Does the Liberal Party still exist?
The questions turns on the ETS and what it is constructed as representing.
Obviously it has nothing to do with resistance to tax and big govt
This is the party that gave us the GST after all.
No, clearly resistance to the ETS is steered by the notion that one part of the party would like to reject the rational calculation of ….
probability, harm, risk and expert knowledge that is simply part of the enlightenment from which liberalism was born.
Instead, Stalin-Lysenko style, they would prefer to subordinateknowledge to politics.
That is not a split around an ancillary issue. It is a division on how the world is viewed and interpreted. Politics is, in the last analysis, epistemology.
In that respect the Liberals will cease to exist as a party if more than 12 MPs cross the floor on the ETS vote.
More in the newsletter tmrw. The illustation si from the British Israelites, one of the largest portestant sects of the 19th c.
They’re staggering on somehow too.
38 Comments
My reading of the CPRS liberal vote is that those closest to their electorate (ie marginal seat) overwhelmingly voted yes. The others are captured by a noisy minority.
The Noes about to lose their seat (from Antony’s election calculator- 3.3% swing to govt) are Simpkins, Vale, Farmer and Johnson. The yesses about to lose their seat were Southcott, Laming, Dutton, Somlyay, Gash, Markus, Lindsay, Wood, Bailey, Baldwin, Keenan & Pyne.
This has two implications. One- there is no way a Lib government would have introduced an ETS- this only got through on fear of electoral annihalation. Two- we are going to have a much more conservative (ie sceptic) opposition after the next election.
Great piece Guy, like Tyroone Power, small but perfectly formed. The libs have the same problem with boat people, no rational argument. But then That’s Jenny Macklin’s problem too.
Vale, Bailey and Farmer aren’t running at the next election, so it’s irrelevant how they voted.
I agree with the general premise of the OP: after the next election, the Coalition will be reduced to a rump dominated by the sceptical end of the spectrum.
Which, if you discount some PR platitudes, hand waving and ‘non-core’ promises, was exactly where they were before the 07 election when policy was dictated by the ‘greenhouse mafia’.
The alternative view, which I’ve mentioned before in Crikey comments, is that the Right fears capitulation to the ALP on AGW means extinction for the Lib/Nats. Turnbull’s head has been turned by Cameron, the Greener-than-thou, solar-panelled Old Etonian. It’s just pompous rhetoric to say there’s a schism in the Right based on “how the world is viewed and interpreted.” And the theatrical assertion that ” politics is, in the last analysis, epistemology” is pure tossery. The Right is still the Right. It’s just badly rattled.
The hard Right is correct, from its point of view, to reject the vast, jerry-built AGW Trojan horse which Rudd is ushering through their ramparts. Turnbull will end up a vassal, reduced to carping and qualifying Rudd’s revision of corporate capitalism. It’s possible that the Right could temporarily split into a hard Right and a weak Centrist party, the latter dependent on the ALP.
The ALP’s “solutions” to AGW are nothing more than very expensive gestures. They won’t make a skerrick of difference to global warming. The expense will be borne by all consumers, but disproportionately by the working class. No surprise there, given that the “modern” ALP is a vehicle for middle-class managerialism. Rudd will be our Very Dear Leader. There’s nothing that Rudd, the Supreme Bureaucrat, would like more than to direct the evolution of capitalism. For the control freak, AGW is the perfect excuse.
This scenario depends on the fate of the AGW hypothesis. The science is far from “settled”. Rundle, yet again, dismisses all opposition to AGW as “Stalin-Lysenko” quack-science. What a fool. If only it were that simple. There are several possible explanations for the current global warming apart from human C02 emissions. It is already starkly obvious that the temperature plateau of the last decade is not mere “noise”, so any claim that CO2 has a direct and immediate correlation with average global temps. is simplistic at best. The hacked University of East Bumcrack (oh yes it is: “climate science” is Cinderella, remember?) emails attest to the anxiety felt by AGW scientists on the observational threat to their paradigm.
The AGW cult is expensive but also irrelevant. The ramshackle schemes concocted so far will not significantly curtail CO2. AGW may not be proven, but it is a serious risk. The sight of Rudd standing under a stationary wind turbine last week summed up the fatuity of his response. Later the same day he invoked the November heatwave as evidence of AGW. Rundle thinks that 10,000 wind turbines in Bass Strait will solve the fossil fuel problem. Rundle and Rudd: two tossers with but a single dick.
The AGW cult is genuinely dangerous. Fascism is spreading like a weed. Savonarola Hamilton suggests the “suspension” of democracy. Censorship of both AGW deniers and sceptics is normal. Bernard Keane frets because some old weatherman spoke to an industry group the other day…wherever you look, free speech is denied. What are you all afraid of? Since Australian CO2 won’t drop ’til 2033, why the panic? If Prince Charles is right, then it’s all over anyway. Methinks you protesteth too much.
What I want to know from AGW cultists is the following: what are you going to do and say if the AGW hypothesis crumbles? Go on, be honest. Spell it out.
one part of the party would like to reject the rational calculation of …. probability, harm, risk and expert knowledge
In fact, that would be both parts of the party, and also most of the Labor party. Only the Greens are rational on this issue.
> What I want to know from AGW cultists is the following: what are you going to do and
> say if the AGW hypothesis crumbles? Go on, be honest. Spell it out.
I will say “Hallelujah! Thank fck we were wrong!” and dance naked in the streets.
Sadly, we are not wrong.
comments by Frank show exactly Guys argument re. epistemology..
Guy did say:
>one part of the party would like to reject the rational calculation of … probability, harm, risk and expert knowledge
While the ETS bill is very poor and doesn’t deserve to be implemented I don’t think that wasn’t the argument in the party room yesterday.
And yes temperatures are rising, they have not reached a plateau in the last 10 years.
AGW cultist? I definitely think that AGW is real. Don’t know about cultist though.
If the AGW hypothesis crumbles?
I would dance in the streets because my children and grandchildren wont have to live in such a stuffed up world. I would then go and crank up the air-con and watch the cricket.
Unfortunately that fantasy aint likely to happen. Except the cricket bit.
Hey Guy – I think, in real terms, the Liberal Party died in 1917, with the Labor Party split – the non-Labor side of Politics has always had the split between the free-traders and protectionists. That’s why they make lousy Oppositions. (Lousy governments, too, but at least they’re usually unified).
I think the ETS debate is the last hurrah of the Howardists, who like an unwanted party guest, don’ tget they’re not invited anymore, unwanted and irrelevant. The party continues around them, and they don’t get they’re not part of it. Minchin et al should take the lead of their leaders – Costello, Downer, et cetera, and go.
Also, could you fix the last sentence up? Typos galore…
@Frank Campbell isn’t there an alternative argument that says This is not a nett vote winning issue for the libs, best to get it off the table and move on. While it sat there it just seemed to damage the coalition and let the ALP get away with a very poor response to global warming. Whether or not you think global warming is real is not really the political issue, the point is that the ALP let the coalition bust them selves to bits fighting each other.
SBH: I’m sure many pro-Turnbull Libs think exactly that- for God’s sake just say yes and the torture will stop. The ALP has cowed its own AGW dissenters far more effectively than the Libs (though Ferguson holds out), so the ALP’s whip is aimed at the Libs. The ALP is corporatist. Hawke and Keating created it. It’s the natural party of government for corporate capitalism. A new bureaucratic language of deceit oppresses everyone (Don Watson’s therapy is to list the most awful expressions. The efficacy of this catharsis is limited). Quasi-independent institutions, such as the former universities, are now repressive corporate units. The Liberals look amateurish by comparison, and the Nationals a joke. Howard was a throwback, but he did (the lying rodent) impose the GST, which delivered government a staggering new income, essential for the ambitious corporate state. Rudd, Goss’s Dr Death, is the perfect leader of the new “consensus”. The ideological terror distilled from AGW has driven most Libs into Rudd’s corral. Game, set and bitch to Rudd. From a purely political point of view, the Libs should reject the entire Rudd AGW project and invent their own, while reserving the right to abandon it if AGW disintegrates. Above all, they must break the cult of AGW, which has paralysed the Right and cowed the Left.
The cult is of course strengthened by the deserved reputations of those who deny it: from Barnaby Beef, Iron-Bar and the truly nasty Kevin Andrews to the crowded asylum of the far-Right tossariat of Bolt, Planet Janet et al. That’s the tragedy- allowing this piratical crew to posture as champions of free speech and AGW scepticism.
I was disappointed to see the Deputy Editor of Crikey yesterday declare that the ABC has reached a “new low”, or words to that effect, by screening the anti-AGW docco “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. The ABC screened Gore’s film and later the riposte. The ABC was correct: AGW is (for better or worse) the ishoo du jour, so they ought to present both sides. I’ve seen both films. Both are brazen propaganda, full of lies and distortions.
If you’ve noticed a sudden crescendo in AGW cultery from Rudd, Wong and the Left tossariat- it’s no accident. Polls shows AGW scepticism (not denial) is rapidly increasing. A recent survey had 11% of Green voters irritated by the “exaggeration”.
That’s why Turnbull and the soft Libs should reject Rudd’s AGW whip. The tipping point is near.
blue-green: all AGW believers say that. You know full well what I asked-after the piss-up, how will you rationalise your current beliefs if they turn out to be wrong?
John Reidy: since 1999, temps haven’t risen. Neither have they fallen. “Plateau” seems a fair description. It is quite correct to say that the past decade was warmer than any in the past century. No one has a clue what will happen next, do they?
blue_green took the words out of my mouth:if I am proven wrong I would dance in the streets. My fear is not that my grandchildren will have to live in a stuffed-up world,but that it will be too stuffed up for them and their children to live at all. If the sceptics are proven to be wrong, as I fear they will not, they can never be forgiven.
@ Frank Campbell:
“There are several possible explanations for the current global warming apart from human C02 emissions”
Name 3. Provide references to the peer reviewed literature including confirmation of the result from a different research team. Rank them in order of probability and explain your choice. Include whether they are consistent with each other.
“It is already starkly obvious that the temperature plateau of the last decade is not mere “noise”, ”
What ‘temperature plateau’? If you look at the graph of all 4 sets of global temperature measurements for the last decade, ALL of them, satellite and land based, show an upward trend. You can check for yourself here: http://tinyurl.com/ydrvj9o
“so any claim that CO2 has a direct and immediate correlation with average global temps. is simplistic at best.”
Which would be why noone has ever made that particular claim that it would be “direct and immediate”, and why the scientists whose work is summarised in the IPCC reports spend a lot of time attempting to assess all the relative factors affecting temperature, their interactions, and their feedback loops, both positive and negative. The increasing CO2 concentration doesn’t mean we stop having weather.
“The hacked University of East Bumcrack (oh yes it is: “climate science” is Cinderella, remember?) emails attest to the anxiety felt by AGW scientists on the observational threat to their paradigm.”
No, they testify to their irritation with people determined to misinterpret their work for political ends, and their frustration that our observations of the precise energy balance at the top of the atmosphere aren’t sufficiently accurate to monitor every short term variation as it happens. If we had the Deep Space Climate Observatory Satellite in orbit, as suggested by that famous ‘AGW cultist’, vice-president Gore, then we wouldn’t have this problem. Funny, the Bush administration mothballed the satellite after it was built and refused all FOI requests about it. Wonder why. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Climate_Observatory). If you want to get hot under the collar about FOI requests and people suppressing observations that might conflict with their paradigm, I suggest you read up on that one.
To Frank Cambell
I look at cities that exist where I played as a child in forests. I look at receding ice everywhere. I think about the amount of oil and coal that is burned daily and the physical nature of co2 and without out doubt I blame the rise of the worlds temperature on human activity. If I’m wrong so what? I insure my house and don’t complain when it does not burn down. Even though it costs me.
If the AGW hypothesis crumbles I will celebrate. I will tell any that care to listen that I was wrong.
And if AWG destroys your childrens world I know what you will do. I will go on, be honest and spell it out for you. You will be dead because your already old, your children and others who remember your stance will curse your name and you will be reviled by any and all that remember your name.
Frank Campbell. I wish you are right. But alas…
As for hypothesing, how, lets say in 2020 I would retrospectively reanalyse our climate system if AGW turns out to be BS. Easy answer… I would ask the climate scientists.
Interesting to note that the mining and energy sectors on the stock market didn’t blink on the announcements that the Libs will vote through the ETS. I think they went up a % or 2. So much for impacting on their bottom line.
Frank
Nurse Ratchet here. Time for your shot, you poor old feller
Frank might reply when he wakes up from his afternoon nap. If he remembers what it was that riled him so.
One not too many. My fear is that the sceptics will be proven wrong, but only when it is too late. What will you do then, Frank? What will you say to your grandchildren?
Been out in the paddock, while y’all been nappin’.
Guy: is that recycled joke the best you can do, old tosser? I appreciate creative insults.
David Walker and the rest of you: not one of you answered my question. How would you rationalise your current positions on AGW if it fails? What would your view then be of the sociology of science, scientific paradigms etc? (just saying “we’d listen to the climate scientists” is a cop-out. If you did, you’d probably be caught short again by a brutal burst of unpredicted global warming 2030-2050…)
JamesH: I’m amazed you whitewash the hacked emails. These are academics behaving normally. They are clinging with some desperation to the hard version of their hypothesis. Science is always like this- a bloodbath between bitterly opposed rival camps. The emails prove nothing at all about the merits of the AGW hypothesis, but remind us that these guys are partisan, and partisans take no prisoners. Intellectual Chetniks. Incidentally, one refers to the failure of climate science to predict the temp. plateau. Causes them anguish, as well it might. Everything, their careers, ego, income, status hangs on AGW being confirmed. They’re desparate. (If the next five years show a resuming upward trend, their joy will be unbounded. I think the technical, peer-reviewed term is human fucking nature).
Re “noise”, multifactorial complexity etc: this is the way every scientific paradigm collapses- the defence increasingly invokes qualification, complexity, etc, thereby weakening the structure. Hysteria rises, then there’s a loud crash. This may or may not happen to AGW- the point is not to be a slave to the cult. As for alternative theoretical explanations of AGW, I’m sure you know there are a lot more than three. So go and patronise someone else.
@Frank Campbell – You said:
“What I want to know from AGW cultists is the following: what are you going to do and say if the AGW hypothesis crumbles? Go on, be honest. Spell it out.”
I would counter that with: What are you going to do if the hypothesis holds up?
From a risk management perspective, it is much more sensible to mitigate against AGW because the overall benefits from such mitigation are significant: – a new economy based upon renewable energy; decoupling from a fuel source that is polluting, depleting and located in politically unstable geographies; less waste through more efficiency, etc. There will be costs, sure. But the sooner we start the sooner we can achive stability.
Because if AGW is real (and I believe it is only one of a series of climate related issues that we will have to deal with) the price of inaction will be infinitely greater.
If I am wrong and you are right, but we have taken action then I may be slightly embarrased but I will probably be living in a less polluted world. If you are wrong and I am right and we have done nothing then life won’t be very pretty for our grandkids.
@DW: “What will you do then, Frank? What will you say to your grandchildren?”
A: “Once upon a time there was this season called winter …”
Merlot64 and Bullmore: You’ve just joined the queue of those who won’t answer my question. Merlot- I asked first. I know exactly what I’ll say if AGW is confirmed, and I agree absolutely that risk management is the only sensible course. I’ve been saying that for years. First, we have to rid ourselves of The Cult, then completely remodel the approach to CO2 reduction. What is on the table now is risible. It will have no effect for decades, if at all. The irony is that Rudd, who claims cult membership, presumably knows this. Yet he’s pushing policies which will do considerable economic harm to the poorest (big coal and oil are keen for their snouts to be in the climate-pork trough) yet are ineffectual. Spending $30 billion on wind is an example.
The science will continue to make them and the rabble of right whinging columnists stuck in their ears look like fools…if Turnbull can stick it out, he’ll be back..they have nobody else but wacky idealogues.
Minchin is as crazy as you get..he was saying teachers were telling his children the ‘earth is burning down’ or some insane drivel in that 4corners…
And Frank conveniently ignores the request of JamesH to provide evidence. Surely there’s a multitude of publications out there supporting the skeptic argument. A mulitude. Surely. It can’t be that hard. You know, from experts. Surely.
Jay: yup, there are lots of scientific papers which question the science of the millenarian cult. I’ve read lots on both sides of the argument. I’m sure you know where to find ‘em.
And look what The Cult has dumped on us now: A Liberal Party with the liberals castrated by the hard Right. Jesus, we’re gunna get Tony the Abbot, the Revd. Kevin Andrews of the Very Nasty Party, a busload of coal-mongers, the unlovely Sen. Bernardi, Wilson Fossil, an assortment of Qld Nationals rocking to and fro and dribbling….and all because Dr Death seduced Malcolm Macquariebank with his pointless ETS…
And don’t think they are certain to lose the next election. There’s a year to tie The Cult to the ALP. It’ll be all hands to the rump as the resurgent Howards massage the electorate… No doubt they’ll be more palatable because they’ll elect Joe Hockey-stick on Monday…Expect a climate conversion from Hockey-stick: he’ll suddenly see the graph upside down.
The biggest loser is: serious action on CO2. Gee thanks, Millenarians…
@Frank – OK! if the AGW theorey falls down, I will put up my hands in meek embarassment and say – “sorry folks. I got it wrong”. But if “effective” action had taken place, I would still be able to say that we had decoupled our economy from oil to a greater degree, we had developed and commercialised sustainable technologies which reduced pollution in China, India and the rest of the developing countries, we4 had developed and implemented efficient building codes of practice that reduced ongoing costs for average consumers, that we built entire new industries around the deployment of renewable power and other sustainable technologies which more than offset any job loss from the old carbon economy.
I agree though. The CPRS as it stands is a joke. It will achieve sod all. It will achive none of what I outlined above and what’s more, does not appear to be part of an overall strategy to get anywhere near it. The Greens’ agressive model was much more what was needed, but needed to supplemented with economic drivers to that would build new industries and support the migration of jobs from old to new. And I do think that the Libs idea of allowing agricultural producers to claim offsets was probably pretty good as well.
But as it stands, the current CPRS is pretty much greenwash.
@Bullmore’s Ghost
@DW: “What will you do then, Frank? What will you say to your grandchildren?”
A: “Once upon a time there was this season called winter …”
A: Learn to swim….
Merlot: well, you’re the only one to actually answer…a meek “sorry”. How about a more sceptical approach to all new science…awareness that scientists are partisan…that paradigms draw everyone in like giant magnets…that social and political agendas influence everything, often unconsciously or deceitfully….Sorry is too easy.
I agree there are numerous excellent reasons for getting rid of oil etc etc. but doing all that good stuff via a war on CO2 is like travelling across antarctica in a train. You could possibly do it, but it would be horrendously expensive and finally Pythonesque. How do we get rid of oil and switch powergen to genuine renewables? Why, we spend big on R and D, 20 years ago. Oh, dammit, we didn’t. Wind is a farce, but solar is probably a winner. Then there’s a long list of others…should have been done long ago. 1st oil shock, 1970s…Capitalism would never do it ( GM destroyed its own electric car, very promising it was, decades ago…vested interests) so govt has to. Fancy keeping the world’s dirtiest (in every sense, not just CO2) power station going for another 30 years as Brumby did recently. That’s brown coal, Latrobe valley. could be converted to gas. Vastly less pollution. so there’s so much that could be done both in amelioration and in basic new technology. What a shambles.
Frank is such a strange character. I think he accepts global warming, sort of, but accuses those of us who are actually worried about it of being “cultists”. It has always been my contention that the real religious ones, the real cultists are the mystics who think we can keep dumping crap into the atmosphere and expect it not to come back and bite us on the bum, even though the evidence is overwhelming that the teeth are well and truly embedded in our soft buttock cheeks.
Seriously, what is going on here? Why do people like Frank say things like “what would you AGW people do if you were proven wrong?” (I’m quoting from memory. I can’t be arsed to go and see his actual quote. Something about ‘cultists’ wasn’t it Frank’?) You know Frank I’ve been asked the same question by my many born again Christian friends. What will you do when the Rapture happens? What will you do when Jesus sorts the sheep from the goats? What will you do when Santa Claus is shown to be a real person? Well, my answer to all the same questions is I will be delighted. I will also be quite surprised. Especially as the ice around the North Pole is all but melted….
Anyway, enough of trawling the backstreets of the ‘minds’ of the denialists. Let them go to the inferno (literally) in their own way.
Nigel: so you can’t see the foam on Clive Hamilton’s lips? Or the terror in Rundle’s eyes when he thinks his AGW scepticism might be revealed- or worse, that he might be falsely accused of scepticism and be excommunicated anyway?
Cultish extremism generates opposition, both rational and irrational. The Cult therefore undermines rational AGW action.
Note the Stalinist tone now infecting the “debate”: Sparrow, Keane, Rundle et al, referring to “climate lunacy”, lunatics, “crazies”.. conjures up white coats, injections….According to charitable Nigel, I’m merely “strange”.
Defining opponents as insane exposes the abdication of critical thought. What do you recommend? More asylums, or will home care suffice?
Speaking of excommunication, would the editor of Crikey tell us if he/she would sack Keane or Rundle if they attacked AGW? Perhaps the editor would ask for a psychiatric report before such precipitate action?
Nigel: “I think he accepts global warming”.
I taught global warming, and cooling, to engineers in the late 70s, as a juvenile academic. Both theories had similar levels of support at the time. Empirically, there’s no question that global warming occurred from c 1970 onward, levelling in the last decade. That is not the argument. Why did it happen, and what will happen next: that’s what matters. If you think the science is “settled”, you know nothing about science or the sociology of science. Like Rundle and the rest of the tossariat. AGW is a hypothesis in trouble, but still in with a chance. That’s all. Check out the East Bumcrack emails. Enjoy.
Asked ’should we insure or not’, sceptics say ‘yes’ and Frank says ‘no’.
Frank, even sceptics think that denialists are either loopy or bent.
Rudd, whether entirely consciously and intentionally,or by good political luck, has played a brilliant hand against the Liberals, given their divisions and stupid incompetence (much more than any lack of intelligence in their scientific views; and their political incompetence is a bit strange since they are quite right about the CPRS being lousy legislation and also unneeded before Copenhagen).
What the nation deserves – and even an AGW believer like Turnbull could have adopted it as policy – is a standing Royal Commission or Joint Parliamentary Committee (with outstanding staff report) to keep the science and economics of AGW under constant review. Only that way is there a chance of carrying the people of Australia along with the need for anti-CO2 measures and the particular measures proposed. Rudd’s irresponsible playing of politics with the ETS has served him well but is not what the nation needs.