So, after some farcical manoeuvres, the Senate has passed Abbott’s legislation removing the carbon price. I hope and believe that this outcome will be reversed in due course, but those who brought it about will stand condemned by history.
It’s not merely that this is a bad policy, which will impose large and increasing costs (depending on how long it takes us to get back on track) on Australia and the world into the future. Even more damning is the fact that this action is entirely based on conscious lies, embraced or condoned by everyone who has actively supported it.
First, and most obvious, no one (least of all Tony Abbott) believes that the government’s “Direct Action” policy is a superior alternative to the carbon price, one that will deliver emissions reductions more rapidly and at lower costs. It is, as everyone knows, a cynical ploy put forward simply to allow the government to say that it has a policy.
In reality, Abbott and the rest want to do nothing, and the motives for this desire are entirely base. For a minority of the do-nothing group, it is simply a matter of financial self-interest associated with the fossil fuel industry. For the majority, however, it is the pursuit of a tribal and ideological vendetta. Their position is driven by Culture War animosity towards greens, scientists, do-gooders and so on, or by ideological commitment to a conservative/libertarian position that would be undermined by the recognition of a global problem that can only be fixed by changes to existing structures of property rights.
Most of these people would describe themselves as climate “sceptics”. There is no such thing. That is, there is no one anywhere who has honestly examined the evidence, without wishful thinking based on ideological or cultural preconceptions, and concluded that mainstream science is wrong. Most “sceptics”, including the majority of supporters of the conservative parties, are simply credulous believers in what their opinion leaders are telling them. Those opinion leaders are engaged, not in an attempt to determine the truth, but in a cultural vendetta against their enemies or in an ideologically-driven attempt to justify a predetermined do-nothing position.
This is a sad day, but one that will come back to haunt those who have brought it about.
John Quiggin 
“we made ourselves a target’. i didn’t make myself a target, i was made into target by racketeers who now offer to protect me from the people they stirred up by curtailing my ancient liberties; its a con by warmongers & their lackeys. -a.v.
It’s a small step from ‘politics is about righting the ship’ to ‘my politics is whatever opposes what most annoys me’. Too many people are annoyed by tax bills, fumbling bureaucracy, infringement of liberties, earnest ‘do gooders’, scientific and macroeconomic denial of ‘common sense’, ‘elitists’, etc. Yes JQ, they do go tribal and there was enough interested big money and media, and more than enough ALP ineptitude and disarray to lump greenhouse abatement in with those other objects of gripe.
The way out? Sadly, it doesn’t just mean respect for truth fairness and rationality. It can’t just be educational. It means banging about what is most annoying about the Right in a most unseemly populist manner. The 7 odd percent post election swing reflects no resurgence of truth fairness and rationality; merely a recognition of naked display of its opposite.
They really aren’t, though. The ALP does horrible things and the coalition does horrible things stupidly.
Newtonian,
“Rather all and sundry seem to be continuing with that great catchcry of ‘progress’ “Homo uber alles” – as though we and our antics are the most important thing in the world and somehow the rest of the planet is there for our exploitation rather than us being here temporarily due to a accident of evolution.”
This and the OP on ‘climate skeptics’ are to me reminiscent of Montaigne’s essay on skepticism, natural philosophy, and grace [christian or other I suppose now – not sure what a non-religious word for Grace is?] , An Apology for Raymond Sebond
“‘Oh, what a vile and abject thing is man (saith he) unlesse he raise himselfe above humanity!’ Observe here a notable speech and a profitable desire; but likewise absurd. For to make the handfull greater than the hand, and the embraced greater than the arme, and to hope to straddle more than our legs length, is impossible and monstrous: nor that man should mount over and above himselfe or humanity; for he cannot see but with his owne eyes, nor take hold but with his owne armes. He shall raise himself up, if it please God to lend him his helping hand. He may elevate himselfe by forsaking and renouncing his owne meanes, and suffering himselfe to be elevated and raised by meere heavenly meanes. It is for our Christian faith, not for his Stoicke vertue, to pretend or aspire to this divine Metamorphosis, or miraculous transmutation.”
Montaigne, translated by John Florio
http://pages.uoregon.edu/rbear/montaigne/2xii.htm
With the post-budget polls consistently giving the ALP an election winning lead, I’m not sure this set back is worth getting too worked up about. Thankfully Shorten/Plibersek appears to be a more stable and competent leadership team than the Dillard/Dudd standup comedy duo. Abbott will be out on his ears in two and a half years and a better GHG policy will be implemented. Plus alternative carbon-lite energy sources like solar are advancing quite nicely and will continue to be rolled out worldwide.
In the global scheme of things, this little hiccup shouldn’t frighten the horses.
@Collin Street
Isn’t that a “distinction without a difference”?
In any case, I will rail against the ALP because they are dishonest empty, soulless shells standing for nothing except self-interest and corporate control of our society.
The LNP is all of those things – but they are slightly less dishonest about it.
The establishment media is the worst player in this joke because they perpetuate the illusion of a functioning democracy.
It looks like PUP will force Abbott to have some kind of (probably ineffectual) ETS.
Thankfully the Australian electors gave us an upper house beyond the direct control of the neo-con/fascist duopoly. Sadly, that is as close as we get to a functioning democracy in 2014 Australia.
@Midrash
Once again he regales us with oblique references to people that he knows who read aticles somewhere about books by authors. It’s a machine for producing syntactically correct semantic rubbish, right. Clever programing.
“That is, there is no one anywhere who has honestly examined the evidence, without wishful thinking based on ideological or cultural preconceptions, and concluded that mainstream science is wrong.”
Which bit of it?
The “continually rising emissions will mean temperature rises and we really ought to do something about this” part?
Or the “we must reduce emissions by 90% within 30 years” part?
I have no quibble at all with the first part there, that second is rather more a political construct than something the science is telling us.
It’s also entirely possible to construct an argument that even with the first one being true little to not very much needs to be done. Within that scientific consensus if we choose to believe that sensitivity is at the lower end of the current range plus also that (to use the SRES) we’re in an A1T world, not an A1FI one, very little to nothing does need to be done.
My own belief (and it is a belief, not any attempt at a scientific statement) is that we probably are in an A1T style world. The cost reductions in renewables going on (and this is a field that I work on the periphery off and see the technological changes coming) mean that they’ll be cheaper than coal soon enough and thus installed in preference to coal soon enough. I’m thinking particularly of solar and fuel cells (linking the two together through hydrogen especially).
Sure, this is a version of the “technology will save us ” argument but that argument is, at times, also actually true.
All that aside it’s still sad to see the back of the carbon tax for Oz had actually implemented the correct policy decision in the right way. Everyone else that is doing anything at all is doing it more inefficiently. And yes, I can hold both those positions at the same time, that we probably don’t need to do very much but that the carbon tax is a good idea: insurance.
@Tim Worstall
I would have thought that if temperatures are rising continually then something would have to be done. Unless you are claiming that continually rising temperatures have no malign effect? I think that solution you describe, the passive growth of non-carbon energy generation technology, is viable in the long run however timeliness is a significant risk factor and without active intervention these technologies may not be implemented with sufficient urgency.
It will be a minor consolation to watch Abbott’s humiliation on climate change at the forthcoming G20 summit in November. None of the other participants owe Abbott anything, his venture into jetsetting diplomacy was a flop, and a good number like Barack Obama have staked real political capital on the issue. Abbott has removed climate change from the agenda, but nothing stops side meetings (excluding him, a she’s publicly not interested) and press conferences. I wouldn’t put it past Obama to tell Abbott that his presence depends on putting it back on the agenda.
@John Quiggin
Yes, and so is your evasion of the kind that Monbiot (in that case falsely) accused Plimer of. But I will spell out the give away for you so you won’t be left with cheap off the shelf stereotypes. Indeed I do want people to maintain just a little scepticism about the reasons for the production of thr very different and patently inadequate models and your comment is very much a case of the pot calling the kettle black as you make broad unsubstantiated (and to my knowledge at best overstated) imputations against the distorting motivations of people who doubt that science demonstrates what you seem yo think it does. I see you say more below but don’t get anywhere near claiming to have examined and to have reason for having faith in any and which of the models on the absolutely critical question of the adequacy and accuracy of modeling natural forces absent manmade emissions.
I shall read what you have written about Lindzen but trust it deals with his papers (one requiring correction – which he made – on the absolutely critical issue of feedback from initial warming).
I think you misrepresent me as relying for my (tentative and not critical) beliefs on what good science says about AGW on Plimer. I don’t. Not at all. But I did find it interesting that a journalist with no scientific credentials whatsoever (by his own admission), George Monbiot, should be given credit when any fair reading of the transcript of the interview which he and some other partisans claim to have skewered Plimer actually shows almost the opposite. I say “almost” because Plimer may be wrong but, if so, you and George Monbiot can’t claim the credit for demonstrating it. You haven’t even touched on the point that Monbiot just refused to listen to Plimer’s point that the figures he was relying on for CO2 emissions from submarine volcanoes were calculated from a very different model and by a different method compared with that used by the USGS. You can’t refute something that you haven’t attended to and Monbiot simply didn’t attend to what Plimer was saying. Plimer may be wrong on the quite important (though far from decisive) point about the emissions of CO2 by volcanoes but neither Mknbiot nor you have gone about demonstrating that in a credible way.
By the way, before I sign off for a while, do you think Bob Carter’s receiving, in retirement, modest recompense for speaking at a Heartland Institute event is comparable to the importance to their decades of future career of the East Anglian lot and Michael Mann of the hockey stick being seen to be on the approved side of an issue like AGW?
@Patrickb
As well as totally avoiding the substance, aren’t you being naive in failing to imagine how concealing identity might bd an important reason for the way in which pretty clear points are laid out?
@Tim Worstall
Well said. A pity that JQ has taken the tribal oath and has to demean himself in consequence like any party politician proving fealty by swearing to his belief in more than he can possibly justify. OK I do understand that it would be positively indecent to accept appointment as a member of the college of Cardinals in the first flush of enthusiasm and then declare oneself an atheist – but it might be both honest and correct.
A correction to my comments on page 1. The general quotes I gave from Murdoch were not made at the 50th anniversary function for The Australian but in an earlier interview with Sky News. A recording of the interview can be viewed on the Skeptical Science web page posted July 14th.
I live in Europe and am an Aussie expat. One of the surprises of being here is that Australia rarely features in the news unless it’s a shark attack, a funny animal or …. a shark attack. I have to say that it was BIG NEWS in Europe when the Gillard government passed the legislation on carbon emissions. This is devastating for Australia, Australians (now and future) and our planet. Future generations will read about today in history books and shake their heads in bemusement towards those in power at Toad Hall. The wind in the willows indeed, if there are to be any willows left for future generations.
My view is diametrically opposed to yours Dr Quiggin. It is a good thing the Co2 tax has been abolished.
You are an ideologue of the far left by advocating that the alleged AGW is “a global problem that can only be fixed by changes to existing structures of property rights.”
You want to take away peoples property rights based on a dubious publicly funded consensus.
Fact: if Australia became totally uninhabited and cut its human co2 emissions to the ZERO, there would be ABSOLUTELY no measurable change to the worlds average global temperature.
So for Australia to do anything (direct action or otherwise) would only be an exercise in WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION and have ABSOLUTELY no measurable effect on the worlds average global temperature.
The abolition of the carbon tax is a victory for the little guy and considering the funding is so severely stacked against the skeptics, it is quite remarkable.
Skepticism is healthy; question everything.
Too bad, but one minor note: very few climate “skeptics” are real skeptics, but rather pseudoskeptics.
At least Oz does better in other things, such as plain packaging.
@John Mashey Hence the more proper term deniers, which deniers find so offensive.
@Megan
The actions of the ALP sway the universe. The ALP is responsible for every sparrow’s fall. If there’s a hole in your sock, the ALP put it there.
@Will
Every time this comes up the reply is the same: the faux-ETS that the Greens voted against guaranteed huge ongoing subsidies to the biggest polluters. New Zealand has a scheme like it, and it’s costing them a fortune with no detectable drop in emissions. Simply, “exempt” polluters have 90% or more of their emission permits paid for by the taxpayer, and in the case of NZ farmers, 100%. So they have no incentive to reduce emissions.
There’s a scheme (really a scam) going in NZ where industry get their NZ permits, sell them, and buy cheap overseas permits to replace them. It’s perfectly legal but it amounts to an actual subsidy for their pollution. I’m not sure whether the same problem was in the Australian system.
One could see or categorise ‘deniers’ as irrational ‘believers’. The religious deniers assume that their benevolent God provides them the ability to know the truth and the right to judge themselves as better than the rest of us.
The atheist deniers assume that as the most intelligent and evolved humans, they are the new ‘Gods’ and it is their DNA to have the right to force all of us to be part of a system that benefits them.
I wonder which category Mishmash is in.
Some of them, like Mishmash, think that having a high IQ makes them better people, but the high IQ scores they fondly attribute to themselves have usually been measured with a silly paper and pencil test that has been discarded by the psych profession as having no validity or reliability, or they simply assume that if they have got ahead it is because they have a high IQ.
But, if Mishmaas is a “machine for producing syntactically correct semantic rubbish”, the machine is breaking down and the program needs de-bugging.
The typing mistakes in the latest round of dribbling likely come from a very bad temper – so many old blokes have this and can’t control themselves. I imagine him shaking with rage as he pounds out his stream of consciousness that is so ordinary. Or could be he’s just drinking a lot.
Some people may be unable to see or hear the hurt feelings and outrage the poor old bugger feels, and very few of us will manage any empathy for him. But I think his verbosity and lack of dignity, shows that he knows ‘in his bones’, if not in his mind, that what is happening, the attitudes people are expressing here, is a growing movement and it is not a good thing for him. He is right.
He and his kind are being exposed for what they are. I can see a big change of attitude toward politics and the LNP in the conservatives in my Qld country town. I don’t know where this dissatisfaction will go, but some do see and a few will admit that this govt is not what they thought it was going to be or do. This confusion is leading to some of them looking for a ‘narrative’ that explains what has happened to their Liberal party and this leads to the beginning of an understanding of the big ‘conspiracy’.
Interesting that Tony Abbott is coming out and giving soft interviews. Chris Uhlman was very nice to him on RN just now – but Sarah Ferguson was off to a good start I thought in the way she conducted the interview with him on 7.30 last night.
And this morning Tony had something he could talk about that didn’t require too much cognitive effort, so there was less umming and ahhing than usual, and on radio one can’t see the lying shifty eyes and the very disturbing hand movements.
My position in judging effective action on an issue like GHG emissions, is to ignore what people say and even ignore what they do in conventional politics. My position is simply “measure the emissions and see what is happening”.
Emissions continue to rise, therefore all that is said and done in the conventional political sphere is no guide to what is happening or will happen to emissions. There is no serious political will to reduce emissions. There is no intention by those who control our economy (the plutocratic 1% or even 0.1%) to reduce emissions. Their will is what gets enacted.
When will things change? It is tempting to think that market action itself (cheaper solar power etc.) will eventually effect change. I have thought so myself at times and said so on this blog. However, I now think I was wrong in saying this. Such a statement assumes a free market. We do not in fact have a free market. We have a market that is distorted by the plutocratic hijack of the state. The state in fact heavily subsidises plutocrats and implements only the policies they demand. Thus, fossil fuels continue to receive massive subsidies while alternative energy gets a relative pittance.
So, only two things can change which will lead to a drop in GHG emissions. Either, the political system must change and indeed invert in a radical and revolutionary manner or the biosphere itself will impose limits. The former is very doubtful, the latter is a certainty if the former does not occur.
I think we might achieve the feeble 5% emission cut by 2020 through economic downturn and what I’d call consumer snit rather than carbon policies. Remember Ford, Holden and suppliers will have shut up shop. Possibly another smelter will decide China is where it’s at. Then again China may slow down or import less coal. Petrol and gas are due for big price increases. Events such as Swanbank gas fired power station closing down to re-open Tarong coal station may be overwhelmed by the overall low carbon sentiment.
A bellwether might be Christmas retail. If people don’t feel they’ve got their $550 worth of price cuts and the climate seems crook they might hold back. As we speak captains of industry are working out how to return us to the Golden Age. Shame if it doesn’t pan out and the old boys become irrelevant.
@midrash You really think people become climate scientists for the money?
As Julie says, it’s striking how people with a high measured IQ can (collectively) make themselves stupider than any ordinary dullard.
Something not mentioned yet is that with Shorten’s declaration that Labor will bring in an ETS, the repeal becomes in one sense irrelevant. It should be clear to any business or investor that there will be a price on carbon in the near future even if there isn’t one now. Anyone who invested in or expanded carbon-intensive businesses at this point would be an idiot. Repeal might mean a few years of higher profits for coal fired generators but they would still need to plan to shut down or divest in future (a great investment opportunity for the Midrashes of this world!)
Has anybody tried to ‘live’ in the alternative universe in power? It works like this: As of today, the potential student says, I don’t have to pay $100 for a leg of lamb, thanks to the abolition of the carbon tax (and the ETS with positive prices), and therefore an increase in the tuition fees are justified as predicted in the federal budget.
(Don’t play this mental game for too long without taking notes to find your way back. Its already too late for some folks, it seems. )
@Midrash
Nope, still not getting it. This makes no sense whatsoever (and not because of the “be” typo):
“failing to imagine how concealing identity might bd an important reason for the way in which pretty clear points are laid out?”
Your criticism about not addressing the “substance” of your posts is unfounded, it assumes that your posts actually have some substance. My point is that your posts largely consist of asides, innuendo, assertions without facts and what are obviously personal biases. You will find that historically I have engaged with arguments that attempt a rational justification of their premises, see above for instance. I find your posts fascinating in that they have so many words and yet say absolutely nothing of substance. I suspect that you are an AGW denier of the classic Plimer kind. Sheer volume of words is used as a substitute for reason.
PrQ asked of @Midrash
Perhaps he thinks “taxpayer dollars” are more exciting than fossil fuel dollars. Not a few of the denier trolls speak as if they are.
@Nevil Kingston-Brown
“It should be clear to any business or investor that there will be a price on carbon in the near future even if there isn’t one now.”
Anyone with some business sense does plan for such, particularly firms involved in international operations.
@Nevil Kingston-Brown
“It should be clear to any business or investor that there will be a price on carbon in the near future even if there isn’t one now.”
Anyone with some business sense does plan for a shadow price on carbon, particularly firms involved in international operations.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/who-wins-who-loses-when-the-carbon-tax-goes-20140709-zt1mm.html
@Fran Barlow
Good point!
@Moz in Oz
While I have no interest in joining the silly partisan blame-calling, I have to point out that the one of the main ways in which just-repealed Clean Energy Future legislation most closely resembled the never-implemented Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was that both of them had almost identical schemes for compensating emissions intensive trade exposed industries. In that respect, the CPRS was certianly no worse than the CEF scheme. There were other, significant points of difference, but compensation for “big polluters” wasn’t one of them.
@Alison Bunting
Hi Alison. I agree the repeal of the carbon price legislation is stupid and counterproductive, and that future generations will shake their heads at the stupidity, but I think it’s going overboard to say that it’s devastating for Australia and the planet. It’s a setback, not much more. It’s certainly bad for Australia, as the all the work done, and money spent, to do what has just been undone will now have to be done again. But I have no doubt that it will be done.
In the long run, I suspect that the repeal of the carbon price won’t even necessarily be singled out as an event of particular significance, but rather, just seen as part of the period in our political history when people were unaccountably arguing about the patently obvious need to do something about greenhouse emissions, before eventually just knuckling down and doing it.
@Ikonoclast
I see that at the moment we have the “doom is certain” Ikonoclast. I think I’ll patiently wait for the “maybe things will be ok” Ikonoclast to cycle back round again. 😉
Midrash has gone away for the moment but as he seems to regard Ian Plimer’s climate change work as worthy of respect, I wish to remind people of Ian Enting’s analysis of Plimer’s first book
http://www.complex.org.au/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=91 .
@Val
I had a brief look at Hansard (re: 3 missing ALP senators on the vote) I may have missed one, but Carol Brown – Tas. and Kate Lundy – ACT didn’t vote.
Of course Hansard doesn’t say why. They may have got lost on the way?
@John Quiggin
It’s a persistent feature of rightwing populism and American libertarianism to de-authenticate, inter alia, the public sector relative to the private sector. The rationales offered for these positions by the two cohorts differ at the margins but they can both be seen quite distinctly when “tax” is mentioned — much as if it is a form of theft, by contrast with commerce.
Consequently, anyone working for anything funded by state bodies is seen at best as not doing ‘real work’ and possibly a party to criminal conduct (often expressed as “living off the public teat” or “rentseeking”) . The populists make an exception of course for the armed forces, and to some extent, emergency services, possibly because these are seen as legitimate exercises of state power, without troubling to explore why the state providing other services that underpin the integrity of community aren’t also legitimate (welfare, education, housing, regulation of business and commerce etc).
The RW libertarians need the RW populists in their coalition and so often run dead on the armed services, or cite Locke and move on.
More broadly, the populists are suspicious of intellectual endeavour and non-manual labour more generally. Thus, anyone who works with their mind, while perhaps admired for their grasp of the abstruse, alienates him/herself from them socially, inviting suspicion and perhaps the fear that the mindworker sees him/herself as their social superior, to which many respond with reflexive emphasis on their cognitive development in “the school of hard knocks” and frontier/pioneer derringdo, and their location within some authenticated small community. The mindworker, almost by definition, will be geographically remote from them and probably live in a metropolis — which again, is less authentic. If they wear a white coat or live/work in a place that seems like “an ivory tower” then again both their isolation and putative existential threat is evident. That they are living from the tax of the toil of those close to the soil shows just how incipiently dangerous such folk are.
The RW libertarians of course could scarcely care less about the authenticity of manual labour or the soil, but they know suckers when they see them. They are perfectly happy with intellectuals, providing they plead for the state to leave them as free as they can to exploit (under the banner of free choice) the weakminded wherever they find them.
@phoenix
Classic. The argument used by tax dodgers everywhere. “The little bit I should contribute is so small it will make no difference, except that it will hurt me. So I will hold out. Oh, and by the way, why are the waiting lists at hospitals so long? Bloody inefficient government.”
Using Phoenix’s logic, don’t bother bother with voting – such a tiny, insignificant thing, that vote amongst so many, many others.
When a country like Australia – at the top of per capita emissions – refuses to do it’s share, it becomes the excuse for others, who’s per capita emissions will almost certainly be less than ours.
If climate is an issue of multi-generational ethics, the opponents of action seem to embody amoral selfishness – except that, when viewed with a conviction that the problem is a deception perpetrated on the decent, the honest and the hardworking by agents of green socialist Evil can invert the moral compass and make what Abbott and team are doing into a noble crusade. In a world of marketing and manufactured perceptions, that kind of inversion can persist for a long time, all the while generating fanatical determination to obstruct timely action. History may well condemn them, but I think it will take some real and indisputable climate consequences severely damaging our economy first.
I got my electricity bill today here in South Australia today. I wonder what I will do with the whole three cents a day the death of the carbon price will save me? Or rather not save me as it’s revenue that will either have to be made up somewhere else or from cuts in services.
@Tim Macknay
I do flip-flop a bit. The “Doom Ikonoclast” is the hard-nosed realist who won’t sugarcoat the pill for himself or all the Pollyannas. The “Maybe we have a chance Ikonoclast” appears when I doubt my empirically derived near certainities or when I decide I should keep some dialogue open with other humans. 😉
@rog
The ALP had a backbone with which they used the last election as a vote on the Carbon tax.
How’d that turn out for them?
While I am to be counted amongst those who saw the CEF package as a step forward compared with doing nothing, it was at best a very modest step forward. Its principal benefit from a climate change perspective was to help increase the international momentum for devising and implementing effective abatement. Had the Abbott regime wanted to, it could have left the package structure untouched and white-anted it by more than 100%. The rules were written in such a way as to permit the carbon farming initiative to be a giant porkbarrell.
Now that the pricing part of the package has been struck down, it might be useful to consider other approaches to abatement that would be less open to subversion and game playing than this one was. If they were framed in ways that most non-tribal voters could understand, the regime might begin to find itself wedged.
@Ronald Brak
Amusingly, I got a letter the other day from my electricity service provider letting me know that their charges were rising by about 2c / kWh. Of course, I didn’t expect my bills to reduce as I pay a premium for 100% renewable-sourced energy (so no carbon price for me), but that really adds insult to injury.
@Megan
If one party is slightly less dishonest than another, is that a good thing? or a bad thing? or neither? and why?
@Watkin Tench
Opinion polls more than two years before election day may have some value as a guide to the actual result — but not much. Very little.
@phoenix
If I’m going to question everything, can I begin by questioning people’s right to property?
@J-D
I don’t think the question admits an answer. There are different qualities of dishonesty after all. And of course some qualities of dishonesty cause more harm than others.
Almost all dishonesty in politics is corrosive of authentic community, and to be condemned of course, but even in this one has to weigh harm to legitimate interest when evaluating it.
@phoenix
A.K.A. the argument of the beard. There is no measurable growth in a beard over, say, 5 minutes therefore beards don’t grow.
This is yet another logical fallacy promulgated by denialists. Logical fallacies are their tool-in-trade.
Sinclair Davidson gets to write on our ABC about how wonderful it is that the Carbon tax was repealed:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-17/davidson-goodbye-to-the-all-pain-no-gain-carbon-tax/5597614
Gee that ABC has a left-wing bias.