Malcolm speaks out

Last night, a somewhat muted and weary sounding Malcolm Turnbull seemed to refute a number of criticisms of the Global Warming debate, saying "a war was being waged on scientists by "those opposed to taking action to cut emissions, many because it does not suit their own financial interests"." and that " the rejection of scientific consensus on global warming was not Liberal Party policy. "Quite the contrary," he said. "The Liberal Party's policy is to accept the scientific consensus that the globe is warming and that human greenhouse gas emissions are substantially the cause of it.""

As Malcom Turnbull's blog points out on the 21 July2011 Lateline interview: "The second point I made in the interview which has been the subject of criticism in the media is my remark that direct action would be a charge on the budget. Well, let’s be fair dinkum about this. The whole point of direct action is that abatement is funded out of the budget as opposed to being funded by an impost on emitting industries who then pass it on to their customers in higher electricity or fuel prices. In other words emitting industries do not face an uniform economic incentive to cut their emissions under direct action. Instead the Government is obliged to pay for carbon credits to offset enough of those emissions to meet the target and the Government may choose to pay particular firms to convert their operations to lower emission intensities. Either way the Government picks up the tab – that’s the whole idea."

So to those who want a "balanced view of the science" do you want to argue about banning di-hydrogen monoxide or simply want enough of it to drink! Quite often, in science, there are facts based on high probability rather than balance.