Slattsnews

Hang around with religious nuts long enough and you’ll be quoting psalms and babbling in tongues.
That appears to be the fate of Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell, who has come out claiming that “climate change” (whatever that is, seeing the climate is changing all the time) is a threat to civilization.
Campbell retains the government’s opposition to Kyoto nonsense but urges adoption of alternative energy sources. Ensuring he’s hardly about to be ordained a high priest of the green religion, these alternatives include nuclear energy.
Regardless of whether Campbell has caught green psychosis, he has effectively snookered the green left by creating a third way on climate change: if it exists, nuclear is the way to counter it.
This letter to The Australian demolishes Campbell’s position while challenging him to reveal his core motivation:

I SEE that Environment Minister Ian Campbell has been captured by the greenies in his department (“Debate over, it’s time to save planet”, 27/10). Senator Campbell should ask those who serve up his advice the following questions. One, where are the measurements for the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere taken and do these reflect accurately the numbers for Australia? Two, if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 0.03 per cent of the total, why do increases of parts per million (ie from approximately 350 to 355 ppm) matter? Three, if the amount of CO2 is increasing, is the rate of take-up also increasing, and if so, is there a still a balance? Four, where does all the CO2 go?
When he has some satisfactory answers to the above, and since this is all about greenhouse scaremongering, he should also ask his advisers what the safe level of greenhouse gas really is. That should stump the lot of them. Finally, since the sudden conversion to supporting efforts to curb climate change (why not tame the tides while we’re at it?), is really all about frightening people into supporting the use of nuclear energy for domestic and industrial power generation, why not be honest and say so? I don’t like being taken for a mug.
James Stuart
Griffith, ACT

UPDATE: Andrew Landeryou provides a terrific summary of the above and other matters in politics this week in comments.

Georgie’s not the best. Ah well, he was always determined to be, as former world boxing champion Lionel Rose put it, “here for a good time, not a long time”.
Nevertheless, he leaves tremendous memories.
And as good a quote as that one about soccer being more important than life and death. George once said: “I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I squandered”.