Congress Should Emulate Australia On Cap And Trade

Australia is in the midst of a vote on a massive cap and trade plan to reduce carbon emissions. Australia, the home of some of the more virulent global warming propaganda around, is one of the last places where I would expect to hear of a backlash against the alarmists in the name of science.

But according to a couple of articles I've read this week, that very backlash is happening. Rob Tracinski asked on Wednesday, Could Australia Blow Apart the Great Global Warming Scare? He and co-author Tom Minchin from Australia detailed the fight that is currently raging in Australia's Sentate as they debate a cap and trade bill. One man in particular, Senator Steve Fielding, is a swing vote, and he decided to come to America to learn more before he cast his vote. He attended the Heartland Institute's conference on climate change at which Yaron Brook spoke. And then Fielding met with an Obama administration official to get his view. Tracinski writes:

Fielding went to the US to assess the American evidence for global warming at close quarters. As Melbourne's Age reported on June 4:

Senator Fielding said he was impressed by some of the data presented at the [US Heartland Institute's] climate change skeptics' conference: namely that, although carbon emissions had increased in the last 10 years, global temperature had not.

He said scientists at the conference had advanced other explanations, such as the relationship between solar activity and solar energy hitting the Earth to explain climate change.

Fielding has issued a challenge to the Obama White House to rebut the data. It will be a novel experience for them, as Fielding is an engineer and has an Australian's disregard for self-important government officials. Here is how The Age described his challenge:

Senator Fielding emailed graphs that claim the globe had not warmed for a decade to Joseph Aldy, US President Barack Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, after a meeting on Thursday…. Senator Fielding said he found that Dr. Aldy and other Obama administration officials were not interested in discussing the legitimacy of climate science. [bold added]

Kimberly Strassel writes about the same issue in today's Wall St. Journal, and just as Tracinski did, brings up Australian scientist Ian Plimer and his new book, Heaven and Earth.

Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

This is all good news, and our own Congress and press would do well to follow in Australia's footsteps. Nancy Pelosi is set to try and ram the Waxman-Markey bill through the House today, and she'll probably succeed. Hopefully enough Senators will show the same intellectual curiosity that Australia's Fielding did, and defeat their version of the bill. Doubtful, I know.

UPDATE: Helpful commenter, Richard, pointed me to an EPA coverup that is just coming to light. Prior to the issuance of EPA's "Endangerment Finding" on carbon dioxide, an EPA expert wrote a detailed report stating why it shouldn't be issued. Alan Carlin's report was "disappeared" and he was taken off any teams dealing with climate change.

Read an interview with him here, some of the background and information from an anonymous EPA employee here, and the blog post linked in the comments here. The last contains actual emails written by EPA officials saying that including Carlin's comments would have "a very negative impact on this office."