Mikklesen, J., Money Offered to Prove CO2 Effect, The Observer, Apr 26th 2011
BELIEVERS in the science [sic] of global warming, you now have the chance to spread the word and at the same time make yourself $10,000 richer.
This has to be really simple, as almost everyone from PM Julia Gillard down, including much of our mainstream media, has been telling us it’s a fact – the science says so, anybody who thinks otherwise is a fringe-dwelling extremist, a denier who won’t accept the evidence and doesn’t deserve to be heard.
According to Ms Gillard, climate change is happening and the time is right for a carbon tax.
This could cost Australian families $863 a year, according to a Treasury forecast, but then you might still end up making a profit.
It’s pretty much a moving target, so it depends who you believe and what they are saying this week.
The Treasury forecast was based on a moderate carbon price of $30 a tonne, but chief climate advisor Professor Ross Garnaut (an economist, not a climate scientist, certainly not a rocket scientist) seems to think we will get it all back at the end of a merry money-go-round where the “big polluters” pay, but you won’t; or not a lot, providing you are a low to middle-income earner.
The PM originally said it won’t lighten your wallet because all the tax proceeds would be paid back in compensation, but now Climate Change Minister Greg Combet says we will only get about half back, yet millions of us will actually end up with more in our wallet.
The other half will go to compensating the big polluters but ours will be permanent, theirs will be “transitional”, which probably means at least until the next election.
They haven’t quite figured how the compensation will apply equitably to pensioners, the unemployed, self-funded retirees or mature-aged workers who now pay little or no tax, but we can trust them to sort all that out by about July. And they are not saying how many will still be worse off.
Treasurer Wayne Swan initially claimed the new tax wouldn’t really be a tax because it won’t show on your payslip. But when electricity generators, oil companies, transport operators, food suppliers and major manufacturers pass on their costs, try telling that to your mortgage holder or landlord while you wait for your compensation package.
If all this sounds too confusing, that’s when the lazy $10k prize on offer could really come in handy. All you have to do is come up with empirical evidence that “increasing atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel burning drives global warming”.
Victorian locomotive engineman Peter Laux has pledged the prize in a statutory declaration witnessed by a police officer, and the challenge is open for 20 years .
Ms Gillard says the overwhelming evidence of “climate change” (I think she means the human-caused variety) is “accepted by every reputable climate scientist in the world”, so just hop on to Google and track that evidence down.
But wait, there are just a few apparent “disreputables” who don’t accept it, so perhaps you should check them out too: international scientists Prof. Richard Lindzen, Henrik Svensmark, John Christy, Dr Ferenc Miskolczi, Dr Miklos Zagoni, our own Prof. Bob Carter, Ian Plimer, Dr David Evans and many others including more than 30,000 scientists who signed a petition in the US stating that CO2 was not causing dangerous climate change.
Prof. Carter and Dr Evans have written numerous articles on the topic, including one in Quadrant Online co-authored by Alan Moran, an economist specialising in energy policy. They debunk the government’s case for human-induced climate change and a carbon tax, point by point.
But don’t be put off, surely with the overwhelming scientific consensus we keep hearing about, the truth really is out there? Peter Laux just wants you to find it.
He describes himself as a “militant trade unionist” – a member of the oldest rail union in the world, the Locomotive Division of the Rail Tram and Bus Union (RTBU), and vice-president of his local branch. He says:
“I have watched over the past couple of decades as the so-called left side of politics has been easily duped, co-opted and corralled by the Northern Hemisphere elite over the issue of the Greenhouse Effect or Global warming or Climate Change or Climate Chaos or whatever new slick PR advertising spin they need to use today.”
AGW proponents constantly claim “overwhelming evidence” and yet incredibly never show any…
“For those who despise the source of their prosperous lives and wish to burden those who can least afford it with carbon taxes and cripple the development in the Third World, I offer you $10,000 (AUS) for a conclusive argument based on empirical facts that increasing atmospheric CO2 from fossil fuel burning drives global climate warming.”
That won’t be as easy as we first thought, but are you up to the challenge?
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8 comments:
An Aussie, of course!
Surprised that it got into the msm!
Great post! Our prospector, Louis, won't be pleased that it was a union man!
Have you read Alfred De Grazia?
The funnies thing about this post is how the cartoonist employs the actual image of religious oppression and dogmatic thinking that put the planet on the road it's on now.
It is the religious folks who placed Mankind at the center of the Universe, convinced everybody they were special, the we had Dominion over the Earth and could not harm it.
Oh. And Oils plays the Nazi card. Way to Science!
Fungus,
Yes I have read Alfred De Grazia, I am friends with him on Facebook, and I quote him frequently. Proud to be a post-Velikovskian Saturnist.
"post-Velikovskian Saturnist" is what exactly? Someone who beleives the Earth was a satellite of Saturn at some point?
Is there any evidence of this?
A post-Velikovskian Saturnist is someone (like De Grazia) who recognizes the importance of Saturn in history.
"First of all the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Cronos [Saturn] when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods." -- Hesiod, poet, Works and Days, 8th century B.C.
"Again, we have been often told of the reign of Cronos [Saturn]." -- Plato, philosopher, The Statesman, 360 B.C.
"There was in their city [Carthage] a bronze image of Cronus [Saturn], extending his hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit with fire. ... Also the story passed down among the Greeks from ancient myth that Cronus [Saturn] did away with his own children appears to have been kept in mind among the Carthaginians through this observance." -- Diodorus Siculus, historian, Library of History, Book XX, 1st century B.C.
"The second star is that of Sol; others say is Saturn. Eratosthenes claims that it is called Paethon, from the son of Sol. Many have written about him -- how he foolishly drove his father's chariot and set fire to the earth. Because of this he was struck with a thunderbolt by Jove [Jupiter], and fell into the river Eridanus, and was conveyed by Sol to the constellations." -- Gaius J. Hyginus, author, Astronomica, Book II, 1st century B.C.
"... Augustus Caesar, true child of a god, who shall establish again for Latium a golden age in that very region where Saturn once reigned." -- Virgil, poet, The Aeneid, Book VI, 1st century B.C.
"... shrink not from our welcome, but know in the Latian race the true people of Saturn, kept in righteousness by no band of law, but by our own instinct and the rule of our parent-god." -- Virgil, poet, The Aeneid, Book VII, 1st century B.C.
"The first change came from Saturn, who arrived from skyey Olympus, flying from the arms of Jove, a realmless exile." -- Virgil, poet, The Aeneid, Book VIII, 1st century B.C.
"To you, O Saturn, Zoilus dedicates these chains and these double fetters, his first rings." -- Marcus V. Martialis, poet, Epigram XXIX, 1st century
"... the saying of the Pythagoreans that the sea is Saturn's tears...." -- Plutarch, historian, Moralia: Isis and Osiris, XXXII, 1st century
"... and yet the King of Gods, the first and eldest one, is in bonds [rings], they say, if we are to believe Hesiod and Homer and other wise men who tell this tale about Cronus [Saturn]...." -- Dio Crysostom, philosopher, 1st century
"... he [Pythagoras] called the sea a tear of Saturn...." -- Porphyry, philosopher, 3rd century
"In Orpheus, likewise, Saturn is ensnared by Jupiter...." -- Porphyry, philosopher, Cave of Nymphs, 3rd century
"The last fell to the lot of Cronos [Saturn] the seventh planet. Such he made this seat; having founded the sacred city, he called it by the name of Thebes in Egypt...." -- Nonnus, poet, Dionysiaca, Book V, 5th century
"But this reign [Quetzalcoatl/Venus], like that of Saturn, and the happiness of the world, were not of long duration...." -- Alexander Von Humboldt, naturalist, 1814
"... but how is it possible that the dark and distant planet Saturn can answer to the luminary who 'irradiates the nations like the sun, the light of the gods'?" -- George Rawlinson, historian, Ninip or Nin - His Epithets, 1875
"... by the word 'Sun' we must understand the 'Star of the Sun,' i.e., Saturn...." -- R. Campbell Thompson, historian, 1900
"[R. Campbell] Thompson in his Introduction to his collection of astrological reports has noticed that the planet Saturn was also designated as Shamosh, i.e. 'sun' by the Babylonian-Assyrian astrologers and he quotes the statement of Hyginus to the effect that Saturn was called 'the star of the sun.'" -- Morris Jastrow Jr., historian, Sun and Saturn, 1910
"...'when Shamash stands in the halo of the moon.' Since this phenomenon can only occur at night, Shamash cannot of course be the sun. The proof that it is Saturn is furnished by the astrologers themselves...." -- Morris Jastrow Jr., historian, Sun and Saturn, 1910
"'The planet Saturn is Shamash.'" -- Morris Jastrow Jr., historian, Sun and Saturn, 1910
"Helios and Kronos were one and the same god." -- Franz Boll, philologist, 1916
"In China, Saturn has the title of 'Genie du pivot,' as the god who presides over the Center, the same title which is given to the Pole star. This is puzzling at first, and so is the laconic statement coming from Mexico: 'In the year 2-Reed Tezcatlipoca changed into Mixcouatl, because Mixcouatl has his seat at the North pole and, being now Mixcouatl, he drilled fire with the first fire sticks for the first time." -- Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend, polymaths, 1969
"What has Saturn, the far-out planet to do with the pole? Yet, if he cannot be recognized as the 'genie of the pivot,' how is it possible to support Amlodhi's claim to be the legitimate owner of the Mill?" -- Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend, polymaths, 1969
"It is the Golden Age, in Latin tradition, Saturnia regna, the reign of Saturn; in Greek, Kronos. In this dim perplexing figure there is an extraordinary concordance throughout world myths. In India it was Yima; in the Old Persian Avesta it was Yima xsaeta, a name which became in New Persian Yamshyd; in Latin Saeturnus, then Saturnus. Saturn or Kronos in many names bad been known as the Ruler of the Golden Age ...." -- Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend, polymaths, 1969
Great quotes!
History trumps science, as you say!
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