Dangerous Abbott unleashed, speaks the truth, critics froth and flounder

Finally the gloves are off

The critics called him a climate denier anyway, even when he toed the politically correct line, so there was nothing left to call him. For former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, there is no point in pandering. Now after a great speech, the EcoWorriers are left saying he is “loopy”. The new unleashed Abbott is so much stronger, more compelling, and his message is being spread far and wide. Not only will his GWPF speech fire up the footsoldier deplorables, but he is more likely to reach the undecided centre by speaking his mind freely. The ABC was pasting his message in large type all over the TV news and in article after article. That’s great for skeptics. The ABC is so blindly consumed with the dominant paradigm they can’t see how appealingly sensible Abbott looks by speaking about cold being a killer, CO2 being good for agriculture, and a bit of warming being beneficial for humans. His message of irrational electricity pain is so terribly sane. He looks at Manly beach and can see that sea levels haven’t changed much which surely everyone else with open eyes can see too. The ABC frames it as “Abbott has examined a century of photos, and he detects no rise” implying he is an amateur out of his depth (pardon the pun). But it won’t do Abbott any harm, thousands of people know Manly beach.

The 2017 Annual GWPF Lecture: DARING TO DOUBT

“Primitive people once killed goats to appease the volcano gods. We’re more sophisticated now but are still sacrificing our industries and our living standards to the climate gods to little more effect.” – Tony Abbott

In most countries, far more people die in cold snaps than in heat waves, so a gradual lift in global temperatures, especially if it’s accompanied by more prosperity and more capacity to adapt to change, might even be beneficial. – Tony Abbott

The reply: “Tony Abbott has gone from just destructive to quite loopy”. — Tanya Plibersec, Deputy Opposition Leader.

The ABC narrator, Andrew Probyn, tosses out any pretense of being impartial, just blows that facade away:

Tony Abbott - already the most destructive politician of his generation — now intends waging war on what he calls environmental theology, …

What exactly did Abbott destroy?

As Hold my beer says at #12.1: “He’s currently threatening their authority-protected, grant-dependent, welfare-sapping livelihoods.”

This is the man who led Australia to the most definitive election victory so far this century, who saved lives by stopping the boats, and who didn’t cause deaths with inept programs like rushed “pink batts” schemes. Other politicians promised to not do a major economic transformation which they then went on to exactly and specifically do. That’s a whole new league of political lie. How’s that for destroying democracy?

Probyn goes on to say that “…if [Abbotts position] tells us anything, it’s that Malcolm Turnbull can’t do anything to appease Tony Abbott on climate action which may embolden cabinet to pursue and deliver the energy policy it wants.“

Instead, the truth is that no one can do anything to appease the Climate-Masters — full obeisance, with bowing, is still not enough.

Probyn has some Christmas fantasy that this will embolden cabinet, that an outspoken Abbott is somehow less of a threat. Good luck with that theory. Are the voters likely to run from an open skeptic? Ask Donald.

Only yesterday Turnbulls team hinted they may have to drop the Renewable Energy Target. Pundits blamed “backbenchers” — which means Abbott and supporters. Abbott on the fringe, or is he ahead of the pack?

The reaction:

Louise Yaxley:

Federal Labor’s treasury spokesman Chris Bowen said the speech was spectacular evidence that Mr Abbott thinks “we can put our head in the sand” and pretend climate change is not happening.

“It is 2017 and we have got a former PM overseas denying the science of climate change and … he is calling the shots on the policy of Australia,” he said.

Andrew Probyn again:

Now freed from any belief he will be prime minister again, [so Probyn hopes] Mr Abbott claims virtue in saying it as he sees it. Even if it is from the fringe.

This is ruinous to Malcolm Turnbull’s ambition to end the climate wars, which is what he had originally hoped for the review conducted by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel.

The prospect of a bipartisan peace on climate policy with Labor, however unlikely, is now impossible. Mr Abbott will not be satisfied even by orthodox expressions of environmentalism.

Andrew Street starts with “Heatwaves are better than cold snaps…”, but has to admit that “That first claim appears to be true”. The best Street can come up with is the threat that things will be worse 30 years from now because the WHO says so, and malaria might spread (he probably doesn’t know it was more of a threat in northern Europe in the cold 1800s), and besides, Himalayan Glaciers will melt. Whatever. Street — probably watches the ABC — so he doesn’t realize the WHO projections are based on models that might as well be magic spells. As for floods, 1,000 years of paleohistory shows that, if anything, floods and droughts were longer and worse. Climate change is bringing us… nicer weather. Tough eh?

“We can tell ocean levels aren’t rising by looking at Manly Beach”

Street thinks global sea levels are rising at 3mm a year (still a tiny amount) because he believes the IPCC, and probably doesn’t know that 1,000 tide gauges estimateit at 1mm a year, as do detailed studies, and as did the satellites until someone adjusted themup based on one sinking gauge in Hong Kong.

“Carbon dioxide increases agriculture yields”

Poor Street again has to admit this is a lot like what we were taught in primary school (because it’s true, eh?) But he repeats the old Nature study that claims the extra food will be less nutritious. Supposedly if rice has 3% less zinc or 5% less iron, people will die, or then again, if you think about it, no sane person eats rice for its zinc or iron content, and as I calculated, people just need to eat one extra chickpea for every 100g of rice and their nutrition problem is solved. People in abject poverty may not be able to afford that pea, but the answer is to help them get cheap reliable energy so they can get out of poverty, not to panic about small declines in minerals. Bulk carbohydrate crops grow faster in a CO2 rich world. That dilutes the other stuff. It’s just chemistry.

“People prefer clear policy to endless uncertainty”

You can’t push ..it uphill forever. We’ll have uncertainty as long as policies are levitating on a namecalling campaign instead of being based on hard data. If we want certainty we need to drop the pagan belief that our power stations can be used to control the climate.

From the transcript:

It would be wrong to underestimate the strengths of the contemporary West. By objective standards, people have never had better lives. Yet our phenomenal wealth and our scientific and technological achievements rest on values and principles that have rarely been more widely challenged.

To a greater or lesser extent, in most Western countries, we can’t keep our borders secure; we can’t keep our industries intact; and we can’t preserve a moral order once taken for granted. Eventually, something will crystalize out of this age of disruption but in the meantime we could be entering a period of national and even civilizational decline.

In Australia, we’ve had ten years of disappointing government. It’s not just the churn of prime ministers that now rivals Italy’s, the internal divisions and the policy confusion that followed a quarter century of strong government under Bob Hawke and John Howard. It’s the institutional malaise. We have the world’s most powerful upper house: a Senate where good government can almost never secure a majority. Our businesses campaign for same sex marriage but not for economic reform. Our biggest company, BHP, the world’s premier miner, lives off the coal industry that it now wants to disown. And our oldest university, Sydney, now boasts that its mission is “unlearning”.

Of course, to be an Australian is still to have won the lottery of life, and there’s yet no better place to live and work. But there’s a nagging sense that we’re letting ourselves down and failing to reach anything like our full potential.

We are not alone in this. The Trump ascendancy, however it works out, was a popular revolt against politics-as-usual. Brexit was a rejection of the British as well as of the European establishments. Yes, the centrist, Macron, won in France but only by sidelining the parties that had ruled from the start of the Fifth Republic. And while the German chancellor was re-elected, seemingly it’s at the head of an unstable coalition after losing a quarter of her vote.

– The Federal Member for Warringah

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