The Northern Territory news Mon 27 Jan 2020
NT news
The Northern Territory news; NewspaperNT
2020-01-27
English
Community newspapers -- Northern Territory -- Darwin; Australian newspapers -- Northern Territory -- Darwin
News Corp Australia
Darwin
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News Corp Australia
https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00042
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/756676
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/759928
MONDAY JANUARY 27 2020 OPINION 13 V1 - NTNE01Z01MA ACTIVISTS are exploiting these terrible bushfires to whip up an astonishing fear of man-made global warming and hatred of sceptics like me. But know what makes me sure, even after this fiery devastation, that the global warming menace is exaggerated? Its warmist scientist Andy Pitman, who has once again confirmed exactly what Ive been saying. How horrified hell be to hear it. You may remember Professor Pitman, the director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. He last year was recorded admitting to fellow warmists that droughts like this severe one thats fed the fires are NOT caused by global warming. As far as the climate scientists know there is no link between climate change and drought, he said. There is no reason, a priori, why climate change should make the landscape more arid. Indeed, despite the drought, Australias rainfall over the century has increased, not fallen. Pitman and the ABC were naturally mortified when I and others started to quote him. Pitman is now furious that former prime minister Tony Abbott last week quoted his admission, too, in The Australian. But in his anger, Pitman let slip a fact that sceptics like me have tried for years to point out. Pitman complained that Abbott quotes me on drought when in fact for 15 years I have been warning that the risk of fires is increasing as a consequence of climate change. Thats because, he said, the extra carbon dioxide we emit is actually plant food that causes greening, meaning we get more leaves and even trees to burn in a drought. But Pitman has been too honest. Most warmists have dodged this truth, because it undermines their fear campaign. You see, its actually sceptics like me who have for years argued that global warming is greening the planet, and that this is, overall, a good thing. As renowned physicist Freeman Dyson says: The whole Earth is growing greener as a result of carbon dioxide, so its increasing agricultural yields, its increasing the forests and its increasing growth in the biological world. NASA has found that an area about twice the size of the continental US got greener between 1982 and 2009. This helps to explain why world grain crops keep setting new records. But wait! A greener planet. Bigger crops. Fewer cyclones, too. Is this really something we want to stop? This goes to the key question that sceptics like me keep asking. We dont deny the planet has warmed. We instead question whether the warming were seeing less than predicted is all bad. We particularly question whether its smart to spend billions or even trillions to cut emissions in a largely symbolic attempt to stop all this. Of course, some warmists will say: look at these deadly fires! Dont they prove global warming is deadly? In fact, tragic as theyve been, they are far from our worst, measured either by deaths or area burned. Whats more, our bush this summer was dried out by a drought that was caused primarily not by global warming but by a natural and regular change in ocean patterns called the Indian Ocean Dipole. When that dipole pushes warmer water in the Indian Ocean east to Australia, we get rain; when it replaces that with cooler water, we get drought. Last December the Bureau of Meteorology warned the dipole had pushed so much cool water our way that we would get no real rain until April. Wed get no rain to stop the fires. Well, the bureau was wrong. The dipole suddenly decayed a couple of weeks ago, and weve since had lots of rain over eastern Australia, with more to come this week. So, thanks to Pitman, the sceptics case is even clearer. Do we really want to spend a fortune to slash our emissions in a largely futile attempt to stop a warming that isnt anything as dangerous as were told? Or would it be far cheaper and infinitely more effective to finally do all the fuel reduction burns needed to keep down the fuel loads in our forests? After all, even Pitman is blaming extra fuel loads for the intensity of the flames. Yet Victoria, for one, has over the past five years burned only half the area recommended by the royal commission into the shocking 2009 fires that killed 172 people four times more than died in this summers fires. But thats one more topic warmists hate. Reason is their enemy, and only fear is their friend. Linking the drought and subsequent bushfires to climate change is an error debunked by expert scientific opinions Being rights a warm feeling ANDREW BOLT Tony Abbott has quoted Professor Andy Pitman Picture: NICK KLEIN Pascoes tale gets muddier WHAT a scandal. Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt now threatens to sack a whistleblower who called out Aboriginal historian Bruce Pascoe as a white. The whistleblower in Wyatts sights is Josephine Cashman, an Aboriginal businesswoman on his advisory council. Cashman says Pascoe, author of the bestseller Dark Emu and star of an upcoming ABC series, is a fake Aborigine and she has plenty of evidence. Genealogical records on dark-emu-exposed.org suggest all of Pascoes ancestors are of English descent, and Pascoe refuses to say which is Aboriginal. Indeed, his story keeps changing. Once he identified as white, until a reviewer of his first novel said it would have been better had Pascoe been black. Once he claimed that one of his mothers grandmothers was Aboriginal, before admitting she was English. Now he claims hes descended from several tribes, including the Boonwurrung of Victoria, Tasmanian Aborigines and the Yuin of NSW. But his claims have been rejected by the Boonwurrung Land & Sea Council, the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania and members of the Yuin, and now even the Yolngu of Arnhem Land. Elder Terry Yumbulul says his fellow Yolngu want Wyatt to investigate Pascoes claim to Aboriginal ancestry and what hes gained from an identity he has been unable to verify. Yumbulul, like the Boonwurrung and the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania, also rejects Pascoes claims that Aborigines werent hunter-gathers but farmers in towns of 1000 people. There is no evidence of it in our art, languages or songlines, says Yumbulul, who accuses Pascoe of causing concerns about our ancient cultures, our ancient traditions, our precious stories. So whats Wyatts reaction? Its to defend white Pascoe and seemingly threaten Aboriginal Cashman with the sack. Wyatt told the Guardian Australia that Pascoes Aboriginality was being played out publicly when we should deal with (it) within communities. He said he could ask one of his advisers to quit: I have to think of the greater good of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Really? Is truth to be sacrificed for the greater good? And wheres this greater good when Aborigines are being stripped of their past and even their right to say who is of their tribe? No Liberal MP should tolerate what Wyatt seems to have in mind. If Cashman goes, so should he. PROFESSOR ANDY PITMAN, THE DIRECTOR OF THE ARC CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR CLIMATE EXTREMES, LAST YEAR WAS RECORDED ADMITTING TO FELLOW WARMISTS THAT DROUGHTS LIKE THIS SEVERE ONE THATS FED THE FIRES ARE NOT CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING. AS FAR AS THE CLIMATE SCIENTISTS KNOW THERE IS NO LINK BETWEEN CLIMATE CHANGE AND DROUGHT, HE SAID. THERE IS NO REASON, A PRIORI, WHY CLIMATE CHANGE SHOULD MAKE THE LANDSCAPE MORE ARID ''