Warmist can't take the heat

Andrew Bolt

Andrew Bolt interviews Professor Tim Flannery.

Question: How has Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery got away with it for so long?

Answer: Because he seems nice.

Oh, and because journalists just won't hold our leading global warming spruiker to account for his litany of dud predictions, exaggerations, falsehoods and bizarre conflicts of interest. But on Wednesday - and give him credit - he wandered into our studio at MTR 1377 for some reason best known to himself. Was it a false confidence, born of years of near unquestioned adulation? Was it that being named Australian of the Year in 2007 made him feel above any pesky but-but-butting from the few media sceptics? Or was it - as the following transcript suggests - that Flannery, now head of the Rudd Government's Coast and Climate Change Council, has an eerie ability to forget inconvenient truths about his past finger-wagging?

Whatever. What we do know is that our chat this week was the first time I can recall that Flannery, the highly influential author of The Weather Makers and chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, has been confronted at length.

Read on, to see how even this giant of warming alarmism dealt with it. You may well then wonder if the great warming scare of the past decade would ever have taken off had more journalists fact-checked the wilder claims and predictions of not just Flannery, but other professional scaremongers such as Al Gore, David Suzuki, Peter Garrett, Rob Gell and Bob Brown.

Flannery started our interview by paying out on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for walking away from what he'd sold as "the great moral and economic challenge of our time".

Flannery: I'm unlikely to vote for him because my trust has been eroded away. He promised to deliver an emissions trading scheme and he's then withdrawn that with very little justification.

Bolt: He said he wouldn't move now until the rest of the world did something, which is a direct repudiation of what he said before. But, Tim, part of the reason that he's backed down is that there's been a great swing in sentiment against this kind of thing. There's a rising tide of scepticism. How much are you to blame for some of that?

Flannery: There is some swing in sentiment. And I think it's very hard to maintain any issue with that sort of very high level of support for a long time ...

Bolt: But, Tim ... I'm wondering to what extent are you to blame for rising scepticism about some of the more alarming claims about global warming.

Flannery: Well, many of the things that scientists highlight may happen are very alarming. They're not alarmist but they are worrisome. Rises in sea level for instance are a significant issue.

Bolt: Well, let's go through some of your own claims. You said, for example, that Adelaide may run out of water by early 2009. Their reservoirs are half full now. You said Brisbane would probably run out of water by 2009. They are now 97 per cent full. And (you said) Sydney could be dry as early as 2007. Their reservoirs are also more than half full. How can you get away with all these claims?

Flannery: What I have said is that there is a water problem. They may run out of water.

Bolt: 100 per cent full, nearly!

Flannery: And thankfully, Andrew, governments have taken that to heart and been building some desalination capacity such as in Perth.

Bolt: Only in Perth.

Flannery: No, there's plans in every capital city ...

Bolt: No, no. You said Brisbane would run out of water possibly by as early as 2009. There's no desalination plant, there's no dam. It's now 100 per full.

Flannery: That's a lie, Andrew. I didn't say it would run out of water. I don't have a crystal ball in front of me. I said Brisbane has a water problem.

Bolt: I'll quote your own words (from the New Scientist June 16, 2007): "Water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months." That was, on the timeline you gave, by the beginning of 2009. Their reservoirs are now 97 per cent full.

Flannery: Yeah, sure. There's variability in rainfall. They still need a desal plant.

Bolt: You also warned that Perth would be the 21 century's first ghost metropolis.

Flannery: May ... Right? Because at that stage there had been no flows into that water catchment for a year and the water engineers were terrified.

Bolt: Have you seen the water catchment levels? Here, see, they're tracking above the five-year level ...

Flannery: You want to paint me as an alarmist.

Bolt: You are an alarmist.

Flannery: I'm a very practical person.

Bolt: You said (in The Guardian, August 9, 2008) the Arctic could be ice-free two years ago.

Flannery: No, I didn't ...

Bolt: I'm asking ... whether (you) repent from all these allegations about cities running out of water, cities turning into ghost cities, sea level rises up to an eight-storey-high building. Don't you think that is in part why people have got more sceptical?

Flannery: I don't, actually, because some of those things are possibilities in the future if we continue polluting as we do. And we've already seen impacts in southern Australia on all of those cities. Everyone remembers the water restrictions and so forth ...

Bolt: You warn about sea level rises up to an eight-storey building. How soon will that happen? Thousands of years?

Flannery: Could be thousands of years.

Bolt: Tens of thousands of years?

Flannery: Could be hundreds of years ... The thermo-dynamics of ice sheets are very, very difficult to predict.

Bolt: Should we ... have nuclear power plants (to cut our warming emissions)?

Flannery: In Australia, I don't think so. We've got such a great load of assets in the renewable area that I don't think there's an argument here that they are ever going to be economic.

Bolt: Four years ago you did. What changed your mind?

Flannery: No, I never did. I've always had the same argument.

Bolt: No, no, no. Here's your quote: "Over the next two decades Australians could use nuclear power to replace all our coal-fired power plants. We would then have a power infrastructure like France and in doing so we would have done something great for the world." That was your quote.

Flannery: I don't recall saying that at all.

Bolt: You wrote it. You wrote it in The Age (on May 30, 2006). There it is, highlighted.

Flannery: Well, very good.

Bolt: That's the point, you know, you make these claims and when people confront you, you walk away from them.

Flannery: But that was about "may" ... Australia may be able to do that. It's not what I recommend and I never have recommended it ... We are going to see a whole lot of other technologies and innovations which are now well under way which we could use instead of nuclear power.

Bolt: Such as?

Flannery: Such as concentrated PV technology, geothermal technology, wave power, wind power ...

Bolt: You're an investor in geothermal technology, aren't you?

Flannery: Yeah, I am. Indeed.

Bolt: How come you don't declare that (in most media interviews promoting geothermal power)?

Flannery: Well, I've just done it.

Bolt: You've invested in a (Geodynamics geothermal) plant in Innamincka and you said the technology was really easy. How come that plant ...

Flannery: Not really that easy.

Bolt: Well, yes. It's actually had technological difficulties and it's been delayed two years because it's not that easy, after all, is it?

* * *

AND we could have gone on - to discuss the $90 million grant the Rudd Government last year gave to Flannery's Geodynamics.

Or to ask about the preferential treatment the Government also gave to Field Force, a "green loans" company Flannery spruiked for.

Or to ask how much Flannery profits from preaching doom.

Or to wonder how this green crusader could lend his name to Sir Richard Brazen's planned joy rides in space.

Or to ask him to explain his concession last year that, despite his great scares of rising heat, "there hasn't been a continuation of that warming trend" and "the computer modelling and the real world data disagrees".

Yes, you may think I'm just picking on details. But details are like pixels - put enough together and they form a picture.

Flannery's details, unquestioned, form a terrifying picture that has helped to panic millions of people into believing their gases could kill our world.

But, once challenged, those same details of Flannery form a very different picture - of self-serving scaremongering with not much more than hot air to sustain it.

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Source: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/warmist-cant-take-the-heat/story-e6frfhqf-1225878118730
URL: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2010/06/11/warmist-can-t-take-the-heat