Say “Yes” to an Honest and Informed Debate

Sen. Christine Milne demands that the Australian Trade and Industry Alliance:

call off its planned advertising campaign against a price on pollution until it is in a position to engage in honest and informed debate.  [...]

Misinformation, as is being foisted on the Australian public every day by Tony Abbott and his allies, can only undermine our democracy.

“These groups should call off their campaign until an agreement is reached and announced and they are in a position to engage in honest, informed debate instead of a scare campaign that spreads yet more misinformation.”

The Australian Greens, of course, always engage in honest and informed debate, but is “undermining our democracy” really the only thing that the alleged misinformation of “Abbott and his allies” can do?

The “pollution” whereto Sen. Milne refers is not pollution but carbon dioxide, the trace gas essential for life on earth.

The Greens would never engage in an hysterical scare campaign for, remember, they “value trustworthiness, sincerity and truth”:  they’d never claim, despite a complete lack of scientific proof and with no empirical evidence, that anthropogenic global warming would inevitably cause more droughts, more floods, higher seas, more warmth, more coolth, coral bleaching and more bushfires, would they? 

Greens leader Bob Brown says bushfires like the ones raging across Victoria and New South Wales this weekend [February, 2009] will be more frequent if climate change continues.   [...]

“Global warming is predicted to make this sort of event happen 25%, 50% more,” he told Sky News.

“It’s a sobering reminder of the need for this nation and the whole world to act and put at a priority our need to tackle climate change.”

The oil, coal and big-resource companies put off the day of action and edged the world further into super-heating  [writes Sen. Brown in the Herald Sun, December 21, 2009].

That means worse drought, bushfires, snow-melt, tropical storm damage and accelerating sea level rises.

The Greens will force the introduction of a carbon price if it wins the balance of power in the senate, leader Bob Brown promised hundreds of party faithful in Brisbane [in July, 2010].
Senator Brown gave two Queensland examples – coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, and the recent impact on water supplies of coal companies pushing into farm land on the Darling Downs – as direct reasons why.

“Burning coal is a major cause of global warming [claims Sen. Brown in a media release of 16 January, 2011].  This industry, which is 75% owned outside Australia, should help pay the cost of the predicted more severe and more frequent floods, droughts and bushfires in coming decades.  As well, 700,000 seaside properties in Australia face rising sea levels.”

UPDATE:  Despite the hysterical and deceitful shrieking of the duplicitous Prof. Hoegh-Guldberg, the corals of the Great Barrier Reef are not deteriorating from supposedly warmer seas.  See Kate Osborne et al., “Disturbance and the Dynamics of Coral Cover on the Great Barrier Reef (1995–2009)”:

While the limited data for the GBR prior to the 1980's suggests that coral cover was higher than in our survey, we found no evidence of consistent, system-wide decline in coral cover since 1995.

UPDATE II (4 July):  For more on the very silly Ove Hoegh-Gulberg, see “The Hypocritical Coral Whisperer”, at ABC Watch.

UPDATE III (5 July):  For even more on the foolish Ove Hoegh-Gulberg, see “Slurred by a Coral Whisperer”, at ABC Watch. 

UPDATE IV (6 July):  For an account of Sen. Brown’s ability to give trustworthy, truthful descriptions, see “Bob Brown v. Reality” at Stop Gillard’s Carbon Tax.