Andrew Bolt: We can't lose focus on climate facts

Warmists are blind to an unfolding disaster that has left Europe so short of energy, it’s forced Britain to fire up old coal-powered generators.

The headline in Sydney’s Sun-Herald last weekend said it all about the global warming cult: ‘Vindicated’ Tim Flannery unfazed by climate change critics.

It got worse. Flannery, our former Climate Commissioner, was interviewed by virtue-signaller Peter FitzSimons, who told him: “Most sensible people will now concede you were right on warning of the dangers of climate change.”

I don’t think “sensible” means what the essentially frivolous FitzSimons thinks it means.

How could anyone sane think Australia’s most infamous climate alarmist was “right” after his many laughably alarmist predictions?

Here are just some: Flannery in 2005 suggested “drought conditions will become permanent” (false); in 2007 he claimed “even the rains that fall will not actually fill our dams and our river systems” (false); in 2008 he warned of “a world five years from now, when there is no more ice over the Arctic” (false); in 2017 he claimed we’d see cyclones “more frequently in the future” (false); and in 2017 he said the Maldives, Kiribati, and Tuvalu would sink under rising seas (they’ve actually grown).

Former Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery.

So when Flannery is hailed in the Sun-Herald as “vindicated” you know that global warming is a religion that demands faith, never facts.

But there’s now another dud Flannery prediction that shows the global warming cult poses a terrible threat to not just our reason but our wellbeing.

Seven years ago, Flannery claimed Australia was being “left in the wake” of China, which was tackling global warming by “leading the charge on expanding renewable capacity” and “acting to limit coal consumption”.

False again. In fact, Australia has cut its emissions while China massively increased its own, and last week China’s Premier Li Keqiang, frightened by crippling blackouts, ordered his country to burn even more coal.

“We must … ensure the people’s livelihood and heating energy in winter, and ensure the use of coal for power generation and heating,” Li said.

“Promote coal mines, … promote the entry of all coal-fired power generation electricity … accelerate the commissioning of approved and basically completed open-pit coal mines.”

And here’s the crazy thing. Just as China ordered more coal for electricity, our Business Council of Australia called for less.

Tim Flannery in 2017 said the Maldives would sink under rising seas.

Last week the BCA demanded Australia cut its emissions even harder: “A 46 to 50 per cent emission reduction range is both pragmatic and ambitious.”

What? Is Flannery running the BCA? Just three years ago this same outfit said Labor’s planned cut of “45 per cent is an economy wrecking target”, yet now it wants more?

To justify its fork-tongued hypocrisy, the BCA babbled that “the pace and severity of climate change was getting worse”, but that’s garbage.

The science shows we’ve never been less likely to be killed by climate disasters. The world is getting greener. World grain crops are bigger.

Worse, the BCA’s policy is idiotically useless. Australia’s emissions make up just 1.16 per cent of the world’s total – so little that our cuts won’t change the temperature. Why even try, when giant China – with 27 per cent of world emissions – meanwhile screams for more coal-fired power?

Compounding the idiocy, the BCA seems blind to an unfolding disaster in Europe, especially Britain.

Britain tried to end coal-fired power stations with its warmist politics, but is now so desperately short of electricity that it’s had to pay old coal-fired generators to fire up again.

One reason for the shortage is that the wind isn’t blowing much over Europe, leaving it short of wind power, with winter coming.

Greta Thunberg speaking at a climate strike march in Milan this month. Picture: Stefano Guidi

Naturally, the Flannerys blame their pet demon. Professor Paul Williams of Reading University says “human-related climate change” might be “reducing the thermal wind at low altitudes”.

Yet two years ago, warmist scientists blamed global warming for the opposite – an increase in wind since 2010. Cardiff University’s Dr Adrian Chappell said “heating of the Earth’s surface” had helped change wind speeds, and “this bodes well for the expansion of large-scale and efficient wind power generation systems”.

Oops. Another Flannery-type fail.

Yet our own warmists – wilfully blind – still push demented demands for “net zero” emissions without any thought of how to achieve that without blackouts here, too.

But who cares about how? Warmist Messiah Greta Thunberg last month mocked such considerations as just “blah blah, blah”, because truth is not the only thing that’s dead in a world which claims Tim Flannery is “vindicated”.

So is practical reality, which is why global warming cultists – eyes all shiny – urge us to do what’s useless, dangerous and just for holy show.