Menzies House

Warm and well fed, or hungry in the dark?

Vic Forbes asks, which is worse - gradual man-made global warming or sudden electricity blackout?

Alarmists try to scare us by claiming that man’s activities are causing global warming. Whether and when we may see new man-made warming is disputed and uncertain. If it does appear, the world will be slightly warmer, with more evaporation and rainfall; plants will grow better and colonise some areas currently too cold or too dry; fewer old people will die in winter and sea levels may continue the gradual rise we have seen since the end of the last ice age.

Who is Scared of Warmth and Moisture?

Viv Forbes believes climate alarmists talk twaddle. He tells us why we shouldn't worry so much.

A scheming cabal of green bureaucrats, academics and corporate speculators is trying to scare us into a mess of energy taxes, subsidies and rationing in order to combat what they call “catastrophic man-made global warming”.

Climate alarmists speculate that if the level of harmless carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is doubled (which may or may not happen in a century or so), world temperature may be one or two degrees warmer than it would have otherwise been.

The proposition that this mild warming, if it occurs, would be “catastrophic” is so laughable that they had to invent “positive feedbacks” to multiply this scare to maybe six degrees in a century. However the emerging evidence, and Earth’s past history, show that feedbacks are negative – the vast oceans tend to stabilise warming temperatures so that even the two degree forecast is probably excessive.

In many places in Australia, temperature rises about sixteen degrees from dawn to mid-afternoon – over say eight hours, or two degrees per hour. So people who can cope with a daily warming of 16 degrees over 8 hours are supposed to panic about a fudged forecast of two degrees over a century – about the warming we feel in just one hour every morning. Even less “frightening” is the less than one degree of warming that has occurred over the last 200 years.

Why worry about warming anyhow?

The New Dark (Green) Age

Viv Forbes discusses the dark times ahead...

 Last week while driving, I happened to hear part of the farewell speech of Senator Nick Minchin. We will sorely miss people like this stalwart senator. It struck me that this one sad event was like the bell tolling for the new Dark Age to come. In the next few weeks, unless a miracle occurs, and for the first time ever, dark greens and their fellow travellers will gain control of the both houses of parliament in Australia. 

No doubt we have won the battle for the minds of the Australian people – every poll shows a strong majority is opposed to the tax on carbon dioxide. And there is growing scepticism for the claim that man causes climate change. But the green elite, who have never won majority support in their own right, are determined to pursue their destructive goals.

Their long-term agenda is to destroy human industry and reduce human population. Thus they are opposed to farming, mining, fishing, forestry, exploration and cheap power.

Their preferred strategy is to divide and conquer. Their tactics are to grab any real concern and magnify and divert it into another reason to destroy or hobble the industries they hate – cattle, sheep, mining, oil and gas, uranium, farming, forestry, fishing and land developers. Their greatest success is achieved when they harness and inflame one industry and use it to ram another – use farmers to destroy the gas industry, use animal lovers and meat workers to destroy live exports, use small business to attack big business, make all industries compete against one another for a dwindling supply of emission permits, get farmers to fight food retailers, cry crocodile tears about the loss of fertile land, and then lock up grazing land in trees, heritage areas and other sterilised ground. And all the time they use their domination of the government media and education empires to spread their half-truths.

They know that the best way to encourage fights is to destroy all vestiges of defined property rights and to encourage poorly defined and overlapping rights, so that eventually nothing can be done on any property without approval and adjudication from the local green committee.

The Green Guards are coming, and they will be far more oppressive and destructive than Mao's Red Guards.

What do we do?

Obituary for Ron Kitching - Driller, Entrepreneur, Explorer, Intellectual and Family Man

 Viv Forbes deliveres an obituary for Ron Kitching: a true freedom fighter and great Australian hero: 

I first met Ron Kitching in 1966 – he took me to inspect a copper prospect called Mount Colin near Cloncurry. We struck a chord that day and since then our lives seem to have crossed many times over his long life. I never failed to learn something useful or interesting from him.

Ron was never luke warm – he was either engrossed and enthusiastic, or indifferent, or fiercely opposed.

He was engrossed and enthusiastic about exploration, drilling, soils, pastures, cattle, water, the principles of freedom, sound money, classical liberalism, the history of the universe and the battle for carbon sense.

He was fiercely opposed to inflationists, communists, socialists, alarmists and centralists. He believed that freedom, sound money, open science and protection of property rights would work miracles in solving the problems of the human race. He understood clearly how we were getting smothered in bureaucracy and weakened by taxation and debasement of the currency.

Ron started his working life at Mount Isa as a diamond driller when he was 20 years old. Four years later he became one of the founders of Glindemann and Kitching, a renowned Australian drilling company. Probably his greatest achievement was his pivotal role in developing the Universal Drill, now used for exploration drilling all over the world. He told me recently that these drills were being used on every continent on earth.  Ross Large Professor of Economic Geology at the University of Tasmania said:

Inspiring and dedicated people like Ron Kitching have been critical to the success of the mining industry in Australia. In the 1970’s Ron perceived a need for a better drill and worked tirelessly to achieve his goals. He carried a lot of people along with him and he showed us all what can be achieved with a clear vision and a determination to succeed.