So we now have a pending federal election with two parties campaigning on the dire consequences of climate change. As a young person at school in the mid sixties I was most concerned to learn that the world was running out of copper. There was widespread concern and debate as to how we could cope substituting aluminium. When I left school, I got a job in the mining industry and soon found that not only was there not going to be a copper shortage, but the mines that would provide the copper were being developed when this hysteria was being spread. It assured a good market price for copper. In the mid seventies we were bombarded with dire predictions that the world oil supplies were nearly exhausted. So scarce was bitumen going to be we would be building concrete highways. I had friends in this industry and collected enough information to see easily that this was a total beat-up, as is clearly evident now. Producers were simply creating hysteria to justify higher prices.
Such a beat-up is the climate change argument, that they have to use naturally sinking volcanic islands to support the claims of rising sea levels. Since around the time of Charles Darwin, Geologists have known the Earths crust is not strong enough to hold up the volcanic cones rising from the sea floor. These old Volcanoes naturally sink as they have been doing for millions of years. Some volcanic islands have sunk to 6,000 feet below the sea surface with remnant coral reefs that could have only grown at or near the surface. The following is a quote from a Geology text book: "Next came the main islands all with drowned river valleys e.g. Pearl Harbour, with up to 1,200 feet of submergence." (Principals of physical geology, Arthur Holmes).
It is not only CO2 that has been blamed for disrupting weather patterns. Gas lighting when it first came in, horseless carriages, uranium mining in the 50s (just a few holes in the ground in SA and the NT), then atomic bombs have all copped the blame for disrupted weather patterns. Locally the flame on the Longford Gas Plant at Sale in Gippsland was also a culprit when first lit. What is so good about the modern climate change hysteria is that it wont be too long before we have a whole modern generation who are as sceptical as myself and some of my class mates from the sixties. The increased solar output from the sun that caused most of the recent warming from the 50s is starting to dim. When this round of the El Nino weather pattern caused by undersea volcanics heating sea water starts to decline, the Northern Hemisphere will start to cool markedly. But in the meantime its a great issue to support hysteria to bring in the votes.