Here we go again. I like Alan Kohler, the economic reporter on the nightly ABC news. He likes numbers, graphs and hard data. Yet here he is, setting up a new project which looks like it ‘s another climate clone site analyzing everything carbon-related in the harsh light of day except the assumption about climate “feedbacks” that the whole error cascade is based on. (This is the same assumption that the empirical evidence has shown was too high by a factor of six.) [See here for my latest demolition and here where a Dr of Paleoclimate comes unstuck.]
The Business Spectator wrote so sagely and incisively about the Super Profits Tax, I’d love to think they would apply the same sharp brainpower to the issue of climate. But Kohler writes:
“We were initially despondent when the CPRS was kicked into the long grass by Kevin Rudd,…”
Despondent? Imagine them saying “Interest rates were raised and we were despondent?”
But Kohler and the other economic commentators have been caught watching the money instead of the reasoning (they’re watching the wrong money too, here’s the money that speaks volumes). If upper tropospheric water vapor doesn’t increase as the world warms, the reason for the worldwide carbon market is null and void. And the radiosonde evidence, for example, is pretty insistent that it doesn’t. This is good news for the carbon shorts, but I guess the Climate Spectator won’t be reporting that universal cataclysmic systemic risk.
Will investors who are long on carbon (or renewables) be able to sue commentators after-the-fact when it becomes obvious that they were not given both sides of the story…
Will investors who are long on carbon (or renewables) be able to sue commentators after-the-fact when it becomes obvious that they were not given both sides of the story, were never informed about the empirical evidence contradicting the theory, and that thousands of scientists were shouting that carbon is a minor player?
The clue is in the Spectator’s inaugural post. It’s true both our major parties have policies to reduce our carbon emissions by 5% by 2020 (such is the power of the name-calling bullies that neither side is brave enough to stand up to them), and it’s true that with population growth that innocuous aim actually translates into a shocking 25% cut per capita in only 10 years. But that’s just it. It’s very ambitious, and very expensive.
Economic commentators like Kohler can see how much money that involves, which is why the idea of an economic commentary on climate beckons. But it’s also exactly why more and more people oppose it. Sure the financial houses are shifting course so they can tack into that climatic cloud of money that carbon trading represents. But that low hanging cumulus-cash is coming from the people, and that’s exactly why we-the-people are waking up. The more money that the bureaucrats and bankers want to take from us, the more we sit up and pay attention. Kohler thinks the need for carbon trading won’t go away; instead it’s the skeptics that won’t disappear. (Not unless there is an extraordinary new development in empirical evidence.)
The man-made global warming theory is falling in polls all over the Western World. It started slowly in 2007 and dropped off a cliff with ClimateGate (see US, UK polls and Australian Polls).
It’s good to see that a few skeptics have already left a plea in the comments for some impartial journalism. Will the Climate Spectator write about the unfolding scientific scandals and the doubts that arise over the science? Surely these doubts would be the most useful thing that any business magazine could write about, so that their investing readers were not caught blindsided and hocked up in a project which was based on an unfounded assumption. Surely there is a lot of money to be made shorting carbon permits, and in shorting renewable companies dependent on subsidies from government who believe in man-made global warming.
Here’s the announcement of the Climate Spectator, and here’s the new site itself:
Pop in and make sure the editors know that many investors are also skeptics.
Engineers, doctors, lawyers, geologists and mining experts are too smart to fall for argument from authority. Kohler and others might be surprised at how many people who were with them all-the-way against the mining tax, are totally against any fiat currency based on data-sets that have been lost, and are unverified and unauditable, and are managed by guys who talk about hiding declines, deleting emails, and fobbing off FOI requests.
The groundbreaking paper. July 2009.
Let’s try to save Kohler from investing his own good reputation in this sorry saga and painting himself into an embarrassing corner.
All together now: The opposite of Skeptical is …Gullible.
NB: To the Climate Spectator crew, if you want to get a summary of the scientific uncertainties that affect the risks of investing in carbon credits, I’m happy to help. As well as the Skeptics Handbook, I’ve written for the ABC, The Spectator, and The Science and Public Policy Institute. (See Climate Money.)