Two items. Don't forget to share (since these "proposals" are going
to affect everyone if we're clueless enough to be Kool-Aid drinkers
in the Branch Algorian Cult). ~ Janice
[1] Recently we saw the story of
<http://agw-heretic.blogspot.com/2007/11/abortion-and-sterilization-as-moral.html>Toni
Vernelli, the British woman who killed her unborn baby and had
herself sterilized because of her desire to "save the planet" from
the ecological destruction her offspring would surely cause.
'Tax Parents for Children's Carbon Emissions' By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor December 10, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - Having babies is bad for the planet, and parents of
more than two children should be charged a birth levy and annual tax
to offset the "greenhouse gases" their child will be responsible for
over his or her lifetime.
At the same time, those who use and prescribe contraceptives and
sterilization procedures should earn tax relief for such greenhouse
friendly services" that help to keep the population size down.
These proposals, by an Australian academic, were published in the
country's leading medical journal on Monday. They drew a sharp
response from a pro-family group.
Australia has a population of around 21.2 million. It recorded
273,500 births over the year ending March 2007, the Australian Bureau
of Statistics reported last September.
Although the total population increase (net migration and natural
increase) was the highest to date, Australia's total fertility rate
(the average number of babies born to women during the reproductive
years of 15-44) has been dropping steadily for decades, from 3.5 in
1961 to 1.76 this year.
In 2004, former Prime Minister John Howard's government announced a
drive to counter the declining birthrate, urging parents to aim for
three children, and offering families a financial
<http://www.cnsnews.com/ForeignBureaus/Archive/200405/FOR20040512c.html>incentive
that currently stands at around $3,670.
But to Barry Walters, clinical associate professor of obstetric
medicine at the University of Western Australia, that undermines the
campaign to fight global warming.
"Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of
greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by
breathing, but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of
our society," he wrote in an article published in the Medical Journal
of Australia Monday.
"Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and thereby
rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behavior, a 'Baby Levy' in the form
of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the 'polluter pays'
principle," he argued.
Walters said Australian parents who have more than an agreed number
of children -- he cited a population-limitation advocacy group as
suggesting a ceiling of two -- should pay the cost of planting trees
to offset the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) the additional children
will produce. (Trees absorb CO2, which along with other greenhouse
gases is often blamed for climate change.)
He calculated that a birth levy of around $4,380 (5,000 Australian
dollars) would cover the cost of purchasing the land needed and
planting the trees required to offset one lifetime's worth of CO2. An
additional annual tax of $350-$700 would cover maintenance of the forest.
Walters said medical practitioners had a responsibility to point out
the environmental consequences of having children.
"By the same reasoning, contraceptives, intrauterine devices,
diaphragms, condoms and sterilization procedures should attract
carbon credits for the user and the prescriber that would offset
their income taxes, and lead to rewards for family planning clinics
and hospitals that provide such greenhouse-friendly services," he said.
Walters implied that the controversial population-control policies in
place in China and India should be emulated.
"As citizens of this world, I believe we deserve no more population
concessions than those in India and China."
'Enormous value of human capital'
Another Australian academic, writing in the Medical Journal of
Australia in response to Walters' article, agreed with his arguments.
"One must wonder why population control, which was such a popular
topic during the 1970s, is spoken of today only in whispers," said
Garry Egger, director of the Center for Health Promotion and Research
in Sydney.
"The debate needs to be reopened as part of a second ecological
revolution," he said. "Doctors, as opinion leaders in the community,
must be at the forefront of this debate."
Australian Family Association spokeswoman Angela Conway said Walters
arguments were "skewed and simplistic."
He fails to isolate the real reasons why we are failing to manage our
environment well," she said Monday. "He fails to recognize the
enormous value of human capital
to long economic and environmental sustainability. He fails to put an
appropriate value on human family life to society."
Conway said traditional societies that value children were more
likely to seek economic and ecological sustainability because they
want to steward the environment for future generations.
"Real solutions always come from human ingenuity and inventiveness,"
she said. "Children are the wellspring for society's human capital."
"Perhaps the children the professor would ban will be the ones who
would have planted the urban forests, and successfully integrated
trees back into farming on a large scale," she said. "Perhaps these
children will be the ones who might have creatively developed
sustainable new technologies and systems. Perhaps they will be the
ones to reject the economic and cultural systems that underpin the
profligate consumption of the developed world."
Conway said she found it sad that Walters would see China's
population control policies as appropriate for Australia.
"Does he make this recommendation in ignorance of the terrible and
large scale human rights abuses carried out under that policy over
the last few decades?" she asked.
Under population policies instituted in the 1970s, China restrict
couples to one child, with exceptions for some ethnic minorities and
in some parts of the country. The policy, which carries punitive
fines for violators, has led to abuses including coercive abortions
and forced sterilization, researchers say.
In a society where boys are traditionally favored and valued for
their future help to ageing parents, another result of the
"one-child" policy is the abortion of unwanted baby girls, leading to
a badly-skewed gender ratio.
Attempts to reach Walters for comment were unsuccessful.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200712/INT20071210a.html
*
[2] December 11, 2007
Skeptical Scientists Urge World To 'Have the Courage to Do Nothing'
At UN Conference
BALI, Indonesia - An international team of scientists skeptical of
man-made climate fears promoted by the UN and former VP AlGore,
descended on Bali this week to urge the world to "have the courage to
do nothing" in response to UN demands.
Lord Christopher Monckton, a UK climate researcher, had a blunt
message for UN climate conference participants on Monday.
"Climate change is a non problem. The right answer to a non problem
is to have the courage to do nothing," Monckton told participants.
"The UN conference is a complete waste of our time and your money and
we should no longer pay the slightest attention to the IPCC
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,)" Monckton added.
(<http://ff.org/centers/csspp/press/20070302_release.html>LINK)
Monckton also noted that the UN has not been overly welcoming to the
group of skeptical scientists.
"UN organizers refused my credentials and appeared desperate that I
should not come to this conference. They have also made several
attempts to interfere with our public meetings," Monckton explained.
"It is a circus here," agreed Australian scientist Dr. David Evans.
Evans is making scientific presentations to delegates and journalists
at the conference revealing the latest peer-reviewed studies that
refute the UN's climate claims.
"This is the most lavish conference I have ever been to, but I am
only a scientist and I actually only go to the science conferences,"
Evans said, noting the luxury of the tropical resort. (Note: An
analysis by Bloomberg News on December 6 found: "Government
officials and activists flying to Bali, Indonesia, for the United
Nations meeting on climate change will cause as much pollution as
20,000 cars in a year." -
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601170&refer=home&sid=aPbfclqokwcw>LINK)
Evans, a mathematician who did carbon accounting for the Australian
government, recently converted to a skeptical scientist about
man-made global warming after reviewing the new scientific studies.
(<http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=927b9303-802a-23ad-494b-dccb00b51a12>LINK)
"We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely
don't cause global warming. We have the missing [human] signature
[in the atmosphere], we have the IPCC models being wrong and we have
the lack of a temperature going up the last 5 years," Evans said
... Evans authored a November 28 2007 paper "Carbon Emissions Don't
Cause Global Warming."
(<http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Evans-CO2DoesNotCauseGW.pdf>LINK)
Evans touted a new peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists
appearing in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of
Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society which found "Warming
is naturally caused and shows no human influence."
(<http://science-sepp.blogspot.com/2007/12/press-release-dec-10-2007.html>LINK)
"Most of the people here have jobs that are very well paid and they
depend on the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. They
are not going to be very receptive to the idea that well actually the
science has gone off in a different direction," Evans explained.
[Note: Several other recent peer-reviewed studies have cast
considerable doubt about man-made global warming fears. For most
recent sampling see: New Peer-Reviewed Study finds 'Solar changes
significantly alter climate' (11-3-07)
(<http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002586.html>LINK) &
"New Peer-Reviewed Study Halves the Global Average Surface
Temperature Trend 1980 - 2002"
(<http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002599.html>LINK) &
New Study finds Medieval Warm Period '0.3C Warmer than 20th Century'
(<http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/iWeb/Global%20Warming%20Politics/A%20Hot%20Topic%20Blog/E6BB2856-9317-4B0C-863F-A9C7AE47472B.html>LINK)
For a more comprehensive sampling of peer-reviewed studies earlier in
2007 see "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming
Fears"
<http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=84e9e44a-802a-23ad-493a-b35d0842fed8>LINK
]
'IPCC is unsound'
UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr. Vincent Gray of New
Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports
since its inception going back to 1990, had a clear message to UN
participants.
"There is no evidence that carbon dioxide increases are having any
affect whatsoever on the climate," Gray, who shares in the Nobel
Prize awarded to the UN IPCC, explained.
(<http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=155&Itemid=1>LINK)
"All the science of the IPCC is unsound. I have come to this
conclusion after a very long time. If you examine every single
proposition of the IPCC thoroughly, you find that the science
somewhere fails," Gray, who wrote the book "The Greenhouse Delusion:
A Critique of "Climate Change 2001," said.
"It fails not only from the data, but it fails in the statistics, and
the mathematics," he added.
'Dangerous time for science'
Evans, who believes the UN has heavily politicized science, warned
there is going to be a "dangerous time for science" ahead.
"We have a split here.
Official science driven by politics, money and power, goes in one direction.
Unofficial science, which is more determined by what is actually
happening with the [climate] data, has now started to move off in a
different direction" away from fears of a man-made climate crisis,
Evans explained.
"The two are splitting. This is always a dangerous time for science
and a dangerous time for politics. Historically science always wins
these battles but there can be a lot of causalities and a lot of time
in between," he concluded.
Carbon trading 'fraud?'
New Zealander Bryan Leland of the International Climate Science
Coalition warned participants that all the UN promoted discussions of
"carbon trading" should be viewed with suspicion.
"I am an energy engineer and I know something about electricity
trading and I know enough about carbon trading and the inaccuracies
of carbon trading to know that carbon trading is more about fraud
than it is about anything else," Leland said.
"We should probably ask why we have 10,000 people here [in Bali] in a
futile attempt to 'solve' a [climate] problem that probably does not
exist," Leland added.
'Simply not work'
Owen McShane, the head of the International Climate Science
Coalition, also worried that a UN promoted global approach to
economics would mean financial ruin for many nations.
"I don't think this conference can actually achieve anything because
it seems to be saying that we are going to draw up one protocol for
every country in the world to follow," McShane said.
(<http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0704/S00277.htm>LINK)
"Now these countries and these economies are so diverse that trying
to presume you can put all of these feet into one shoe will simply
not work," McShane explained.
"Having the same set of rules apply to everybody will blow some
economies apart totally while others will be unscathed and I wouldn't
be surprised if the ones who remain unscathed are the ones who write
the rules," he added.
'Nothing happening at this conference'
Professor Dr. William Alexander, emeritus of the University of
Pretoria in South Africa and a former member of the United Nations
Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, warned poor
nations and their residents that the UN policies could mean more
poverty and thus more death.
"My message is specifically for the poor people of Africa. And there
is nothing happening at this conference that can help them one little
bit but there is the potential that they could be damaged," Alexander
said. (<http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/alexander2707.pdf>LINK)
"The government and people of Africa will have their attention drawn
to reducing climate change instead of reducing poverty," Alexander added.
Related:
<http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=c9554887-802a-23ad-4303-68f67ebd151c>http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=c9554887-802a-23ad-4303-68f67ebd151c
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Received on Tue Dec 11 11:35:39 2007
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