fossil fuels and plastic straws”.
The document appears to be based on a widely debunked blog post first published in 2019.”
So the “paper” was a junk blog post that circulated widely but of course was false. No such announcement was ever made.
Yawn.
Yeah, that’s how the search for knowledge goes around here
My scepticism was solidified when NASA admitted it was all wrong
But that is not true. NASA never said that.
Yawn
You are the problem.
So what? Peta is too busy being mayor to get every detail right. Her BS meter is spot on, at least when it comes to deciding whether climate action is a priority.
But she quotes just one source of information, given to her by a constituent, who got it off the internet. If the claim that NASA announced that they had got it all wrong doesn’t excite her BS meter, she doesn’t have one.
“… The document appears to be based on a widely debunked blog post first published in 2019. …”
Have you got a copy of the debunked blog post?
Do you know what other evidence she considered?
Are you relying on SMH getting their analysis right? Seriously?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, you’ve got nothing.
The blog post seems to be this one
There is no analysis. She says what caused here to “solidify” her doubt, and the claim she used, whatever its origin, is blatantly fake. You don’t need more than that.
Try asking her to produce that NASA statement.
Philip is not yawning about science, he’s yawning about you, once again pushing your own brand of junk science.
How boring.
The who spends his life pushing junk science, is complaining about junk science.
From your ‘fact check’,
”The spokesperson said that collectively, the past eight years have been the warmest since modern records began in 1880.”
Something never explained by alarmists is why ”modern records began in 1880” when in fact that time chosen was at the end of the little ice age and the globe has been warming ever since. Does that excite your BS meter Nick?
Modern records began when people started to systematically keep temperature records. We (now) didn’t choose that time.
How convenient. But something that has never peen portrayed to the public as to why temperatures have been rising from that time, has it, Nick.
It isn’t a reason, only a descriptor. It was cold then, it is warm now, so we call that a little ice age. There is no law of nature that says that if it is cold, it has to get warmer.
I think, a big concern is, that someone feels the need to be defensive for fear of reprisals, their comment might bring. Megan Anderson obviously felt a bit intimidated when questioned, and she back tracked as quick as she could, just incase someone accused her of being a D*nier. Oh the shame and humiliation of it. She might be banished to obscurity.
Maybe some cracks are appearing. Time to pull the finger out of the dyke and let the seas of reason flood in.
What Australia needs is some politicians with the courage to stand up and back their convictions and not pass such comments as a half arsed joke. BTW America, what we call “Liberal” is not what you call “Liberal”. Ours are mostly right of centre. Some more so, some less so, although some of them could pass for left wingers.
I bet a lot of politicans are climate skeptics but they are too cowardly to say so- not willing to challenge the zeitgeist.