A STRAIGHT-SHOOTING MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

In Australia

"JOHN Howard's new Environment Minister, Ian Campbell, has signalled a hard-edged approach to his new portfolio, refusing to be captive to the demands of a "myopic" conservation movement. Senator Campbell wants to continue the Government's agenda linking the nation's future power needs to coal and oil, rejecting the global framework for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

In an interview with The Weekend Australian, he said that while he respected the environment movement, its focus was often too "myopic". "Those who have a myopic focus on one area tend to fail that area," Senator Campbell said. "You've got to put all of the issues into the broader context. We operate within real-world constraints."

He believes environmental leaders such as Greens senator Bob Brown fail to see the links between the economy and the environment and are failing the environment as a result. "You should be looking at the donut and not the hole," he said. Senator Campbell, who habitually recycles and composts, argues that the answer to environmental sustainability is in successful business. "Businesses that are successful are much better at upholding their environmental responsibilities," he said. "If a business is failing or operating in a bad economy they (will) ... cut corners and won't uphold their environmental responsibility."....

Senator Campbell said he would vigorously defend the Coalition's green credentials if the environment shaped up to be a big election issue.... I'm a practical hands-on sort of bloke who will want to get on and deliver good results."

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GLOBAL WARMING IN BRIEF:

"The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that human activities are responsible for nearly all earth's recorded warming during the past two centuries. A widely circulated image that dramatically depicts these temperature trends resembles a hockey stick with three distinct parts: a flat "shaft" extending from A.D. 200 to 1900, a "blade" shooting up from A.D. 1900 to 2002, and a range of uncertainty in temperature estimates that envelops the shaft like a "sheath."

Michael Mann of the University of Virginia and Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia updated the influential reconstruction of (Geophysical Research Letters, 2003) used in the IPCC's third assessment of climate change. However, researchers are calling into question all three components of the "hockey stick,"

Mann's research does not fit with the overwhelming evidence of widespread global warming and cooling within the previous two millennia, making his assertions -- and, consequently, the IPCC -- open to question"

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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