garnaut report
25 Feb 2008
Who is Ross Garnaut?
Professor Ross Garnaut is suddenly one of the most powerful people in the country. Ben Eltham digs up some dirt on the man who has the PM's ear
All of a sudden, without many people realising it was happening, Ross Garnaut has become one of the most powerful people in the country.The ANU professor and mining corporation chairman is now also the key advisor to the State and Commonwealth Governments on climate change. Garnaut chairs the Climate Change and Policy Response to Climate Change Review for the Premiers of the Australian States - which, after November last year, expanded to include Kevin Rudd's new Federal Government.
The Review was set up by Rudd and the State Premiers last year to act as a kind of Australian Stern Report on the likely economic impacts of climate change, and the costs and benefits of mitigation strategies.
So important has the Review now become, and so sensitive, that Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has been forced to back-pedal on its influence. Trying to hose down the alarm after Garnaut summarised the dramatic recent developments in climate science, she told a Senate committee that "you don't contract out decisions as significant to the Australian environment, community and economy to a single individual." Note to Penny Wong: don't mention the elephant! For this is exactly what Kevin Rudd has done.
But just who is Ross Garnaut, and how did he get to have the PM's ear on this most important of issues?
Garnaut's glittering career spans nearly all dimensions of Australia's elite, from economics and business to diplomacy and high-level government policy making. Currently Professor of Economics at ANU, he sits on the board of nearly a dozen different companies, organisations and academic journals and is Chairman of four of them - including Lihir Gold Limited, a gold mine in PNG whose environmental record is, as we shall see, far from spotless.
Garnaut has always been a high-achiever. Graduating as School Captain of Perth Modern School, he studied economics at ANU, where he completed his PhD on liberalising Australian trade with South East Asia in 1972.
Garnaut's academic expertise in Asian and Pacific economic development soon saw him drafted as a key Finance Ministry advisor to the fledgling PNG Government. Garnaut built a team of local and expatriate bureaucrats who put PNG's finances on a firm early footing, particularly through a mineral royalty tax which became the basis of the PNG Government's revenues. While the experience led to a book for Garnaut, this reliance on commodity taxes was to prove highly destablising for PNG in the 1990s.
By the late 1970s, Garnaut had moved into trade negotiations for Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. In 1979, he was deeply engaged in talks with other economists and finance officials from ASEAN member countries, which led to his appointment as Deputy Chair of the first Pacific Economic Conference in 1980 (the fore-runner to APEC).
This work on Asia Pacific trade led to Garnaut's first really big break: his appointment as one of Bob Hawke's most trusted economic advisors in 1983. Garnaut had a seat at the table during the historic liberalisation decisions of the early Hawke-Keating administration - floating the currency, removing trade barriers, liberalising banking regulations and embarking on the Cairns Group of trade negotiations that would eventually become the Uruguay Round of the WTO.
Garnaut's influence in the early Hawke Government should not be under-estimated. In The End of Certainty, veteran Canberra bureau journalist Paul Kelly quotes Hawke's senior mandarin at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Ed Visbord, as saying "Hawke never took my advice on a single economic issue unless it coincided with that of Ross Garnaut."
In 1985, Garnaut got his reward: the plum posting as Ambassador to China. Here he worked to set up some of the first Chinese direct investments abroad - an iron ore mine and an aluminium smelter in Australia. Although only small steps, they proved to be the shape of things to come, as Chinese corporation Chinalco's massive recent investment in Rio Tinto demonstrates.
Garnaut returned to Australia in 1988 with all the right connections. He got appointed Chairman of the Board of the Bank of Western Australia (now BankWest) in the dying days of the Downing Government, and managed to avoid both the financial meltdown of other State banks as well as the stain of WA Inc, remaining Chair of BankWest until 1995. Right through this time he was still publishing prolifically in the economics literature, being made a Professor at ANU in 1989 and penning an influential paper, Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy, for Gareth Evans and Hawke in 1989, which predicted the Chinese boom (although not the Japanese bust).
In 1995, Garnaut was offered the Chairmanship of a new PNG mining company, Lihir Gold Limited. The company's main mine is on the island of Lihir, 700 kilometres north east of Port Moresby. This large open-cut gold mine generates huge taxes and export revenues for PNG. It is also a serious polluter of the coral reefs and ocean floor around Lihir Island, as mine tailings which contain traces of cyanide and heavy metals are loaded on barges and dumped on the nearby ocean floor. Meanwhile, post-processing waste is discharged by pipeline 1.5 kilometres out to sea. In June 2000 there was a cyanide spill at the mine.
Lihir was financed by an Australian Government loan by the Export Finance and Insurance Company, which provided hundreds of millions in finance guarantees. The guarantees were provided after the US Government export credit agency, OPIC, rejected the Lihir project on environmental grounds.
In 1995 Garnaut told the ABC's Karen Snowdon that the environmental impacts had been "very carefully studied, and the studies have concluded that there won't be detrimental effects on fish life. It's highly technical stuff, and I myself have to rely on expert opinion on that. But the expert opinion is reassuring." But what Garnaut didn't tell ABC listeners was that PNG's environmental standards were far lower than those expected of an Australian mine. This issue was graphically demonstrated soon afterwards at BHP's Ok Tedi mine on the Fly River - a mine so environmentally damaging that BHP was eventually forced to divest itself of the polluter.
Garnaut remains the Chair of Lihir Gold, which is now in the top 100 companies by market capitalisation on the Australian Stock Exchange.
Garnaut's experience and connections at the intersection of government, trade and mining have proved lucrative beyond the wildest dreams of other academics. By 2000 he was advising global oil giant Exxon on "fiscal arrangements in the petroleum industry" and sitting on the PNG Sustainable Development Program - the PNG Government body that ended up owning the Ok Tedi mine after BHP washed its hands of it.
So it was not surprising when Kevin Rudd turned to Garnaut in 2007 to head up the Australian version of the Stern Report. Garnaut had the academic clout, the business credentials and the political nous to navigate perhaps the single trickiest policy problem in all of Australian government. What is perhaps surprising is that Garnaut's commitment to the facts of climate change has his colleagues in the mining and energy sectors worried. His interim report on climate change policy, released last week to the State Premiers, demonstrated that he is at least keeping up with many of the most alarming scientific developments - including the looming irrelevance of Rudd and Penny Wong's target of a 60 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. As Garnaut rightly observes, this isn't going to be enough.
But are Rudd and Wong listening? Wong has already stated that Labor will be sticking with the 60 per cent target. And the chorus of nay-sayers in the fossil fuel lobby has started up again, noisily clamouring for government relief. It's now obvious that climate change is going to be one of the real tests of Kevin Rudd's first term of government - and it will be an examination set by Professor Ross Garnaut, who will clearly be driving the Australian climate change policy agenda.
Right now, that makes him one of the most powerful men in the country.
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Great backgrounder. But…
…just when it looked like Ben was about to fall into the trap of ‘playing the man not the ball,’ we get this poorly veiled bit of eco-fascist cheerleading:
"What is perhaps surprising is that Garnaut’s commitment to the facts of climate change has his colleagues in the mining and energy sectors worried. His interim report on climate change policy, released last week to the State Premiers, demonstrated that he is at least keeping up with many of the most alarming scientific developments - including the looming irrelevance of Rudd and Penny Wong’s target of a 60 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. As Garnaut rightly observes, this isn’t going to be enough."
As the above statement clearly indicates, this isn’t a critique of Garnaut. It is a poorly disguised endorsement of a pentecostal type of green (read ‘sustainable’) capitalism, with Garnaut playing the role of the born-again high priest.
Because previous criticisms have missed their target, I now wish to restate my case in a manner more akin to Mr Eltham’s oeuvre:
“What is perhaps MORE surprising Ben’s commitment to a one-dimensional understanding of the climate change phenomenon that has NM readers, myself included, worried. His (mis)identification of the important ‘issues’ above, demonstrates an inability to even modestly penetrate a real debate that has kept up with the most alarming scientific developments. It seems my persistence in pointing out the overbearing irrelevance and fascist-like undertones of this type characterisation, isn’t going to be enough.”
Interesting also that Garnaut is a Driector of Ok Tedi Mining Limited(OTML). Some suggest that OTML was basically a James Hardie effort by BHP - after raping the countryside and destroying the river - and many of the communities that live along it, not to mention the tailings dumping that is now silting all the way to the Torres Strait - BHP ‘gave’ the mine back to the people of PNG (of course most of the ore body had already been exploited). the Ok Tedi Development Foundation (OTDF) was established out of this to look after the long term development of PNG and i think Garnaut was on the board - though there is a mysterious restructure happening there at present.
From what i hear the OTDF, isnt delivering too well in terms of any of the glorious claims that were made at its inauguration or for that matter that exist on its website.
certainly the environmental impact of Ok Tedi would take billions to fix up - though BHP wont have to worry about that now…wonder what Garnaut says about all this?
Bob, thanks for the comment and the praise … I’ll try as best as I can to respond.
Firstly, the 60% carbon emissions reduction target was set by Rudd pre-election. He argued it was on the basis of the science. The science is now extremely firm that the earth is experiencing human-caused climate warning, that there are serious environmental consequences pending from this warming, and that unless we stabilise atmospheric CO2 emissions at a level somewhere below 350ppm, then these consequences are inevitable.
All of this is available on the public record at the IPCC and in the various writings of James Hansen, who is generally recognised as one of the most reputable scientists working in the field, as well as in thousands of other peer-reviewed articles dealing with climate change.
Now, the latest science suggests the situation is even worse than the IPCC’s recent predictions. Arctic ice and glaciers are melting faster than even the worst-case scenarios envisaged. This is why Ross Garnaut is suggesting that the 60% target will not be enough.
So, sorry if this is one-dimensional or a "pentecostal type of green capitalism" (what does that mean anyway, Bob?). I’m not really interested in getting into a debate about the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change - as far as the scientific community is concerned, the evidence is in.
As to your accusations of fascist-like undertones at New Matilda … I thought the usual throw-away remark would be "pack of lefties", "hippies", "Latte-left" or the good old fashioned "commies." But "fascism" - now that’s a new one …
One of the nice things about much of Economics is that, like the any religion, as a construct it can mean anything you like and all the arguments are self-referencing. Which is, of course, why we have come to depend on its prognostications (however fragile) but does not explain why we should give an economist, any economist, the authority, implicit or explicit, to show us the way through the scientific, political and philosophical difficulties that we face in the sudden realisation that climate changes. Difficulties that are ultimately (i.e. when push comes to shove) different in kind but no greater in complexity than many that have gone before and to which we have perforce had to adapt, without an economist in sight.
Hi there,
A good backgrounder.
I have regarded Garnaut as a traditional economist and free marketeer, very friendly to the corporate sector especially the resources sector. A contrast to the academic political economists of Sydney University. with whom I sympathise a lot more frankly.
The choice of Garnaut to come up with this Interim Report on climate change and what the new Government has to do about it seemed to me - and no doubt to many others - either a support strategy for its position or, more conservatively, as a means to come back to a more conservative position than suggested at the Bali Conference.. The Interim Report by Garnaut has surprised me, pleasantly for sure. One has to accept that it signifies a major shift in corporate thinking on the environment. How else can it be interpreted?
Recently, I had the opportunity to listen to Ian Dunlop, once at a seminar organised by the New Matilda/Centre for Policy Development and a couple of months later at a book launch at UTS dealing with the corporate sector and various green issues. On both occasions Dunlop, a (former) corporate chief in the Resources Sector (especially coal mining I think), talked on the "war on climate change" and the need to curb coal mining, etc. Perhaps I am not terribly in touch with what is happening in the corporate sector but these performances also surprised me. These individuals talk the language of the Greens, not that of the ALP, much less that of the Coalition. I also heard Dunlop saying that our political system is frozen and cannot cope with rapid, drastic changes that are required to meet environmental threats. I have been saying this for years but I am not a corporate chief, or an academic like Garnaut who has been an advisor of mining giants and Government for years.
I think the ALP would do very well to not downgrade the Garnaut Interim Report but my gut feeling is that they will do just that, at least if one has to go by what Penny Wong’s first response was. That would be a pity.
Klaas Woldring, Ph. D.
Associate Professor, Southern Cross University (retired).
Without all the political overtones what Professor Garnyat seeems to simply stating is the response that the evidence requires. We need to believe the science and its advice as to its consequences and take immediate steps to reduce as fast as possible the consequences of our actions. Penny Wong’s response does not fill me with any hope that we will and the nay-sayres non scientific arguements also fill me with alarm. I fear that the governments of the day will all think it is too hard. Howard denied it existed, he probably jumps into bed and puts his head under the blankets if anything like this arises. A 2 degree celcius rise in world temperature will be bad enough but a 3 degree rise will see the end of the natural world as we know it. Howard lost us twelve years, if the new government loses us more then we will leave a sorry world for our children and their children.
This committment to ‘me-too’ election promises by Rudd and Co. is somewhat nerve racking. Like the 31 billion $ odd tax- refunds, the 60% carbon reduction by 2050, the continuance of the insane Medical insurance rebates, none of these promises make a lot of sense, economically or rationally, but were made in order to win an election.
The rigidity of Rudd and Co. on these promises says that Rudd will never be able to cope with emergencies, because it seems that he is not able to be flexible where flexibility is the most sensible way to go, even though it may break what was always seen as stupid election promises by those intelligent enough to see it.
I always wondered at the appointment of Garnaut, but I wonder daily at Rudd’s appointments to anything. Hugh Morgan ( a radical and raving Free Marketeer and Union Hater) to a selection Committee for the "Incredible Thousand"! One has to wonder just what the Hell is Rudd trying to do with this thing. Allow it to be stacked with Morgan’s friends, and we can be sure that all the ideas coming out of it are Zealous Free Market and all human UNfriendly.
He retains people like Ruth Halton? in Health, knowing that she was and probably still is much loved by Howard and Reith, who kept promoting her as she bent to their wishes.
I know Rome was not built in one day, but surely he must know that all these people, including Garnaut, Halton and Morgan, are definately NOT friendly to Labour ideals. In fact, will work assiduously to ‘kill’ them. So why retain them in, and appoint them to, powerful positions. I still fear very much that Rudd is Tony Blair in disguise.
A Tory in progressive clothing!
Rudd and Wong are backpedalling so fast from the bad news that Garnaut quite surprisingly brought, that one has to be very afraid that we are not going to see any cut in carbon emissions any time soon, certainly nothing to reverse the Earth Killing effects so quickly catching up with our greed, stupidity and prolifigate waste of resources.
Must not upset the Coal Industry, hey!? Dazza.
Dave here Why not have hybrid cars of LPG & electric this decreases our reliance on oil based feuls then all street lights be solar power as the garden lights that we have then all rooves be made of solar panels & solar hot water all the trees in towns be fruit trees this supplies free fruit & the fruit trees are shorter than our native gums grow plants of medicinal use in the parks etc & plant trees on the western plains
God Bless to all & may your Lord Shine on you all well Dave
Dave here Why not have hybrid cars of LPG & electric this decreases our reliance on oil based feuls then all street lights be solar power as the garden lights that we have then all rooves be made of solar panels & solar hot water all the trees in towns be fruit trees this supplies free fruit & the fruit trees are shorter than our native gums grow plants of medicinal use in the parks etc & plant trees on the western plains
God Bless to all & may your Lord Shine on you all well Dave
Dave here just like to apologise for the double comment but just getting used to this new fangdangled gear I am not real versed in these computers
God Bless may your Lord shine on you all well
Bye Dave
Dave,
"all the trees in towns be fruit trees this supplies free fruit "
No way mate. The first crop from my thirty year old Macadamia lasted exactly 24 hours before the Cockatoos found it and demolished it.
On Ben’s point about 60% reduction, what is to stop the alarmists’ target from moving every twelve months?
Who has said that warming is reversable anyway? And if that is achieved how do we maintain a neutral/ benign momentum?
Bob:
Can you please clarify what you find fascist in this article.
EarnestLee - there should be nothing stopping the target from moving, if that’s what the science suggests is necessary. The "alarmists" have a point: the planet really is warming up rapidly.
And who we might ask, is Ben Eltham, and what is he up to this time? Ben’s article, especially the header, for which he may not be responsible, promising that the artcle ‘digs up some dirt on the man who has the PM’s ear’ is an odd mixture of fact and inuendo, with the latter using things that could easily have been spun spun the other way.
If the point of the article is to discredit what Garnaut might say, this seems to me unfortunate. What I have heard from him so far is, as an earlier correspondent says, just what the scientific evidence requires combined with a clear sense of the difficulties that will be involved in obtaining an equitable and effective international response to the problem.
Barry Hindess,
Hi Barry
Well you can check out my bio to the right for some information on who I am.
I hope there wasn’t any innuendo about Prof Garnaut in my article. I aimed to present the facts on the public record, including lesser-known facts like Lihir Gold Limited’s environmental record.
Nor was I trying to discredit Ross Garnaut’s suggestions; indeed, I don’t see how an article in an independent journal can discredit what Garnaut might say, as he has wide influence and superb connections.
For me, the most interesting thing about Ross Garnaut’s career is the glimpse it gives the reader of Australia’s true power elite: a group of men with deep connections to the academy, bureaucracy and big business that ordinary Australians simply have no access to. This is, I think, quite relevant, as these are the people who are now deciding the future of Australia’s de-carbonised economy.
The task facing Garnaut and all the others seeking to make the drastic changes needed ,are formidable. The only way to go is to have an all party cabinet, like a war cabinet, to persuade us all.
As it stands Labour bounces off the Liberals and vice versa.The decisions of the de-carbonised economy should be shared by all.Is Garnaut up to knocking all our heads together?
Okay kids, due to popular demand I’m back on this thread.
Ben, having summarized Garnaut’s history as a "high-capitalist" your use of the phrase ‘what is perhaps surprising…’ in the second last paragraph begs the question: ‘why is it perhaps surprising?’
You never answer this question. It is left begging.
Is it surprising because he has had a change of heart and rediscovered his inner rationalist? This answer would certainly match the ‘personal critique’ theme you have adopted in the article generally.
Or is it surprising because Garnaut, like most in political animals is constantly under the influence of different groups with different vested interests. I think we cannot draw this second conclusion from your article, because you repeatedly insist that when it comes to ‘driving the Australian climate change policy agenda’ the buck stops with Garnaut. Such a conclusion is at odds with intent of your critique of Garnaut the person anyway.
So….
…putting aside your implicit cheerleading for the promotion of the policy of emissions reduction as a final solution to the problem of climate change (fascist-like undertone no.1)…
and…
… given your willingness to analyse the complex process of policy selection as a struggle between "strong" personalities (fascist-like undertone no.2)…
I can only repeat my earlier conclusion:
"this isn’t a critique of Garnaut. It is a poorly disguised endorsement of a pentecostal type of green (read ‘sustainable’) capitalism, with Garnaut playing the role of the born-again high priest."
The idea of environmental sustainability is pragmatic in its orientation, not totalising.
The Rudd Governments plans to meet its commitments under the recently ratified Kyoto protocol have been dealt a potentially lethal financial blow.
The Federal and ultimately the High Court of Australia is now to rule on whether the Commonwealth can use the 80 million tonnes of Carbon Credits accumulated from land clearing bans.
It had been the previous coalition governments intention and by default the Rudd governments plan to meet it’s commitments to limit the nation’s Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2008-2012 to the Kyoto Target of an 8% increase above the levels achieved in 1990, by using these accumulated credits without paying farmers for them.
The Federal Court in Sydney in December last year agreed that farmers have an arguable case against the Commonwealth over ownership of the 80 million Tonnes of carbon created from land clearing bans.
The credits will single-handedly enabled the Commonwealth to meet its Kyoto commitments. The value of those credits has been estimated by leading authorities at $10.8 billion dollars.
Peter King, Barrister for the New South Wales farmer Peter Spencer who is challenging the Commonwealth on ownership of the carbon in the trees said in a statement "This is the first occasion in Australian legal History that it has been found there was an ‘arguable case’ against the Commonwealth by farming interests that the Kyoto Protocol may give rise to property rights"
Now the court has given Mr Spencer the ‘Green’ light to file a "notice of motion" which is an injunction to stop the Commonwealth from entering into any carbon trading scheme, until the case is decided.
FULL STORY at http://www.agmates.com/blog/2008/02/24/108-billion-payment-to-farmers-to…
Excellent detective work Ecoeng.
Yes indeed, nice little tit bit of news, eh what Jeeves?
This has to be seen in the context of the bureaucrats in Helen Clark’s NZ Govt. recently trying to expropriate, by simple fiat, the carbon credits held in the pinus radiata plantations that NZ farmers were putting in for their old age, kids and grandkids.
NZ farmers have been doing this for generations in the expectation of the lumber paying for their retirement on the Gold Coast and helping to keep their kids on the land (the dream of everyone who ends up with a halfway decent bit of dirt). The carbon credits were just going to be the cream on the coffee.
Planting of pinus plantation in NZ crashed by 90%+ last year. Go figure.
Nothing like a rush of green greed to the head to turn an AGW fanatic (or would-be messiah) into a storm trooper (or Der Fuhrer) overnight.
I agree wholeheartedly with your instincts.
The outcome/fallout from this case may well be the first real test the morals of the apparatchiki of the Rudd Govt. (not to mention you know who, you know who, you know who and you know who….etc., etc. ;-).
Are there enough scientists and engineers having a say on this issue or is Kevin only getting advice from economists? I am biased against them having seen how much influence they have in proportion to expertise.
To follow up on my post above regarding the outcomes of the debate in NZ about who owns the carbon in the trees, in the first quarter of last year the NZ Govt. ruled that it owned the carbon credits in tree plantations planted prior to the Kyoto datum i.e. prior to 1990.
Only for trees planted from 1990 on would the carbon credits reside with the owner of the plantation.
The responsible minister Jim Anderton is the leader of the (formerly Socialist) Alliance party, the most ‘green’ of the NZ parties and leading representative of this party in NZ’s ruling Labour/Alliance coalition.
Given that pinus radiata plantations are harvested every 25 - 30 years, in one fell swoop the NZ Govt. picked up all the carbon credits from private forest plantings made between about 1960 and 1965, both that which had been fixed into building timber after harvest and that which still resided in unharvested trees at 1990.
In effect, the NZ Govt. bureaucracy argued that the Govt. was entitled to all post Kyoto carbon credits from trees planted before, and still growing at 1990 and only trees planted after Kyoto were planted with ‘an intention’ on the part of the owner to also profit from carbon credits (as well as the timber value).
Although this decision has it’s own unique (bureaucratic) logic and did partly defuse the debate, it has nevertheless still led to a marked decline in new plantings (as I noted above) as the NZ farming industry in particular is highly suspicious that future governments might well snatch the post-1990 carbon credits as well.
Conversely, there has been a massive expansion in the trade in tree-based carbon credits in NZ, no doubt partly in the expectation that it will enshrine the principle of private ownership of carbon credits under NZ law.
It will be interesting to see how the Australian Govt. responds to the Federal Court ruling on the Spencer case. Will it be prepared to accept that all land which, at 1990 was privately owned and capable of clearing has continued to accrue private carbon credits only or will it expropriate all carbon credits credited by bans it has imposed itself? The latter would spell the death knell to the private trading of tree-based carbon credits within Australia and would be a backward step.
It is astonishing that the Spencer case has received so little coverage in Australia (and in new matilda!) and it clearly shows that the economic debate regarding Greenhouse-driven carbon trading is so primitive here we even lag behind little old NZ. Says much about the ‘smarts’ of the ‘green economics gurus’ who publish herein.
Would the next Kiwi tourist to Australia please turn on the light!
A correction to my previous entry. I mistakenly used the name of Hugh Morgan on the selection panel for the ‘Rudd 1000’. It should be David Morgan, an entirely different person.
I found it interesting, another thread, that indicated that the ‘1000 wise people’ may be a subtle threat to the entrenched ‘Howardization’ of the Federal Public Service, perhaps even a way of bypassing this very Right-Wing mind-set. It would cost many millions of dollars to get rid of these Howard people so maybe Rudd is trying to get them to change their ways, or else! If so, very cunning! Hope it works.
I think Garnaut was appointed by Rudd to this position because they thought him utterly predicable, a sure-fire Free Market proponent, one that would keep things quite manageable, if not very ‘green’. I reckon that Rudd and Co. got one Hell of a shock when his interim report came out, which is why they have been back-pedalling and distancing themselves from him ever since. This is a big change after all the time during the Bali Conference saying that almost everything hung on the Garnaut Report, and they refused to do anything until they got it.
Have to wonder where they go next? Dazza.
Talk about not seeing the wood for the trees… have any of you sat well back and taken a fresh look at what’s happening here?
Government, instead of formulating policies based on national electoral consensus, now makes these solely on the basis of a handful of personal opinions of dubious integrity. This is at best, oligarchy; at worst emerging dictatorship. In other words, the predetermined culmination of a three decade-long abandonment of democracy.
And, just to avoid confusing the above cluster of appallingly insular academics, democracy is ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’; not the insanely circular motion of electing someone else to do our thinking for us. Nor is it through the appointment of experts. Earlier generations wisely rejected political elitism from 1790 onwards.
Therefore, and saliently, the prerogative to recognise or reject the entirely unproven premise of anthropogenic planetary warming is that of the sole owners of this country; the people. So far they have not been presented with the full range of data, let alone been given the opportunity to determine their own future.
The second failure has been the most unscientific and arbitrary closure of debate on global warming. Entirely ignored are the thousands of scientists who have listed their relevant qualifications alongside their absolute rejection of ‘man-made global warming’. The same scientists have pointed out that the famous UN list contains names of untraceable entities, scientists of disparate disciplines, and hundreds of scientists who have demanded that the UN remove their names from the ‘list’; entered by the UN after spuriously quoting their support for anthropogenic warming.
Supporting the now satanised nay-sayers and denier-heretic’s position, are archaeologists and historians who, with characteristic media non-savvy, are quietly aheming the Chinese Imperial Navy’s 1242 exploration of a largely iceless Arctic region.
Or they are making pointed references to that patron saint of all developers, Eric the Red and his world first Project Development, in which he promoted his new product with the self-describing name of Greenland because of its vast and magnificent green pastures. Such a shame that three centuries later global cooling presaged permafrost and forced his client’s descendants to return to Denmark.
We might note also, just in passing, that polar bears somehow survived that terrible earlier period of global warming; before we move on to ponder why other planets are now also warming apace. Cyclical peaks in solar radiation perhaps? Obviously, objective research into global warming has barely begun.
But, in my opinion, the greatest failure of all is the infantile gullibility of adults who don’t ask themselves who is benefiting from the more than $3 trillion in carbon credits collected worldwide?
It doesn’t take much tracking to discover that, ultimately, this is the Rockefeller/Rothschild conglomerate of international bankers who own the funds of the US Federal Reserve, the WB, IMF and BIS; and who direct the WTO that creates the stop banks that channel national wealths in their direction.
And, as La Rouche pointed out, who do we find in the midst of this unholy cabal but his holiness, Al Gore.
Didn’t any of you twits ever stop to wonder why Rupert Murdoch and his banker and corporate advertiser friends, who have consciously and flagrantly destroyed the world’s ecology for many decades, should suddenly undergo character reversals and enthusiastically embrace a ‘Save Our Planet’ credo.
Have we all forgotten that Rudd was given the nod by Murdoch and Cheney, following the Cheney round of negotiations. Those who fell for the global warming con, like the twittering elite who prostrate themselves before Messiah Rudd, represent the phenomenon that made Hans Christian Anderson most famous.
With typical self-absorbed arrogance, elitists will dismiss what I say because I have failed to provide persuasive arguments and references. But persuasion was never my intention because the formal intelligentsia has always been irrelevant in the overall scheme of things. My energies are exclusively directed to the ordinary people, out there in the electorates.
What I did want to achieve here is confirmation that you have indeed had access to the real world and chose to pursue something else. This is the single feature that will be retained by ordinary Aussie readers.
How will you wear this in the future?
Tony, your comment is a long one and I won’t respond to it in depth, except in so far as to say this:
* the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming is overwhelming
* there is very little data to support the idea that global warming is some kind of "natural" phenomenon, unrelated to human greenhouse gas emissions, and a vast body of evidence that supports the contention that the earth is warming because of human intervention
* in a 2004 paper for Science Magazine, Naomi Orestes examined no fewer than 928 scientific papers published on the topic of climate change. She found that not one of them disagreed with the IPCC consensus position
I quote from her paper and also provide the link:
"This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686
It’s all well enough to talk about "the real world" but you should be aware of the scientific evidence that your world is, in reality, rapidly warming up.
I agree with Ben in that:
* the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming is overwhelming; and
* there is very little data to support the idea that global warming is some kind of "natural" phenomenon, unrelated to human greenhouse gas emissions; and * a vast body of evidence that supports the contention that the earth is warming because of human intervention.
However, where we are already getting into deep trouble though is:
* falling prey to the ‘axe to grind’ alarmists who would con the general public into thinking that the projections at the upper range of the IPCC(2007 - not 2004) are to be accepted as the most likely; and
* failing to recognise that scientific consensus on AGW is, and always will be, a moving feast and far from fixed in time.
Contrary to the claims by the postmodernist prophets of apocalypse who appear to infest the ‘progressive’ side of politics, if anything the scientific consensus of the likely degree of warming for a doubling of the current level of CO2 is moderating.
Facts such as that:
* 1998 was the warmest year so far, followed by nine years of slight cooling; and
* 2007 was the coldest year post 1998; with
* January 2008 being globally the coolest month since 1982; and
* atmospheric methane levels have been declining for over a decade (despite the warming of the Siberian permafrost); and
* the recent outcomes of refinements to GCMs and paleoclimatalogic studies; and
* the surprising emergence of an unusually quiet sun and its underestimated effect on contemporary world climate since September 2006,
all point towards a likely moderation of the IPCC(2007) projections.
It is time to move beyond the crude, self-serving posturing of the Clive Hamilton types and move rationally towards consensus on real issues such as carbon credits, national and international reafforestation, and the implementation of more and more trials of carbon geo- and biosequestration technologies, oceanic algae stimulation and atmospheric albedo manipulation etc.
Why Was Professor Garnaut Exempt From Yarra City Council’s Heritage Planning Review?
Speaking to Professor Ross Garnaut’s next door neighbours, regarding City Of Yarra’s handling of Garnaut’s permit application for a contempory building in a heritage sensitive area and comparing his case to this particular case [here] I’ve read about City Of Yarra’s hard line Urban Heritage Policy makes me pause for thought;
Has the City Of Yarra town planning department has been starstruck ?( for want of a better word)
How much influence should one man have?
Got a better photo Garnaut’s lapel pin (on the left breast above the heart) to see whom he serves?