The Dog’s Bollocks

If you believe the folks at Jennifer Marohasy’s environmental blog, Anthropogenic Global Warming has been thoroughly disproved beyond all doubt, and those who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge this are akin to religious zealots in the high church of the IPCC who have irrationally adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet.
This is the latest strategy of the denialists – let’s talk endlessly claiming that global warming has been disproved and then argue that non-denialists are deluded with nothing but blind faith to support their position – never the mind reality.
Yet the reality is that scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the case for AGW, and opinion polls show the vast majority of the general population agree. Ironically, it is the denialists who have unshaken faith that the planet is cooling and that there is no such thing as AGW, and that the science supports their belief.
Of course, a professional scientific contrarian like Marohasy knows full well that she will never win the debate – the name of the game for denialists is to obscure, obfuscate, confound and generally misdirect the debate, on behalf of her corporate masters (BHP Billiton, Murray Irrigation, Gunns, and Monsanto, for e.g.) in order to delay political and regulatory action dealing with limiting carbon emissions and the fostering of renewable energy technology. And she has a loyal band of true-believers willing to sing from the same hymn sheet and make as much noise as possible. They also fervently believe that it is our moral and ethical obligation to maintain our affluent lifestyle as the only effective means of solving world poverty and inequity. Those damned environmental extremists want to deprive our children of energy and destroy our economy and our way of life! How dare they!

We know that Marohasy is a dedicated environmentalist, for her site often has pictures and stories about endangered species. Why, only this week, in response to the Victorian Government’s plan to protect 83,000ha of Murray River Red Gum environment from cattle grazing and logging she argued against the park on the grounds that this will endanger the survival of Koalas in the area. The logic is that there is not enough water for the trees (did I mention that one of Marohasy’s corporate sponsors is Murray Irrigation, who represent the water allocation interests of Monsanto, Big Cotton and Big Rice) so it is better to reduce the number of trees to match the amount of water available and thus save the Koalas! Or something.

Filed under: Environment, Pseudoscience, AGW, Denialism, Jennifer Marohasy