Climate right for an ugly con job

IF TODAY'S budget bonus left Australians feeling a little out of pocket, they will experience real shock when they read the recommendations in Ross Garnaut's climate change report to be delivered on Friday.

Garnaut, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's old boss from his diplomatic days, was asked to provide the report on April 30, 2007, in one of a number of election stunts organised by Labor's campaign strategists in its successful bid to woo voters from the Howard government. Its terms of reference make plain the Rudd Government's unquestioning belief in human-induced climate change, even though the hypothesis has never been tested and there are no plans for any testing involving the normal guidelines of scientific rigour. Nor have there been any rational or evidence-based explanations for the limited evidence on which the theory of man-made climate change relies. On the one hand, we have falling global temperatures, and on the other, we have the apocalyptic warnings of a band of publicity-seekers like former US vice-president Al Gore and Environment Minister Peter Garrett - and shortly we will have Garnaut's blueprint for Australian policy to be implemented by 2010. Garnaut has no special expertise in this area but that should not be a problem as almost everything to do with climate change coming out of Australia has been based on modelling which has relied on quite specious theoretical premises that require a suspension of all scientific and economic guidelines to be believed. Take for example the CSIRO report for the Climate Institute released just last week. It draws upon the Climate Institute's 2007 modelling which set out a number of "scenarios" - notably not "forecasts", "predictions" or even "projections". Even those who embrace the notion that the world is superheating would realise that the "assumptions" that report was upon including its bizarre belief that the world oil price never rises above $100, when the price for West Texas intermediate is currently at $142, are way off the mark. (Even Treasury's Budget forecast assumes that WTI will average $115 per barrel in 2008-09). The report also assumes that by 2030 all major emitters will be actively engaged in global emission reductions - tell that to the Chinese and the Indians. It also assumes that emission trading will include all carbon dioxide emissions including agriculture, and that carbon prices will range $US30 to $US200/tonne by 2030 and range from around $US100 to $US300 by 2050. (A carbon price of $US300/tonne basically adds around 75c a litre to the price of petrol, tripling the current excise rate of 38.1c.) This is yet another example of the Rudd Government's penchant for making up policy as it goes along, like the appointment of another of Rudd's former bosses, 80-year-old Richard Woolcott, the head of Foreign Affairs, to oversee the formation of a new Asian economic forum, and the nomination of former foreign minister Gareth Evans to chair a new international commission on nuclear non-proliferation disarmament. Evans, who believed he would make an excellent secretary-general of the United Nations but was unable to convince others of the soundness of that proposition, is head of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. He is best remembered there for the bold pronouncement he made about the lack of an imminent threat of Indonesian terrorism while delivering the Wallace Wurth lecture at Sydney University on September 27, 2005. "The judgment I make from our work in the region, Indonesia in particular, is that the risk for us is real but it's basically moderate, not extreme," he said. "The Crisis Group's perception is that the JI regional division that covered Australia has been effectively smashed, and that JI as such no longer constitutes the serious threat to Australia and Australian interests that it previously did. "As to the specific risk posed by terrorist groups operating in and from Indonesia . . . the probability does not seem very high." Four days later, three JI terrorists were killed when they blew themselves up at two Bali sites, Jimabaran and Kuta, murdering 20 and wounding more than 130 others. Not so much a reliable tipster as an old friend, it would seem. Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan are softening the nation up for another kick in the guts with their gloomy prognostications about climate change and the bitter medicine they want to prescribe. Their mantra has been that "the costs of inaction far outweigh the costs of action", which was what Garnaut was charged to explore, begging the question: Why did he bother writing a report when Rudd and Swan knew what the outcome would be anyway? Further, if the costs of inaction by all Australians outweigh the costs of action, why compensate only some people for those costs? (Though I believe everyone should be spared, where possible, the costs of the Rudd Government's lunatic proposals.) Every year new forms of confidence tricks emerge, from blokes selling speakers out of the backs of vans, to wide-boys promising vast returns on investment properties that are never built. Despite police warnings, some people are always ripped off. Climate change and the emission tradings scheme is the latest con.