Here's to a Better Year! Let's Shelve the ETS

by Joe Fone    5 February 2011

The other day I received an email from National list MP Nicky Wagner 'toasting' to a better year. A splendid idea I thought. So I wrote back saying that 2011 could indeed be an improvement on 2010 quite easily. All that needs to happen is that our Climate Change Minister Nick Smith admits there is no justification for continuing with the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and sets about to dispose of it. Or that he puts the ETS on hold until it can be proved beyond all reasonable doubt that global warming is still happening and that it is a "problem" of catastrophic proportions. It should be shelved until it can be proved that climate change is unnatural and caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). This is a tall order considering the last few record cold winters in Europe and the United States and the record sea ice extent in the Antarctic.

Until this can be demonstrated, the ETS is necessarily based on questionable ad hoc science. The Minister must surely know this if he has been keeping up with developments. Every week there is more evidence against manmade global warming, more skepticism in the public domain; more scientists expressing their outrage at what they see as the greatest pseudoscientific fraud in history. Yet despite this trend it has become a habit for climate alarmists to interpret every extreme weather event, every flood and drought, every heat wave and snowstorm as 'evidence' of manmade global warming. The alarmists have hijacked both ends of the argument so that no matter what happens, it somehow proves their case.

Ten years ago, Dr. David Viner of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit warned that within a few years, winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event" and that "children just aren't going to know what snow is". In 2009 Alex Hill of the UK Met Office worried about vanishing snow in the years ahead and thought it "very unlikely" that there will be a ski industry in Scotland in 50 years' time. Such dire predictions of a world without snow are not uncommon. Yet Europe and the United States are buried in it to record depths every winter.

After four severe winters in a row in Europe and the US, it is time to remind the politicians and the media of these failed predictions by global warming alarmists. As the evidence turns against them, they become more desperate and extreme. Every hurricane and bush fire is now blamed on global warming while all conflicting data is tortured until it recants. Science writer Nigel Calder described this process in an interview for Britain's Channel 4, "The reporting has to get more and more hysterical" he argues "because there are still, fortunately, a few hardened news editors around who will say, 'You know, this is what you were saying five years ago'. 'Ah, but now it's much, much worse'. They have to keep on getting shriller and shriller and shriller" he says.

But this arrogance is nothing new. In the 19th century, Thomas Huxley lamented that the great tragedy in science is "the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact". Science is constantly evolving, to the chagrin of those with vested interests in entrenched ideas. And this is no different. The infamous "hockey stick" graph, enthusiastically employed by Al Gore and the IPCC that purports to show global temperatures going through the roof, has been utterly discredited as a shonky piece of science. The smoke and mirrors tricks that gave rise to it were uncovered by Canadian statisticians Stephen J. McIntyre and Professor Ross McKitrick. Yet the 'hockey stick' graph continues to be used as a banner by climate alarmists, even by our own Climate Change Minister, that mankind has been heating the planet since the Industrial Revolution and that we are heading for a catastrophic tipping point. Yet the extent of the alleged "catastrophe" is a few tenths of a degree. The temperature gradient between night and day is often ten times larger or more, yet no one bats an eyelid.

So this raises a number of questions. Is the Climate Change Minister completely unaware of the controversial nature of the 'hockey stick' and the controversies raging within the climate science community? Or is it that he knows but just doesn't care? Is the Government oblivious to the scandals that have undermined the claim that mankind is heating the planet catastrophically through CO2 emissions? Are politicians on both sides of the House aware of the fractious science, the deliberate manipulation of data, the destruction and hiding of data so that it cannot be scrutinized? If they are aware, why does it appear that the National Government doesn't care and chooses to ignore it as though the issues are too trivial to be concerned about? They are far from trivial.

The science behind anthropogenic global warming is obviously broken. The ETS - which was established on the strength of it - is a large imposition on the economy and individual wealth. So these scandals in the climate science community must render it entirely spurious.

Ironically, everyone agrees that the ETS will have zero impact on climate, so why are we paying it? It is all too easy to suspect a hidden agenda. Does the Government see it as a golden opportunity to impose a tax in the guise of "saving the planet"? How can anyone argue with such a laudable cause? If you question the ETS and its supposed purpose then apparently you're against "saving the planet". But it hardly needs saving from such a contentiously weak hypothesis as anthropogenic global warming, poisoned as it is with so many vested interests.

So yes, Nicky Wagner is right. 2011 could indeed be better than 2010. All the National Government needs to do is shelve the ETS and start paying attention to what's going on. So let me finish with a final question for the National Government: What proportion of voters do they think still believe manmade global warming is happening or is a problem worth fixing? My personal experience is that most people are skeptical or cynical of the motives. I hardly ever meet anyone who still believes it - unless they have some personal reason to, like their job depends on it. And therein lies the rub: the global warming movement has the unmistakable stench of money and politics.

ENDS 

Joe Fone is a member of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.