Gaia grants and climate cash

It is hard to keep track of the many climate-related threats and perils the settled scientists of the catastropharian creed insist are bearing down on our long-suffering planet. Dams that will never fill but do anyway, mass extinctions of species that seem even now to be doing quite nicely — you know the sort of thing. It can all get a bit much, so glazed eyes might have missed last week’s report that Australian cities will be fried by 50-degree stinkers come century’s end.

The ABC went big on it, and then bigger, and then bigger still, with nary an attempt to seek the counterview of those who believe Gaia’s predicament to be not quite so dire as climate careerists would have us believe. But you probably missed that too. When the ABC’s editor-in-chief objects to acknowledging the need for referencing fairness and balance in the national broadcaster’s charter, is it any wonder her underlings feel free to omit views and evidence they regard as sand in the gears of opinions received from on high? The result, one of them, is an audience declining at such a rate that, as announced last week, Lateline can no longer find a worthwhile one.

Still, while it is extraordinarily difficult to keep track of warmism’s every outrageous prophecy and absolutely impossible to collate all the ABC’s very many partisan assaults on truth, it is somewhat easier to follow taxpayer dollars as they are swept into the ghetto’d gullytrap populated by alarmism’s acolytes. That report about the sweltering Sydney and baked Brisbane our greatgrandchildren can expect in 2100 makes the point rather nicely. The settled scientist putting her name to this latest doomsday scenario is a certain Dr Sophie Lewis, who frets for the planet at ANU’s Fenner School in Canberra.

Well, those dams might never fill, but alarmism remains a spigot of plenty. Follow the link at the foot of this post to see just one example of how much taxpayer money gets tossed into the Church of Catastropharianism’s collection plate. If you have the same problem with numbers that seems to plague so many of our leading climate scientists, know that the sum of the grants placed in Ms Lewis’ stewardship is pocket-change-shy of $400,000.

Good work if you can get it. And until the same politicians who have subjected an energy-rich nation to blackouts and an imperilled grid alter course, the climate establishment will likely keep right on enjoying super-sized grants for quite some to time to come.

— roger franklin

Read More