The Church of the Latter Day Alarmists is currently in ascendancy with AGW or human caused global warming now being broadly accepted as fact by the vast majority of Australians. The religious fervour of the proponents has washed into the media with very few, if any, questioning the science. As I’ve remarked recently;

Tabloid TV, SBS and the ABC have rolled over and we can’t view a scene of nature or animals cavorting without a sombre voice-over mentioning global warming. Films of icebergs melting, as they do very summer, cannot be shown without a mention of the impending doom for all mankind, Polar bears and penguins.

This is all summarised by Tony Brown in a letter to the Australian today

When the last polar bear has died, the last glacier melted, and the last alpine ski lodge closed, will the climate change sceptics (Cut & Paste, 28/7) still claim that global warming was all a mirage conjured up by the misuse of dodgy greenhouse statistics?

Possibly Tony, but by then, hundreds if not thousands of years in the future, we may well know more about our climate and just how much us puny humans affect it. Dodgy greenhouse statistics will have been rationalized and we might, just might, have accepted science over religion. I doubt if people like you will have changed though- religious zealots seldom revert. I guess Tony really believes everything he sees on tabloid TV – such conversion to a religion is bankable but I think it would be fair guess that Tony has always been in the front pew. No one can claim the Liberals are playing populist politics when they demand more detail on Rudd’s plans. In view of todays polls one could easily define their stand as suicidal but it is a stand they must make. Someone has to ask questions about the ALPs headlong push into the unknown. From todays editorial in the Australian;

The real message from today’s Newspoll is that the politics of ecological catastrophe being pursued by Labor has much greater traction than the politics of economic responsibility being prosecuted by Dr Nelson.

This is stark evidence that we need a debate about the matter and the Libs are the only ones likely to start it. The voters don’t know what the cost of any ALP plan is and Rudd is trying to force the Libs, Greens and assorted anti Poker Machine addicts and anyone else who believes they hold the balance of power, to roll over and pass their bills through the House and the Senate before costs are detailed. Once the punters are aware of the likely costs and the fact that those increased personal costs and increased pressure on industry and commerce will lead to inflation for no discernible benefit to the hypothetical problem they will balk. The opinion polls will change.