A government of climate skeptics?

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We already know that this Government is struggling to produce a coherent climate change policy but how deep does its skepticism run? John Howard gave a speech last night in the UK that suggests very deep. From the SMH:

Mr Howard revealed before the speech that the only book he had read on climate change was Lawson’s An Appeal to Reason: a Cool Look at Global Warming, published in 2008.

…But the book has been attacked by climate experts.

Mr Howard quoted as “compelling” one of Mr Lawson’s claims in the book: that unmitigated warming would leave future generations 8.4 times better off, compared with 9.4 times richer in the absence of climate change (the book in fact uses the numbers 8.5 and 9.5).

That calculation is based on “sleight of hand and faulty logic”, said Bob Ward, policy director at the London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and it ignores the possibility of warming at the higher end of estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Sir John Loughton, lead editor of the first three reports by the IPCC, the UN’s climate panel, called the book “neither cool nor rational”, saying it showed a “surprising ignorance of elementary statistical analysis” and ignored the impact of more frequent floods and droughts.

Tuesday night’s speech was titled “One religion is enough”.

In notes for the speech distributed beforehand, Mr Howard said he chose the title “in reaction to the sanctimonious tone employed by so many of those who advocate … costly responses to what they see as irrefutable evidence that the world’s climate faces catastrophe”.

…”I don’t know whether all of the warnings about global warming are true or not,” he said. “You can never be absolutely certain that all the science is in.

“I am unconvinced that catastrophe is around the corner. I don’t disregard what scientists say. I just don’t accept all of the alarmist conclusions.

“I instinctively feel that some of the claims are exaggerated.”

The arrogance of relying on your instincts when you’ve read just one book on the subject is breathtaking. I don’t know any more than John Howard how bad climate change is – though I’ve read a few more books on the subject – but I’m not going to dispense with the advice of science based upon ignorance and instincts. Why would anyone do that?

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For instance from a UBS report yesterday on the utilities sector:

To emphasize the weight of opinion that lies behind the Government polices we show some quotes from a recent presentation by Professor Andy Pitman to the Investor Group on Climate Change. The IPCC report had
— 259 largely new authors compared to previous report;
— 54,000 review comments from 1089 experts;

sdafas

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal…since 1950s, many observed changes are unprecedented.. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snand and ice have diminished, sea level has risen.

In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983-2012 was likely the warmest 30 year period of the last 1400 years. Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850.”
Source: Presentation to Investor Group on Climate Change

I just don’t get this conservative resistance to science. It used to be the Left that was possessed with irrational fervour for its desired outcomes. Now it’s the Right via some ideological distrust of bureaucracy.

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Liberalism deserves better. It can adapt to collective challenges without this kind of reflexive atavism. Conservatism too should be concerned with the preservation of our system, environment and civilisation. The notion of insurance for unknowable outcomes is an intrinsically conservative one.

It makes no sense to me at all.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.