Fanatic finds ‘flaws’ in Wong Green Paper
Melbourne newspaper The Age is running a story by climate denialista Bob Carter called Wong’s climate paper clouded with mistakes in which he cherry picks words, disputes consensus opinions on climate science and rounds up his same old tired rhetoric to have a go at Climate Change Minister Wong’s recently released ‘Green Paper’ on Carbon Polution Reduction.
The first sentence of the opening section of her paper, entitled “Why we need to act”, contains seven scientific errors — almost one error for every two words.
Here is the sentence: “Carbon pollution is causing climate change, resulting in higher temperatures, more droughts, rising sea levels and more extreme weather.”
And here are the errors.
First, the debate is not about carbon, but human carbon dioxide emissions and their potential effect on climate.
It makes no more sense for Wong to talk about carbon in the atmosphere than it would for her to talk about hydrogen comprising most of Sydney’s water supply.
Use of the term carbon in this way is, of course, a deliberate political gambit, derived from the green ecosalvationist vocabulary and intended to convey a subliminal message about “dirty” coal.
Next, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a naturally occurring, beneficial trace gas in the atmosphere.
Bob is sort of right here, naturally occuring CO2 is not a polutant in and of itself. But the term ‘Carbon Pollution’ is a specific reference to the 40 billion or so tonnes of extra CO2 being pumped into the air by human activity. As the website ExxonSecrets makes plain, Mr Carter has been champing on this bit for years, frustrated I imagine that the only people who pay him any attention are irresponsible publishers, the coal industry and a handful of cranks. My rule of thumb is simple. When I see the story is written by someone like Bob, with a history of coal-industry toadying and climate-change misinformation, I usually just skip the whole story.
In my personal opinion the man is a despicable attention seeker who manipulates facts to suit his, and his pay-masters’ message. It truly seems that people like Carter are deliberately seeking to set back a movement whose only goal is to avert the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced. Is this not treason? — DS
