Australia

Inconvenient nonsense infiltrates the classroom

IN 2006, former US vice-president Al Gore made a movie and companion book about global warming called An Inconvenient Truth. Gore undertook many speaking tours to publicise his film, and his PowerPoint slide show has been shown by thousands of his acolytes spreading a relentless message of warming alarmism across the globe.

But while audiences reacted positively and emotionally to the film's message - which was that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming - some independent scientists pointed out that An Inconvenient Truth represented well-made propaganda for the warming cause and presented an unreliable, biased account of climate science.

For nowhere in his film does Gore say that the phenomena he describes falls within the natural range of environmental change on our planet. Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.

No need to lead from the front on ETS action

KEVIN Rudd was right to ditch, or at least postpone for a lengthy period, the emissions trading scheme. Meanwhile Tony Abbott has made an important and strangely unreported speech, setting out his policy on immigration, which is almost as important, strategically, as the Prime Minister's position on the ETS.

The Opposition Leader's speech does as much good for the nation as Rudd's position on the ETS. Both, I believe, have been misinterpreted.

Rudd has said all along that under his leadership Australia would do no more and no less than the rest of the world in combating climate change. In an interview with me in 2008, Rudd said he thought any international deal would be extremely difficult to achieve. He also made it explicitly clear that his government's approach would involve flexibility. If the global consensus was for more aggressive action, Australia would be more ambitious. If the global consensus was for slow action, Australia would similarly adjust.

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