Treadgold gets it (nearly, but for $30bn) right

Don’t get too excited, but I agree with Richard Treadgold when he says of the gazetting of a ’50 by 2050′ emissions target by the New Zealand government that:

Noting that 39 years remain in which to achieve these so-called “reductions”, the gazetting strikes us as primarily a marketing exercise rather than a sincere attempt to influence the climate.

Full of hope and joy at this unwonted sagacity I read on to where Treadgold complains about a lack of references:

No references are given to justify the claimed “international agreement” that future global temperature increases should be held to 2°C or less, nor is the treaty document named in which New Zealand signed up to such an agreement, nor is the Hansard or Gazette record cited in which our government ratified such a treaty.
No references are given for believing that the measures taken by all nations will achieve the stated restriction in future global temperature rise. Yet without that belief, why should we offer what appears to be merely an expensive form of moral support?

Well that sure told them – moral support is for people who haven’t read Ayn Rand. But then, without references Treadgold states that:

After the expenditure of some $US50 billion in climate research over the last 20 to 30 years, we have yet to detect a human signal in the global temperature data. There is an absence of evidence of any human effect on warming, much less that the effect might be dangerous.

What a lovely paragraph. Words like this should be used again and again. Oh. It seems that these words have been used again and again. Bob Carter appears to have been the first to use words to this effect on 18 June 2007, in The Courier Mail:

…the expenditure of more than $US50 billion ($60 billion) on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one…

Not being one to waste words I see Carter used the paragraph again and again. I found many minor reworkings. This is lazy perhaps but not naughty. If Bob Carter thinks he has a valid point then he should keep hammering it. Though I notice Bob Carter doesn’t give references in any of his versions either. According to Bob Carter, the dollar amount was the same for 2008, and 2009. How very economical. But then, a little later in 2009, it was revealed that climate scientists had greedily grabbed another U$30 billion when Chris de Freitas informed the world that the total was now U$80 billion:

The US federal government has spent 80 billion US dollars on climate research on the assumption that human caused rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem. Despite this, no one has yet found even a shred of objective scientific evidence that humans are causing damaging global climate change.

However, the good news is that if Treadgold is right about the U$ 50 billion then it is obvious that climate scientists have since seen the light and returned U$30 billion and managed to get by without spending anything since 2007. Unless of course they are just running a huge Ponzi scheme.

[ Peking Man: A room that echoes]