Will Australia Settle The Global Warming Debate?

With the continuing brouhaha about whether Anthropogenic Global Warming is real or a hoax, it could be that it will be Australia that will finally end the debate, and not the way that AlGore or Dr. Hansen want it to be.

As the US Congress considers the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, the Australian Senate is on the verge of rejecting its own version of cap-and-trade. The story of this legislation's collapse offers advance notice for what might happen to similar legislation in the US—and to the whole global warming hysteria.

Since the Australian government first introduced its Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) legislation—the Australian version of cap-and-trade energy rationing—there has been a sharp shift in public opinion and political momentum against the global warming crusade. This is a story that offers hope to defenders of industrial civilization—and a warning to American environmentalists that the climate change they should be afraid of just might be a shift in the intellectual climate.

Much of this shift is due to a book authored by Australian scientist Ian Plimer, Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science. When a staunch global warming advocate like Australian Paul Sheehan is swayed by Plimer's book and comes to realize global warming is a crock, then it's a pretty good indication that Plimer may have more than enough verifiable evidence that disproves global warming, at least as it applies to human activity. Sheehan writes:

Much of what we have read about climate change, [Plimer] argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modeling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive."…

The Earth's climate is driven by the receipt and redistribution of solar energy. Despite this crucial relationship, the sun tends to be brushed aside as the most important driver of climate. Calculations on supercomputers are primitive compared with the complex dynamism of the Earth's climate and ignore the crucial relationship between climate and solar energy.

To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable—human-induced CO2—is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly.

But that one factor is the entire basis of AGW theory. All other factors are ignored or marginalized. Skeptics are labeled as 'deniers' or 'tools of the oil and coal companies.' No debate is possible because the so-called warmist doctrine must not be questioned in any fashion. But supporting such doctrine becomes more difficult when former supporters of AGW theory look deeper into the data and research and find it doesn't match the theory.

But things like facts don't matter much to many in the US Congress. Instead, it is feelings that matter and if they feel that global warming is the greatest danger (or the greatest opportunity to grab power), then that's all the justification they need to pass draconian measures like the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” bill. Never mind there's no real need for it.