More scaremongering from Australian Climate Commission

We have all heard the claims that the world is doomed, human life will become impossible and many other life forms will become extinct unless 80 percent of our fossil fuels remain in the ground. Sounds like another plot for a Hollywood blockbuster disaster movie but this time our Australian Climate Change Commission is scripting the plot. My article in the Queensland Times online at
http://www.queenslandtelegraph.com/climate-report-is-scare-mongering/

We can expect more extreme weather such as cyclones and floods unless we stop using fossil fuels, according to the Climate Commission scientists. (Canoe Point, Tannum Sands)

By John Mikkelsen

A FORMER technical manager at Gladstone Power Station has joined the reaction against the latest Australian Climate Commission report warning that the world will be doomed unless fossil fuels are left in the ground.

The report claimed there would be dire consequences in terms of global warming and further extreme weather events unless 80 per cent of coal reserves remained undisturbed.

But Gladstone’s Cameron Hoare has joined spokespersons from the Federal Government, Federal Opposition, Carbon Sense Coalition and the Minerals Council of Australia in criticising the suggestion.

Hoare, who has had a long career in the electricity generation industry, claimed the latest ACC report was “the same old scare mongering by people who are supposed to know better, backed up by the fanatics in the Greens”.

He told the Telegraph yesterday: “This latest report from the climate commission is just more of the same old pretend science produced solely to meet the government’s policy requirements that we have seen before.

He said real world observations do not support the latest claims and “a large, and increasing, section of the real scientific community are beginning to question the whole catastrophic man made global warming ideology and its unsupported exaggerations”.

“The real world data is now clearly showing that there has been no global warming for more than 15 years, with one of the satellite temperature series showing this failure of the real world to conform to the virtual world of the climate models, going back over 20 years.

“The observed temperature trend since 1979 is now way below even the lowest predictions of the computer models; In fact global temperatures have even declined in the last decade,” Hoare claimed.

“Many scientists who are not in the government funded global warming club are now predicting that the world may be in for a few decades of global cooling with some scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg in Russia suggesting that this cooling trend could persist for over 200 years,” he said.

Carbon Sense Coalition chairman Viv Forbes claimed carbon dioxide plays “almost no part in any of the dominant weather processes”.

The Rosevale pastoralist, who is also a geologist and soil scientist, said the so-called greenhouse gases (mainly water vapour and carbon dioxide) have the ability to absorb radiant energy and transmit it to their surroundings.

“These gases tend to retain some surface heat but also assist the Earth to shed heat from the upper troposphere by radiating energy to space. Without this ability to shed heat to space, the upper atmosphere would be considerably hotter”.

He said the net atmospheric effect of additional carbon dioxide was “very minor and difficult to quantify”.

“It probably makes the nights slightly warmer, especially in higher latitudes during winter; and it probably has little effect on daytime temperatures.

“But additional carbon dioxide in the biosphere gives a major boost to all plants which feed all animals. It is not a pollutant, anywhere.

“Carbon dioxide is not the gas of global warming – it is the bread and butter of life,” he claimed.

Federal Resources Minister Gary Gray said Australia’s coal was helping nations such as India and China bring many millions of people out of poverty.

He acknowledged the need for clean energy, but said coal was still vital to the global economy and  while Australia could turn to natural gas, it should still export its coal reserves.

“There is no solution to global baseload energy generation that does not figure a big contribution by coal,” he said.

And Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt also ruled out closing the coal industry.

He said the Coalition supported Australia’s emissions reduction target but  real change would not happen until there was a global agreement.

But Greens leader Christine Milne claimed the Government and the Coalition had shown they do not accept “the climate change science”.

“You either understand those coal reserves have to stay in the ground or, if you’re going to back those coal reserves and the ports in Queensland, then you don’t believe the climate science,” she said.