Seventeen years ago, on this day, March 5th, 2007, an Australia politician who had already scuppered a national Emissions Trading Scheme in 2000 came out and said what he was “thinking.”
A SENIOR Federal Government minister has expressed serious doubts global warming has been caused by humans, relying on non-scientific material and discredited sources to back his claim.
One month after a United Nations scientific panel delivered its strongest warning yet that humans were causing global warming, the Finance Minister, Nick Minchin, has questioned the link between fossil fuels and greenhouse gas pollution.
In a letter he wrote on March 5 to Clean Up Australia’s founder, Ian Kiernan, Senator Minchin took issue with Mr Kiernan’s criticism of the minister’s scepticism.
Frew, W. 2007. Minchin denies climate change man-made. Sydney Morning Herald, 15 March.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384.8ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Minchin, who was only from a very small and frankly not very bright state, South Australia, had been a knuckle-dragger and knuckle bruiser on climate for some time. He had successfully defeated the first effort to get an emissions trading scheme through Howard’s cabinet in August of 2000. Climate change had in about September of 2006, exploded onto the Australian public’s consciousness, for want of a better word, and Minchin was fighting the culture war.
What I think we can learn from this is that the idiotic beliefs of idiotic people can have enormous consequences if those people can call themselves senators and so forth, and sit around the table where the decisions are being made. And so it was.
What happened next
An Emissions Trading Scheme was eventually passed in 2012 and then abolished less than two years later. Thanks Tony Abbott and Rupert Murdoch and all the crumb maidens…
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
March 5, 1950 – first computer simulation of the weather…
March 5, 2011 – Australian “wingnuts are coming out of the woodwork”