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Member for Goldstein Tim Wilson, who boasts below of having been schooled in climate science, popped up after Wentworth to urge, as The Australian put it, “action on emissions reduction”. This stirred memories at Quadrant Online, where the then-IPA scholar contributed extended coverage from Copenhagen of politicians, bureaucrats, NGOs, promoters of green gimcrackery and seekers of other people’s money demanding some of those very same actions “on emissions reduction.” We dug those dispatches out of the archives, as Tim’s tone in 2009 seemed at odds with his apparent endorsement of Wentworth winner Kerryn Phelps’ call for yet more “action on emissions reduction.”
Today Tim writes to Quadrant and The Australian to tell us that his view is more nuanced than a mere comparison of what he said then and what he says now might suggest to less subtle souls.
Dear Editor,
I enjoyed my first Cut and Paste trip down memory lane for a while (Green Libs: from Copenhagen farce to Paris targets, 25/10/2018) that pulled together select quotes over a decade implying I’ve had inconsistent views on cutting emissions.
The select quotes can be summarised: ‘Goldstein constituents expect the Coalition to have a credibly (sic) policy and so do I’ and ‘radical activists use climate debates to undermine free markets and won’t front the world’s poor to explain the cost of what they seek to impose’.
I stand by both views, though confess enjoy using cheeky humour to mock radical left-wing activists who are a parody of themselves.
As the only Federal MP who has studied climate science at a postgraduate level I take these issues seriously and neither dismiss them, nor slave to them.
In case anyone’s wondering what my views are, they’re encapsulated as follows: we should take the primary science seriously and be sceptical of hysteria and unsupportable claims; countries should seek to cooperate, but ultimately determine their own emissions policies and not have them imposed by the United Nations; Australia’s policies should act consistent with driving economic growth; consistent with that objective sustainable emissions reduction will principally be achieved through technology, not taxes; and the future is going to be awesome.
Yours sincerely,
Tim Wilson MP
Federal Liberal Member for Goldstein
Clear on that? Do you grasp at a glance how emissions reductions will be “achieved through technology, not taxes” when there is not a wind tower, solar farm, abandoned ‘hot rocks’ project, big battery or wrecked and rusting tidal generator that has not been underwritten by the public purse? If not, if Tim’s turn of phrase in 2018 has you baffled, then his view of action on emissions reduction, circa 2013, might clarify things. Or perhaps not. He wrote then (emphasis added):
Recently the Abbott government announced it wouldn’t be lumbering Australia with more burdensome emissions cuts at this week’s climate change negotiations in Warsaw, Poland.
Instead the bipartisan 5 per cent cut of emissions off 2000 levels would remain and no further tax dollars would be on offer for emissions reduction financing programs.
It’s difficult to overstate the strategic realignment of the new government’s sensible policy change.
If Tim’s position remains opaque in the eyes of some, perhaps his thoughts concerning “action on emissions reduction” from 2011 will clarify matters. Long before the US abandoned Paris, and with India and China never having been in it, Tim identified the ruinous folly of setting the world a virtuous example.
… greenhouse gas emissions are a global challenge, the externality is also global, and can therefore only be addressed with a global carbon price.
Australia showing leadership may make us feel warm and fuzzy, but it doesn’t address the challenge if there is no global price to feed into…
… What’s sad is that while we are trying to lead from the front, while other countries are walking in the opposite direction, we need leadership to address challenges we can directly influence.
For those curious how Tim’s evolved view of “action on emissions reduction” has gathered so much nuance, the full archive of his climate-change writings prior to entering parliament can be found here.
Roger Franklin is the editor at Quadrant Online. A recent quarterly electricity bill for his small, one-person house, home office and a cat, who does quite well in the dark, came to just shy of $1000
By the look of things one thing that the member for Goldstein did not study, or, if he did, failed to grasp the basics of, was the English language. The quoted piece here would not have got the tick of my Grade 7 English teacher, let alone the High School ones.
Wilson’s actions and utterances since his “elevation” to parliament have show him to be a self-serving groveler.
Was Tim’s partner in 2009 the same as his partner now?That might account for the change in heart(or nuance as he would call it).His partner now is a school teacher, Ryan Bolger
“…we should take the primary science seriously and be sceptical of hysteria and unsupportable claims.”
Regrettably, the so-called “primary science” is a very elusive will o’ the wisp.
What used to be “primary science” has morphed into “consensus” and “conspiracy” pseudo-science.
For example, they can’t even agree on a definition for “cause”. Rather important, don’t you think?
“Among other lacking items [in the extreme weather event attribution framework], perhaps the most important one regards the absence of definition for the word cause. Several recurrent controversial arguments in the realm of event attribution may possibly be related to this lacking definition of causality: for instance, an argument often made (Trenberth, 2012) is that any single event has multiple causes, so one can never assert that CO2 emissions, nor any other factors, have actually caused the event. (A. Hannart et al, American Meteorological Society, January 2016, p. 100)
Furthermore, “most unfortunately, in the climate sciences, no such sample of Earth-like climate systems is accessible to natural observation and even less so to experimental testing … With such strong limitations on the natural observation side and with in situ experimentation inaccessible, we are left with the only remaining alternative: so-called in silico experimentation [computer games].” (Hannart et al, 2016)
“Another serious difficulty is that climate models, including the most detailed GCMs, are simplified representations of reality that are affected by both numerical and physical modeling errors. Thus, the real causal effects may differ from the model causal effects. (Hannart et al, p. 106)”
Such admissions rarely, if ever, appear in the orthodoxy’s media releases or the MSM. They are the dark secrets in the alarmist attic.
So much for the “primary” science, Mr Wilson.
QED
Have Trent Zimmerman, Jason Falinsky, and Tim Wilson become Green Liberals and LINO’s rather than conservative Liberals? They supported ‘same sex marriage’, intermittent renewable energy and global warming ideology. They probably support ‘big immigration Australia’ – [a la Kevin Rudd] or at least Zimmerman has given written support for our ‘Ponzi scheme’ massive immigration in the North Shore Times.
Commmon for the first two names at least is the apparent support of NSW Party ‘godfather’ and lobyist, Michael Photios.
Tim is just a main chancer sucking on the Green-Kool-Aid now that he is on the cushy parliamentary payroll (+ expenses).
He is on the winning side, now all he has to do is wait to see who wins before joining them.
Another LINO who should be consigned to the dustbin of history through the rise of a real Conservative Party. At the next election cast your first 12 votes for any of the following in any order before adding your vote for a National, Liberal, Socialist, Anarchist, Green or Labor candidate. That will make your vote count! In Alphabetical order:
1. AUSTRALIAN CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT
2. AUSTRALIAN LIBERTY AALLIANCE
3. CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY (Fred Nile)
4. CHRISTIAN ALLIANCE
5. DEMOCRATIC LABOR PARTY
6. Every INDEPENDENT
7. FAMILY FIRST
8. LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY
9. ONE NATION
10.PIRATE PARTY
11.RISE UP AUSTRALIA
12.SECULAR PARTY
13.SENIORS UNITED PARTY
14.SHOOTERS, FISHERS AND FARMERS PARTY
Wilson writes “As the only Federal MP who has studied climate science at a postgraduate level ….”. Presumably this is intended to impress upon us his superiority over his parliamentary colleagues in this area. I will presume he has not only studied but actually gained a qualification in this area although, if so, it would appear he has learnt little since, with a modicum of objective research, he would discover there is not a single study which proves mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions drive climate change. He may, as many do, be impressed by the various climate models despite the reality that these models grossly overestimate global temperatures and bear no resemblance to the real world measurements. Perhaps he is taken in by the homogenisation of temperature records by our once-august Bureau of Meteorology. Perhaps, despite his postgraduate studies, he is just a dill.
Just an educated dill