Victorian Senate Group J: Sceptical about Climates, and also, apparently, about Science

From scepticism about religion to scepticism of an entirely different stripe – meet the No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics Party!

This party is the gift that keeps on giving, really. The problem is, there are so many cheap shots that it’s hard to know where to start.  But for the record, I’d just like to state that I, for one, am entirely convinced that we have a climate.  Call me gullible, but there it is.

Oh, wait – I was going to go to bed and write this up in the morning, but this is too good not to share right now:

The papers above are for the serious thinker to read and in some instances may be too complex for some readers to fully understand. To be helpful we also have powerpoints on the resources pages and web sites and videos on the links pages with infomation which are a good place for the layman to begin with.

Ah, of course.  The science is just too complex for my frivolous little mind to understand!  So if I disagree with them, it couldn’t possibly be because the vast and overwhelming majority of scientists are convinced that human-caused climate change is real, it must obviously be that it’s all too complex and I’m just not as bright as the authors of this website!  And that’s clearly true, because I, foolishly, always thought that the word  “information” had an ‘r’ in it, but obviously I have been deceived by mainstream dictionaries.  What a good thing that there are wiser heads available to share the truth with me!

(Yes, that was a cheap shot.  I can’t help it.  They are making up pretendy-science and trying to suggest that I’m too dim to understand it.  The least they could do is use a spell-checker while doing so.)

Right, let’s look at their Senate Ticket.  Can you guess who is at the bottom of it?  If you said the Greens, you would be absolutely right!  Interestingly, though, the parties directly before them are the Nationals, Liberals, ALP and the Democrats.  It’s entirely possible, therefore, that their vote will go to Labor, purveyors of the Climate Tax that they so loudly denounce.  Up at the top of their ticket – oh dearie me, it’s Rise Up Australia.  Really?  And then the DLP and Family First, followed, oddly, by Drug Law Reform Australia.  I’m not sure how that snuck in there, but it must be deliberate, because they follow it with the Australian Voice (which is probably not a political party full of opera singers, though I intend to pretend that it is until it is proven otherwise), the Australian Christian Party and HEMP.  I never thought I’d see those two factions keeping company.

I think we have now gained all that we can from their ticket, so let’s move on to their policies, or should I say, their policy…

Can you guess what it is?

I bet you can’t.  Because their policy is Science!

We began our party in 2008 when a number of climate sceptic bloggers and thinkers realized, there were no political parties that were standing on the principle of truth in climate science. The apparent politicization of science lead us to form a hard nosed common sense party, in order to drag Australian politics back to practical basics.

Truth in climate science.  Because the North Pole is lying.  About all the meltiness, that is.

Anyway.

The policies of the No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics Party are based on three fundamental principles: All policy and legislation should emerge from a balanced and objective assessment of available information. The rights of every Australian must be protected. Minimal government regulation (i.e. the winding back of excessive regulation). These principles may seem basic, but together they form a powerful framework that allows “obvious” policy formulation. Our policies are summarised below, and described in more detail in our policy PowerPoint.

You know, this statement would actually be pretty good if the Climate Sceptics actually knew anything about actual science.

I really don’t know how to address this party at all, actually.  Because their policy is essentially that climate change is not real and that it’s all a great conspiracy, presumably between the Greens and the government who is looking for excuses to take away their freedoms.  It’s really difficult to argue with anyone who has already decided that there is a conspiracy, for one thing.  And as for the science, while I can point to surveys showing that 97% of climate science papers agree that global warming is man-made, it’s fairly easy to respond with something along the lines of 97% of people thinking that Galileo was wrong about the sun rotating around the earth, too.  Or, alternatively, that this isn’t proof – which, of course, it isn’t, though as someone who works with scientists, I’d say that if you can get that many of them to agree on something it certainly bears investigating.

Of course, from their point of view, there is no point arguing with me because I’ve already made up my mind.  And they would be right – I have.  Based on what I consider to be good evidence.

Anyway, before I tangle myself further up with this, let’s have a look at the rest of their policy page.  They are, of course, against the carbon tax, and they want a Royal Commission into climate science.  I wonder what it would take to have them agree with any findings?

They are worried about property rights being threatened by ‘climate alarmism’, and think that water is the real environmental issue of our time.  And here we have water infrastructure to rural communities again. No doubt about it, I need to educate myself on why everyone is so hyped about water this time around – it wasn’t a bit thing at the last election.

The Climate Sceptics believe that ‘favouring ideology over objectivity led to a horrific loss of life and property’ in the Black Saturday fires, and they want landholders and communities to implement balanced fuel reduction measures.  Actually, if I recall correctly, the problem had less to do with Evil Government Control over property, and more to do with the fact that too many homes were built in bushland areas, making burning things back to reduce fuel a very risky prospect that householders were unwilling to try.  But I could have this wrong.

They are worried about housing affordability, and want to develop satellite cities and better public transport in the city fringes.  This is proof that no party is so crazed that I can’t find something to like in their policies!

The Climate Sceptics want cheap but reliable Broadband – really, who doesn’t? – and want to fix unemployment training.  There’s a nice self-serving little policy about new parties and independents being provided with public funding, including for television and radio time so that Australians can hear all viewpoints.  In fact, I’m in favour of this, but I’m amused at the context.

They want smaller government with more transparency, and better old age pensions.  And then we have the environment policy:

We believe that governments have an important role to play in ensuring the sustainability of our nation: We support incentive-based policies that reward good land-care outcomes. Direct action should be favoured over feel-good advertising or education programmes. Issues such as farming native animals or leasing national parks should be based on objective assessments.

This is another one of those fascinating statements that looks good on the surface, but leaves me with the odd impression that it contains coded messages (and not the exciting kind you find when you play LPs backwards).  In particular, the ‘feel-good advertising’ and the bit about farming native animals or leasing national parks being based on ‘objective assessments’ makes me a little suspicious (yep, now I’m the one with the conspiracy theory).  My instinct is that this is supposed to make us think of environmental groups, who in this worldview are clearly a bunch of sentimentalists who are out of touch with the needs of farmers.  But I may be being unduly cynical.

All in all, the Climate Sceptics fail to impress me.  There is something not quite right about that whole series of policies and arguments, which I am unable to put my finger on, and it’s driving me a bit nuts, actually.  I am left with the uneasy impression that I am missing something important.  But I don’t think it’s the ‘fact’ that climate change is a myth.