This is what a Luxon-led Government means by being "pro-business"

This Luxon-led Government is pro-business.

That is to say, it's pro particular businesses. Particularly one that begins with an 'F' and ends in 'letcher.' Have a city to rebuild, or a convention centre to build (and burn down), and that particular business will assuredly get the nod -- along with a large cheque paid for by you and I.

Ronald Reagan famously observed the principle of pro-business governments like this one: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidise it.” All three are in operation in the decision to shell out $60 million of your money (along with a new tariff) to subsidise Fletcher's to keep open a cement business. 

Why do Fletcher's need the subsidy? Because National's Emissions Tax Scam was going to stop the business moving. And a business that doesn't move, along with any associated businesses needing Fletcher's cement, don't pay any tax.

Does the Emissions Tax Scam make any sense? Nope, not unless you think shackling producers makes sense -- shackling and then subsidising to avoid the scam's implications. To quote a friend back in 2009, the scheme is "criminally absurd," and a decent government would by now already scrapped it (in favour, perhaps, of a subtle and sensible carbon tax).

“An ETS is the best tool to reduce emissions," says the Taxpayers 'Union' in response to the subsidy's announcement, before going on to pontificate that "it should not sacrifice industry at the altar of net zero, only for taxpayers to fund the rescue. ... It is a false economy," they say, "to make businesses unviable through carbon charges, then bail out those with the best lobbying teams in Wellington. The Government must review its industrial allocation settings [sic] across all trade-exposed sectors.”

In two sentences this illustrates everything wrong with this government, with the Taxpayers 'Union,' and with the so-called policy 'settings' about which they argue.

Yes, it's false economy. But it's worse than that. The whole Emissions Tax Scam is a gun pointed straight at producers' feet. To impose the tax, and then subsidise its payment, makes no sense on any level. It's simply insane. The argument isn't about tinkering with 'policy settings,' it should be about removing the insanity, and danger of the slippery slope back to the Muldoonist 'picking losers' policies we once escaped with so much pain. 

In reality, as RD points out below, it's a strong example of Luxon and Willis’ net-zero scheme being unworkable (not to mention immoral), then socialising the cost of the failure by picking favourites at taxpayers' expense.

Expect to see more of it in the very near future as its unworkability (and immorality) become more obvious even to those who espouse it.

"...the Reserve Bank has forgotten what its core business is."

"[Price] inflation hit 2.2% in the most recent quarter. Not the annual rate - the rate for the quarter.
Arguably, Reserve Banks shouldn't be making statements about inflation outside of the scheduled monetary policy schedule.
    "But it seemed a bit odd that the Bank put out a release on establishing the Māori Bankers Rōpū to coincide with the release of the inflation statistics. 

    "They came out within minutes of each other, as though the Bank were saying 'Yes, the CPI numbers are out today, but here's what we're really interested in.'

    "Today the Bank released its Climate Change report.
    "New Zealand has an Emissions Trading Scheme that caps net emissions.
    "The ETS is nowhere mentioned in the report.
    "The Executive Summary tells us that 'Climate Change is part of our core business.'

    "It simultaneously tells us that the Reserve Bank has forgotten what its core business is."

          ~ Eric Crampton, on 'Core business for a central bank'

The Greens Cutting Taxes?

Let’s start with the good news.

The good news about the Greens’ Carbon Tax Plan is what it takes away.  We would see the end of Nick Smith’s Appalling Emissions Trading Scam, income taxes removed on the first $200 of income, and (maybe) 1% removed from company tax.

Fair play to the Greens for that.

Now for the bad news.

Bad weather for warmists

Ahem, I have some news for you.

Global warming stopped 16 years ago.

SOURCE: Daily Mail

See, if we had my Very Special Carbon Tax, you’d all be getting a tax refund now.

Instead, we’re still hammered by Nick Smith’s Emissions Trading Scam.

Emissions scheme delays has some problems

The National-led Government has “indefinitely postponed” further implementation of its Emissions Trading Scam (ETS), saying “the economic environment means consumers and businesses simply can't afford it.”

"We're not prepared to sacrifice jobs in a weak international environment when other countries are moving very slowly," said John Key.
    As signalled in the Government's response to a review of the ETS completed last year, Climate Change Issues Minister Tim Groser announced farmers will not have to buy carbon credits to offset livestock and pasture emissions until at least 2015…

There are a number of problems with this.

First, the date of 2015 is interesting, isn’t it. It’s the year this government fantasises it will finally emerge into surplus. A feat even the Reserve Bank can’t bring itself to believe. No doubt the fantasy of economic growth in the next three years sufficient to allow the government to get back into surplus is linked to the notion of economic growth sufficient to allow agriculture to be included with little economic cost.

Which means it’s unlikely to ever happen at all.

Second, for some years New Zealand Trade Ministers have stumped the globe arguing against agricultural subsidies. But what is this but an agricultural subsidy—as, no doubt, someone sitting across the table in trade negotiations with Tim Groser will soon tell him.

Finally, every argument used in favour of delaying further implementation of this Scam can be used with greater accuracy to support abandoning the stupid scheme altogether. It simply adds costs and costs jobs without any meaningful impact on the climate whatsoever. If extending it further is wrong because in this economic environment “consumers and businesses simply can't afford it,” then having it at all is wrong for the very same reason.

Which it is.

No power? How about no Greens.

What’s the definition of humbug? I’m not sure exactly, but it’s something involving Russel Bloody Norman and his Green Party. Who are on Red Radio this morning arguing that the country needs security of electricity supply!

Excuse me, this is Russel Bloody Norman from the Green Party arguing for security of electricity supply!?

It just makes your jaw drop.

This is the Green Party who partied when the coal-fired Meremere Power Station was mothballed and protested when it wanted to re-open transforming waste to power. Who celebrated when Marsden A closed and Marsden B was disallowed from opening—and whose protesting helped to make the closing necessary and the opening impossible.  Who cheered when power stations closed in New Plymouth, Palmerston North and Te Awamutu.  Who help to throttle every proposed expansion of every existing power plant, and who helped to kill new generation from Project Hayes, Project Aqua, Mokihinui Hydro, Tongariro Hydro and hydro using the Whanganui River, Wairau River, Matiri River, Makititaki River or the Arnold River;  any further hydro on the Clutha River; any possible gas or tidal generation around the Kaipara; and who even as we speak are helping to delay new generation projects at Dobson, Castle Hill, Hurunui, Matiri, Mill Creek, Mokau, North Bank, Puketoi, Rotoma, Stockton, and Wairau.

They’ve protested every coal-fired power-station that has been opened—and every gas-fired and oil-fired power station proposed—and they’ve resisted every coal mine, gas field and oil field being explored, coming on stream or being exploited. They’ve argued against every wind project—and helped to spearhead resistance. They’ve helped to stop every new hydro scheme proposed –and every oil or gas-fired plant dreamed up. They helped to promote the Kyoto Protocol and the related Emissions Trading Scam, which serve to strangle coal, oil and gas-fired power stations, and the Resource Management Act, which helps to kill off hydro, wind and thermal power stations.

If we have no power, and we’re perilously close to that unhappy state, then it is they and their fellow travellers will have played the largest part in making that happen.

And now they have the cheek, they have the effrontery , to complain that selling state-owned power generators is going to threaten the security of electricity supply!

I’m staggered.

The only thing worse than the absolute bloody hypocrisy is the abject bloody acquiescence of the journalists who didn’t bother to ask Russel Norman how he looks in the bleeding mirror in the morning without vomiting.

Sayonara Kyoto [update 4: Sayonara climate activism]

After two weeks of conferencing and a couple of late nights over the weekend, delegates to the Durban Climate Conference emerged yesterday bearing … something.

Actually, nothing. Nothing at all. Well, nothing except political folk trying to spin failure as success. A “historic agreement” to meet again later.

Don’t take my word for that. Even the warmists agree. Take Greenpeace International’s head man Kumi Naidoo, for example, who says,

“Right now the global climate regime amounts to nothing more than a voluntary deal that’s put off for a decade.”

This conference was the last chance to resuscitate the Kyoto agreement before it expires next year. Which means Kyoto is now dead.

And in a decade, Kyoto will be dead, buried, and have a large granite headstone over it.

What a shame.

The biggest news to emerge from the conference was the inclusion of developing countries like China and India in agreements. But what did they agree to? They agreed to meet again later. To take part in more talks to produce another agreement to met again, where they will no doubt agree to meet and talk again.

Because neither the Chinese nor the Indian politicians want to voluntarily put the heads of their own producers in a noose. They will leave that sort of stupidity to the idiots of the west.

In other news, carbon prices hit a record low on the European exchange (the only place where you can buy this sort of hot air), trading at a record low of 6.77 euros.

And Nick Smith has been demoted from the front bench.

UPDATE 1: I endorse this comment from Julian, below:

And Canada has just invoked its legal right and pulled out of Kyoto. Are you listening Mr Key? Why are you hampering NZ business?

UPDATE 2: [Hat tip G-Man]

Don't pretend we know what causes climate change – John Robson,  T O R O N T O   S U N
Not only is the Kyoto Protocol technically flawed, the so-called science behind it is utter twaddle. Never mind complicated things like non-linear mathematics or, indeed, mathematics of any sort. The alarmists can't possibly know how to predict the future of Earth's climate because they can't explain its past…
    Ask the warmers with their spuriously precise predictions of a "greenhouse effect" involving floods, famines, hurricanes a'blowin and a bad moon rising: Can you plug in known year 1000 data and have your computer model produce a Medieval War Period ? If not, why should anyone believe you can plug in year 2000 data and predict 2215 or 2875?
    It's not just the Middle Ages.… 
    [Even so] should we encounter sudden temperature change, the best defence would be wealth: productive resources able to replace failed agricultural systems, energy to heat or cool ourselves to survive new climatic patterns, new irrigation or drainage systems. The worst defence would be to inflict massive harm on our economies in pursuit of environmental phantoms.
    It's not just that Kyoto couldn't stop man-made global warming if it were happening. It's that the whole process is driven by fake science.
    If they can't explain the past they can't predict the future. And if they won't discuss the past, you know they can't explain it.

Long Faces in Durban – Jack Kelly, R E A L   C L E A R   P O L I T I C S
Unseasonable cold greeted delegates to the U.N. conference on climate change in Durban,South Africa, Nov. 28. They were chilled more by the impending collapse of one of the most brazen scams in the history of the world.
    The warnings of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the world faced doom from anthropogenic (man-made) global warming were based on peer-reviewed scientific literature, the IPCC chairman claimed. But when Canadian writer Donna LaFramboise checked the 18,531 references in the 2007 report, she found 5,587 were newspaper and magazine articles written by non-experts, unpublished theses and pamphlets produced by environmental groups.
    IPCC reports supposedly were written by leading scientists. Ms. LaFromboise found many authors were graduate students selected more for political connections and "diversity" than for expertise. This explains, in part, why these reports contain so many factual errors.
    Fraud is a better explanation….
    In a review of Ms. Lafromboise's book … Judith Curry, chair of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, said she "feels duped" by the IPCC, which she supported until December 2009. That month someone posted on the Internet 1,000 emails in which prominent scientists discussed how to hide a decline in global temperatures, evade Freedom of Information Act requests and smear scientists who disagreed with them. The U.N. climate change conference a couple of weeks later then flopped, in part because of the flap those emails caused.
    Just in time for the Durban conference, 5,000 more emails have been leaked. In this batch, scientists admit the science supporting anthropogenic global warming is weak and depends on data manipulation.

UPDATE 3:

India Proudly Sinks the Durban Climate Change Talks – R E A S O N   M A G A Z I N E
America no longer is the only villain in the climate change melodrama. Canada this week formally withdrew from the Kyoto Treaty in order to avoid being slapped with $14 billion in fines next years for failing to deliver on its promised cuts. Canada’s environmental minister Peter Kent maintains that Canada would have to resort to extreme measures, like pulling all motor vehicles from its roads and shutting heat off to every building in the country in order to meet its targets. (He blamed the Liberal Party for agreeing to the treaty “without any regard as to how it would be fulfilled.”)
    This may or may not be hogwash, but with most of the major “polluters”—America, Canada, India and China—ducking and dodging, I think it is safe to start singing a requiem to a global climate change treaty. [Emphasis mine]

UPDATE 4:

The Great Global Warming Fizzle – Bret Stephens,  W A L L   S T R E E T   J O U R N A L
The climate religion fades in spasms of anger and twitches of boredom.
How do religions die? Generally they don't, which probably explains why there's so little literature on the subject…
     Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen.
    As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term "climate change" when thermometers don't oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other "deniers." And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.
    This week, the conclave of global warming's cardinals are meeting in Durban, South Africa, for their 17th conference in as many years…
    Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the climate apocalypse. Namely, the financial apocalypse.
    The U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and the EU have all but confirmed they won't be signing on to a new Kyoto. The Chinese and Indians won't make a move unless the West does…
    Cap and trade is a dead letter in the U.S. Even Europe is having second thoughts about carbon-reduction targets that are decimating the continent's heavy industries and cost an estimated $67 billion a year. "Green" technologies have all proved expensive, environmentally hazardous and wildly unpopular duds.
    All this has been enough to put the Durban political agenda on hold for the time being. But religions don't die, and often thrive, when put to the political sidelines. A religion, when not physically extinguished, only dies when it loses faith in itself.
    That's where the Climategate emails come in…
    The reason they mattered is that they introduced a note of caution into an enterprise whose motivating appeal resided in its increasingly frantic forecasts of catastrophe. Papers were withdrawn; source material re-examined. The Himalayan glaciers, it turned out, weren't going to melt in 30 years. Nobody can say for sure how high the seas are likely to rise—if much at all. Greenland isn't turning green. Florida isn't going anywhere…
    Any belief system, particularly ones as young as global warming, cannot easily survive more than a few ounces of self-doubt.

UPDATE 4: 

Durban Climate Change Outcome Rubbished – Dr Richard McGrath, L I B E R T A R I A N Z
Libertarianz leader Richard McGrath today labelled freshly-demoted cabinet ministers Nick Smith and Tim Groser as "useful idiots in the farce that was recently played out in Durban, South Africa."
    "As is the norm for these Climate Change junkets, there was plenty of hot air, and - thankfully this time - little in the way of commitment to further crippling industry and productivity.”
    "The Libertarianz Party believes individual New Zealanders should be left free to respond to any perceived human influence on global temperature in their own way. They don't need failed politicians such as Smith and Groser to tell them what to do, to punish their attempts to better their lives, and to regurgitate the junk science of charlatans such as Jim Salinger and Phil Jones…
   "The Libertarianz Party calls for an end to the idiocy of the ETS, which unfairly and senselessly penalises New Zealand farmers and industry for no gain."

Is any other country shooting themselves in the foot like we are? [updated]

Eric Crampton asks, for the third time in three years, “is any country other than New Zealand both facing a binding Kyoto cap, by which I mean one that can only be met by costly efforts, and planning on meeting its obligations by buying international credits?”

Answer: no.  It appears* we are the only country facing this kind of self-inflicted wound, and given our reliance on exports and our small size and distance from markets, the one that can least afford it.

So no wonder this Government plans to continue with it.

* * * *

* Eric: “It's possible that some other country is doing it; I just can't find any evidence that anybody is and can find evidence that some rather prominent ones aren't.”

Emissions Trading Scams

Australia’s PM Julia Gillard has just passed a carbon tax tax on its producers after promising pre-election she wouldn’t. New Zealand’s PM John Key introduced an Emissions Trading Scam after promising pre-election he wouldn’t do so until everybody else did. And they haven’t.

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” That’s all the thinking that’s really going on here: i.e., never let the chance of a new revenue stream go to waste.

What would 'Party X' do about the environment? - PART 5: A very special carbon tax

IMAGINE A ‘PARTY X’ that was actually committed to opposing statism ,and to advocating for free enterprise. Imagine such a party had a cabinet committing to rolling back the state, and an environment minister brimming over with ideas to do that.
    Here, in several parts, are the sort of environmental policies such a party (and such a minister) could advocate. Seven simple policies using present-day political realities to roll back the state without introducing any new coercion along the way.

Today, Today, what I like to ironically my 'Carbon Tax Plan':  A Carbon Tax—but not as you know it!

We've all heard the litany: We’re all gonna die. Runaway global warming is gonna get us.  Man-made global warming is killing the planet. We "need" a carbon tax, urgently …  Agree or disagree, like it or not, but those sentiments and those statements are political reality, both here and across the Tasman.

So I’m proposing something to bring honesty to warmist science and warmist politics. Yes campers, it is a carbon tax. But look closely, because it’s a very special carbon tax.

First off, it’s a carbon tax that is a substitute for other taxes (yes, a condition of Party X’s support for any new tax would would be the removal of another tax.)

And second of all, it’s a carbon tax that’s reality based, i.e., it’s a tax whose rate is linked to actual global temperatures instead of to the sound of hot air.

What I’m actually suggesting is not new. It was first put forward by Canadian Ross McKitrick, who was the co-debunker with Steve McIntyre of the IPCC’s infamous ‘Hockey Stick.  What he put forward was a carbon tax linked to actual global temperatures – specifically, to the temperature of the tropical troposphere, which is precisely where the IPCC's science says the primary CO2 "fingerprint" is to be found.

It is, if you like, a way to call warmists’ bluff. But it is a new tax, of sorts, albeit a tax with a number of very attractive advantages for everyone on both sides of the debate.

Because if you really believe that temperatures are going to rise precipitately, then how could you reasonably oppose such a tax -- from the warmist point of view, this is a one-way bet with cross-party support! And if you don’t believe, it’s the same.

So if warmists were to oppose the tax, it would call into question everything they say they hold to be true—and vice versa.

But there’s more:

• The Special Carbon Tax offers a real fiscal bonus. If the globe warms we pony up, true, (but remember this is offset by the removal of another tax). But if the globe cools as many solar researchers expect?Then if the globe cools, we all get a real refund. “If models are right, then the tax would go up a lot,” [points out economistGeoffrey Plauche], “but on the other hand, if the tropical troposphere temperatures continue to decline as they have since 2002, then the tax would go negative and turn into a subsidy on carbon emissions. Of course, the alarmists are convinced this won't happen so it shouldn't be an obstacle to them endorsing the tax...” Like I say, a Party X could use this to call warmists’ bluff.
• But that’s not all. With carbon taxes linked to global temperature, people would begin to really focus on the actual means by which global temperatures are measured – how the measurements are produced, what the actual surface temperatures are, and how closely (if at all) they correspond with predicted temperatures. They might notice too that the methods by which the surface temperatures are presently produced are seriously shonky but considered “good enough for government work.” And they might even notice that there has been no real warming since 1998.
• There will be serious attention paid to this ongoing temperature figure, so much so that we might even see warmists forced to admit there has been no real warming since 1998. We might expect to see the measurement recorded at the Stock Exchange, and shown on the news each night right after the Dow Jones and the Nikkei and the US govt debt figures, and for the same reason those figures are reported and with the same pressures regarding accuracy and accountability (except of course for the US govt debt figures).
• In a further wrinkle suggested by economist Arnold Kling and others, we would expect there to develop a futures market in the temperature indicator, with taxes, profits and predictions tied to the futures price in a way that rewards accurate forecasting instead of the sort of political horse-trading rewarded by the IPCC.
• Furthermore, all those computer models that predict warming (and since 1998 that’s the only place we actually see any real warming) – all those models would be under much closer scrutiny. And as Climate Science Coalition convenor Owen McShane points out, we’d expect to see the rise of real, non-government, climate experts to make real non-government sponsored predictions about where troposphere temperature is going, Those whose "predetermination and bias" always encourages them to predict "warmer" would soon lose their clients and their track record would be there for all to see. No doubt too these experts would be listed in the same pages as the share market and similar "real" information. As Owen says, “The late Augie Auer would be thrilled.”
• Finally, as I said before, this idea was originally proposed by Ross McKitrick (the chap who helped debunk the bogus IPCC hockey stick) so it already has serious credibility, and has received significant international attention. No harm at all in using that spotlight to help promote more freedom here.

So in short we have here a “tax” designed to call warmists’ bluff while keep industry free of their shackles, and doing it in the name of the warmists' name—a “tax” that promises to be a tax refund.

You can see why I call it a special carbon tax.

[Tomorrow, Part 6: A fishy story]

* * * * *

THE SERIES SO FAR:
INTRO: 'What Would 'Party X' Do About the Environment?'
PART ONE: Un-taxes
PART TWO: 'A Nuisance and a BOR.'
PART THREE: Making Life Easier for Small Consents
PART FOUR: “Iwi then Kiwi” - A Unique  Privatisation
THE SERIES IS BASED ON THE PRINCIPLE DEVELOPED HERE: 'Transitions to Freedom: Shall We Kill Them in Their Beds?'

When Al Gore falls, does Nick Smith make a sound? [updated]

Global warming cap-and-trade is this National Government’s big idea (they have damn few, so anything at all is enough to constitute a big one).  Nick Smith’s Emissions Trading Scam is a flagship world-leading policy—leading the world in plundering consumers and shackling producers, in the hope the world will catch on and emulate us.

They’re not.

So here’s a tale for someone to read to Nick Smith.  A story about a man named Al Gore, who several years ago, in the midst of the hype over global warming generated by loud activism, scary science and fraudulent films like his own, got involved in setting up the Chicago Climate Exchange. It really was leading the world. Explains Steve Milloy,

Although the trading in carbon emissions credits was voluntary, the CCX was intended to be the hub of the mandatory carbon trading established by a cap-and-trade law, like the Waxman-Markey scheme passed by the House in June 2009.
At its founding in November 2000, it was estimated that the size of CCX’s carbon trading market could reach $500 billion. That estimate ballooned over the years to $10 trillion.

Al and his friends were looking at billions of dollars of profit if they could scam the politicians to pass the bill, or something like it. Never happened. Never will. And so here’s what some recent trading on Al’s exchange looks like:

 

Impressive, huh?

Al Gore’s exchange is dead, dead, dead.  And it serves the old fraud right.

Al Capone tried to use Prohibition to muscle in on a piece of all the action in Chicago. The CCX’s backers wanted to use a new prohibition on carbon emissions to muscle in on a piece of, quite literally, all the action in the world.

And now the CCX, launched to the sound of unrelenting media hype,  is quietly being taken out and shot.

In a little reported move, the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced on Oct. 21 that it will be ending carbon trading — the only purpose for which it was founded — this year.

Which leaves just two relevant questions:

• Will Thick Smith take the relevant decision himself—or be forced to?
• If Al Gore’s Chicago Climate Exchange Suffers Total Failure, Does the MSM Make a Sound?

UPDATE: The graph of carbon price per metric ton over the life of the exchange is fascinating. Thanks for the link to reader Julian P. who, like me, “finds it really difficult to feel sorry for the people who bought in at 750 cents.”

Notice too who else bought into the scam when it was spiking?  Yep, mid-2008 was about when Thick Smith started to go hard on his Emissions Trading Scam.

And a year later, once he’d begun its introduction, the Wall Street Journal had this to say:

To the annals of global warming lunacy, add this gem from New Zealand: According to [the Key Government, Nick Smith and] a parliamentary committee, Kiwis should accept lower standards of living to protect the national image abroad.”
            - ‘Kiwi Carbon Haze,’ Wall Street Journal, September 7, 2009

The image to be created presumably being that of a pack of idiots.

The green dream team

Every bullfrog and his left-leg-legrope are up in arms today about Nick Smith’s Emissions Tax Scam, which purports to fulfil “our obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.”

Too late! Far too late.

The time to be up in arms was … about twelve years ago when the Kyoto Protocol was signed by National’s Simon Upton; about the time Auckland was suffering the first of what have become regular recent power-cuts; which was the time I penned and sent out this press release below, pleading for some sanity and some sense of the future we’re now living through:

GREEN DREAM TEAM PROMISES FURTHER CHAOS

PRESS RELEASE FROM THE LIBERTARIANZ POLITICAL PARTY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Friday, 6 March 1998 4:54:08 p.m.)

New warnings today that Auckland’s current power crisis is only a dry run for worse to come. Future restrictions on industry arising from ‘The Green Dream Team’ will dwarf our current problems, according to the Libertarianz Party. The Dream Team’s two players are the Resource Management Act and the Kyoto Protocol: The RMA we know about by now; the Protocol, signed by Simon Upton earlier this year, came out of a Government talk-fest in Kyoto, Japan, and extracts promises that governments of wealthy, industrial nations will ‘work towards the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions’ - the inescapable by-product of the burning of fossil fuels. Stripped of its worthy glow this means nothing less than a promise for the reduction of industry!

“The greenies’ anti-development crusade reached its climax in this country with the RMA, an act making the future construction of necessary infrastructure (like power stations and hydro dams) virtually impossible. The anti-energy crusade has reached its climax with the Kyoto Protocol, promising measures to strangle our existing infrastructure (like power stations and industrial plants). The current power crisis offers a precursor of what life will be like as a result of these measures - together, these bureaucratic monsters will act like a calicivirus on industry, and on all who depend on industry for their survival; which means all of us," said Libertarianz Environment Spokesman Peter Cresswell today. ”

“New Zealanders’ natural and trusting benevolence allows environmentalists’ bizarre claims to pass largely unchallenged. The bogus claims by self-serving, populist myth-makers have been swallowed whole and are being used to camouflage a creeping socialism; the pseudo-scientific, jargon-ridden utterances, and the carefully worded epistles describing what ‘might’ happen (if they can only get their computer climate models to work properly) are being used to conceal the dangerous lack of any real scientific basis to their claims. The Kyoto Protocol, for example, rests on the fraudulent claim that emissions of carbon dioxide are causing a catastrophic warming of the planet, and promises to curb this ‘possible outcome’ by curbing industry.

“The environmentalists’ false claims for disasters that ‘might’ occur will be dwarfed by the disasters that will occur if we continue to blindly accept their rantings. You think that the loss of power to our industrial capital for nine weeks is bad news? Just wait until the Dream Team kicks in - you ain’t seen nothing yet!”

ENDS

Just coincidence that Nick Smith is minister for both members of the dream team, eh.

The time to kick against these pricks was some time ago, but it’s never too late to wake up.

Battle of the Toons, 4: It’s July Fools Day [update 2]

When Black Thursday comes . . .

Produced by John Ansell and Grant McLachlan “in honour of possibly the stupidest tax in New Zealand history, which comes into effect today.”

UPDATE 1: Just in case you were wondering if a change of PM in our Trans-Tasman neighbour was going to see them join in this self-destructive foolishness:

In her first speech as Australia’s new prime minister, Julia Gillard assured her nation that she will not be rushing in any climate change policies, and certainly not carbon taxes, because there is no consensus on the need for carbon taxes.
Read the full story...

So that’s just us then, shooting ourselves in both feet.

UPDATE 2: It’s only lunchtime on the First July Fools Day, and already businesses are heading offshore.

Battle of the Toons, 3: Do you recognise this Dick? [update 2]

Anyone he reminds you of? Do you need a clue? 

Here’s the scam this entity is introducing this morning: forcing you to pay the govt for having the temerity to use petrol, power or anything relying on those boons, and pay foresters for not cutting down the trees they grew to cut and sell.

The government’s budget documents this year also showed that the payment due to foresters who planted post-1990, is $1.6 billion over the years 2008-2012 . This $1.6 billion is based on an assumption that 67 percent of eligible post-1989 foresters will take up their entitlement. Unfortunately for National, government officials have advised me that recent projections show that some 87 percent of foresters may now be planning to take up their entitlement. If this happens, the $1.6 billion will blow out to over $2 billion.

And who gets all this dosh? Well, here are the main owners of the trees in NZ’s main plantation forests:

Yes Virginia, that’s where the bulk of those billions are going.  So that’s hundreds of thousands of dollars of your money going to the likes of Weyerhauser Global Forest Partners (a huge player in Nick Smith’s electorate)*, Juken Nissho, and the Harvard University Endowment Fund for the boon of leaving their trees uncut.

Thanks Nick.  You Dick. You haven’t got a beard like that cartoon above, but you sure as hell have a head full of hairballs, and a tongue so forked you could hug a tree with it.

* In 2007 Weyerhauser sold its 51% stake in the Nelson plantation forest joint venture to its partner, Global Forest Partners.” The figures in the chart above come from MAF’s 2009 survey …

UPDATE 1: About Global Forest Partners
Global Forest Partners LP is an SEC-registered investment adviser, specializing in the structuring and management of sustainable forestry investments. Founded in 1982, the firm is recognized as a leader in forestry investing and for its unique global perspective and experience. GFP, which is headquartered in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, currently manages a USD 1.5 billion portfolio of closed-end commingled timberfunds and separate accounts on behalf of institutional clients and other qualified investors. Additional information about GFP can be found at http://www.gfplp.com

UPDATE 2: Dr Richard McGrath has sent me his latest press release to post here:

PRESS RELEASE: Thank You For The Tax Increase, Mr Smith
    Libertarianz leader Richard McGrath heaped praise on Climate Change Minister Nick Smith for lifting energy prices today, but said the BlueLabour Government was far too lenient on Big Business and should have increased petrol and diesel prices by 50 cents a litre and imposed power blackouts on private homes in the face of the global warming Armageddon.
    “Everyone who voted BlueLabour in 2008 will think back to 1 July 2010 as the day Dr Smith got medieval with free markets, with yet another shiny new tax. He’s right of course—what has capitalism ever done for humankind? And what hypothetical problem can’t be fixed by taking more money from private individuals and passing more legislation?”
    “As we head into the coldest month of the year, pensioners and those on fixed incomes will nevertheless feel a warm fuzzy as they turn their heaters down to save power, knowing that Mr Key has more of their tax dollars to use keeping prisoners warm in their cells and to put aside for helping the poor darlings stop smoking next year.
    “There’s no way Mr Smith or anyone else in the BlueLabour government could be profiting from this tax, is there? No way any of them could be planting trees on their land to exploit the laws they imposed on those same pensioners and fixed-income New Zealanders? No way this could result in transfers of money from said pensioners and others into the pockets of said politicians? Surely not.
    “I do have one question, Mr Smith. I know we are being rapidly boiled alive because of the climate cataclysm, but with global temperatures dropping for the past twelve years despite a steady rise in carbon dioxide emissions, can you just remind me again why this tax was necessary?”
    “And don’t forget you farmers, business owners and industrialists out there – but most of all you consumers to whom these tax increases will be passed – don’t forget to vote for those nice BlueLabour people in 2011. And keep your party hats and balloons handy to celebrate the GST increase in October.
    “Finally, Mr Key, if you’re reading this, could I suggest a slogan for BlueLabour’s election campaign next year:

Taxation – I’m Lovin’ It.”

Emissions Tax Scam Day almost upon us

This time tomorrow, you’ll already be paying more for petrol, diesel, power and everything else that uses any of these things—which means you’ll be paying more for everything—paying more because Nick Smith and John Key have been hell-bent on signing you up to a scheme few want, nobody can afford, whose alleged “benefits” will do precisely nothing to fix the alleged problem, and whose economic impact no-one will even be able to quantify.

But just because “it will be difficult if not impossible” to quantify its economic impact—except to say that we know it will be wearing a negative sign in front of it--that doesn’t mean we can’t quantify the sort of impact it’s going to have on our hip pockets, and on the expenses columns of every would-be producer.

• Petrol prices are likely to rise 3c a litre and diesel by 4c.
• Aviation fuel prices are set to rise by 6.75c a litre.
• Mercury is increasing electricity prices by 3.3 per cent and Contact by 3.2 per cent.

So the money you would have spent on more food, more books or a new pair of shoes for your kids—or that a business might have spent on new investment or, you know, creating new jobs--will instead now be going every week to… well, no-one can really tell you where the hell it’s going, can they. Around a billion dollars a year going … somewhere.

Meanwhile, the coal that would have and could have been burned here to provide warmer homes and cheaper power will instead be shipped to China to provide more and cheaper power there.

But don’t complain about it.  This is what madman Nick Smith has been touting since at least 2006. This is exactly what you voted for.

And tomorrow you’re going to get it good and hard.

It really isn’t about science; it’s about control.  After all, even if the IPCC’s worst prognostications came to pass, it doesn’t follow that we all need to stick our head in Nick Smith’s noose. As Bernard Darnton says, we know that socialism doesn’t work at fifteen degrees, so why will it work at seventeen?

So what would a libertarian do about global warming?  Plenty. Property rights can still work over international borders. Fact is, it’s not sacrifice and self-abnegation that’s needed, but more self-interested pursuit of technology, more freedom to adapt to price signals -- and what's needed to pursue that is more freedom and less big government.

Tomorrow, John Boy will deliver the opposite. 

Smile.  He might wave back. And remind you there’s more hikes to come…

A lesson from Canberra [update 6]

In around four hours from now we will know whether or not Australia has a new Prime Minister--and whatever the outcome, John Key will have been delivered an important lesson.

Only last year, K. Rudd was enjoying unprecedented seventy-percent approval ratings, but is now so unpopular that senior Labor party folk consider themselves unelectable with the Krudd at their helm.

The two chief reasons for his unpopularity?  The latest is the usurious tax on mining profits, which threatens to send many of Australia’s biggest mining companies offshore--unpopular not just because it’s an economy-killer, but because the Krudd said he wouldn’t spend taxpayers’ money on advertising such programmes, and he did.

But even that misbegotten behaviour pales into insignificance compared to his backing and filling over Australia’s Emissions Tax Scam, i.e., the very scheme John Key said he’d be following with his own one, not preceding.

And therein, really, lies two lessons for Mr Key. The first is that popularity is not something on which you can bank forever.  It’s here today, and gone tomorrow.  Gone like the dust on the wind. So just because you have the support of a focus group today, don’t expect that same support to be there tomorrow, especially if you go back on your word.

The second lesson is well articulated by Andrew Bolt, and should give Key cause for pause on his own Emissions Tax Scam:

How strange. Global warming a year ago was seen as the policy supported by everyone of sense, and by all political parties. Since then the leaders of the both [Australia’s] biggest parties have lost their jobs essentially over this issue.

Let that point rattle around the empty crania of the Beehive, and resonate through its corridors. As that sign in Tuesday’s protest suggested ETS (Emissions Tax Scam) could easily mean OTG (One Term Government).

UPDATE 1: Turns out NZ’s Climate Science Coalition was making essentially the same point yesterday in a press release warning “John Key Faces Risk of Rudd-Slinging”:

Unless he intervenes to defer implementation of the forthcoming emissions trading scheme (ETS), Prime Minister John Key runs the risk of the same level of sudden electoral backlash that now threatens the re-election prospects of Kevin Rudd’s Labor government in Australia. This today from the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, commenting on the description by two Victoria University researchers that New Zealand’s current ETS is “technically obsolete” and “beyond rescue.”

UPDATE 2: Don’t think for a moment that Julia Gillard, Rudd’s likely replacement, will take the country in a different direction, or grasp more firmly the nettle that Rudd refused to. Gillard is simply Helen Clark with lipstick.

Nonetheless, her ascension will allow her to permanently park the Krudd’s Emissions Tax Scam, if she wants to, but abandoning his unpopular Mining Theft Tax will be heck of a lot harder.  It will be harder because Treasurer Wayne Swan was relying on it to pay Australia’s unaffordable and ever-growing welfare bill. That’s the very sharp nettle that any Australian Prime Minister urgently needs to grasp, the scale of which John Humphreys’s now prescient comments from 2005 make clear [hat tip Tim R]:

Our top marginal tax rate is higher than the rate in communist (sic) China, our income tax burden is one of the highest in the developed world and Australians are currently suffering from the highest level of tax in our history. An estimated 80,000 people are employed to avoid or enforce taxes, and those taxes result in about $30 billion of lost efficiency every year. The current system of welfare payments is complex, expensive, inefficient and ineffective.  If we distributed the current federal welfare budget directly to the poorest 25% of Australians, each family of four would receive $72,000 per year.11 And welfare spending continues to increase quickly. In three years, we will reach $100 billion federal spending on welfare ($80,000 for each of our poorest 25% of families). And yet, despite this massive level of expenditure, poverty remains and is even entrenched.

Australia’s welfare bill is now $111 billion, making that $88,000 per family, yet this War On Poverty has done nothing to roll back the enemy, it is still entrenched, and as countries from Britain to Greece to Australia are now discovering, it’s a War that becomes more unaffordable every day.

How Gillard seeks to pay that bill, or to reduce its size, will define whatever time she can manage in the job.

UPDATE 3: Via kochie_online, “Final numbers being counted ... Word is 64-70 votes for Gillard... Solid win.”

Andrew Bolt gives a timeline of how it happened.  Apparently, it started with a meeting called over the need to resolve the resource super-profits tax….

UPDATE 4: It’s done. Rudd steps down without a ballot, with no visible blood on the floor to mop up (he really must be wanting that Foreign Affairs job).

And in even better news, ABC news in Australia is reporting that Julia Gillard may take a 'new direction' on the mining tax…

UPDATE 5: Sam Hearne posted this pertinent point at his Facebook page:

Gillard as PM. Can anyone think of any policy successes that she has had in her portfolios? Can think of a lot of disasters (BER, computers in schools, Medicare Gold, and having responsibility for the training aspect of the home insulation scheme). Additionally, she has been central to every disastrous policy that this government introduced. Same old Labor.

UPDATE 6: An unfortunate headline from the ABC [“Miners jump on Gillard”] but Australian stocks reflect the hope, signalled above, of a “new direction” on Rudd’s mining tax.

Mining stocks have surged at the opening of the Australian share market after Julia Gillard was confirmed as the nation's new prime minister.

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: The Egregious Tax on Serfs

Libertarianz  leader Dr Richard McGrath ransacks the newspapers for stories on issues affecting our freedom.

This week: “The Egregious Tax on Serfs.”

Yesterday, three libertarians – Don, Olive and myself – joined a march from the Civic Square to the Beehive protesting at the imminent Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). It felt good to exercise our right to free speech and expression in peaceful protest, without harassing anyone in the process. Despite the beautiful Wellington weather, there were only about 100 people marching, and more the pity as the issue will affect every one of us – and soon. The price of electricity and fuel will rise, thus hurting everyone who uses electricity and owns a motor vehicle. But farmers will be worst hit. The agriculture industry will basically be punished, in order to subsidise investors in forestry.

The prime movers behind this tax are Nick Smith, who was previously opposed to the concept of an ETS, calling it a lemon [read John Ansell’s blog for a full account this “Nickpocrisy”], and John Key, who gushed over Al Gore’s movie about Al having “pushed all [his] buttons.” In 2008, the National Party joined ACT and the Libertarianz Party in condemning the growth of the state sector and Helen Clark’s micromanagement of New Zealanders. National was elected on the basis of pledges to shrink Nanny and adhere to core values which apparently include limited government and personal responsibility. In 2010, however, they’ve given up on all that.

The evidence to support the hypothesis that human activity significantly influences global temperature is proving difficult to find. Computer models do not comprise hard evidence, so lets discount those immediately. The high priests of the Church of Global Warming conveniently ignore the observed rises in CO2 levels that don’t precede but FOLLOW rises in global temperature. Tey ignore that recorded temperatures in the 1930s were as high or higher than they are today, without any comparable rise in CO2 levels. They ignore the steady drop in average recorded temperatures from 1940 to 1975 while CO2 levels rose during a period of war followed by re-industrialisation. They ignore the slow but steady decline in global temperature over the last dozen or so years; in fact they want to hide the decline.

They even ignore the fact that their chief propagandist Al Gore, doomsayer of rising sea levels, has purchased coastal real estate since making his propaganda film.   

So what IS the limited government approach to the alleged threat of climate change? The first step would be to depoliticize the field of scientific research – shut down or privatise NIWA and all other government-run research organisations, and free the taxpayer from having to fund them. Let the private sector gather and analyse data on weather and temperature, it can’t be that hard.

Secondly, sit back and let the market respond to the consequences of any rise in temperature. Increased temperatures are an opportunity to millions of people, who will find crops easier to grow and the environment somewhat more human-friendly. Huge frozen expanses in Russia and Canada would likely be more amenable to development. There are endless possibilities whereby humans can take advantage of changing climate, just as humans always have. It is much easier now for people to migrate to new areas. I don’t pretend to know all the answers, but neither do politicians and bureaucrats. Entrepreneurs will provide humankind with ingenious life-enhancing breakthroughs that will harness climate trends for good.

The Church of Global Warming are scare-mongerers, whose aim is to stoke people’s anxiety about the weather to new heights and then offer to save them – at the cost of higher taxes, of course. They should be free to spout their rubbish as much and as often they like, but their freedom ends where my nose starts. Their irrational fears do not entitle them to raid my wallet, or yours.  

As former Libz leader Bernard Darnton pointed out a few years back, if socialism doesn’t work at 17 degrees, why should it work at 19 degrees? The ETS is a destructive tax, based on a crumbling edifice of bullshit. Enough is enough – vote out Nick Smith, John Key and their anti-farmer anti-business BlueLabour Party.

As one banner said yesterday: ETS = OTG (One Term Government). That’s a message even Nick Smith should understand.

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny - when the government
fear the people, there is liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson  

“Only a few dozen” IPCC “experts” support their so-called consensus [update 3]

In his widely reported attack on climate change skeptics last week, John Key’s Chief Science Adviser Propagandist for Global Warming Zealotry Peter Gluckman conceded that he himself is “not a climate scientist…

But suffice to say that I accept the weight of evidence that anthropogenic climate change is real and at some time in the not too distant future there will be significant impacts. This is the consensus view reached by every credible scientific body that has examined the question.”

He went on to insist again yesterday, in response to further criticisms of his non-scientific tirade, that there is “an international scientific consensus that the world is warming,” so skeptics should essentially just go away and shut the hell up.

But as I asked last week after his outburst,  if the science is truly settled, then why has the IPCC felt the need to manufacture evidence, and the government scientists on which it relies felt the need to massage data and alter temperature records? To have departed from science so severely “that they have become advocates for one particular set of hypotheses, and have become militant fighters against all others”?

If the case is closed, then why has a cross examination of global warming science conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Law and Economics just concluded that virtually every claim advanced by global warming proponents fails to stand up to scrutiny?

If there is a scientific consensus, then why has Britain’s Royal Society of scientists, of which I believe Professor Gluckman is a member, just released a statement saying quite explicitly that “any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect.”

In fact, in his own words Professor Gluckman places this so-called “consensus” above the scientific evidence itself—as you can see if you read his original speech—but even as he insists that politicians and the news media talk only about this so-called consensus, instead of those who point out its non-existence, he concedes that “the [consensus] conclusions are not universally accepted.”

So at the same time he submits the so-called consensus is his strongest argument, at the same time he agrees that the consensus itself is not universal.

In fact, as the Royal Society points out, the “consensus conclusions” are not even so widely accepted as Professor Gluckman would like us to think—not even by the IPCC, upon whose pronouncements he wishes us to rely. As a prominent IPCC insider has declared unequivocally in the last few days, the IPCC consensus on climate change is phoney.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider.  The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was ‘only a few dozen experts,’ he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony.
    “‘Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous,’ the paper states unambiguously, adding that they rendered “the IPCC vulnerable to outside criticism.’
    “Hulme, Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia –  the university of Climategate fame — is the founding Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and one of the UK’s most prominent climate scientists. Among his many roles in the climate change establishment, Hulme was the IPCC’s co-ordinating Lead Author for its chapter on ‘Climate scenario development’ for its Third Assessment Report and a contributing author of several other chapters.
    “Hulme’s depiction of IPCC’s exaggeration of the number of scientists who backed its claim about man-made climate change can be found on pages 10 and 11 of his paper, found here.”

No wonder so many many once celebrated climate researchers are now feeling like the used-car salesmen of the science world—and that Professor Gluckman feels called upon to step in and defend them.

UPDATE 1 [9:52am, Tue]: If you’re near a radio, Leighton Smith at NewstalkZB will be interviewing the Pennsylvania law professor responsible for the cross-examination mentioned above at 10:30 this morning.  Listen in at the NewstalkZB website if you can’t get near a radio. (And I’ll try to get an audio link up as soon as I can.)

UPDATE 2: Here’s the audio link for Leighton’s interview with Jason Scott Johnston, Professor and Director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, who found in his cross-examination of global warming science that “on virtually every major issue in climate change science, the [reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and other summarizing work by leading climate establishment scientists have adopted various rhetorical strategies that seem to systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties or even disagreements.”  In short, that “it doesn’t withstand scrutiny.”

The interview starts at 35:20: “Interview with Professor Jason Scott Johnson”

UPDATE 3: A related point made by Andrew Bolt:

    “But this raises the question: how easy is it for such a small group [or a senior science adviser] to become slaves of group think - or, indeed, to become intoxicated with their enormous and flattering influence on …politics?
    “In 2006, Professor Edward Wegman raised this very fear in his report, commissioned by the United States House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee to examine the IPCC’s discredited “hockey stick”, devised by Michael Mann, which purported to show unprecedented warming last century:

One of the interesting questions associated with the ‚"hockey stick controversy’ are the relationships among the authors and consequently how confident one can be in the peer review process. In particular, if there is a tight relationship among the authors and there are not a large number of individuals engaged in a particular topic area, then one may suspect that the peer review process does not fully vet papers before they are published…
    ‘However, it is immediately clear that the Mann, Rutherford, Jones, Osborn,
                   Briffa, Bradley and Hughes form a clique, each interacting with all of the others. A     
                   clique is a fully connected subgraph, meaning everyone in the clique interacts
                   with every one else in the clique....
                   ‘Michael Mann is a co-author with every one of the other 42 [in his clique]. The
                   black squares on the diagonal [fig. 5.2] indicate that the investigators work
                   closely within their group, but not so extensively outside of their group.’

“Note those names again: Michael Mann, Scott Rutherford, Phil Jones, Tim Osborn, Keith Briffa, Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes are all climate scientists implicated in the Climategate scandal.”

**What** climate consensus, Oh Great Science Adviser?

Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about
freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each
and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.”
- Vaclav Klaus, Blue Planet in Green Shackles

If you're wondering why on earth John Key is pushing ahead with his "world-leading" Emissions Tax Scam in the teeth of a recession and the face of widespread opposition—wondering perhaps just where in hell he’s getting his advice from—then wonder no more: it's because of increasingly shrill “advice” like this from his so-called science adviser, Peter Gluckman: that “the climate row” is “undermining “ confidence in science.

‘ There is a growing concern among those of us who have some role in marrying science and policy that the way the debate is being framed is undermining confidence in the science system,’ he told a Victoria University seminar series on key policy challenges facing New Zealand.”

Oh forfend us, oh Great Science Adviser from challenging figures that don’t stack up!

The Great Science Adviser  is a fine scientist  in his own field, but he is not a climate scientist.  Further, since his association with the Prime Minister—and his elevation to having a role in “marrying science and policy” (you can just hear the smug, self-satisfaction in that phrase, can’t you)—he appears to have eaten of the power-lust tree, peddling the mistaken idea that when government-appointed scientists talk, we should all just shut up and listen.

Scientific debate is undermining science, you say?  Well, forgive me Oh Great Science Adviser, but your political slip is showing. Whatever your scientific credentials, there is not and never can be a time or a means by which scientific debate can undermine science.  Scientific debate underpins science, it does not undermine it.  To not know that is, frankly, ignorant.

What does undermine science  is the shutting down of debate by claims of a non-existent scientific consensus, which is what Professor Gluckman explicitly relies on in his argument.  What does undermine science  is its politicisation, which is what Professor Gluckman specifically endorses, and enjoins.

And there is never a more important time in which to challenge the politicised science, and to demonstrate that there is no consensus whatsoever.

The science is settled?  Then why has the IPCC felt the need to manufacture evidence, and the government scientists on which it relies felt the need to massage data and alter temperature records? To have departed from science so severely “that they have become advocates for one particular set of hypotheses, and have become militant fighters against all others”?

The case is closed? Then why has a cross examination of global warming science conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Law and Economics just concluded that virtually every claim advanced by global warming proponents fails to stand up to scrutiny?

There is a scientific consensus? Then why has Britain’s Royal Society of scientists, of which I believe Professor Gluckman is a member, just released a statement saying quite explicitly that “any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect.”

No wonder so many many once celebrated climate researchers are now feeling like the used-car salesmen of the science world—and that Professor Gluckman feels called upon to step in and defend them.

But in defending these scientists, in endorsing the politicisation of science, he is doing irreparable damage to science itself—and in propping up John Key’s Emissions Tax Scam he is endorsing inflicting irreparable harm on New Zealand agriculture, and New Zealand business. 

Shame on him.

Content is copyright PC.BlogSpot.Com © Please contact author for permission to republish: (organon at ihug.co.nz)