Twenty three years ago, on this day, September 28, 2000, an Australian Liberal MP went full “black helicopters” during hearings about the Kyoto Protocol, which Australia had signed and was – at least nominally – due to ratify sometime (it didn’t until 2007).
“The Lavoisier Group’s ranting about the risk of invasion by Kyoto eco-fascists has its echo in comments from the Liberal MP and Treaties Committee chairperson, Andrew Thomson. During public hearings of the committee last year, Thomson wondered aloud whether Australia would find itself at the mercy of international greenhouse inspection committees dominated by “hostile” developing countries, and speaking on ABC radio on September 28, (2000) Thomson questioned the “strange notion of inspections like having Richard Butler go into Iraq”.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/stories/s190290.htm
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 369ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the anti-Kyoto anti-climate nutters occasionally let slip in public the full depths of their batshit craziness. Howard had, it was already clear, made up his mind that the Kyoto protocol would not be ratified (that was leaked in September of 1998).
What I think we can learn from this is that climate denial will take you to some odd places.
What happened next
The climate denial keeps going to odd places while we in the reality-based community had to deal with reality. Andrew Thomson’s political career if you can call it that ended as these careers are wont to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Thomson_(Australian_politician)
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.