You see @Essendon12, this is the perfect example of what I’m talking about. You see Corey and that he claims to be a conservative and there fore you feel he represents your views, and defend him in all and sundry but he has done and said some pretty far right things that youcould easily disassociate yourself from. But you dont.
I’m not saying your a nazi, not at all. But you can’t rationalise any level of objectivity when it comes to conservative politics. Case in point right there.
What ‘far-right’ things?
He has never as far as I know said anything that could be construed as facist. It would go against what he stands for I would have thought.
I would be happy to disassociate myself from him if you can provide some evidence but I am not simply going to write someone off because some random on the interwebs believes it to be true.
You are very naive. Of course, climate change is politival. Why do you think every Party has some sort of statement on it as part of their manifesto. Its probably the most politically charged topic in the country.
Wishing it not to be true, does not make it not true.
Cant believe all the leftist views of this politician, should have been a member of the greens
I mean its John Howard, I implore you to listen to it.
Proud of his governments action to reduce carbon emissions to combat climate change and global warming.
Wanted to introduce a price on carbon.
How can you reconcile the greatest leader of the right of his generation saying those things and then claiming that the things we walk about in this thread are things only the left would say?
He may have wanted a slower and less economically damaging path, but hes not claiming its a god damn hoax.
Is that like Covfefe??
That’s the point though. 2/3’ds of Australian political parties realise it’s an issue that has to be actioned. Even your mob half of them do, so it’s basically 1/4 of politics who think it’s still a debate.
The only politics that should be occurring about climate change is how to future proof for it, not if it’s actually happening.
Geeez, I just realised you think the word politics can only be used as a noun.
■■■■ me, now that is conservative.
Que?
You say everything Trump has done is positive. This marks you as far right. True conservatives find him abhorrent.
Yep its a bit hard to claim that Tump represents “Family Values”
I hate the artificial left/right dichotomy that all political discussion seems to devolve into. It’s just so arbitrary and it lumps too many people who hold a multitude of differing views into overly broad categories, mostly because political journalists are too lazy and dumb to cover politics as anything other than a horse race between the two major parties. And the environmental debate is one of the key areas where this happens.
My impression has always been that whether environmentalism is seen as a ‘left’ issue depends more on history than on political ideology. In the UK and Germany, for instance - acceptance of the reality oif climate change is pretty much bipartisan and not really questioned in any meaningful way except by fringe lunatics like UKIP. Back in the day, environmental leadership was frequently provided by the conservative parties. The Clean Air Act in the UK was largely a conservative initiative, in the US, Nixon created the EPA and the US version of the clean Air Act, and Reagan and Thatcher (the latter especially) were driving forces behind the enormously successful international efforts to phase out CFCs and reduce acid rain across the northern hemisphere. Thatcher was vocally in favour of tackling climate change too. And all that is understandable. I mean, conservatism at its best is all about protecting that which is good against foolish or destructive change. And in the meantime, the USSR and the nations of the ‘leftist’ Eastern Bloc were environmental vandals on a truly monumental scale.
Which brings me back to the uselessness of the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ because any political terms (like ‘;left’ as it is frequently used) which encompasses both the Communist nations of the pre-1989 Warsaw Pact and the ever-so-tentatively social democratic modern day ALP of the US Democrats is so stretched as to be functionally meaningless. And where the hell does modern-day China sit on the ‘left/right’ axis anyway? A nominally communist state that runs a dog-eat-dog capitalist economy with a load of billionaires under a repressive regime?
Naomi Oreskes’ ‘Merchants of Doubt’ is a really good history of how things changed, and I’d thoroughly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the history and politics of climate policy. She tracks the entire climate denial movement back through several similar movements, back through the smoking/lung cancer denial movement, the defenders of CFCs, the defenders of DDT in the wake of Silent Spring and so on. In the early stages the same names keep popping up again and again, but I’d argue that the movement has a momentum of its own now.
Fundamentally, the whole thing started with a groups of (largely US govt) scientists who believed (with some justification) that the capitalist economic system and the dynamism of business was the main reason that the West would overcome the USSR in the cold war, and (with rather less justification) that anything that put restraints on the ability of companies to do what they want (like environmental regulations, health regulations, etc) was giving aid and comfort to the commies.
This all started in the late 60s and 70s, and took some time to get meaningful traction (they built up a pretty good lobbying machine in the 80s to oppose the CFC ban but ultimately got rolled, while the whole lung cancer thing is uncontroversial now and the DDT ‘ban’ comes up now and again in online ranting but is largely settled from a policy point of view). But the important work had been done, and that was that a dynamic had been established that painted environmentalism as opposed to business and vice versa.
Which to my mind explains why climate change denial is established on the ‘right’ in US and Australian politics, but not so much in Western European politics. The UK ‘right’ party is traditionally much more a party born of the aristocratic tradition rather than a business-driven party such as the US republicans or our Libs. I believe (I’m no expert) that the German ‘right’ parties (excluding the way-out neo-Nazis and the like) coalesced much more around regional and religious groupings. So neither of these European ‘right’ parties have a dog in the AGW fight one way or another.
A couple of decades later, and I think we’re at the point now where acceptance or otherwise of climate change reality is driven by tribalism as much as anything. People choose ‘their’ political party or position for reasons that are important to them, and tend to adopt the views of their ‘side’ on whatever issue they don’t have a firm view on, due to the politicians they trust and listen to,and the media they consume (the influence of the Murdoch media outlets shouldn’t be underestimated here)
It just seems like so often people view AGW science through the lenses of their pre-existing political views. There’s no meaningful way of averting catastrophic AGW without govt intervention in the energy market and international cooperation, and that gets the back up of people who believe in untrammelled free markets and dislike interational treaties that impose restrictions locally. Similarly, if your livelihood depends on coal mining or the oil industry you’re going to be pre-disposed to hope/believe that nothing needs to change because of the uncertainty that implies for your future. If you disliked Al Gore politically, you’re probably going to be predisposed to disbelieving the stuff he said in Inconvenient Truth. And the whole business has gotten worse over the past decade or so with the systematic denigration of technical expertise on the ‘right’ in Australia and the USA especially - the whole depressing line where some media slimeball or political oik will be confronted with an awkward scientific fact and pull out the old ‘well, certain inner-city elites might believe that but I think the average Aussie hard working Aussie battler in the pub would disagree’ as if expertise and factual accuracy and a lifetime of in-depth study of a subject were just another opinion and should be distrusted because the holder of the expertise likes lattes and ate an avocado on toast once.
Not trying to pretend for a moment here that the so-called ‘right’ holds a monopoly on this sort of thing. I know people who are lefties to the bone and will talk your ear off about the scientific evidence for climate change - but then who don’t vaccinate their kids due to omgtoxins autism conspiracy-theory bullshit. (Mind you, anti-vax seems to be to be a variety of crazy that neatly crosses the left/right divide). But in the specific case of climate reality denial, that seems to be a ‘right’ thing (in the US and Australia anyway) but I suspect a lot of deniers are deniers because they support right-wing parties, versus than people who looked at the evidence, decided that there was no AGW, and then started voting ‘right’ as a result of that.
The basic issues of science have become irredeemably politicised (as was the strategy outlined by Exxon in their leaked strategy document - that was successful beyond their wildest dreams) and I honestly don’t know what the way back from that is.
The debate about climate change should never for about politics. It is not a Right/ Left issue at all.
It is about the future of our planet and economics. If you study the arguments from the three stooges, sorfed, Trippo and Mr Wolf, it is always about money, and the cost of this and the cost of that. Reality should be that money is secondary and the science showing us our future is primary.
So Stooges, get over yourselves, forget politics and look at reality.
Perfectly cromulent.
Researchers have coined this trend the ‘anti-enlightenment movement’, and there’s been a lot of frustration and finger-pointing over who or what’s to blame. But a team of psychologists has identified some of the key factors that can cause people to reject science - and it has nothing to do with how educated or intelligent they are.
In fact, the researchers found that people who reject scientific consensus on topics such as climate change, vaccine safety, and evolution are generally just as interested in science and as well-educated as the rest of us.
The issue is that when it comes to facts, people think more like lawyers than scientists, which means they ‘cherry pick’ the facts and studies that back up what they already believe to be true.
_So if someone doesn’t think humans are causing climate change, they will ignore the hundreds of studies that support that conclusion, but latch onto the one study they can find that casts doubt on this view. This is also known as cognitive bias. _
“We find that people will take a flight from facts to protect all kinds of belief including their religious belief, their political beliefs, and even simple personal beliefs such as whether they are good at choosing a web browser,” said one of the researchers, Troy Campbell from the University of Oregon.
“People treat facts as relevant more when the facts tend to support their opinions. When the facts are against their opinions, they don’t necessarily deny the facts, but they say the facts are less relevant.”
Renewable energy may be cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020
A new report points to the influence of China in reducing costs
More like Anti enRIGHTenment Movement
Science on the outer after Malcolm Turnbull’s Cabinet reshuffle
By political reporter Melissa Clarke
Updated 21 Dec 2017, 7:10am
Zed Seselja stands in front of some shops and restaurants in Canberra.
PHOTO: The science portfolio has been allocated to an Assistant Minister, ACT senator Zed Seselja. (ABC News)
RELATED STORY: Five new faces in PM’s ministerial reshuffleRELATED STORY: ‘Politics is a tough game’: Reshuffle ruffles feathers within National PartyRELATED STORY: Porter’s the new AG, but can he keep his own seat?
MAP: Australia
Malcolm Turnbull’s extensive frontbench reshuffle has seen science left on the outer, with the portfolio shunted from Cabinet and assigned to a junior minister.
Key points:
Putting science into Assistant Minister’s portfolio “demotes it”, STA spokesperson says
Zed Seselja will be fourth Science Minister in three years, compounding concerns about rapid turnover
But the Senator says PM is putting innovation “front and centre”
The move has dismayed Australia’s scientific community, which has been frustrated by a succession of changes to the important post.
With the former minister for science, Arthur Sinodinos, stepping down due to ill health, the Prime Minister dropped the role from Cabinet and allocated it to an Assistant Minister, ACT senator Zed Seselja.
“We would much prefer to have a minister sitting at the Cabinet table,” said Professor Emma Johnston, the president of Science and Technology Australia (STA), representing the nation’s scientific and research associations.
“Putting that science, that fundamental research, into an Assistant Minister’s portfolio demotes it, makes it less of a priority, and words matter.”
Senator Seselja will be assisting the Minister for Jobs and Innovation, Michaelia Cash, and believes the arrangements show innovation is still central to the Coalition’s agenda.
“[Malcolm Turnbull] put it front and centre for the Government,” Senator Seselja said.
“We’ve got the new portfolio led by Michaelia Cash and Craig Laundy, which is really about jobs. Jobs and innovation.”
Multiple portfolio changes cause problems, STA says
It is only the second time since the 1930s there has not been a minister for science in cabinet, with Mr Turnbull’s predecessor Tony Abbott also dropping science from cabinet.
Compounding concerns is the rapid turnover of science ministers in recent years, with Senator Seselja the fourth in the past three years.
“Having multiple portfolio changes does cause problems,” Professor Johnston said.
"They’ve individually been very excited and talented people, but the instability does cause problems for the sector.
“Science and research are long-term programs. They pay off, but you need to invest in them and you need to invest in them securely.”
Media player: “Space” to play, “M” to mute, “left” and “right” to seek.
VIDEO: Malcolm Turnbull announces the ministerial reshuffle (ABC News)
The Opposition spokesman for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Kim Carr, said the demotion puts science and research in the hands of “a third-rate junior”.
He said the science community needs an advocate at the Cabinet table and that shouldn’t be “turned on and off like a tap”.
STA want to see science at the heart of government decision-making.
“It’s paramount that anyone with the science portfolio is committed to evidence-based policy creation,” Professor Johnston said.
Senator Seselja is a conservative Liberal who was a vocal opponent of carbon pricing under the last Labor government.
But he said climate change policy would not fall under his purview.
“I’m not going to get into the absolute detail of that — it is beyond my portfolio,” he said.
“But I think the direction the Government is going in is absolutely the right one.”
The Australian reporting it as a delightful opportunity for some juniors to get a leg up. Plenty of Shorten sounding irritating about the civil war bw Nats and Libs but nary a mention of anything ‘sciencey’.
Turnbull is a coward of unfathomable depth
Science has no place in negotiating industry donations and post politics board room positions.