Climate alarmists are overlooking scientific facts

Some letters to the editor below that appeared in "The Australian" on 27th

ALARMISTS such as Fred Cehak and Chris Roylance (Letters, 26/9) criticise acclaimed scientists such as Dan Wood and Steven Koonin for their sceptical views, yet continue to peddle the fiction that the “science is settled” in the climate debate.

Those aboard the ship stuck in Antarctic ice early this year believed their own shoddy science that said the poles were melting. Today, the Antarctic ice sheet is at an all-time record high, and Arctic ice is now refreezing as normal.

The junk models used by the alarmists to frighten the world are in a state of disarray as more than 50 excuses are circulating trying to explain, unsuccessfully, the 17-year halt to global warming, even with rising carbon dioxide emissions.

Despite its shortcomings, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared there is no relationship between emissions and hurricanes, Atlantic storms, drought and wildfires, and any other catastrophe served up as fact by the alarmists, whose arguments are always based on appeals to authority rather than the tenets of true science as embraced by sceptics.

G. M. Derrick, Sherwood, Qld

THE informative and balanced article by Steven Koonin (“A degree of uncertainty”, 23/9) brings me to the following conclusion. Much of the vast sums of taxpayers’ money being spent on researching and controlling man-made climate change should be directed to researching the magnitude and causes of natural climate change.

We would all then be in a better position to determine how significant is man-made climate change in comparison to natural climate change, and develop appropriate policy.

Charles Stanger, Manuka, ACT

FRED Cehak criticises those who doubt the accuracy of climate models and says the majority of scientists support the views of the IPCC. Yet doesn’t the IPCC’s fifth assessment report state that the rate of warming over the past 15 years, a 20th of a degree per decade, is smaller than the trend since 1951, an eighth of a degree per decade? This despite an unabated increase in the alleged driver, atmospheric carbon dioxide. Surely that’s justification for critical review of some of the more alarming predictions.

And we never see any criticism from Cehak or others of the failed predictions by Tim Flannery that Sydney and Brisbane’s dams would now be dry never to fill again, or of the equally ludicrous suggestion by Greens leader Christine Milne that repeal of the Renewable Energy Target would lead to only a billion people being left alive by 2100.

Peter Troy, Kingston, Tas

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That ABC show is Questionable & Adversarial

A DANGEROUS parallel universe now exists alongside the reality of what the Police Commissioner calls the “clear and present threat” of homegrown Islamic terrorism.

This sham reality has been constructed by the “progressive” Left-leaning establishment of academics, politicians, journalists, media organisations and activists who have inexplicably joined forces with­ Islamic ideologues to downplay the threat, undermine our security and accuse those trying to keep us safe of Islamophobia and fearmongering.

In their eyes, the terror raids last week were suspiciously timed to ­distract from the Abbott government’s troubles and somehow to justify sending troops to the Middle East to help Iraq confront the Islamic State.

In politicising a security issue, they are wilfully deaf, dumb and blind to the assessments of those who actually are privy to the intelligence which led to last week’s terror raids.

“Let me tell you that matter that we dealt with last week was well past being a thought bubble,” NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione tells me.

“There was a clear and present threat that was very soon to be ­delivered. We know in Queensland only the week before, again, a matter of days before it was to be delivered.

“… It’s such a difficult call that the experts in the counterterrorism command area have to make.

“It’s a matter of waiting to get as much evidence as possible but ­ensuring that nothing happens. And we will always err on the side of going a little bit early because … if that ­attack that was planned last week had been successful. this ­nation’s history would have changed forever.”

That’s the reality which the tinfoil hat crowd deny, on the basis of zero evidence.

They ignore Monday’s order by Islamic State extremists to their supporters to kill Australians in whatever way they can.

For a view into the belly of this tinfoil beast, go no further than Monday night’s Q & A on ABC-TV. It distilled every delusion and pernicious idea about Muslim victimhood into one hour of dangerous insanity.

Western imperialism is to blame. Israel is to blame. “Team Australia” is to blame.

Two belligerent Muslim women controlled the conversation: sociologist and Islamophobia specialist Randa Abdel-Fattah and Anne Azza Aly, a social science research fellow at Curtin University, who was billed by the ABC as a “terrorism expert”.

Fattah claimed the terror raids were like an NCIS episode, “whipping people up into a frenzy of hysteria of war fever”.

“(They) reinforced this wider narrative of Muslims as criminals,” she said.

Then, after being the font of all wisdom for 50 minutes, Fattah said it was too complex to explain why Iraq asked for Australia’s help to stop Islamic State beheading, crucifying and raping its citizens.

“I’m not an expert because I’m too busy battling Islamophobia,” she said.

Aly, meanwhile, described terrorism as “theatre”.

Fellow panellist and Greens MP Scott Ludlam agreed the timing of the raids was an “amazing coincidence” and the terror threat was a beat-up hatched by “tabloid papers” which are “hurling fear” at people.

“Divisiveness” and fear is what terrorism is all about, he said, that “corroding and undermining of the underpinnings of society”.

Silly you if you thought terrorism was about chopping off heads and blowing up people.

Mark Dreyfus, Julia Gillard’s former attorney general, accused the government of “overstating” the ­jihadist threat,

Justice Minister Michael Keenan did a valiant job rebutting the nonsense but he was outnumbered five to one, and his most effective opponent was the host.

Tony Jones cut across Keenan, ­allowed guests to badger and interrupt him, and at one stage made the most extraordinary intervention. He interrupted Keenan to quiz a Muslim woman in the audience whom he imagined had claimed that “ASIO” had threatened to behead her, rape her corpse and slit her children’s throats.

Who would believe such a thing?

It turned out the woman’s claims were about “right-wing Nazis” on ­social media.

Even the audience laughed at Jones then.

The ABC could have brought in any number of sensible Muslims who understand the terrorist threat. It could have brought in Christian ­Assyrians or Afghan refugees or ­actual terrorism experts.

Instead the taxpayer-funded broadcaster chose deliberately to sow community disharmony, to smear Australians as racists and bigots, and to feed the sense of misplaced grievance and victimhood that justifies radicalism.

But the reality remains that we have a serious terrorist problem and the people charged with keeping us safe must not be distracted by ­spurious claims of Islamophobia and legal threats.

Were police not supposed to question three men at the football who were pointed out to them by ­spectators because the men might hire lawyer Adam Houda and threaten civil action?

Were they supposed to ignore two carloads of bearded Muslim men stopped near the Lucas Height ­nuclear reactor?

This isn’t a game. It’s not politics. It’s about saving lives.

“There are tough times ahead,” Scipione says.

“We can never become complacent. Just because something’s been thwarted … doesn’t mean the threat has gone away. In fact every day … that you don’t read about it is one day closer to the day when the ­attack will happen.

“They’re out there and they’re plotting.”

That’s the truth.

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The halal racket

A South Australian company is paying one of many competing Islamic Halal Certification “services” (AFIC) an undisclosed monthly fee for its seal of approval. But Scholle Industries Pty Ltd, based in Elizabeth, is a manufacturer of plastic packaging (plastic is derived from oil) and has apparently been able to assure Muslim fraudsters that all oil wells are facing Mecca.

Farcical Halal certification is being exposed as nothing more than an extortion racket adding to the cost of almost every type of purchase and governments are failing to act to protect Australians from this Islamic curse on our retail trade for fear of an Islamic electoral backlash.

    Coercion, and threats by the Islamic “certifiers” to economically cripple Australian manufacturers and processors who refuse to pay up are being ignored by authorities.

Since the scam has been exposed, Aussie shoppers are refusing to buy product with the Halal certified label and the little Arab motifs are disappearing from shelf products everywhere like pork pies at a Passover, but the payments and the threats remain.

Halal certification headquarters are based in Saudi Arabia with Indonesia (MUI) administering the Asian arm and many various competing Australian “certifiers” operating both nationally and in most States.

Total income from the world-wide scam is a reported $1.2 trillion, with Australia contributing a mere billion or so while our Defence Force wonders where the hell the House of Saud gets the money to pay the Islamic State.

It was reported here earlier this year that one major Aussie meat processor, who refused to be identified, claimed he had been told to pay $27,000 a month for halal certification or risk being banned from exporting.

Mr Stephen Kelly, an executive of the Japanese-owned Nippon Meat Packers in Queensland, said last year that MUI had already banned his abattoirs from selling meat to Indonesia because he had procured his “certification” from one of MUI’s Australian opposition certifiers, AHFS.

Meanwhile the Heart Foundation’s “tick of approval” is proving another fraudulent impost on embattled Aussies with “ticks” being thrown to pizzas, deep-fried chips and pies, if the right amount of money is paid of course.

MacDonald’s has forked out millions over the past eight years to have the Heart Foundation's “tick” of approval on their junk food.

The Heart Foundation is a (cough, cough) non-profit organisation but their “advisers”, “consultants” and executives drive very nice cars, live in very nice houses and take extended, very expensive and all exes paid overseas trips to study other "ticksters".

If this government was able to get rid of the carbon tax, Halal, Kosher and the “tick” taxes should be a piece of piss.

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A balancing act-home schooling regulation

Most parents never progress beyond day-dreaming about home schooling, but it is becoming increasingly mainstream-everyone seems to know at least one home schooling family and most admire their choice.

Statistics for NSW confirm this perception. The number of children registered for home schooling has increased by 64% in five years, from 1,945 in 2009 to 3,194 in 2013. However, these figures underestimate the true size of the home schooling population. According to estimates by the Home Education Association, there could be as many as 12,000 unregistered, home schooled children in NSW.

Whether you see this as a problem depends on where you sit on the parental rights spectrum. At one end is the idea that parents know what is best for their children and should be free to make decisions about their children's education without government interference. At the other end is the notion that since children have a right to a decent education, governments have an obligation to ensure this occurs, and this takes precedence over parental rights. 

Submissions to the parliamentary inquiry into home schooling in NSW cover the full range of views. Many home schooling families and their advocate organisations argue that the registration requirements in NSW are too onerous, and deter families from registering. They argue that home education (their preferred term) is unique and should not be regulated like a school. The NSW Teachers Federation, on the other hand, strongly favours strict regulation, taking the position that public schools provide the best education and that any exception must be justified.

The requirements of home school families are stricter in NSW than in other states: adherence to the NSW syllabus is mandatory and student progress is monitored by home school inspectors (or 'Authorised Persons'). The extent to which this is enforced is debatable; anecdotal reports from home school families claim it is heavy handed, but according to the NSW Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards (BOSTES), less than half of one percent of registrations are refused or revoked due to failure to meet requirements.

Currently, home schooling families are doing all the work in their relationship with the state and getting little in return, receiving no educational or financial support. Nevertheless, home schooling is increasingly being seen as a viable option. If this trend continues, government policy will have to strike the right balance and adapt to challenges of providing parents with the flexibility they want and giving children the protection they need.

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