Matthew England babbling on to the ABC:

ASHLEY HALL: Well Mrs Rinehart says that that’s an important role for them to play, that they need to balance out what she describes as climate extremists. Is that not reasonable?

MATTHEW ENGLAND: Well not really. I mean in some sense you don’t hear balance on things like whether the earth is flat still. You don’t hear balance on whether lead in paint is poisonous and whether asbestos is toxic.

Are there thousands of scientists dissenting against the idea that the earth is round? Is the idea of lead paint being dangerous falling apart at the seams? Did the ban on asbestos undercut the very foundation of the economy? This is an absurd comparison, which leads me to question why England is so keen to demonise those that disagree with him. Why is he so keen to advocate and propagandise?

ASHLEY HALL: She also points out that there have been ice ages in the past, there have been periods of global warming in the past to end those ice ages, for thousands of years, and they’ve occurred naturally, as she says, due to the earth’s orbit and not due to mankind at all.

How can we be certain that the changes that you’re recording are due to mankind?

MATTHEW ENGLAND: Oh it’s very clear that greenhouse gases trap heat, they warm the lower atmosphere very effectively. Without them on the planet we would have a very cold planet. So there’s a very long understanding from the scientific research dating back several centuries actually of measurement.

So these are facts.

On a recent ABC show, England failed to provide empirical evidence for the positive feedback mechanisms that he insists exist and similarly, he says absolutely nothing here. He makes several claims that few would argue with, never getting to the crux of the debate, before declaring case closed. By presenting the case for the natural greenhouse effect, the uncritical mind can come to see our contribution of carbon dioxide as significant. It all starts to sound quite plausible until you consider the relatively minor contribution to the greenhouse effect that CO2 plays, its logarithmic properties and the likely negative feedback in the climate system.

(Via: Kae’s Bloodnut Blog)