Nineteen years ago, on this day, May 15th, 2007, a stupid politician is stupid,
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, March 15.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/minchin-denies-climate-change-manmade/2007/03/14/1173722560417.html#
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that there’s a kind of Australian politician who takes delight in what we now call “owning the libs” and being a hate figure. They believe that they are somehow heroic Galileos, defending Western civilization or some such. Nick Minchin is one of those, and in 2000 he led the successful campaign to defeat an emissions trading scheme in John Howard’s second cabinet.
The specific context was that the climate issue had burst back into public prominence in September, October, 2006 for a variety of reasons, including the Millennium drought, Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, a fracturing business consensus about Kyoto ratification and the ongoing IPCC process, all of which were taken and being taken advantage of by Labor, the opposition party. In December 2006 Kevin Rudd had become Labor leader, toppling Kim Beasley, and had used climate change as one of his two sticks to beat John Howard with. So here we see the Liberals feeling cornered and flustered, but you can always rely on someone like Nick Minchin to say the stupidest thing possible.
What I think we can learn from this. Some people are just well, they’re who they are.
What happened next. The climate wars continued unabated. The most vicious period was maybe 2011 because we had a female prime minister who was “intentionally barren” trying to do the smallest, most inadequate thing to put a price on carbon dioxide. And those climate wars bubble under today, and you have the problem being that there is no competitive consensus, and that you have a Labor party that has basically given up on everything except being in power.
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:
May 15, 1932 – great deluge forecast by science, reports New York Times… – All Our Yesterdays
May 15, 1950 – Getting Warmer? Asks Time Magazine… – All Our Yesterdays
May 15, 1963 – JFK gets told “Yeah, Rachel Carson was Right”
May 15, 1972 – Clean Air Conference in Melbourne – All Our Yesterdays
May 15, 2006 – Australian Prime Minister John Howard spouting “nuclear to fix climate” nonsense