RUTHFULLY YOURS

You’ve probably never heard of Barnaby Joyce, but he has twice been deputy prime minister of Australia, from February 2016 to October 2017 and from December 2017 to February 2018.  During both terms, he served as leader of Oz’s National Party, which frequently allies with the country’s biggest conservative party, called the “Liberal Party.”  The National Party was formerly known as “The Country Party” and represents farmers, grazers, and other rural residents.

Like the United States, Australia is subject to agitation for CO2 emissions reduction in the name of “saving the planet.”  As deputy P.M. serving in coalition under the leadership of warmist true believer Malcolm Turnbull, Joyce could not speak his mind for fear of those interests.

But Australia has a new liberal (conservative) government following federal elections last May 19, with the margin of victory attributed by most observers to the opposition by Scott Morrison, the new leader of the Liberals, to closing a major coal mine.  And Barnaby Joyce became a backbencher.

In that capacity, Joyce is answerable only to his constituents in rural New South Wales.

As columnist Andrew Bolt put it (link paywalled):

Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is now a backbencher and can finally tell the truth about the global warming scare[.]

On his Facebook page,  Joyce wrote:

The very idea that we can stop climate change is barking mad. Climate change is inevitable, as geology has always shown.” These are the views of New Zealand lecturer of geology, David Shelley. A person vastly more competent than me and the flotilla of others telling the kids the world is going to end from global warming.

The central theme of David Shelley’s analysis is that sea levels are rising and have been for thousands of years and will fall during the next ice age which is expected about now, give or take a thousand years.
When the ice age does arrive temperatures will drop around ten degrees. A warmer planet will be a disconsolate chronicle and many, maybe most, will die from starvation as is the usual experience of man or beast in previous ice ages.

The weather is going to brutally win the population problem and the parliament of Australia has no power against it. One may suggest that warmer weather is the better problem of the two.

One of the few graces of being on the backbench is you can be honest with what your views really are. I believe this is one of the greatest policy phantoms, the misguided and quite ludicrous proposition that Australia can have any affect on the climate. If we could we should be the first to make it rain and, more importantly, stop the recurrence of an ice age anytime in the coming millennium.

Politics takes politics to the absurd. We have to absolutely affirm that our domestic settings can deal with a proposition which is stated quite clearly by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that: “In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

You don’t get the feeling when you listen to the political propaganda or the supporting lobbyists that there is any doubt about their capacity to “fix the climate problem” I do get the feeling that you will be tried for heresy if you dare question the zeitgeist so you basically have to lie about your honest assessment of what the hell we are doing to our economy, standard of living, our basic rights and the real future of our children.

Today, more than in the past, the political debate is set within a predetermined paradigm. Participants cannot ague outside these preset boundaries. Maybe it is over cynical but I believe the promotion of the primacy of the state over the individual is very well served by the apparent necessity of climate policy.

Private property rights are removed, by the implementation of vegetation laws, because of “climate action”. The state will limit your access to electricity because of “climate action”. You will drive an electric car because of “climate action”. You will divest the nation of its largest export because of “climate action”. Rather than state there is no prospect whatsoever that any action of ours, and most likely of anyone else, will have any affect [sic] whatsoever on the trajectory climate is on.

We have instead the congenial narrative that we are all trying to make the world get cooler, but one path or the other path is the better alternative of cooling policies . We will do this by shutting down all our power stations, replacing them with windmills and rejiggering our nation away from our largest exports of mining and agricultural resources to carbon neutral tourism and the knowledge economy. Australia will be the catalyst to a global epiphany and the totalitarian Chinese regime will follow our lead because of our righteousness followed by India and the United States.

No, I don’t think that will happen. I hate to say it but I doubt the majority of people on the planet, give a toss about the Paris Agreement. I would be amazed if one percent of the planet could competently explain it.

I will make one prediction; after this is published it will be promptly followed by the remnants of the traditional media in furious pursuit of my heresy. Questions will be asked by the fourth estate and high octane derision will issue forth from the climate change actionistas.

No doubt I will be accused of not knowing what I am talking about, and when it comes to predicting the weather more than a fortnight or so out, that is true. But of those who ask the questions, will any of them truly understand what on earth are they are talking about?