Have you ever questioned the links between bushfires and atmospheric CO2?

Discussions about the changing climate and the level of human contribution are only allowed if the discussion follows the approved narrative. Heaven forbid somebody decides to do their own research into how global average temperatures are calculated, how many temperature stations were around in 1850, how climate models compare to observations, how CO2 functions as a greenhouse gas, and how past predictions have borne out.

For those who would label me a ‘denier’, I have a label for you – coward. Allow me to explain my contempt.

If green-left politics is your bag and you endorse the approved message, please explain your doomsday cultist narrative and how your objectives will send us backward to enjoy the living standards of a third-world country, with negative impacts on the environment.

To those who say that ‘Australia should be a climate leader’, I ask you to show evidence of a country both cutting emissions and improving its economy, living standards, and security, while pushing the renewables mantra. The world’s best examples of high renewables all have high electricity costs – Germany, United Kingdom, California, and Australia.

If you are not swayed by real-life examples of failure, then I urge you to ask yourself, why the ‘experts’ are pushing us into weather-dependent power sources, when the weather is supposed to become more unpredictable and extreme?

To the renewables lobby, including their sycophant ‘experts’, media, and political allies, I ask why, if your product is so good, do you continuously push for subsidies, targets, market intervention, cheap finance, and government spending, all while demonising the fossil fuel industry that has almost single-handedly created our current abundance of wealth and health.

To those who say ‘we need more climate action’, I ask you to quantify those actions and the effects of those actions on the climate. Please be specific. You and your ilk have a history of vagueness and being very, very wrong.

To those who rave about ‘the transition’, I ask you to define the end of the so-called transition – when will this magic outcome occur, and what does it look like? Because to me, this transition looks like a never-ending cycle of building wind/solar/batteries, with their short life-span requiring replacement every 10-20 years.

To anybody who believes emissions reduction is important, I ask if you support nuclear power.

If you think the federal government has any role in the management of bushfires, I ask you to look at the responsibilities and performance of the state environmental and emergency service bureaucracies.

If you think the world is going to end because of sea-level rise, I ask you to put ice cubes in a glass, fill it with water, then wait for the ice to melt and observe the glass not overflowing.

If you think ‘the science’ is infallible, I ask you to read what Alan Finkel, Peter Ridd and Richard Horton have to say about the credibility crisis in scientific published research. Then give the ClimateGate emails a once-over. Then ask why the world’s primary atmospheric carbon dioxide measurement laboratory is located beside an active volcano.

If you are swayed by ‘the consensus’, I ask you to read Happer, Lomborg, Plimer, Schellenberger, Epstein, Spencer, Curry, Peiser, and Ridley. Then compare those with the writings of Gore, Thunberg, and Obama.

If you find yourself convinced by the weighty opining of ‘experts’ that all CO2 increase is caused by human activities, I recommend the mission pages of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory and the finding that in one year, the combined emissions from three rainforests increased by five-times Australia’s annual emissions.

If CO2 emissions are the first thing you think about when you wake in the morning, consider that global emissions reduction reduced by almost 10 per cent in 2020 because of Covid lockdowns, and that it cannot be differentiated from natural variation (according to NOAA).

If the fact that burning coal has led to prosperity and improved health for billions of people hurts your brain, try this:

• Burning wood releases the carbon isotopes C12, C13 and C14
• Burning coal and gas releases only C12 and C13
• Measuring the dilution of C14 in the atmosphere proves the increase of C12 and C13
• You can’t apportion how much CO2 is entering the atmosphere from burning coal, without knowing how much CO2 of all types is also entering and disappearing from the atmosphere separately

If you think the UN has Australia’s best interests in mind, I ask you to name another large, unelected bureaucracy that you trust to decide your best interests. Then ask what the UN has done for you lately.

If you think CO2 emissions are the harbinger of doom, then I ask you to lead by example and commit to a single vehicle, composting, no air conditioners or plane travel, using only local seasonal produce, no batteries, no computers, no electricity, no running water, no textiles, nothing made in a factory or transported or harvested by machine, or grown using fertiliser and herbicides.

If you find yourself nodding along with phrases like ‘green hydrogen superpower’, I suggest you look up how much energy is consumed in producing green hydrogen, how the energy for green hydrogen is generated, and what that looks like on the environment.

If you quite like your first-world lifestyle, spare a thought for the third-world where people are being offered the joys of solar panels, which doesn’t remove them from poverty.

If you are tempted to label me a right-wing nutjob, climate-change denier, racist, a symptom of the colonial white privileged patriarchy, go for it. But please allow me to respond…

If you are part of the media, political, or scientific elite and you disagree with anything I’ve said, but you cannot be bothered to look it up yourself, if you’ve never bothered to look into the so-called ‘other side’, if you have no interest in the truth of things, if you cannot bring yourself to challenge your pre-conceived ideas, then you are a climate coward.

Ben Beattie is an electrical engineer in the power and natural gas sectors.

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