140701 - gc - sp - climate change conference slides

Climate change: Where the Horror and Comedy Genres Collide

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TITLE SLIDE

Thank you and acknowledgements.

BIO SLIDE

I am not a scientist.

So I won’t attempt to prove nor disprove the impact man

is having on the temperature of the planet.

I am not a climatologist.

I am an elected representative in the Australian

Parliament so I would prefer to talk about my

constituents – what they think, how they live, and how

policy around climate change has an impact on their

daily lives.

I am also a fan of the television series – Star Trek.

TREK SLIDE

Now I am talking about original Trek - where Captain

Kirk knew how to deal with destructive green beasts

long before the show went all liberal and the enterprise

started saving whales.

So I know good science fiction when I see it.

And that is what I have seen in the climate change

debate – a lot of fiction dressed up as science.


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Most great works of fiction end up on the silver screen

so it was inevitable that climate change would become a

“major motion picture”.

DIRECTOR CUT SLIDE

But a screenwriter has several angles to work with and

which one they choose depends on whereabouts on the

climate change timeline they pick up the story.

Early on in the piece, it is a disaster-cum-thriller plot as

prophets warn of the impending doom of mankind and

the planet.

The story then lurches towards a slasher-style horror

flick as ever more graphic descriptions are used to scare

people into submission.

Finally, the plot descends into a farcical comedy as

government and environmental terrorists make

ridiculous suggestions about how mankind will control

the planet.

In Australia, we have crossed that point where the horror

genre is descending into a comedy.

The Australian political scene has been dominated – for

the past seven years – by the global warming debate

and the political response to hysteria.


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Global Warming and its new incarnation, Climate

Change, claimed one Opposition Leader and then two

consecutive Prime Ministers in the Australian

Parliament.

Australia is the obvious location for filming when the

next blockbuster goes into production - Climate Change:

The Movie.

But it wouldn’t be the first time a movie has been made

about climate change.

In 1995, Universal Pictures launched the most

expensive movie ever made (at the time).

WATERWORLD SLIDE

Waterworld, starring Kevin Costner, cost $235 million to

bring to the silver screen but it grossed just $88 million

at the North American box office.

In you weren’t in one of those empty theatres,

Waterworld is a science fiction movie with a plot so far-

fetched even escapist movie-goers couldn’t buy it.

In this post-apocalyptic world, the polar ice caps have

melted and the Earth is flooded – seriously flooded –

leaving just the peak of Mount Everest sticking out of the

water.

In Waterworld, the protagonist was Kevin Costner.


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FLANNERY SLIDE

In Australia, we had a snake oil salesman by the name

of Tim Flannery.

Flannery is a palaeontologist, environmental activist and

global warming alarmist.

He was also appointed the head of Australia’s Climate

Change Commission in 2011 on the basis of providing

an “independent and reliable” source of information for

all Australians.

He failed.

The Commission was also supposed to build a

consensus to support a carbon tax.

He failed.

And this is the reason why he failed.

None of his hysterical claims and forecasts have come

true. Most have been spectacularly wrong.

As the Chief Snake Oil Salesman, Flannery was

supposed to build a consensus.

But the more he pushed the scaremongering envelope,

the more people turned off.


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Flannery didn’t predict seawater level rising to a

Waterworld extent.

But he did say this:

“Picture an eight-storey building by a beach. Then

imagine waves lapping its roof.”

If you’ve ever seen a tourism commercial for Australia,

you would know every Aussie home has a sandy beach

at the front doorstep and a kangaroo in the backyard.

WHITSUNDAY SLIDE

Every State capital in Australia is on the coast and more

than 80% of the population lives within 50km of the

coast.

So Flannery casts a pretty big net when he tries to scare

the wits out of coastal communities and capital cities.

And if they weren’t frightened enough to buy his snake

oil, he also believed Perth, the capital city of the largest

Australian State, would run out of water:

FLANNERY CARTOON SLIDE

“Perth will be the 21st Century’s first ghost metropolis.”

This is a familiar theme in Flannery’s prophecies.


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He said Sydney’s water supply would be dry in as little

as two years.

He said “even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill

our dams and our river systems.”

He said that Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane “need

desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18

months”.

Flannery’s disaster/thriller plot was turning into a horror

movie.

But Brisbane didn’t need desalinated water because the

rains Flannery said would never come DID come.

FLOOD 1 SLIDE

Floods in 2010 and 2011 forced the evacuation of

thousands of people from Brisbane and more than 70

other towns. The floods we were told would never come

killed 38 people and caused more than $2 billion in

damages.

We were told our dams would never be filled again but

Wivenhoe Dam reached 190 per cent of capacity.

FLOOD 2 SLIDE

Three-quarters of Queensland was declared a disaster

zone and the Queensland floods were followed later that


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year by more disastrous floods in the southern state of

Victoria.

But former global warmists who prophesied about

drought have now switched to become climate changers

to account for floods being a sign of man’s carbon sins

as well.

The truth is Australia is no stranger to either.

DOROTHEA SLIDE

The poet, Dorothea Mackellar, penned her most famous

verse about Australia:

“I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.”

Mackellar penned that verse more than a century ago.

More than a century ago – in 1896 – a heatwave

stretched across Australia for weeks. The death toll

reached 437 people in the eastern states.

And yet, a heatwave in 2009 has been sold as the worst

in 150 years. This claim is assisted by a convenient


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“deleting” of history, which has been “justified” with

claims of poor thermometer placements.

Alarmists claim thermometers were placed in the sun.

In 1896, the temperature in Bourke was at or above 102

degrees F for 24 days straight. In Brewarrina, the

thermometer read 109 degrees F at midnight.

I don’t know how you put a thermometer in the sun at

midnight in Australia.

The weather and climate in Australia has not changed in

the last century.

But a new religious interpretation has arisen since then.

Now, when we are in a drought, they tell us “lack of rain

is a sign”.

When we are in a flood, they tell us “too much rain is a

sign”.

More hurricanes is a sign.

Fewer hurricanes is a sign.

The sky is blue – it’s a sign.

Gravity! –It’s a sign.


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A new religion is born and those who refuse to kneel

down before the Inconvenient Altar shall be cast out.

AL GORE SLIDE

We had a visitor in Australia two weeks ago.

Al Gore popped in with his constant companion – an

entourage of blizzard-like conditions – freezing

temperatures that are such a constant companion of Al

Gore’s jet-setting that they have inspired a new

meteorological term – the “Al Gore effect”.

Canberra, the Australian capital, was forecasting a warm

start to winter. But a “Polar Goretex” descended to the

southern hemisphere just in time to give Al another cold

reception.

Since the globe has failed to warm, alarmists have

adopted the more non-committal terminology of “climate

change”, which helps explain any inconvenient truths

like lack of warming or record freezes.

But where the alarmists like our Tim Flannery come

unstuck is when they make specific predictions that

prove specifically wrong.

DESAL SLIDE


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In response to the disaster/thriller scaremongering

claims about cities running out of water, Australia built

five desalination plants at a cost of more than $9 billion.

Only one is operating.

Four have been mothballed.

The water from these plants was going to be up to ten

times more expensive for householders than dam water.

But that turned out to be wishful thinking, especially for

plants that didn’t produce a drop of water.

The worst offender is the desalination plant that sits idle

in Melbourne.

The cost of having that desalination plant there –

producing no water at all – is $384 for every single

household in Melbourne.

Every year.

For 30 years.

If it were to produce any water, the cost would increase.

Australian policy-makers were threatened and cajoled

into undertaking farcical desalination projects on the

back of menacing doomsday climate prophecies.


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You would think, after those desalination disasters, that

any sensible government would be too scared to go

back in the water again – certainly not without a bigger

boat.

But they did.

WAVE GENERATOR SLIDE

In 2004, Energetech developed a taxpayer-funded

prototype wave generator off Port Kembla, which broke

free of its pylons and sank.

In 2012, a second prototype, having been

decommissioned, was rusting away.

But if it’s worth doing something dumb once or twice, it’s

worth doing three times.

This year, Oceanlinx (formerly Energetech) reported the

airbags supporting a new 3,000 tonne prototype had

burst and the unit had sunk.

It now looks like a salvage operation will take a year to

remove the wreckage of that alternative energy folly.

Having the carcass of stupidity polluting the marine

environment for the next year is bad enough.


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But that is peanuts compared to what might just be the

dumbest, the weirdest, the most bizarre attempt to fight

carbon that we will ever witness.

The ultimate folly would have left thousands of

carcasses strewn across the continent because global

warmists pointed the finger at farting camels.

CAMEL SLIDE

The climate boffins in Australia produced a 62-page

proposal to issue carbon credits for killing camels.

Can you imagine the chaos that would be created not

just in culling the beasts but in policing the credits.

There would have been an explosion of camel-culling

police – regulators, inspectors, prosecutors and

auditors.

And someone had already wrestled with the problem of

producing more carbon in the process than what might

be saved.

Hence a formula was derived to measure any possible

net gain.

FORMULA SLIDE

A complicated formula it was, too.


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Note that GDgv,c,j,y equals the Ground distance

travelled by vehicle (gv) using fuel type (j) in undertaking

the activities (c) in year (y).

Also note that LPKgv,j equals the litres of fuel type (j)

combusted per kilometre for vehicle (gv).

Got that?

It’s no longer a disaster movie or a horror movie.

At this point, we are seriously in the bowels of a

comedy.

Shooting wild camels, armed with a mathematical

formula and reporting to the camel police might be a job

creator but not a climate solution.

That might have been the thinking of former Australian

Prime Minister Julia Gillard when she floated the idea of

the “green police” to investigate households using too

much power.

Her plan was to require power companies to meet tough

new efficiency standards by conducting audits of their

customers and telling them to upgrade inefficient

appliances.

The green police were to go door-to-door, sticking their

noses into everybody’s lives on behalf of a government

intent on perpetuating the global warming hysteria.


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The Gillard government even provided $3 million in

grants to organisations who could sell their snake oil for

them.

GILLARD SLIDE

By this stage, the Labor Government had already

introduced a carbon tax (which they specifically

promised they would not do) but then started advertising

for help to come up with a reason why we needed a

carbon tax and to sell that idea to the people.

If you listen to the alarmists, there’s no shortage of

reasons why something needs to be done – even if the

reasons are paradoxical.

Even on something as simple as trees, the global

warming alarmists can’t seem to get their story straight

about what the alleged impacts will be.

One day the alarmists are telling us that trees will grow

slower.

The next day they are telling us that trees will grow

faster.

One day trees will be less colourful. The next day they

will be more colourful.

We’ve even heard claims about trees growing on

Antarctica.


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These are actual reported claims made by climate

alarmists that have been made in the media – I kid you

not.

There are plenty of other environmental catastrophes in

the pipeline, according to these media reports.

Global warming will:

Make poison ivy more prevalent and itchier

Change the sex of lizards and make them smarter;

and

Cause volcanic eruptions

That claim about volcanic eruptions might have been

made after an alarmist support group’s hosting of an all-

night volcano movie marathon.

VOLCANO SLIDE

Perhaps they had watched Joe Versus the Volcano,

Dante’s Peak, Volcano, SuperVolcano all through the

night (and finished it off with the 2009 film – 2012)

before thinking: “Wow. That would be a good thing to

blame on climate change”.

It’s hard to tell the difference between an alarmist claim

about global effects and the basic premise of a disaster

movie plot.


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See if you can spot the Hollywood movies among these

animal disaster plots

Tigers eating people

Different shark species interbreeding to producing a

hybrid shark –

JAWS SLIDE

JAWS 7 maybe?

Supersized spiders with a passion for biting

Alligators in the Thames

A herpes epidemic in oysters

Invasions of:

o Alien worms

o Antarctic aliens

o Asian carp

o Cane toads

o Caterpillars

o Cats

o Herons

o Jellyfish

o King crabs

o Lampreys

o Midges

o Pine beetles

o Rats

o Slugs

o Stingrays


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o Walruses; OR

All of the above

I don’t know how many of those have been made into

movies, but every single one of them is a global

warming claim.

PENGUIN SLIDE

And spare a thought for the penguins.

Apparently:

o Their chicks will be frozen

o Their chicks will be smaller

o Penguins will be in the dark

o Their populations will be devastated

o Their sex lives affected; and

o Penguins will be replaced by jellyfish

WOLVERINE SLIDE

We can also expect the extinction of the Wolverine (sad

news for Hugh Jackman and the X-men franchise).

The news is no better for humans.

Hollywood already has a list of disease disaster movies

to scare audiences, with the likes of Outbreak, 28 Days

Later, I Am Legend, Slither, Children of Men, 12

Monkeys, Blindness, Quarantine, and Resident Evil.


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But screenwriters need look no further for inspiration

than alarmist claims that global warming will:

Cause stress, anxiety, and depression

Increase the incidence of Post Traumatic Stress

Cause an explosion of asthma in children

Cause bubonic plague outbreaks

Make us all fat; and

Release ancient viruses into the atmosphere

Apparently society is already crumbling in Africa with a

decline in circumcision and marriage due to global

warming.

That’s the theory of Australia’s own alarmist and Snake

Oil Salesman – Tim Flannery.

According to the alarmists, if we don’t do something to

cool the planet, we will see an escalation of “intelligence

and spying wars” as well as rioting and nuclear war.

Global warming already has been described as a

Weapon of Mass Destruction.

But if you really want a bizarre plot line, there’s a whole

solar system and universe out there to be impacted by

camels farting.


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According to the alarmists, global warming has already

caused the Earth to tilt, changing the sun and stars we

see in the sky.

And it gets worse.

There will be more asteroid strikes and more UFO

sightings.

But global warming will prevent contact with alien

civilisations.

And through all this, we will have to deal with:

ZOMBIES SLIDE

The dead rising from their graves … not in the

zombie way but with water levels rising, dead

bodies will be pushed out of the ground

More executions of witches in Tanzania

A prostitute shortage in Bulgaria

Increased cannibalism

More amorous cats

LOCH NESS SLIDE

And the death of the Loch Ness Monster … Nessie

hunter Robert Rines has ended his 37-year search

because apparently she is dead – possibly the

victim of global warming.


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And the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise will

have an unlimited supply of new plot lines.

According to Chief Climatologist for alarmist group

Climate Central, Heidi Cullen, in her book, “The Weather

of the Future”, she claims pirates will run rampant in a

globally warmed world.

I look forward to Johnny Depp doing Pirates of the

Antarctic.

Finally, some movie screenwriters were obviously ahead

of their time with classic flicks like:

Unfaithful; and

Indecent Proposal

Because Global Warming is already causing women to

cheat on their husbands.

CHEATING SLIDE

There have been several reports now of extra-marital

affair websites claiming that global warming is causing

their clients to stray – women more often than men.

But women are getting the rough end of the deal

because there’s also claims that climate change will kill

more women than men.


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Now that we know what global warming will cause –

pretty much everything – let’s look at what an alarmist

response looks like.

Not just a thought bubble response but an actual Act-of

Parliament response.

$23/TONNE SLIDE

Australia’s previous government introduced a carbon tax

two years ago, taxing companies $23 per tonne of CO2

emissions.

The fixed price increased to $24.15 after the first year

and rose again on July 1 to $25.40.

A shotgun inquiry was conducted into the tax but the

inquiry was given just three weeks and was forced to

start blindfolded.

There was no legislation drafted and the modelling that

had been done on the impact of the carbon tax was not

released until minutes before the inquiry began.

I was appointed to the carbon tax inquiry as an

Opposition MP and had the opportunity to grill Ross

Garnaut, an economist behind the originally-proposed

cap and trade legislation, who had been brought in to

sell the new carbon tax.

GARNAUT SLIDE


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I asked Garnaut: “Is it a distortion of reality to state that

regional communities and industries are likely to

become more vulnerable to the impacts of this

legislation than urban centres due to their reliance on

agriculture and other natural resource-based industries

and low levels of infrastructure stock?

He replied: “I do not think it is true.”

That was was an interesting response because I was

quoting chapter 16 of his report, “Sharing the burden in

Australia”.

Garnaut knew exactly what the impact of the carbon tax

would be on industry, on businesses, and on families.

He knew that a carbon tax like the one being proposed –

the biggest and widest carbon tax in the world – would

place Australian industry at a competitive disadvantage.

He knew that industries would be forced to close down.

He knew that people would lose their jobs over this

carbon tax.

And he knew that Australian emissions would still go up

after the carbon tax was introduced.

But he was a salesman first and an economist second.


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A Deloitte Report showed that my home State of

Queensland would be the worst-affected under the

carbon tax.

It also showed the region I represent would be the

worst-affected in the state.

Our main agricultural industry, growing sugarcane,

would cop an $81 million slug due to the carbon tax.

In an industry where 87 per cent of the crop is exported

overseas, a carbon tax would place local growers at a

competitive disadvantage.

WHITSUNDAY SLIDE

The same story applied to tourism where the majority of

tourists in the world-famous Whitsundays (in my

electorate) were from overseas.

A report predicted that a $26 per tonne carbon tax would

drive $266 million of domestic tourism offshore and

reduce inbound international tourism by around $457

million.

An independent report warned a number of mines would

close down and 4000 jobs would be lost under the

carbon tax.


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So we knew, before the carbon tax was introduced, just

how much damage it would do to our three key

industries.

And still it was introduced in one of the greatest acts of

economic self-harm ever enacted by an Australian

parliament.

Of the 150 members in the House of Representatives –

149 went to the election promising NOT to have a

carbon tax.

Only one member promised to advocate for it and a

hung parliament meant that one person’s party – the

Greens party – had the power to destroy people’s lives

for no benefit to the environment.

SUBMISSIONS SLIDE

The carbon tax inquiry received more than 4,500

submissions on the carbon tax but the committee only

accepted about 350.

I attempted to table the overlooked submissions – a two-

foot high stack – in parliament but the Labor-Greens

alliance denied those voices.

And so, Australia went out and led the world – in folly –

and nothing happened to change the world nor the

planet’s temperature.


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We still have droughts. We still have floods.

The tropics are still warm and Antarctica is still cold.

In fact, alarmists are now even trying to blame the next

ice age on global warming.

They have to because of an Inconvenient Truth about

the expansion of ice in the Antarctic.

At the end of last year, Chris Turney led an expedition of

“tourists” and climate activists to the Antarctic, retracing

the voyage of the explorer, Douglas Mawson.

SHIP OF FOOLS SLIDE

But the Expedition of Irony was trapped in ice they were

there to prove didn’t exist.

Not only was this “Ship of Fools” stranded in sea ice

some 70km from where Mawson landed, the ship sent to

rescue them also became stranded.

Before the expedition, their claims were that “loss of sea

ice is a sign of global warming”.

After the expedition, their claims changed to “too much

sea ice is a sign of global warming”.

It’s time we called Kevin Costner back into service.


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The remake of Waterworld should be Iceworld because

even if the planet were up Mount Everest’s neck in ice, it

would still be the fault of global warming.

And I’d like to leave you with one final prediction that we

look forward to celebrating.

Because in all of these claims, the alarmists were bound

to set a deadline that they could be held to account on.

This one came from Australia’s then chief scientist,

Professor Penny Sackett.

5 YEARS TO ACT SLIDE

She warned that the planet had just five years to avoid

disastrous global warming.

That claim was published in the Herald Sun on

December 4, 2009.

Less than five months out from the deadline, we are

expecting the next apocalypse movie to be enacted in

real life.

Perhaps I will see you at the premiere on December 4.

Then again, I am guessing it’s going to be a complete

flop, like all the other climate change disaster plots have

turned out to be or will turn out to be.

140701 - gc - sp - climate change conference slides

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