The Old Men And The CPAC: A Parade Of Hacks, Has-Been Oz Politicians And Tired Climate Lies
Climate science is a fraud, according to one speaker; renewable energy has pushed up electricity prices for Australians and the case that carbon dioxide drives global warming is unproven, according to others.
Those were just some of the themes at last weekend’s annual conference in Sydney of the Conservative Political Action (CPAC) network – billed as the “largest and most prominent conference for conservatives and liberty lovers in Australia”.
Several Coalition figures were in attendance, including the former prime minister Tony Abbott, alongside conservative activists, Sky News presenters and imports such as Brexiteer Nigel Farage. The New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, sent in a video welcome, congratulating the attendees for being “part of a conservative movement that’s driven by big ideas and bold action”. Except that when it came to the climate crisis, the theme – almost without exception – was one of derisive animosity to any action.
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Another keynote handpicked to preach before the CPAC crowd was the veteran climate science denier Prof Ian Plimer, a geologist and mining industry figure. Plimer claimed global temperature records had been tampered with to make modern-day warming seem worse than it was. “We are dealing with a fraud. A scientific fraud from day one,” he said.
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Plimer’s claims are “wrong and wrong”, says Prof David Karoly, a veteran climate scientist at the University of Melbourne. Aside from the basic physics of carbon dioxide causing warming, Karoly pointed to a 2001 UN climate report as one of the earliest to show that CO2 was driving warming. When climate models were run parallel to each other – some with human-caused CO2 added and some without – the “increase in observed global average temperature is only possible with observed increase in CO2 concentrations due to human activity”. Karoly told Temperature Check: “Plimer is not a climate scientist so this is just the same echo chamber that the likes of Donald Trump listen to. Their evidence is based on non-experts where they only listen to views that reinforce their existing perspective.”
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