As long as “climate change” is on the agenda in Western politics it will keep tearing the right-conservative side of politics apart. Because it is built on a mistake, the only stability for the right (and eventually the left) will be resolute skepticism. Truth will out in the end. Til then, the right side hobbles along with the exception of a few like Abbott, then moreso, Trump. Trump is the only politician to laugh at the snake oil salesmen and he won the most powerful democratic battle on Earth. When will other non-leftie politicans get the message?
Here in Australia the issue is so toxic that the only kind of carbon tax we can have is the secret, mislabeled kind. The climate issue is so toxic it has gone underground.
The legacy media keep telling us “the science” is all one way so they are baffled that so many in politics don’t get it. What the media hide from themselves is that skeptical scientists vastly outnumber and outrank the believers, and that most of the public doesn’t buy the message either (see these climate polls). If politicans truly represented the public on this, over half would be skeptical.
Australian Financial Review: “More than half of federal Liberal MPs ‘don’t trust’ climate science: think tank
John Roskam, the executive director of the Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs, said he hadn’t conducted a formal count but found most Liberal politicians shared his doubts about what many experts say is the greatest global threat to mankind.
“More than 50 per cent are solid sceptics and more than 50 per cent feel they need to be seen to do something,” he said in an interview. “The science is not settled.”
Journalist Aaron Patrick drops the usual line in about “climate scientists” as the gospel:
The overwhelming majority of climate change scientists accept the atmosphere is warming and humans are responsible.
What he probably has no idea of, is how that small sub branch of science has failed utterly to convince any other branch of it’s central thesis. Surely if climate scientists were right, the first people to recognise that would be meteorologists, followed by engineers, geologists, chemists, etc.
The fact is (and any genuine reporter would find this out easily) almost half of meteorologists — fergoodnesssake — are skeptics, survey after survey shows that two-thirds of geoscientists and engineers are skeptics, and most readers of skeptical blogs (who chose to respond to surveys and list their qualifications in comments^) have hard science degrees. Of the twelve astronauts who ever walked on the moon, three are outspoken skeptics (Harrison Schmidt, Buzz Aldrin, and Charles Duke). Not to mention that some skeptics have Nobel prizes (the real kind in Physics, not “Peace”). If we had to name a list of skeptics versus believers, the skeptics number 31,000, yet there is no list of named scientists who believe that comes close — let alone a list of 300,000 which would imply some truth to the statement that the science is settled, and the world’s scientists agree.
The one sided reporting leaves us open to these kinds of myths — as if a large part of conservative politics disagrees with “science”:
But many right-wing politicians, commentators and voters aren’t convinced the scientists are correct, or suspect the consequences of global warming are being exaggerated for ideological or economic reasons. Some Liberals unenthusiastically support climate change policies in the hope scientific opinion will shift in future years, Mr Roskam said.
Top marks to Peta Credlin
The Coalition backbench is “deeply sceptical about climate theology,” the former chief of staff to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Peta Credlin, wrote in the Daily Telegraph last week.
“Make no mistake, even his strongest supporters in Cabinet understand that climate change remains Malcolm Turnbull’s kryptonite,” Ms Credlin wrote.
Nick Cater is brilliant, when asked what his think tanks climate position was he said “Should we have one?”