7 thoughts on “Is this the most ridiculous idea ever on climate ?”

1. Not much from Julia Gillard isn’t ‘paranormal’ at the moment, immigration and refugees, carbon pricing, Greens deal and so on.

2. Warwick

   Do you think they will be advised by the AGW Cultists from BoM & CSIRO?

   Perhaps some serious lobbying will be needed to get some balance int the science presented at that forum.

   Otherwise it will be moulded int a populist rubber stamp.

3. That’s what you get once you replace a proper government by public vote. It’s not “paranormal”, it’s “democracy” on its perfectly logical development into “mob rule”, caused by the implication of that idiotic idea of giving each person equal rights and each vote equal weight, independent of the intellectual qualification, mental health and honesty of the voter. You’d only need to qualify believers in “God” (no matter in which disguise – Jesus, Jahwe, Allah, Gaia, The Fuehrer, …) and those without a full University education and fluent knowledge of at least two languages as mentally unfit to vote or to speak in public, and the problem would not arise.

4. “You’d only need to [dis]qualify believers in “God” (no matter in which disguise – Jesus, Jahwe, Allah, Gaia, The Fuehrer, …) and those without a full University education and fluent knowledge of at least two languages as mentally unfit to vote or to speak in public”

   Begging your pardon, governor, but hasn’t the brain capacity of homo sapiens been diminishing some 10’s of millenia already?

   Not certain that enforcing criteria on an inevitably corrupt elite qualifies as a ‘solution’.

5. You’d have to disqualify Nobel Prize Economists judging from Paul Krugman’s article in the NYT.

   Look at the scientists who question the consensus on climate change; look at the organizations pushing fake scandals; look at the think tanks claiming that any effort to limit emissions would cripple the economy.
   Again and again, you’ll find that they’re on the receiving end of a pipeline of funding that starts with big energy companies, like Exxon Mobil, which has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting climate-change denial…
   Or look at the politicians who have been most vociferously opposed to climate action. Where do they get much of their campaign money? You already know the answer.

   The Nobel Laureate then gets confused because he then claims its COWARDICE that drives politicians to oppose the “Cap and Trade” fantasy. For this latter ad hominem attack, he singles out Vietnam war hero cum politician, Senator John McCain.
   Yep, you would have to exclude Nobel Prize Laureates in Economics from such an assembly because of their demonstrated lack of logic.

6. Herbert Stencil left a comment over at On Line Opinion on this topic. Seems to me his view is worth taking into account:

   My comment relates to Julia’s proposal for a 150 layperson ‘Citizen’s Assembly’ do assess what to do re AGW. I was recently part of an exercise that I suspect was a pilot program for the Citizen’s Assembly. 40 lay people, supposedly of diverse views on AGW (ie those concerned and sceptics) were subjected to a series of presentations over 3 days. At the beginning we were asked to respond to a voluminous set of questions to determine our attitudes to AGW, and our willingness to pay to correct it.

   We were then subjected to a series of what can only be called ‘alarmist’ presentations of ‘the science’. The question sessions were tightly controlled so that no ‘inconvenient’ questions could be asked.

   It was clear that most of the lay people in the audience, when presented with ‘the science’ by the ’eminent scientists’, were persuaded. Subsequent surveys showed increased concern re AGW, and increased willingness to pay.

   The problem with the whole process is that it can only be called propaganda. There was no opportunity to hear any sceptical views. Sceptics were dismissed as ‘denialists’.

   An appalling experience. If Citizen’s Assemblies are approached in this way, we will get a very unfortunate outcome.Posted by Herbert Stencil, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 7:11:30 PM

7. “Citizens’ Assembly”? Sounds like something out of the French Revolution to me. I wonder if Ms Gillard is going to reintroduce the guillotine for us “deniers”.