Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
sometimes leads to heated and protracted arguments, it seldom leads to one side trying to
attribute to their opponents all the basest characteristics of the human species. Yet this is
precisely what happens in the climate change non-debate. Question even one minor factor
in the 'official' story and you are likely to be accused of all sorts of political chicanery and
moral turpitude. I am yet to find a scientist or read a paper which claims that the climate is
not changing. Hence, to label someone as a climate change 'denier' demonstrates that the
accuser believes that without human activity, climate would not change. This is ignorance.
If Australia reduced its CO
2
emissions by 5 per cent by 2020, unvalidated models
by climate 'scientists' predict that there would be a cooling of between 0.0007°C and
0.00007°C. Such temperature changes are experienced by just moving. This temperature
decrease cannot be measured, and such a restriction of emissions is pointless in the light
of the great increase in emissions by the developing world. Surely, few activists would
consider this meaningful. Australia would suffer an alarming fall in its standard of living
and the voluntary act of international environmental kindness would have absolutely no
effect on the global climate. Such a self-destructive sacrifice by Australia would not be
reciprocated by developing nations such as China and India.
The community sits back with a warm glow feeling that by taxing the 'polluter', it has
done something for the planet. They certainly have done something for the planet. The
economically vulnerable have been pushed into fuel poverty. Vulnerable people die earlier,
costs and unemployment increase and, in the Third World, such climate policies create the
continuation of crippling poverty and unnecessary deaths, especially amongst women and
children.
IntheUKoverthelastfiveyears,homeheatingcostshaverisen63percent,realwages
have decreased and an increasing number of the poor spend more than ten per cent of their
income on energy. Energy poor pensioners are spending their days riding in heated buses
to keep warm, a third are leaving parts of their homes cold and rugging up with hats and
scarvesandblanketsandtheyareforcedtostayinbedlongerbecauseofthecostofenergy.
Isthisgreenpolicyabouthelpingthepoororthetriumphofideologyovertried-and-proven
systems?
This warm embrace of feel-good, highly expensive, 'renewable' wind energy has left
the most vulnerable citizens out in the cold. Literally. In Germany, charities report the
power is cut off from more than 300,000 households each year because consumers can't
afford to pay the high costs of 'renewable' green electricity. Some 800,000 Germans are
now described as being in energy poverty. German consumers now will be forced to
pay annually more than €24 billion to subsidise electricity from solar, wind and bio fuel
generatingplantsthatproducedelectricityatamarketpriceofjustover€3billion.Because
of the green dream, Germans now have the highest electricity prices in Europe.
In the UK, green levies for 'renewable' energy are causing energy poverty for 2.4
million British households. There are some 6,000 wind turbines there, with about 1,000
