Inaccurate. Always.

Fairfax Media’s Peter Hannam used to be billed as the publisher’s “carbon economy” correspondent, but as there is no carbon economy to correspond about he now goes by the more straightforward appellation of “environment editor”. As it is official policy at The Age and SMH to deny both credence and column inches to those loathsome sceptics, this must be a rather undemanding job: Take a little dictation from the warmist du jour. Regurgitate on the printed page. Repeat until the receiver arrives. This last must surely happen soon, given those newspapers’ ever-shrinking circulation base and former advertisers’ understandable reluctance to invite the sort of people who still read Fairfax papers into their stores.

Those true believers are likely more peeved than usual today, as they will have swallowed every word of Hannam’s scoop that government “subsidies” to Big Carbon are costing the world’s poor “more than $200,000 per second”. According to the story, this information comes from the International Monetary Fund, as the line reproduced at the top of this item clearly states. If the IMF says that, who can doubt it?

Actually, the IMF doubts it.

In the very same IMF report Hannam cites and right up at the top, where even the mere moderately astute might have noticed it, there is the prominent and black-bordered advisory reproduced below:

Click on the image to make the text fully legible and you will see the disclaimer that “views expressed in IMF working papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board or IMF management.”

And if you have just filled your car’s tank with petrol and might be wondering who is getting those subsidies when consumer taxes represent such a huge chunk of the per-litre price, it works like this: Carbon emission are (allegedly) doing great harm and this damage can be valued in dollars. Therefore, because this (alleged) damage is not being repaired, those unspent dollars amount to a subsidy.

Take it from the warmists: Not only is the science settled, so is the accounting.

The IMF’s disavowed report can be read via the link below.

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