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Who’s running The Big Scare Campaign?

Just which Big Scare Campaign is the worst?

Thanks to Thanks to Steve Hunter h/t  Andy’s Rant.

The Australian Labor Party has been crying “Tony Abbott’s Scare Campaign” in every second interview on the carbon tax. I guess we could call this whipping up a scare about the scare campaign. Except that Abbott was responding to the primary scare, so cries of “Scary Abbott” are the counter scare to the scare that counters the real scare campaign.

We’re not just talking of job losses and electricity bills. The ALP forecasts Hell. The prophesies are for centuries of killer heatwaves and mega-fires —  seas may rise 7 m threatening 700,000 houses and melting Greenland; the houses that aren’t inundated might be razed by fire; acid will leach through the oceans wiping out the Great Barrier Reef (and 60,000 jobs). The entire agriculture industry of the Murray Darling irrigation basin will disappear….and deadly mosquito plagues will spread and put more than a million people at risk.

The Labor Party are The Primary Scareholders

Here’s a member of Parliament doing his best to scare the pants off Australians (guess who?)

Excerpted:

“The massive stores of heat in the world’s oceans means climate change cannot be reversed for many centuries.

… if we fail to control global greenhouse gas emissions global average atmospheric temperature could rise by up to 5 or 6°C above 1990 levels by the end of this century. These are dramatic temperature increases. To provide a point of comparison, the difference in average global temperatures between the last ice age and today is about 5°C. These temperature changes would be accompanied by significant and ongoing rises in sea level, heat waves, bushfires and droughts, disruptions to ecosystems including the extinction of many species, disease threats, and social and geopolitical destabilisation. 

More than 700,000 residences across Australia are estimated to be at threat from the effects of climate change including storm surges and extreme weather events.

Bushfires are expected to become more intense, and the interval between them will shorten. The mega fires in Canberra in 2003 and Victoria in 2009 are consistent with these expected changes in fire regimes…

Under a worst case scenario irrigated agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin would virtually disappear by 2100.

Climate change and population growth are likely to increase the number of people living in areas suitable for supporting dengue fever by up to 1.4 million by 2050.

Assuming no adaptation, there could be an additional 5000 heat related deaths in our five largest cities by 2050.

A tipping point is where the climate is effectively flipped into a new state with no way to recover. Some of these flips can occur rapidly with little advance warning. It is possible that a temperature threshold will be crossed later this century that will see the eventual disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet. If this happened, it would lead to 7 meters of sea level rise. Such a change would be irreversible in any timeframe meaningful for human societies”

 Source: Greg Combet in Parliament , 13 August 2009. (my emphasis added – the full speech is at the link).

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Steve Hunter is a freelance cartoonist and illustrator and lives in Buderim Queensland. Check out his site and Andys Rant too.

H/t to the excellent Kerry W in 2009 for the Combet link.

 

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