It is easy for simpletons and politicians to classify a complex issue into ‘yes and no’ or ‘true and false’ or some other variety of the black and white argument.  But life is never that easy and very few serious and complex issues are ever so easily and so conveniently classified.  Climate Change is certainly just such an issue. For starters, most people cannot even easily define the issue.
Just using the term ‘climate change’ is pointless since it is quite obvious that climate changes and always has.  Even adding ‘Anthropogenic ‘ (human caused) to the front doesn’t help much since it is a basic understanding of science that since we form part of the earth’s bio-system we inevitably affect it.  The truly telling word that makes all the change and causes all the debate is ‘catastrophic’. Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change (CACC). 

CC is obvious. ACC is pretty certain although the degree of effect is very debatable.  But CACC is where you lost me.

CACC essentially believes we are all going to fry, starve, drown or die in mass numbers unless we all do the IPCC’s bidding and spend hundreds of trillions of dollars changing our lives and lowering our standard of living.  Conveniently, the bulk of that money apparently needs to go to poor third-world countries. It wouldn’t be the UN if it didn’t involve criticising the West and doling out huge amounts of aid to African dictators and other left-wing dictatorships!

But is that C really all that credible?

I am naturally a cynic.  It is my personality trait.  Rather than viewing it as a failing, it is indeed very helpful in business, allowing me to see through the marketing hype and over-optimistic predictions to see the truth.  I don’t fall for scams because I always ask myself ‘where are the facts’ and the pertinent questions. Being a cynic means you don’t trust easily.  Faith isn’t your first resort but rather your last and blind faith is simply asking too much, period.  So naturally, the word ‘catastrophic’ aroused my instant suspicion.

To be honest, I’ve heard it all before.  Blah, Blah Blah.

We had the post World War 2 fear that we would all die in a global nuclear war.  Then we had the pollution global scare of the 1970s where we all expected to die in mounds of rubbish, breathing toxic air and drinking deadly acidic water.  We had Y2K, that truly embarrassing example of global hysteria and now, we have CACC.  Originally, we just had Global Warming but apparently that wasn’t sexy enough and probably too easy to confront so it was renamed CACC.

I’m not a denialist - which is a truly offensive term - but rather a cynic, demanding evidence and proof.  I don’t blindly accept the CACC position and so I ask ‘prove it’.  And that is where we part company.

The default position is always that climate is not heading towards catastrophe and as support for that I refer you to tens of thousands of years of human history where we were not destroyed by climate change. This of course is not proof that we aren’t heading towards catastrophe but it remains the default position that CACC proponents have to debunk.  As a cynic, I don’t have to prove anything. Rather, it is the job of CACC proponents to prove their case. And to be honest, it has been an epic fail.

A 0.89 degree rise in over 100 years doesn’t really concern me and I’m not sure why it should.  It clearly hasn’t harmed us in any way and I’ve heard several arguments that it has actually been a good thing. And when I see that the global warming has stabilised and has for the last 17 years I again question the hysteria over warming.  After years of doom-and-gloom predictions that the poles would melt, they have resolutely failed to do so and even now are increasing in size again. The six metres of sea level rise is closer to 6mm.  The UN’s prediction of 50 million climate refugees by last decade has been off by... fifty million.

But still the hysteria rages unabated. And hasn’t it gotten personal? Anyone who has ever debated or argued at length knows that once the debate gets personal you know the other side has lost. Superior, evidence-supported argument doesn’t need personal attacks.  So now I am a ‘denialist’. Considered a criminal by some and a fool by many in the CACC crowd.

I’m not a fool.  I’m a cynic.  If you want me to be a believer then you need to prove your case and to date, the CACC crowd have not even gotten close.  The one-time ‘gold standard’ Hockey Stick Graph which once adorned the IPCC reports and backdrops at news conferences is now generously described as bad science, although fraud is a better word.  The Climategate scandals have shown people willing to game the system to maintain the momentum of CACC.  But even such reprehensible behaviour doesn’t comprehensively negate CACC, although it certainly severely damages its credibility.  The real nail in the coffin of CACC is climate itself.

The world’s climate is stubbornly refusing to follow the IPCC’s predictive models.  Temperature refuses to rise.  Ice caps refuse to melt.  Glaciers refuse to disappear.  Extreme weather remains at the same level as it has for centuries.  Sea level rises are in millimetres, not metres. And reservoirs and dams continue to fill, even in dry countries like Australia.

I love it when a known moron thinks he knows better than 99% of the scientific community.

longweekend58 wrote on Sep 27^th, 2013 at 10:40am:

I read it, and I decided 99% of the scientific community are correct. I am sure your ancestors believed in a flat earth, let's face it you still believe in fairies in the sky, the true sign of a fool.

skippy. wrote on Sep 27^th, 2013 at 10:38am:


I love it when they change the definition to "catastrophic".

Karnal wrote on Sep 27^th, 2013 at 11:00am:



We are living in a period of a mass extinction which looks like will include our species. Yeah you are right, catastrophic is an understatement ... deadly climate change is more fitting.

____ wrote on Sep 27^th, 2013 at 11:06am:


I think Longy might take issue with that, GW.

As do the IPCC, based on their most recent report.

Longy isn't out to destroy humanity through sheer pigheadedness alone. Mind you, if it keeps Labor out of power, Longy would be the first to push the button.

Now that's ethics, leftards.

CC is obvious. ACC is pretty certain although the degree of effect is very debatable.  But CACC is where you lost me.

You seem to partially accept the problem but want to ignore the obvious results.

If you accept climate change the question is then how much impact does it have.

2 , 5, 3 degree increases are talked about action today or more precisely 5 to 10 years ago were to limit the chage at around 2 degrees.

I believe it is accepted that temp increase has a significant impact on arid land and a reduction of world crop viability.

i.e. we lose the ability go grow enough to feed the population. Some feel that this is a catastrophic problem but I suppose some feel that their class and position will enable them to get enough food and that a few hundred million dying will solve the rather mild annoyance.

____ wrote on Sep 27^th, 2013 at 11:06am:


Where is the evidence.....?????

Show me..............!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!