Money Offered to Prove CO2 Effect

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?

Global Cooling Spells Trouble For U.S. Bee Population

AFP: Bitter winter spells trouble for US bee population.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – America's dwindling honey bee population has been badly hit by the bitter winter, the harshest in decades, with experts warning that winter losses could be as high as 50 percent.

Beekeepers normally lose around 10 percent of their colonies during the wintertime, when food stores are low and bees are confined to the hive.

But preliminary estimates indicate that this year, losses will be between 30 to 50 percent, said David Mendes, president of the American Beekeeping Federation.
"There are a lot of beekeepers who are in trouble" he said.

"Under normal condition you have 10 percent winter losses.. this year there are 30, 40 to 50 percent losses."

Winter figures showing the extent of the seasonal loss, are to be published in April.