The thing to keep in mind is when all those prehistoric disasters occurred the Earth didn't have 8 billion humans. Even a quarter million years ago if things got tough in one area the occupants relocated. These days they'll arrive in boats and everybody will get upset.

It may be true that another long cold spell is on the way. Within a decade or two we'll have burned almost all of the oil and gas and the remaining coal will be inferior or deeper. The problem is getting past 2050. For that reason alone we should use the remaining fossil fuels sparingly.

Puny humans have absolutely no control over nature. Net Zero is a load of rubbish that will never eventuate. The usual thugs are using climate change to rip more money off us, and to control us. The nonsense going on now will be looked back on as the greatest hoax in history.

Net Zero is merely a Woke term for 'let's get our grubby fingers on their money" !

There is no science behind Net Zero. It was invented by the left, but seamlessly adopted by the right, as yet another proxy for endless growth.

The numbers don't lie. Since global climate policy became a thing 30 years ago, global population has increased from 5b to 8b. And global emissions have also increased, more or less pro rata.

The fruitless quest for Net Zero has become yet another excuse, to do nothing about over-population, habitat destruction, and land clearing.

Viv, what you need to understand is, the natural climate is controlled by the sun, her waxing and waning phases. When she waxes the joint heats up and when she wanes as since the mid-seventies (NASA) she cools.

And that isn't what's been happening. With the hottest years on record and extreme heat waves and long enduring droughts. That said, I agree with your comments regarding net zero and trying to achieve it with extremely expensive renewables. Regenerative farming, if standard practise across this wide brown land, would absorb all the emissions we create here.

But pointless when 3 billion people across the globe use wood and dung to heat their homes, cook their food etc. And between India and China, they're opening up one new coal-fired power plant every week.

I don't give a monkey's if our foreign owned and operated coal mines and coal-fired power plants become stranded assets. Before the war in the Ukraine is over. We could be paying as much as 3 dollars or more for diesel?

The solution is and has always been nuclear, not just any nuclear but MSR thorium and MSR nuclear waste burners and prices as low as 3 Cents PKWH for the former and 1 cent or less PKWH for the latter.

Nuclear technology and proven science will allow us to make all the (extremely price competitive) fuel, fertilizers and plastics we need from abundant/inexhaustible seawater. And inexhaustible hydrogen (the fuel of the future) as well.

Stationary diesels can run on homemade on farm methane (biogas). All one needs is a bit of steel wool in the air intake to enrich the mixture and you can run almost anything. Anyone handy with a welder can build the (closed cycle, smell free) fermentation tank(s).

Bitching endlessly about what we cannot change, with the current drongos in charge, helps SFA! And as long as you and endlessly bitching folk like you want to support yesterday's coal. Carbon free nuclear options will remain forever pigeonholed. Think about it or better yet, just think. Even if that's a new and novel experience.
Alan B.

Indy. You need to try and speak from a little higher up. Woke has nothing to do with manmade climate change. And judging others by your own grubby, money faced standards, doesn't help anything or anyone. We're not all like you. Some of us do give a monkey's for the other bloke.
Alan B.

Tas makes a good point about recent population growth and its inevitable outcome. More CO2 creating power and fuel needed than ever before and massive cities/heat sinks pouring heat into the immediate adjacent atmosphere.
Alan B.

This article’s entire premise is false.

So far as I know, no-one has argued achieving net zero will mean that “global climate will become serene - not too warm, not too cold. Wild weather will cease, and there will be no more droughts, floods, cyclones or snow storms and no more plant and animal extinctions.”

Nor would anyone argue that with the statements that “even when nature was in full control, it was not a serene place”, or that “long before the first steam engine puffed along the first railway, earth was periodically battered by natural disasters – earthquakes, tidal waves, pole shifts, magnetic reversals, volcanic eruptions, wild weather and droughts.”

The fact that the climate always was and probably always will be variable, unpredictable and sometime dangerous and deadly in not in dispute. Nor is the fact that, compared over millennia, we are in an unusually warm phase that has been beneficial to life in general and humanity in particular. And one day, this interglacial period will probably end.

In the meantime, we are observing rapid and accelerating global warming that is a result of human activity, and which many experts expect to do significant and possibly catastrophic harm to the environment and human welfare. The next ice age is perhaps 50,000 years away. I’m worried about the next few decades.

WTF?

Indyvidual states: "Net Zero is merely a Woke term for 'let's get our grubby fingers on their money" !"

Just who is the "their" you are talking about?

Let's look at the facts.

According to OECD Revenue Statistics for Australia 2022:

In 2020:
Revenue from taxes on personal income, profits and
gains was 40% of total taxes.

Revenue from taxes on corporate income and gains was 19%.

Payroll taxes?: 4%

Property taxes?: 10%

GST and other value added taxes?: 27%

Now keep in mind that just over 50% of people who are paying tax are NET tax payers - that is they put in more than they take out.

A substantial number of Australians are suckling on the public teat even though they may have employment.

So who are the "their"?

Well I am one and my retirement will be self-funded also.

No pension or health care card for me.

So if I am one of the "their" then I say by all means take my money and look at ways of improving the future for Australians in a less carbon-dependant world.

WTF?

All of the different revenue percentages listed above are above the OECD average.

The OECD average revenue for Social security contributions is, however, 27% of revenue.

Want to guess what that revenue is for Australia?

If you know your Maths it is 0%.

So while in other OECD countries specific taxes are being collected to provide for social security over the working life of a person this does not happen in Australia.

It seems to me that many of the boomer whingers on this forum should think about their own financial contributions in relation to how much the rest of us support them before commenting

People that wake up in the morning and worry about the weather, exhibit mental illness traits.

For such an anxiety neurosis, there are establishments to visit and seek help, staffed with experts in OCD and the host of other mental illnesses with a core value of panic and anxiety.

At Davos, Al Gore spoke of "boiling seas" and a "billion climate refugees". If this bloke was not a hugely rich big mouth, he would be in residential care, heavily medicated. As it is, the climate hoax made him a billionaire.

The whole climate narrative is "absurd" says Richard Lindzen. He can't believe that "something so absurd could gain such universal acceptance".

The whole thing was born in dishonesty, and the lies have been growing bigger ever since

Hi Dan

There are many people with good reason to wake up worried about the weather – farmers, builders, tree-changes, and SES volunteers, for example. Happily, I’m not one of them. I prefer mild warmish weather when I don’t run the aircon, and moderately wet weather to keep the garden green.

I do, however, worry about climate. It’s not the same thing.

___

Hi ttbn

Yes, Gore is alarmist, and Lindzen is a genuine recognised expert in climate (unlike Viv Forbes). Lindzen accepts that human activity is generating greenhouse gases that are causing global warming, but believes the effect will be modest and possibly benign. Most other climate scientists disagree with him.

This is not surprising. Complete consensus is rare (and probably unhealthy) in science.

Most important policy decisions are made in circumstances of imperfect knowledge, and it is possible that Lindzen is right, and it is not necessary to act to reduce emissions.

A common approach to managing risk in these circumstances is to use a risk matrix - how likely is it that an event will occur, and how severe will its consequences be.

It is possible that we could waste a lot of money and cause a lot of unnecessary economic disruption if we adopt emission-reduction measures, and it turns out that Lindzen is right.

But if we fail to cut emissions, and it turns out that Lindzen is wrong, the consequences will be far, far worse.

And given that most climate scientists disagree with Lindzen, and their evidence seems compelling, the most reasonable conclusion based on current knowledge is that it is not very likely that Lindzen is right.

So from a risk management perspective it makes sense to act on climate change even if it turns out to have been unnecessary.

Those in favour of a 'green battery-driven world" should read Siddharth Kara's book "Cobalt Red"

Rhian. Agree with your informed take.

And we do not need to tank the economy to deal with climate change. In fact, the very opposite and a recharged economy on steroids and super charged.

The privileged elite never get out of their air condition cars offices and air-conditioned homes. And are simply too busy making money to give a monkey's for the planet.

Moreover, if the science proves their activities are harmful, junk the science, call it woke, or blame all the bad stuff on the scapegoated lefties.

We could restart manufacture in this country if absurd power prices stopped sending them offshore.

Every industrial application and every industrial electric motor that turns anything, burns energy and when the cost of that energy vastly exceeds the wages bill, then the industrialist has no choice but abandon Australia for a more competitive industrial environment.

I mean if our car industry was powered by MSR thorium/MSR nuclear waste burners, we wouldn't have had to subsidise it to the tune of 1 billion a year. And even then, only because we were insanely wielded to coal.

Adopt MSR nuclear waste burners with unspent fuel, i.e., nuclear waste, we are paid annual millions to accept, and the world of manufacture will beat a path to our door.

It wasn't the coalition that killed manufacture in this country, but our stupid addiction to coal. All the finger pointing in the world changes nothing only affirmative and sane action.

Forget that MSR thorium/nuclear waste burners are carbon free. It's the economy, stupid.
Alan B.

Dear RHian.

Seriously Alan, climate is not the weather? That sadly for you is not a fact.

This climate change nonsense, is fast creating a nation of beggars

Dear Dan

NASA would disagree

<https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/noaa-n/climate/climate_weather.html>

What actually brought about the previous climate changes, pollution from stone age technology or the burning of country perhaps ?
Whatever modern mankind is doing now is obviously contributing to the changes we're experiencing lately but it's not fossil fuel. It's greedy, selfish humans who don't know when to stop polluting & over-harvesting natural resources. These people blame the big companies when it's these same people themselves who cause this insane rush for 'more" !
Everything they demand to be delivered to their door is petroleum-based yet they all cry climate change & greedy companies.
There really needs to be stirring of the gene pool asap !

Indonesia has 350 . stations
We In Australia produce 1.8% of carbon

China produces 3o%

Every night around the world billions of poor people in villages light up their fires to cook dinner and have warmth and light.
Burning wood releases lots of carbon into the air. Trees absorb carbon and give off oxygen. They are the lungs of the earth.
NASA says the Earth has covered itself in a màssive 15% more trees and greenery in response to the greenhouse conditions