The Government says it wants a “climate expert” to sell the message to the public, and who do they pick? A small mammal expert whose predictions on the climate are so wrong any normal person would slink off in shame. But not Flannery, the Teflon prophet, reality doesn’t stick to him. How can it be that the outrageously wrong get away with it with reputations intact (and get rewarded too)? Blame the mainstream media. Blame also a government that thinks it’s a good use of public money to promote known failures.
Flannery will be paid $180,000 a year to be part-time chairman of the Gillard Government’s Climate Commission, to convince us to agree to her plans to “put a price on carbon”. In other words, he’s not an expert in climate science but in science-PR. Bolt describes how Flannery changes his PR tune to suit his employers. The man has no scruples.
He claims the “committee is independent”. But we all know that they will come to no other conclusion that to support a tax, call carbon “pollution”, and rave about all the evidence (that they can’t name specifically). That $5.6 million dollar committee is just a thinly disguised $5.6 million dollar advertising campaign.
Despite the reality of floods when he predicted droughts, of 3mm sea level rises when he predicted a meter a year, Flannery is not going to admit he was wrong, or that he helped waste taxpayer funds. Nor that his promotion of a culture of endless drought may have influenced the managers of a certain dam to store water even as deadly flood water collected around them. People blame skeptics already for hypothetical deaths that may come, but bad science is already killing people.
What’s the point of this committee?
It’s sure isn’t science: the “new climate change commission which has been set up to build community support for a carbon price”. The committee is nakedly about promotion of a government agenda. They didn’t even bother to hide it.
“We don’t take advice from the Minister. Our role, really, is just to get a little bit more clarity and understanding in the public around these big issues.
“We’re going to have make a decision around this and everyone will be better served by getting a better understanding around the science.”
A “decision”? Not about “to tax or not to tax” but about “to do a town hall speech” or to do another “televised prime time advert” in the form of a press conference.
When the outcome of a committee is a preconceived conclusion, the point of it is clearly propaganda.
–Jo
PS: Henry Ergas does a good job making sense of the Garnaut report.
Polling du jour
From Bob Carter.
Folks,
An important poll is being run by The Age in Melbourne, asking whether people are for or against a carbon tax. Amazingly (given that it’s The Age) the current result is running 56% to the “Noes”.
The PM, Julia Gillard and her carbon-dioxide-obsessed government, will be watching the result, especially given yesterday’s announcement of a new Climate Commission, headed by Tim Flannery and with a budget of $4.5 million over the net 3 years to help “convince the public of the science of climate change”. See: The Australian
Voting is at, The Age
Bob
Professor Robert (Bob) M. Carter
Poll results: 89% of 1824 people say NO.
…
From reader Bruce:
The companion poll over at the Oz looks like this so far:
Is Tim Flannery the right person to be Australia’s climate commissioner?
Yes 15.26% (375 votes)
No 84.74% (2085 votes)
Mr Combet, we don’t like being fed propaganda or to be taken as fools.
…
ADDENDUM — Where are the bandwagons of skeptics?
Flannery on Lateline fills in the not-so-detailed-details and tells of bands of skeptics touring the country to mislead people.
TONY JONES: Ross Garnaut has been accused by prominent sceptics of politicising the Queensland disasters, and in the past these sceptics, some of them, have actually been travelling in kind of bandwagons around the Australian countryside convincing people that climate science is fraudulent.
Will you be doing the opposite? Will you be travelling in a bandwagon to the same locations trying to convince people that those sceptics got it wrong?TIM FLANNERY: We’re definitely going to be doing – visiting regions and we are going to be engaging with people. I don’t think we’re going to be out there trying to convince people point blank that we’re right.
I think we’ve got a lot of listening to do as well, try to work out where people are at and just try to explain the basics of climate science. The waters have become so muddied, in part, as you’ve said, because of these bandwagons of people really trying to mislead people as to what mainstream science is saying. And we’ve got a big job there.