SCIENCE: Global-warming - myth, threat or opportunity? - 27 September 2008

Those who claim a high degree of scientific certainty regarding global warming can only be woefully uninformed, overly impressed with themselves or less than honest. There are serious doubts and uncertainties about every aspect.
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• Most important of all, global temperatures have declined markedly in both hemispheres over the past two years, with widespread record and near record lows.

The current cooling was unpredicted by any models. Although warming advocates have tried to dismiss it as only natural internal variability, they have previously strongly denied any such possibility in connection with warming.
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The proposed carbon taxes will only result in a vast new windfall for government, large cost/price increases and economic recession. Emission-trading is set to become a huge new non-productive industry of wealth redistribution with little or no actual reduction in emission beyond what is effected by economic decline.

The world is headed for an energy crisis with consequences we have not even begun to appreciate. Australia is better positioned to cope than any other nation. The only thing holding us back is blind adherence to an ill-founded belief that daily becomes more hysterical, in denial of conflicting evidence, contrary to sound science and detached from climate itself.

The choice is unambiguous. We can either adhere to the dogma of the eco-cult and suffer immense self-inflicted hardship, or risk an increasingly dubious prophecy to take a clear path to the future.

Seldom is the way forward so obvious. One path goes down easy street; the other takes a detour through Jonestown. The political leaders who recognise this and present it to the electorate will be the next government.
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- Walter Starck is one of the pioneers in the scientific investigation of coral reefs. He grew up in the Florida Keys and received a PhD in marine science from the University of Miami in 1964. This article is reproduced from National Observer (Council for the National Interest, Australia), No. 77, Winter 2008.