It’s been quite the week for overblown climate hyperbole and preposterous exaggerations, so we thought we may as well join in the fun: ‘New Ice Age to arrive by summer 2023. Australia prepares for a White Christmas.’ In reality, our own far-fetched prediction is probably more credible than the nonsensical ‘the era of global boiling has begun’ trotted out by the clownish and increasingly toad-like Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres. Every politician rightly dreads the moment the public stops fearing them or taking them seriously and instead starts laughing at them, and Senhor Guterres certainly toppled over that particular tipping point this week. Sadly, however, his is not a democratically elected position, so it is unlikely he will disappear from our TV screens any time soon. Thus, we must take his prediction seriously, not so much for what damage our ‘boiling’ planet may do to us all, but rather, the incredible damage such asinine rhetoric is doing and will carry on doing to our economic outlook and future prosperity.

You didn’t have to be a climate-denier or even a climate-sceptic to find the Guterres rant risible. But the problem is that such inflammatory climate language is then regurgitated through all channels of the media and fed directly into our schoolchildren’s daily diet of woke disinformation. Most well-meaning but less-politically engaged people and hard-pressed parents tend to presume that the truth about subjects like climate change ‘lies somewhere in the middle’ and are quite happy for others invested in the culture wars to battle it out. However, by constantly ramping up the extremist language, the left wilfully and deceptively shifted the ‘sensible centre’ further and further away from reality. Even one of the head honchos at the IPCC was forced to admit that Guterres’ ‘global boiling’  was wide of the mark. But of course such cautionary notes gain nowhere near the publicity of hysterical fear-mongering.

Full marks as always to Speccie contributor and South Australian Senator Alex Antic for his suggested future alarmist expressions for the UN to excitedly promote when ‘global boiling’ loses its scare factor, which it shall, including ‘Global Climate Inferno’, ‘Mega Universe Heat Death’ and ‘Super Global Spine Chillingly Hot’.

Equally absurd, and linked, was the claim by both Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that their government had ‘saved’ the Great Barrier Reef. Hilaire Belloc would have adored the twisted logic that has the United Nations not declaring the Great Barrier Reef to be in mortal danger as they had been feverishly plotting to thanks entirely to the one-and-a-bit-year-old Labor government having increased the cost of your electricity bills. Or something like that. Here’s a wildly radical and heretical thought: perhaps it was never in danger to begin with. Because maybe the oceans aren’t actually boiling.

In this week’s magazine, Michael Baume exposes just one tiny but incredibly disturbing aspect of where all this madness is leading us to. It was Alan Jones who used to speak of the ‘national suicide note’ that is net zero. But our foolish Energy Minister seems hell-bent on living up to that promise, as he jeopardises our critical relationship with Japan courtesy of his climate dogma and renewables fantasies. As Michael writes, ‘[Our new emissions laws] are of such major concern that not only have Japanese senior ministers already requested flexible measures under the safeguard mechanism for LNG projects supplying Japan, but PM Kishida has made a similar approach to PM Albanese.’

At the same time, Rebecca Weisser reveals that even the net-zero luvvies have added up the carbon numbers and come to the conclusion that offshore wind farms in NSW are a flat no-no.

No hyperbole there.

Stealth and deception

The great danger now for the No campaign as we head towards the referendum on an indigenous Voice to parliament is complacency. The strategy of the Yes campaign to run purely on the ‘vibe’ of the thing has failed. Despite their desire to do everything within reason to assist disadvantaged Aborigines in remote communities, the simple fact is that Australians are neither stupid nor gullible and demand to know precisely what changing the constitution and enshrining a Voice will mean.

Stealth and deception have been the hallmarks of this campaign since Mr Albanese spoke at Garma last year. Put simply, it is Labor that needs to indulge in some ‘truth-telling’ on what their plans are regarding ‘sovereignty’ and ‘reparations’. But of course, they are incapable of doing so because now any answer they give fails to either appease the activists or reassure the public. Instead, expect even more deception in the days ahead.