Category: Climate Change
Over recent weeks the plight of Manus Island refugees and the Prime Minister’s offer to take 150 has dominated the news. The media’s obsession with the refugee issue is reminiscent of their incessant promotion of Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party in the run up to the election.
In November every year, most of our mainstream media subject us all to saturation coverage of the evils of “climate change” (by which they mean dangerous anthropogenic global warming). This is no coincidence. At this time of year, the UNFCCC holds its annual “Conference of the Parties”, which is attended by large delegations from every government in the world, along with tens of thousands of acolytes.
Last week we looked at the economic policies of the Parliamentary parties. This week we dig deeper into the party manifestos. While Labour has changed its cheer leader, its policies and loyalties remain the same.
Standing up to bullies takes courage. That's true, be it in a school playground, workplace, or a home. Politics is no different. It takes courage to stand up to ideological bullies, especially those with roots in extremist doctrines that are well organised and have strong links to supportive media.
The Trump administration has bit the bullet, and to the outraged dismay of the political left has withdrawn from the Paris accords. That agreement, which went into effect on November 4, 2016, just days before Donald Trump’s election is a complex affair in which the United States made the key “voluntary” commitment to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions in the next decade by about a quarter of their 2005 rate, with further reductions to come thereafter.
Trying to stop humans producing carbon dioxide is very big business. Trillions of dollars a year are ploughed into projects linked to man-made global warming.
I read with great irony recently that scientists are “frantically copying U.S. Climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump”. As a climate scientist formerly responsible for NOAA’s climate archive, the most critical issue in archival of climate data is actually scientists who are unwilling to formally archive and document their data.
October was an important month for global warming advocates - New Zealand ratified the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Essentially the Government has committed us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 - even though an estimated one million more people will be living in New Zealand by then.
After covering global warming debates as a journalist on and off for almost 30 years, with initial credulity, then growing skepticism, I have come to the conclusion that the risk of dangerous global warming, now and in the future, has been greatly exaggerated.
Public policy has a major impact on our lives; that goes without saying. If the assumptions upon which policy is based are sound, there is a good chance that the resulting laws and regulations will have a positive influence on the country. But when the assumptions are driven by ideology instead of reason, the outcomes can be detrimental.
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