October 29, 2006 | Graham

Wayne Swan a casualty in the CO2 wars?



The Greenhouse debate seems to have swung firmly in the favour of the global warming alarmists, even as the science, and the IPCC reports, are tending in the other direction, and as happens when the public relations hacks really get their teeth into something, truth is replaced by half-truth and then plain hyperbole.
The master of political hyperbole is Wayne Swan, but his latest prouncement is the most hyper I’ve seen yet.
Not only is Wayne pitching for a carbon free future – what sort of a life form does he really think he is – but he’s predicting that if we don’t do something about carbon dioxide now we will all asphyxiate.
Talking yesterday on AM about a preview briefing he had received on the “Stern Report” he said:
“…going carbon-clean is the only growth strategy for the future, and the only way we can maintain prosperity in the world”
and then more alarmingly:
“Well the Chinas and the Indias will come in if we put in place the incentives. They recognise that they have to reduce carbon emissions in their economy if they want their people to breathe and if they want to maintain a prosperous economy into the future.”
More chance of them asphyxiating by putting their collective heads into brown-paper bags, which is what Swan should do with his, than from cabon dioxide emissions.
Apart from his ignorance of the facts, this statement also illustrates Swan’s poor grasp of mathematics, surely a flaw in a would-be Treasurer. How could have made this statement after prattling on earlier in the interview about CO2 in parts per million? At 550 ppm, the level Swan was predicting in 50 years time, we’re talking carbon levels less than a percent, and plenty of oxygen for all!
Full marks to ABC journalist Gillian Bradford for getting these remarkable statements out of Swan. She’s one of the few journalists who appears to be across her brief on this issue.



Posted by Graham at 7:12 am | Comments (8) |
Filed under: Environment

8 Comments

  1. Science has yet to decide what form of life Wayne Swan is.
    The whole ragbag of ideas coming from the likes of Swan, and now more “respectable” politicians will, like so many other wild theories, prove to be wrong. The worst part of it is that we will all have to bear the cost and deprivations of the wacky ideas they are espousing – just as we always do.
    Oh, for a group of politicians with more than one brain between among them.

    Comment by Leigh — October 30, 2006 @ 9:29 am

  2. Is this a joke? Do you really believe there is no threat to life from global warming? Have you been to Beijing and tried to breathe the air? Are you insane? Are you unaware of the pacific islands already sinking as the seas rise? I hope you live on a canal estate.

    Comment by peter — October 30, 2006 @ 11:17 am

  3. Have you checked the tide gauges in the South Pacific recently? Sea levels have been rising all over the world for centuries, but that doesn’t mean anyone is about to get wet feet anytime soon.
    As for CO2 and Beijing, CO2 is a colourless and odourless gas. You’ll find the problem in Beijing isn’t CO2 but all the particulates they aren’t scrubbing from their smokestacks.
    Here’s a question for you – bothered to read any of the science on the issue? Or are you just backing your prejudices?

    Comment by Graham Young — October 30, 2006 @ 12:42 pm

  4. Peter, AYE. I worked in Beijing. That yellow sky on dry cold winter days isn’t CO2 – it is particulates and photochemical smog. CO2 is THE vital plant food; and in Europe, growers enrich their greenhouses with it to make their veges grow better. Back in the warm wet Eocene paradise, 50 million years ago – when many of our plant families evolved – CO2 in the atmosphere was x5 that of today. BEE. Only 20,000 years ago, at the Last Glacial Maximum, sea level was 130 metres lower than now. Coral atolls in the equatorial Pacific were just above sea level then, and are now. They can keep pace with melting ice – provided humans don’t kill the coral. People and development, not rising seas, are the problem on those atolls.

    Comment by fosbob — October 30, 2006 @ 12:51 pm

  5. Get real, who the hell are you calling alarmists.It’s a pity your teritary edcucation did not teach you to think,that’s if you had one, or you would not just be a headline grabber to ferment your conspiracy view. If you think you have a higher intellect than the majority of scientists you live in fairyland.

    Comment by keith — October 30, 2006 @ 6:10 pm

  6. The Editor of Science magazine has claimed that there is near scientific unanimity on AGW.
    That should be comforting because scientific consensus does not have a very good record of being right. Either factually, or ethically.
    Take poor Galileo; not only was he pilloried by the church, but by the great majority of his peers as well.
    The most shameful period for consensus science was its overwelming embrace of Eugenics at the end of the ninteenth centuary. Hitler later got hold of this and the rest is history.
    Then came ‘Piltdown Man’, again readily embraced by a near unanamous scientific community, which savagaly condemned any of their own who dared to question it. Needless to say P.M. was exposed as the greatest scientific fraud of all time; that is until the IPCC’s ‘Hockey Stick came along and knocked it off its perch.
    And so the list goes on,.. the dire predictions of the ‘Club of Rome’ …and so on.
    Judging by the record, what chance they are right about AGW?

    Comment by Sid Reynolds — October 31, 2006 @ 1:16 pm

  7. how is you beach house situated relative to the tide Leigh?

    Comment by Taz — October 31, 2006 @ 3:06 pm

  8. All this pros and cons,are really talking shit,as an example,take a look around Australia,and see just how white colonisation has ****** the land and its original inhabitants,for sure global warming is a reality,so all this bullshit,about who is right and who is wrong,is bolony,but Wayne Swan is correct

    Comment by Karooseun — November 5, 2006 @ 3:04 pm

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