Science vs Lies – We have been Conned
By Keith Antonysen
Mr Dutton has stated that Australia should not help poor Nations which have done little to increase global warming, while Prime Minister Albanese has left the question open at present. Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of greenhouse gases; hence Australia is partially responsible for the plight of millions of people overseas. The LNP view of having “No Duty of Care” for young people falls into a similar belief as not caring for people when the emissions exported by Australian fossil fuels corporations is deadly for people especially in poorer countries, and to a lesser extent for Australians. The effect of greenhouse gases knows no borders.
In 2019 New York Times journalist David Wallace-Wells wrote a very long article titled “The Uninhabitable Earth” which was published twice in the New York Times magazine. When first published the article gained much criticism, the second presentation provided annotations providing references which supported his views.
A seemingly very frustrated Professor Ian Lowe speaking on Radio National’s Big Ideas drew attention to how science is hardly taken notice of by politicians, it is the economy that rates far higher. Major comment made by Professor Lowe are that we are dependent on the health of the environment and on biodiversity. The loss of one species has an impact on the food chain providing problems for other species. How much damage can Nations sustain from flooding, drought and wildfire before they can no longer cope, Bangladesh is said to be close to the edge.
Already in 1912, the problems of coal were discussed in a short article in a New Zealand paper, the article had been archived.
The Mining Congress Journal in 1966 also warned about the influence greenhouse gases emanating from coal have negative impacts on climate.
Since the 1960s more studies were displaying the damage greenhouse gases have on climate.
The concerns about greenhouse gases became more public when James Hansen testified to Congress in 1988 about greenhouse gases changing climate.
In his opening remarks Professor Hansen stated “I would like to draw three main conclusions. Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause-and-effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to effect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves.”
After Professor Hansen’s comments, greed was displayed by fossil fuel corporations seeking to scotch science through misinformation, lies and misrepresenting science studies through using third parties such as Heartlands. The fossil fuel corporations sadly have been very successful along with their political mates in pushing science to the sidelines. We are all now paying the price.
The question is, are governments responsible for providing financial support poorer nations for the problems created by climate change; or, is it a combination of rich countries and fossil fuel corporations? The products of fossil fuel corporations do all the damage!!
Keith Antonysen has been researching climate change for decades. Apart from reading about climate science, Keith also views pseudo-science presented by contrarians. It seems that the material referenced by contrarians is continually recycled. Immense problems will be created unless real efforts are made to thwart the worst climate can throw at us. Nature bats last.
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8 comments
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Keitha Granville -
Clakka -
New England Cocky -
Andrew Smith -
B Sullivan -
Andrew Smith -
Canguro -
Keith
Return to home pageThe Labor party have a bit to do getting us onboard with all the remedies for Climate Change, guess they can’t do it all at once.
Dutton’s comments are unsurprising given his tasteless remark on the open boom mike years ago.
It’s all too little too late mostly, the planet is doomed.
Secure in their cosy-up with msm and the magnates, anything but the epistemology of bling, celebrity, faux gravitas and self-interest is of no concern to politicians. The wonders of modern science will only be dragged out in debate as trompe-l’oeil to demonstrate the genius of parliamentary rocket-scientists in their quest for universal god-headedness.
The well spoiled path of economics held in the dark sacred vaults of prestidigitation can only be wrangled by the arcane devices of politicians and bankers who have, so they tell us, an inviolable mandate to win … QED
PS: and of course, not to forget diplomacy at any cost regardless of who pays.
OK foreign owned multinational corporations producing & selling fossil fuels are principally responsible for the destruction of the natural environment the loss of species and climatic changes that are proving to be devastating.
So, what are Mr & Ms Australian voter doing about it?
Which groups if any are pressuring the feral Albanese LABOR government to introduce purchase subsidies for eVehicles?
Why these could even be financed by re-directing the too many, too generous subsidies to the fossil fuel industries for searching for new oil &/or gas fields.
When did the Albanese LABOR government direct that the Commonwealth car fleet should be replaced by eVehicles as the car fleet is rolled over?
Why has the feral government allowed the Pilliga Scrub Narrabri NSW CSG fields to be developed for the benefit of Beetrooter & his Nazional$ mates?
As this SANTOS project threatens the purity & agricultural use of groundwater from the Great Artesian Basin, how will Mr & Ms Taxpayer afford to pay the necessary compensation agriculture al entities after SANTOS ”miraculously discover” that the their wells have penetrated through the sandstone capping allowing CSG contamination that renders the groundwater useless for anything except removing CSG from wells?
LIttle Johnnie Howard with Crooks & Co have sold out Australian interest in just about everything. What a great job the LIARBRALS made of creating financial deficits of about $1 BILLION for Albanese LABOR to rectify.
Something often not revealed regarding Prof. Ian Lowe, in addition to presenting on that ABC RN Background Briefing ‘Big Ideas — Why environmentalists and conservationists can be a problem for the environment’ is his role as a patron for SPA Sustainable Population Australia.
Not only does SPA link environmental degradation to immigrants and population growth, without credible research evidence, but they admitted to hosting decades ago the deceased white nationalist John ‘passive eugenics’ Tanton who was with the fossil fueled & auto supported ZPG Zero Population Growth, admirer of the white Oz policy, muse of Bannon et al., alt right, GOP and ‘the great replacement’.
SPA does the same as too many actors, especially in industry, blaming humanity while they avert their gaze and PR influence from fossil fuels, carbon emissions, tactics to delay transition, need for robust regulatory constraints and compliance, in favour of blaming non Australians for environmental ‘hygiene’ issues; maintaining the status quo.
Andrew Smith
Of course environmental degradation is linked to human population growth. If you personally don’t think scientific evidence, ie knowledge, is believable it makes no difference to the undeniable fact. As if what you think is credible or not matters at all to reality.
A century ago there were only about a billion people living on the planet and it had taken ten thousand years of advances in agriculture and medical science to achieve that number. Now there are eight billion people demanding ever more food, water, energy, shelter and waste disposal at the expense of every other living thing on earth. It is unsustainable. The planet’s resources are limited. There are so many humans extracting these resources now at ever increasing rates that the earth cannot replenish these resources fast enough to meet the demand. Each year humans use up more resources than the earth can regenerate in a year. Environmental degradation is inevitable with unsustainable population growth. Now we live in the Anthropocene Age. Man has claimed dominion over all other life on earth and the rate of the mass extinction that has begun is directly linked to over-populated human activity.
B.Sullivan: ‘scientific evidence, i.e. knowledge’ is false equivalence, the former if credible follows the science research process vs. latter which is about beliefs, perceptions etc. can be learnt from anywhere.
‘Knowledge’ under Bloom’s Taxonomy on which education is based, is a base skill, followed by understanding, application, analysis, evaluation and synthesis (& creativity).
There are various tests applied to academic sources, not just peer review*, but the ‘CRAAP’ test of currency, relevance, authority, accuracy & purpose, which can then be used to base a position or argument, if the result of broad and deep research presented as a synthesis of credible sources.
*Peer reviews can be gamed (for a time) to gain credibility, especially by climate science deniers supported by fossil fuels interests, for further transmission via media, especially tabloid.
I expect this post will attract a zero response, focused as we are on the day to day local shenanigans of national and international miscreants, but it’s worth reminding ourselves that we live within a global ecology that’s facing significant and severe threat and that the major drivers of this threat are effectively doing nothing to rein in the pace of the unfolding disaster, nor are the institutions with the regulatory capacity to place controls upon the drivers, viz., the fossil fuel producers primarily, and the allied industries who profit by virtue of the products produced by the energy companies.
To put it crudely, plainly, vulgarly, unless appropriate actions are taken, now, not tomorrow, next week, year, decade, we are fucked, as a species, as a member of a complex composite collectively termed the global ecosystem.
This article, linked, by George Monbiot in the Guardian, is as clear a beacon as anything else beeping its warning signals:
Our leaders had a final chance to halt climate breakdown. They failed each and every one of us.
Canguro
To reduce the outcome of COP27 to the basic underlying theme … the killers have won in the short term.
The killers being fossil fuel interests and the lackeys supporting them. Fossil fuel companies have known for decades about how fossil fuels are dangerous commodities. The dangers of fossil fuels in more recent times hare become more widely recognised. The fossil fuel companies have paid third parties to undermine climate science, a very successful strategy. The problem is that climate science overtime has become far more sophisticated; but, the relics of pseudoscience and political ideology remain negative influences.
The aspirational target of 1.5C has been known to have little probability of happening, though to hold global temperature to as close to 1.5C as possible is critically important. COP27 provides little hope that real action will take place.