Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Welcome to Fantasy Island!

I have in the past given the title of "Fantasy Island" to the UK for pursuing an impossible approach to carbon dioxide emissions reductions. Over the next week a much bigger island will take that title. On July 1, Australia's carbon tax comes into effect, which has already prompted a new round of cheering and critiquing.

Representative of the cheering, Nature Climate Change has just published an essay that celebrates the tax as a model for other countries, without noting that it has been used intentionally as a political wedge issue making it deeply unpopular, and more importantly, that it will do almost nothing to help Australia to meet its short-term emissions reductions targets. This sort of willful blindness is endemic in climate policy discussions among those calling for action. Perhaps the thinking is that maybe if we pretend, then the fantasy will become real.

A Response to Popular Ad Hominem, err Science, Magazine on Global Warming Skeptics - Forbes

...When skeptics behave badly, its because they are evil.  When climate scientists and their supporters behave badly, its because… skeptics are evil.

I challenge Popular Science, and in fact all of the mainstream media, to stop enabling climate scientists’ in their aversion to replication and debate.  Next time you are going to dedicate 7 full pages to the climate debate, focus on the actual science and scientific positions from the credible, core members of each community rather than writing the thousandth article hypothesizing about how much the Koch family gives to the Heartland Institute.