Climate madness from candidate for Higgins

Very green

Sorry, did you expect anything else? It’s the Greens we’re talking about. I think The Australian publishes Clive Hamilton’s alarmist rant tongue-in-cheek, so if you want a laugh, here we go. By the way the headline is “Alarmists create a climate of fear.” Sorry, “Sceptics create a climate of fear.”

The Right has jettisoned science in favour of deeper beliefs. [And I guess the green left, and Rudd, are still beacons of scientific impartiality? Think Lowy – Ed] One can only hope Kevin Rudd backs his strong words with leadership in Copenhagen, although his willingness to emasculate the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in response to industry lobbying doesn’t augur well.

In Australia and the US, climate change is the most important arena for the long-running culture war of the neo-conservatives. In pursuit of their goals they have tapped into primitive fears. [Yeah, that’s right. Only redneck religious nuts question global warming – Ed]

Last week Czech President Vaclav Klaus finally gave in to irresistible pressure and signed the Lisbon Treaty aimed at streamlining the operation of the European Union. Klaus resisted to the end because he believed adopting the treaty meant the Czech Republic would cease to be a sovereign state, despite the fact none of the 26 other EU members or the two houses of the Czech parliament entertained such fears.

This is relevant because Klaus is an anti-warming fanatic, declaring it to be a plot by the UN to achieve world government. [Er, yes, and your point is? – Ed]

Klaus shares this preposterous fear of the UN with right-wing militias in the US and the membership of our Lavoisier Group of climate sceptics set up by Hugh Morgan, which wrote in all seriousness that the Kyoto protocol represented a threat to our sovereignty comparable to Japan’s planned invasion in World War II. [Why don’t you go and read the draft treaty for Copenhagen, and then have another think about it? – Ed]

The climate debate has shown just how precarious is modern humankind’s commitment to scientific evidence and the claims of rationality. [My commitment to scientific evidence is fine, thanks. Maybe you should think whether yours is too – Ed.] It suggests that for many the Enlightenment was never more than a veneer used to cover deeper attachments to a belief in how the world should be, rather than how science and reason say it is.

The progress made during the Enlightenment is being wound back thanks to alarmists like you who have an ideological, quasi-religious fervour about climate change, divorced from science or evidence. Voters of Higgins, you have been warned.

Read it here.