Ten years ago, on this day, April 18, 2013, Liberal Party bullshit about “soil carbon” was revealed to be nonsense.
18 April 2013:[ABC investigative television programme] Lateline follows up with CSIRO on soil carbon and proves again that Greg Hunt’s soil carbon plan would require up to “two thirds of the land mass of Australia.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 398.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The Liberal and National Party opposition had been hammering the Gillard government on the so-called “carbon tax” and proposing a so-called “direct action” scheme, despite pleadings from business. “Direct Action” (nice name, shame about the science) was based on heroic (i.e. bullshit) assumptions about lots of things, including the ability of soil to absorb carbon…. So, Greg Hunt, Liberal opposition spokesman on climate (who had written an Honours thesis on carbon trading in 1990) was out there spouting all sorts of nonsense. And getting pushback, but so what, eh?
What I think we can learn from this
Facts don’t matter, when there is a vast propaganda machine defending anyone spewing useful non-facts.
What happened next
On 19 April 2013: Climate Spectator points out mysteries, questions and problems after Greg Hunt’s address to ANU. The [Labor] Government also releases a detailed line by line rebuttal of Greg Hunt’s speech.
The Liberal National coalition became the government. “Direct Action” was “tried” – and guess what, to precisely nobody’s surprise, emissions went up.
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.