My Australian friends:

Re climate change (ie. the planet we bequeath to our grandchildren)…

Let me declare myself: when 97% (the lowest figure I’ve seen recently) to 99% (highest) of peer-reviewed climate scientists believe something, I’m more likely to commit myself to their competence in terms of climate change, than to the views of climate skeptics – especially those who might have a vested interest in making money from polluting industries – or, as politicians, supporting the ‘high end’ of town.

ITEM 1: A study this year of 300 federal, state and local government political leaders, by the University of Queensland, suggests sharp differences in beliefs and understanding around global warming between the Coalition and Labor parties. Coalition MPs were less likely to believe climate change is happening, and showed less trust in scientists, although the results reflected only those who decided to take part in the survey. Forty-one federal MPs, 101 state MPs and 69 local government representatives took part. The results showed 38 per cent of Coalition politicians believed the world was getting warmer because of human-induced carbon emissions, compared with 57 per cent of non-aligned politicians, 89 per cent of Labor politicians and 98 per cent of Greens. “This difference is unlikely to have occurred by chance,” said Dr Kelly Fielding, of the university’s Institute for Social Science. “What it shows is that a much higher proportion of Liberal-National politicians are uncertain in their views, whereas on average the Labor politicians are more likely to agree with the statements made by scientists.” (http://awesternheart.blogspot.com/2010/08/tony-abbott-still-doubts-planet-is.html )

ITEM 2: Mr Abbott (on ABC’s Four Corners) maintained his previous position that warming may have stopped, based on the views of geologist and climate sceptic Ian Plimer. (http://www.theage.com.au/federal-election/abbotts-climate-doubts-20100816-126xm.html )

NOW NOTE THIS: According to the Wikipedia article on Plimer, he is a director of three Australian mining companies: Ivanhoe, CBH Resources and Kefi Minerals. In 2008 and 2009, according to a columnist in The Age (1), Plimer earned over AU$400,000 from these interests, and he has mining shares and options worth hundreds of thousands of Australian dollars. Plimer rejects claims of a conflict between his commercial mining interests and his view that man-made climate change is a myth.

(1) Manning, Paddy (2010-02-13). “A resourceful climate sceptic”. Melbourne: theage.com.au. Retrieved 2010-02-12.

Thanks – and happy voting!

Rowland Croucher
August 19, 2010

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Comments by Facebook friends:

I wonder what the percentage of scientists is who believe in Darwinian evolution.

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As for the science: The Mann hockey stick has been completely disproven; the IPCC and the CRU have ignored the MWP in their temperature graphs; the level of Carbon in the atmosphere has been up to 7000ppm (during the Cambrian period); in the UK the supreme court found 9 scientific errors in Al Gore’s movie (other scientists have found up to 35 in total); Cosmic Radiation and the Sun’s 11 & 33 year oscillations; the US Senate report on Climate Change that lists leading AGW proponents that have now coverted to being Deniers …… and I could go on and on and on ….. and I haven’t mentioned ClimateGate, PolarBearGate, AmazonGate, AntarcticGate ……

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There is something deeply suspicious that people who rely on oil and coal and related fossil fuel industries, and most right wingers, seem to be the epicentre of climate denial. If you took out those who have a blatant self-interest in fossil fuels and a rabid belief that the market can’t be wrong, you would probably have enough climate sceptics to fit on a postage stamp.

OTOH, in the US climate denial and Creation Science, or other variations, are almost joined at the hip. It seems the American Evangelical distrust of biology, paleontology etc., creates a fertile ground for climate denial. If the scientists are wrong on evolution, so the line seems to go, they may well be wrong on global warming.

So American Christians get sucked in by two deceptions.

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Let me say firstly that science is not and has never been about belief – it is about responding to evidence. It irks me that politicians can still wander around saying they believe this or they don’t believe that.

The majority of GetUp members identified this as the most serious policy issue for the parties to get their acto together on – but neither the Liberal party nor the Labor party seem inclined to comit themselves to any course of action.

GO GREENS!!!”

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I might also add my own view about the event that most significantly raised the volume of the climate skeptics – the leakage of emails from a scientific research unit in the UK which commentataors suggested indicated that unsatisfactory evidence had been covered up. This event gave courage to the skeptics and they shreeked about it.

Just a few weeks ago, a committee of enquiry in the UK found that despite the implication of some of the emails, the scientific findings of teh research unit that supported human agency in climate change remained just as robust as they seemed before the story of leaked emails. Strangely this did not lead to mass recantations from Climate Change Skeptics.

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To actually make a difference we have to voluntarily reduce our consumption, allow the economy to slow down, or even shrink – shock horror. Now that is a big call.

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This is just another example of the “scandal of the evangelical mind”, as Mark Noll would term it: an inability to think clearly about the world and science. And as Peter Enns said a few years ago, this just consigns Evangelicals to a ghetto with no more relavence than a cult. It is really sad that thoughtful Christians can be so jerked around by psdeudo-science…

I am not sure why they are so gullible, but it is really sad that, since the mid-19th century, Evangelicals have retreated from common sense and the precautionary principal to become willing accomplices in the earth’s devastation. I can understand dispensationalists (a sick theology if ever there was one) doing so, but serious thinking Christians?

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Wondering if anyone else likes Dr Suess’ The Lorax.

Putting aside climate change for a second… a world that is based on greed and growth is not sustainable… the planet is actually, and scientists and skeptics agree on this, a limited size.

It may be flat, it may be round, but it is certainly finite.

Evidence continues to demonstrate that less wilderness means less sanity. Its allready worse than we think. Deep down we know it.

I hate the australian christian lobby passionately and don’t believe they represent what moral and ethical people should do… but thats partly because the people I know who love them, and cannonise their every word, believe that Julia Gillard is an instrument of the devil, and turn the debate to conspiracy theory that is so convoluted I can’t even begin to engage the conversation… and so I leave it well alone.

We are not, on the whole a Christian Nation, we are, I believe, a secular nation… and I will vote as a citizen of that nation for what I believe best serves that nation, in a sense render unto ceaser, and when in rome… but more to the point, it is in no way ethical to enforce my morality on any other person… so a political stance that does so, by my ethical standards is an ‘ethics fail’.

We learned fast at primary school not to bully our friends into being who we want them to be… but it seems like in a political context its okay to try and bully people into complying with our views. Why do we fail to generalise such a simple lesson?

Don’t even get hung up on the climate change issue folks… vote for sustainability. Why do we NEEEEEEEED more people? more plebs for pushing ploughs and peddling products to. No other reason.

We import people to fill skill shortages because we’re not prepared to pay teachers enough to teach our own kids how to fill skill shortages, and because its easier for fat guys running big businesses to just ship in a new crowd of victims than to explain to the sons and daughters of the people they abused last decade that “really its okay now, we’ll be nice”.

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I’d rather do something about it and be wrong than do nothing about it and be wrong…

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I would certainly support LOTS of initiatives which promote a greener Australia .. but it all depends on what they cost. IF human induced climate change is a reality … spending a few more years getting the proof and science right is not going to destroy the planet … but running half blind into carbon taxes etc. could bring whole enconomies to their knees.

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Over 31,000 American Scientists alone have signed a document stating:

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

Not sure where the 97% and 99% come from Roland?

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Have you checked the critiques of that claim that over 31,000 American Scientists alone have signed that particular document? It seems simply not valid. Based on all the real evidence, Rowland is right.

I really think we do have enough evidence now. Of the 31,000 science graduates who signed that questionable document, only 39 were climate scientists.

Do you accept that the overwhelming majority of those whose life’s work has been actually to collect the evidence in this field – near 99% – do believe in the probability of human induced climate change?

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The thing that must also be taken as read with all the climate science stuff is that one day we will realy really really run out of non-renewable fuels. As these fuels become more scarce the price of them will go up.

A carbon tax now may or may not avert climate change but it certainly will ensure that those non-renewable carbon-based fuels will last a bit longer.

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Debate over origins has to do with the reconstruction of long past conditions from randomly preserved data; that is, it is beyond the capability of science to set up controlled observations of events. On the other hand, climate science has been the subject of reasonably accurate and controlled observation for close to 150 years

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“I’m all for responsible stewardship of the creation, but lest we panic (and more importantly get distracted from Jesus stated priority for Christians … evangelism not environment), remember that we actually have a specific promise from God about the planet and the climate. Look it up – Genesis 8:22.”

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“How extraordinary. I would have thought that our mutual responsibility to care for the welfare of each other implied a responsibility to so act in the world that we had no detrimental effect on it – you know – “do unto others …”

The evangelical imperative does not override our responsibilities ot all our fellow passengers on Planet Ark.

As for Genesis 8:22 I have never heard anyone claim it as a promise that we can do what we like to buggar up the world, but God will keep it going because he said he would.”

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What concerns me is that the science has been neglected for so long.

The science has been around since the mid 19th century (no: I’m not confusing my centuries!) but the implications weren’t yet recognised.

We knew in the 60s that warming was happening, but the focus was on oil stocks and then the ozone layer. No one was talking about warming all that much.

So, although it is not a scientific revolution in fact, it is a scientific revolution in perception, and people don’t accept a scientific revolution just on the basis of the science. There has to be a “conversion”, and conversions don’t proceed in a uniform fashion.

Fundamentalism is in many respects an anti-conversion movement, and its thinking is influencing evangelicalism as well.

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And here’s a very good article by Gordon Preece – http://www.ea.org.au/ea-family/Ethos/Faith-and-Politics/Faith-Politics-Articles/Vote-of-Confidence.aspx