Politicians damaging the country…
In evaluating the present politically-promoted scenario of threatening, man-made global warming, heavily backed by well-funded interest groups, and now a useful opportunity for government taxation and control, we are seeing little reference to the following – a small-only selection of examples of the natural variations in climate change that are on record as far back as 6 AD – and very probably earlier.
More recently:
1778: “remarkable disappearance of ice at high northern latitudes” reported
1809: Thomas Jefferson Reveals That Snow Is (Nearly) A Thing Of The Past
1853: Northwest Passage – Open Water Found In The Arctic Basin – In May
1872: 140 Degrees Reported During Australia Heat Wave
1950: Scientists Say Earth Warming And Glaciers Melting
1952: Another Severe Drought In Australia
1952: Alaska is really getting warmer
1970: Arctic Has Most Ice In Over 60 Years
1970: Global Cooling – “Will Igloos Be The Homes of The Future?”
1972″ There’s A New Ice Age Coming!
1974 : Another Ice Age? – Climatologists Blamed US/Pakistan Flooding On Global Cooling
1974: CIA Determines Moscow Drought And Midwest Floods Result of Global Cooling
1975: National Academy Of Sciences Warned Of A Coming Ice Age
1975: Climate Modelers Ponder Return To An Ice Age
1975 : A New Ice Age Dawning?
1976: CIA Experts Predict Political & Economic Upheavals From Global Cooling Over Next 40 Years
There are always three things to remember when the long-suffering people of a country are told yet again that the government (central or local) has no choice but to regulate and tax them for their own good.
Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP for the South East of England, has published several books arguing for electoral reform. From his own experience he reminds us that “the desire to regulate is encrypted deep in the Eurocrats DNA”.
It is encrypted no less deep in the DNA of our own central government, and local government and its bureaucracy.
Think management. Think power. Think of the need for management not to leave things alone but to “justify” an often totally undeserved salary – given the Peter principle: – “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence” – at which stage individuals are capable of causing the greatest harm.
Think of the need to be doing something, to be regarded as important, as essential to the running of a company, a country, a bureaucracy, a political party. One must be seen to be involved in issues of importance where one’s superior gifts and insights are vital, for the company, the local council, the government to hold the right course ahead.
The catch, as always, as historian Barbara Tuchman reminds us – a reminder that we should never forget- is that: “Governments get most issues wrong”.
We need to say that again: “Governments get most issues wrong.”
Local governments? Companies? Managers? Politicians? Arguably they get very many issues wrong. And this fact is never without its consequences. Only when the decision-making is open to public scrutiny, to the input of individuals who are often far better informed, more experienced in the areas under scrutiny, even more intelligent or far less wedded to ideological theorizing, can a company, a local government, or even a country be regarded as operating at its optimum level of efficiency – particularly with regard to healthy democratic outcomes.
It is a very long time since New Zealanders had any real say in the directions in which this country has been heading, some of them demonstrably quite wrong – as in the shockingly flawed, unsustainable man-made global warming cult theory. Why it has achieved the mileage it has can be explained in a second of Daniel Hannan’s reminders; that of the manipulative “precautionary principle” which, octopus-like, is enveloping so much of our day–to-day activities. It is presented by some who well know that the man-made global warming theory is an excuse to fall into line behind the party leaders, “just in case”. It is in fact the perfect copout for the Pontius Pilate attitude which washes its hands of integrity and truth in decision-making.
At the level of irritating and stultifying interference in everybody’s affairs, our power-loving bureaucracies’ constant and expanding invocation of the precautionary principle dominates the resource consent procedure causing so much damage in economic terms to this country as a whole – let alone to individuals – with increasing compliance costs, the need for costly litigation, for legal support to defend their positions against council and government edicts. At the level of sheer banality, the precautionary principle forbids children to climb trees; to play with conkers; to access a playground under teacher guidance unless “a risk assessment procedure” has first been carried out); removes trees with poisonous berries; and plans to remove trees alongside main highways in case a drunken driver hits them – when more determinedly removing the drunken driver from our roads would be a far more logical solution.
In the words of a highly intelligent and experienced political and academic commentator: “You’re right about these high flyers being rigid thinkers with programmed minds… heavily stereotyped opinions which prevent {name deleted} from thinking originally or objectively about anything. He’s really out of touch with what’s happening at street level. A lot of judges and politicians – who make the decisions that govern our lives – are of this type.”
Although INVESTIGATE and the National Business Review occupy their own valuable niches, New Zealand is particularly badly off in that we have so little of the intelligent well-informed opposition to the wrong directions and rigid theorizing that we find in excellent overseas publications even from just across the Tasman, such as Quadrant and the Australian News Weekly http://www.newsweekly.com.au/ with its broad-ranging, up-todate, insightful commentary on economic, sociopolitical Pacific and world affairs simply not available in this country.
Most thinking New Zealanders have come to realize this. Many have already looked back and seen the very foolish, even disastrous managerial and political decisions which have cost us so much in recent years. Yet nothing is in place in this country which has any chance at all of reversing the imbalance caused by the power monopoly of whatever political hierarchy is imposing its hands-down edicts from the top. New Zealand is not by any means the only country which has suffered from poor government decision-making aided by the undue influence of powerful and wealthy individuals who too often, in the way of the world, have preferential access to our government hierarchy.
Simply dreaming up new systems of voting possibilities such as STV will do nothing what ever to undo the ongoing damage done to the country by political party systems which swallow up and control their membership. The recent voting record of our major parties’ MPs on issues where they simply did not carry the country with them, but voted in opposition to those who elected them and whom they supposedly represent – such as on the pernicious anti-smacking legislation – and on the damaging Emissions Trading Scheme, the Marine and Coastal Area bills – has conclusively demonstrated that our Parliament is now antagonistic to the reality of democracy. Both Labour and National MPs (and this by no means excludes the minor party MPs) no longer act as individuals with their consciences and electorates to answer to, but fall into line, for self advantage, for promotion, to retain their perks and to remain “in” with the party hierarchy. When the latter is dominated by underinformed, basically historically and philosophically ignorant but highly ambitious and autocratic leaders bent on self-advantage, or wedded to ideologies basically antipathetic to democracy – such as socialism, Marxism, left-wing union domination – or, from the other side of the spectrum – arguing for extremist right-wing policies favouring corporate advantage and market monopoly, then a democracy is terminally ill.
The only solution is to abolish the dominance that party politics has over the country at large. Before the last election, for example, National as much as Labour – if not even more – over-controlled its candidates from party headquarters. Candidates were forbidden to write their own speeches – but had poorly written diktats foisted off on them by the party executive. Some of the most powerful ministers within the National Party at present, pushing through legislation with no mandate at all from New Zealanders at large, were not subjected to any scrutiny by an electorate, but chosen because the determined John Key, ignoring the National Party’s individual electorates’ right to meet and to rank the list candidates in order of preference – were told to forget it. Key had already chosen the first 50 – those he could no doubt count on to recall in future that they owed their positions in Parliament to him – certainly not to the country at large. Nobody in fact voted for these individuals – the very antithesis of a democratic system. But their powerful positions have seen them virtually dictating policy to the country, and dominating its directions within their own sphere of influence – if not further abroad.
There is only one way in fact to reclaim the country as a democracy, and it is entirely possible for this to be brought about within 2 to 3 parliamentary terms – achievable through our 100 Days – Claiming Back Democracy www.100days.co.nz movement. Like all brilliant concepts it is essentially simple, uncomplicated and achievable – which makes it possible for New Zealanders themselves to decide their own directions, irrespective of the personal ambitions of politicians for promotion within the party – or for those with a longer term view – on the world stage. Switzerland, the most successful democracy in the world, finally decided upon this ultimate weapon of political control of politicians by the country at large. It is no coincidence that this masterstroke of judgment has been the predominant reason why Switzerland is the most successful and flourishing democracy in the world. A highly influential, pro-democracy Australian group now supports our conclusion that it is the only really practical way to control politicians.
Undoubtedly it is a movement whose time has come, and this is well illustrated by examining the voting record and/or the preferred options of our political parties as shown in the latest INVESTIGATE (HIS/HERS) October, 2011.
Looking at our political parties’ records on issues that affect us all, and noting the directions in which they wish to take us, it would be productive to recall:
Firstly, Daniel Hannan’s reminder that the desire to regulate is encoded deep in the political bureaucracies DNA;
Secondly, the precautionary principle “which holds that because something might be dangerous we shouldn’t permit it until it has been shown to be safe. ( Its absurdity is illustrated by the example he gives, that at the beginning of the 19th century it was widely believed that the noise of passing trains would cause pregnant women to miscarry. Had the precautionary principle been applied, with rail operators of the day unable to prove that they would not cause miscarriages, then “we would never have laid an inch of track.”)
The third reminder is the most important one of all, and has resounded down through the centuries. We should ask ourselves – Cui bono? – whose interests do these directions, or does this promoted legislation, serve? Large pharmaceutical companies, for example, can openly lobby for an opportunity to put their smaller rivals out of business. Big corporations can persuade MPs to legislate in their favour – or at least to refrain from legislating to disadvantage them. I recall a reported meeting the CEO of one of our largest companies had with a National Party Prime Minister immediately prior to her presiding over a cabinet meeting in connection with a planned opening up of the company to competition – from which she emerged having apparently changed her mind.
Cui bono? In whose interest…?
Political parties’ proposed legislation is always presented, of course, for the victims’ i.e. the citizens of a country’s, own good. In recent years the remarkably near-fascist Green Party (check out the list of freedoms the Greens oppose New Zealanders retaining in the latest INVESTIGATE (HIS/HER) analysis presented by Family First NZ. It makes productive reading, bringing home the fact the Green Party has the lowest of all ratings when it comes to questions that depend upon the right of New Zealanders to over-rule an autocratic government by exercising their democratic right to binding citizens initiated referenda.
Similarly, the Greens actually oppose the fundamental notion that parents have the prime responsibility for their children – not the government – an ominous stance given the fact that deeply worrying changes to the way the family is regarded in law have been made by extending the State’s authority over children, and liberalizing the description of families far beyond the traditional acceptance of a mother, father and child/children. Parents also now only have ‘day to day care’ rather than custody over the children, with children’s “rights” now being inappropriately aggrandized. Nor do the Greens support the move to introduce legislation to decriminalize parents, although the latter’s authority over their children has been weakened by our leader-dominated MPs attacking parents’ authority over their children – and the respect in which parents are held. The evidence in fact points to the Greens, for all their liberal façade, being the most anti-individual, pro-big government of all the political parties.
I recently received an e-mail from the internationally highly respected geologist Dr Gerrit van der Lingen with his updated essay on supposed sea level rise – now able to be accessed on our Articles page.
Dr van der Lingen has forwarded the section on the Netherlands to the Dutch Government, which has “received advice on the to-be-expected sea-level rise from a committee based on extreme, computer-based projections. This committee advised that the government should spent 2 billion euro annually for many years for protection against this extreme sea-level rise, such as raising the dikes. I received a kind letter of acknowledgement from the Prime Minister. I hope my analysis can help them to save such unnecessary expenditure.”
He rightly adds that politicians should read this. “Nick Smith comes to mind, of course, but I doubt that he is open to good information. I suspect that he is well aware that man-made global warming is a big con, but as a politician he sees advantages in pushing the green wheelbarrow.”
Nick Smith must answer for himself, but any defence of his position will be taken with more than a grain of salt by very many well-informed New Zealanders who initially thought that politicians had simply not done enough reading, neither following the debates nor scrutinizing the evidence and analyzing its facts. Only gradually have they come to the conclusion that many politicians from both Labour and National already well knew that the scientific evidence, not withstanding all the propaganda, does not support the anthroprogenic cult theory. Yet not one of these MPs opposed the Emissions Trading Scheme on the basis that any recent warming period has been part of an entirely natural cyclical phenomenon and that this recent one has ended. It’s worth here checking out periods of global warming balanced with global cooling.
http://www.c3headlines.com/bad-stuff-happens.html
The website above should be of particular interest to politicians who have been overquick to fall into line cheerleading for their party leaders’ endorsement of the deeply flawed, it’s-all-our-fault doomsday scenario of global warming. So, too, should be the headlines below – already highlighted at the top of this article and chosen from hundreds highlighting the fact that warming and cooling periods can be recorded by geologists – who have the advantage of over computer modelers, in that they deal with scientific facts.
What’s in it for the party leader – apart from the expanded ability to raise taxes and further assist the process whereby the State continues to expand its power and control over people’s lives? This is a question overdue to be asked when New Zealanders are having their competitive advantage with other countries even further eroded, with punishing financial consequences. Can we afford to ignore the evidence? If not, why are we buying into this massive con?
To recap:
1778: “remarkable disappearance of ice at high northern latitudes” reported
1809: Thomas Jefferson Reveals That Snow Is (Nearly) A Thing Of The Past
1853: Northwest Passage – Open Water Found In The Arctic Basin – In May
1872: 140 Degrees Reported During Australia Heat Wave
1950: Scientists Say Earth Warming And Glaciers Melting
1952: Another Severe Drought In Australia
1952: Alaska is really getting warmer
1970: Arctic Has Most Ice In Over 60 Years
1970: Global Cooling – “Will Igloos Be The Homes of The Future?”
1972″ There’s A New Ice Age Coming!
1974 : Another Ice Age? – Climatologists Blamed US/Pakistan Flooding On Global Cooling
1974: CIA Determines Moscow Drought And Midwest Floods Result of Global Cooling
1975: National Academy Of Sciences Warned Of A Coming Ice Age
1975: Climate Modelers Ponder Return To An Ice Age
1975 : A New Ice Age Dawning?
1976: CIA Experts Predict Political & Economic Upheavals From Global Cooling Over Next 40 Years
Contrary to the highly politicized, and, for, some highly profitable promotion of the recent past round of mild global warming as signaling a catastrophic period ahead, and supposedly necessitating the control of carbon dioxide emissions, this recent short period of warming is now finished – and according to any decent scientific analysis, has been unable to be sheeted home to the minor atmospheric gas, carbon dioxide, as the culprit. The records show conclusively that any carbon dioxide rise actually follows global warming, rather than contributing to it.
So what exactly is going on as far as our politicians are concerned? To answer this question we must go back to Daniel Hannan – Cui bono? To whose advantage has been to promote this theory? Al Gore’s self-serving and alarmist scenario has contributed to the now considerable wealth of his multibillion dollar company involved in trading carbon credits – as absurd a concept as any dreamt up inside the corrupt US high finance finance sector these recent years. In this respect, “INSIDE JOB”, the unmissable DVD record of the high-flying US companies paying exorbitant bonuses to their chief executives, many demonstrably corrupt – Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stears etc. details what has been well described as “A Crime Story like no other in history”, the ongoing corruption of the money markets, their bankers, investors and traders costing tens of millions of people their homes, their jobs, their savings – their future – with the full compliance of the international credit rating agencies now rating us… Plus ça change…
Closer to home, why would National Party leader John Key, who openly disagreed with the anthroprogenic global warming theorising before he became party leader, then decide to support it? Why have National Party MPs – (as with no doubt some Labour MPs – the Greens probably too brainwashed on this topic to be even considered) – at least half of whom are known to actually disbelieve what has now taken on the impetus of a well-funded religious cult, of, supposedly, Earth-threatening proportions equal to the bubonic plague, not publicly stood up and said that they think the whole theory is a rort?
Why have we not heard from senior National ministers such as Tim Groser and Maurice Williamson, reportedly dismissive of this pseudo-scientific scenario? As another experienced observer points out , if National really believed the propaganda our major parties have been advancing in their end-of-the-world is nigh scenario, with inexorably rising tides and temperatures, why would they have abandoned their original proposals to involve the farming community in controlling animal emissions? Why not the planning for worst-case scenarios, the relocation of coastal housing, the rerouting of highways inland? Where bureaucrats in individual councils such as Gosford, a coastal town in NSW, are attempting to place notifications regarding projected sea level rises of up to a metre, a coastal resident’s groups is now exploring the possibilities of a class action against the council.
This democratically healthy sign outlines the possibilities open to New Zealanders themselves.
The riddle of why MPs will not stand up to party leaders is not hard to solve – either gullibility, the inability to think independently, or the wish to be “a party man” (by no means unlinked to self-advantage) have come to rule the day. But the question of why our present Prime Minister has so changed his stance on this issue may become clearer, when we consider how nowadays a country’s political leader may begin to look further ahead to life after Parliament; to become ambitious to be part of the international circuit; a secure member of the international community; to become acceptable to the major powers with a view to becoming a player on the world stage, part of the powerful celebrity circuit meeting with international figures and on hello-again terms with royalty. Endorsing the scenario presented by countries like the United States, under its present problematic leader Barak Obama, with his endorsement of AGW, also becomes important. Even more so, with the job opportunities offering, is the need to be viewed well by the figureheads of the United Nations, for all its anti-the West directions.
For example, what was the purpose of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, head of this basically antipathetic organization, in recently visiting New Zealand? (We should recall that its Commission on Human Rights comes under repeated criticism for its unwillingness to address genuine human rights concerns, as well as the composition of its membership, member countries themselves having poor, even disgraceful records, including countries worst of all in this respect, whose representatives have been elected to chair the commission.)
Here recently in New Zealand with the President of Kiribati, Anote Tong, Ban Ki-Moon joined him in quite wrongly claiming that is “climate change” ( he meant man-made global warming – the wording has been carefully adjusted) which poses the most serious threat to the livelihoods, security, and survival of our Pacific countries. Both were pushing for “urgent international action to reduce emissions of the harmful greenhouse gases” underlying “the need to make climate change adaptation funding available…”
According to the Washington Times – EDITORIAL: Pacific islands not sinking from global warming – a “New study debunks Al Gore’s hysterical fairy tale: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jun/11/pacific-islands-not-sinking-from-global-warming/ – “the Hockey Stick has been thoroughly debunked, the Himalayas still have snow and the polar bears are alive and well. As just about every tenet in the Church of Global Warming has been debunked, it’s time for the movement’s high priest, Mr. Gore, to offer a refund to those from his flock who bought his work of fiction.
Ban Ki-Moon has bought it, too. So has John Key, Nick Smith. So has Julia Gillard? Or have they? Cui bono? When the scientific facts are against them, the answer has to be somehow, either that they simply have not bothered to analyze the evidence, or some particular benefit must accrue to them must accrue to them in pushing this barrow?
To take one example: In New Zealand alone, looking for what should be the very obvious effects of anthropogenic global warming, we can instance the Waikato Basin where there has been measurably no more rain, no more storms, no perceptible increase in warming for 107 years. Why did the media not tell Ban Ki-Moon this – and ask them why he had not bought himself up to date with facts? Or if he had, why was he peddling the nonsense he was promoting?
It is not as if we do not have real, horrific human rights abuses about which he, John Key, Phil Goff, Julia Gillard and other world leaders remain remarkably quiet, including the oppression and violation of women, still, worldwide, and close to home, among our major trading partners, communist China’s brutal treatment of dissidents – from which our government averts its eyes – (and, worryingly, fromwhat China is up to in the Pacific…) because it is anxious not to offend this increasingly aggressive giant, important to us as a trading partner.
New Zealanders have a problem. We have in our small country highly activist and energetic subversive groups basically seeking to overthrow democracy, and to work for self advantage.
Correspondingly, we have a mainstream media of apparently largely ignorant, often too busy, day-to-day, under-educated journalists recording the news of the day without making any attempt to look behind its superficialities. We have a majority of opinionated columnists shooting from the lip, as it were, and doing very little research into the issues which affect us all. But without much needed strategic analysis of the directions in which we are being pushed, how much chance is there of the country actually surviving the attacks we are under?
New Zealand in fact is at war… but sleepwalking into it. Yet, as Arnold Toynbee reminded us: “Every age has its own crisis and challenges which must be met – otherwise society collapses.”
It would be a very foolish individual who would now claim that we have no current crisis – or that are we not being faced with the disintegration of our society, very much assisted by the political decisions autocratically imposed on this – by no means by the AGW claim alone.. The evidence in fact points in the opposite direction.
The new article posted on our webpage – www.100days.co.nz by Dr Gerrit van der Lingen – “Luctor et Emergo” – analyses one of the most important untruths of our day – the claim made by our politicians, by the Secretary General of the United Nations, and by others who should know better. Please feel free to send it on.
© Amy Brooke
Post-script:
“a) Recently, an excellent article was published on sea-level rise in the Auckland region (Hannah et al., 2011). Their Figure 3 is a graph showing the linear sea-level trend from 1898 to 2010 (Figure 22). This trend is 1.5 ± 0.09 mm per year. They write that “The most recent analysis
Figure 22. Linear trend of sea-level rise in the Auckland region, from 1898 to 2010. This trend is 1.5 ± 0.09 mm/yr (uncorrected for any regional vertical land motion). Please note, there is no acceleration. Figure 3 from Hannah et al, 2011.
of the Auckland data (Watson, 2010, Cole, 2010) reveals no acceleration in the rate of sea level rise”. Indeed, their analyses suggest a slight positive acceleration in the early-mid 20th Century followed by a slight negative acceleration in recent years.” [my emphases]. Making a correction for the Global Isostatic Adjustment at the Auckland tide gauge site of +0.30 mm/yr, they obtained a final figure for the sea level trend of 1.8 mm/yr. This result is very similar to global sea level rise, including that of The Netherlands (1.76 mm/yr, see Figure 8). Again, none of these show any acceleration of sea level rise.”
Dr Gerrit van der Lingen
100 DAYS - CLAIMING BACK NEW ZEALAND 