Emission controls not warranted by facts

Some environmentalists (and The Age newspaper) are predictably crying foul at Kevin Rudd's relatively modest White Paper option of up to 25% or 35% cuts from the estimated business as usual level of Australian GHG emissions in 2020. Nevertheless, the proposed ETS conforms to the government's threat to "reform and transform our economy" (Climate Minister, Penny Wong), by effectively choking it just when it is running out of puff

• In response to an alarm that is not ringing: Temperature trends over the past century or more (not to mention high-quality satellite data from the past thirty years) are almost indistinguishable from flat, (0.6°C over the whole of the 20^th century) except when portrayed as dramatically scaled anomalies based on arbitrary baselines—that, even so, show no warming trend in the past seven years
• Without any regard to the relevant context: The paleo-climate record is undisputed. Our climate continues to warm (slightly) as the planet recovers from the last ice-age; another ice-age cycle seems highly likely (soon in a geological time-scale); direct evidence of climate history shows at least 8 warming (up to +6°C from today's levels) and cooling (up to -12°C from today's levels) cycles over the past 800-thousand years that very likely have solar or galactic origin, and certainly have nothing to do with human influence
• Adopting prescriptions dreamed up by the adherents of a theory that is dis-confirmed by its own predictions and has no support other than some modeled 'scenarios' that predict warming that has not taken place, in fact: click the thumbnail above.

This mad policy has democratic credentials, but not much intellectual credence because its strongest support (in Australia, Ross Garnaut's investigation) depends on an argument from authority to justify a refusal carefully to (re)evaluate the evidence.

A sort of millenarian madness has gripped governments that should be seeking ways to promote knowledge and growth, not to stifle both with a fog of so-called 'settled science' (a silly claim that borders on being a lie) and public dread.

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