The “Putting a Price on X” Game

In “Clear link between climate change and bushfires: UN adviser warns Tony Abbott”, by the credulous Judith Ireland, we learn that the useless-when-it’s-not actually-destructive UN is still hoping to persuade people that slightly warmer weather is catastrophically dangerous, and that we must therefore lavish even more money on the already bloated bureaucrats who have lied to us for so long about the alleged dangers of very slight global warming.

A senior United Nations climate change official says there is “absolutely” a link between climate change and bushfires and has warned that the Coalition government will pay a high political and financial price for its decision to scrap carbon pricing.

There is, of course, no link at all between supposed anthropogenic global warming—which is what these venal buffoons mean when they refer to “climate change”—and bushfires.  That is a self-serving lie—or, to be charitable, perhaps yet another wondrous case of the modern flexibility of language whereby “absolutely” means “not at all”.

In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Monday, the head of the UN’s climate change negotiations, Christiana Figueres, said there was a clear link between climate change and bushfires such as those raging in New South Wales.

She noted that the World Meteorological Organisation had not yet established a direct link between the NSW fires and climate change.

“But what is absolutely clear is the science is telling us that there are increasing heat waves in Asia, Europe, and Australia; that these will continue; that they will continue in their intensity and in their frequency,” Ms Figueres said.

Uh huh; there’s no direct link, and no proof, but we should base all our spending on the notion that there is a proven link, anyway.  This loony is allowed outside to walk among us.

Ms Figueres described the NSW fires as an “example of what we may be looking at unless we take actually vigorous action”.
The UN adviser said the Abbott government would not only pay a high political price but a “very high financial price” for stepping away from a price on carbon.

A price on carbon, by the way, is code for a neo-Luddite tax (on industrial emissions of beneficent carbon dioxide, for the most part) which can do nothing to stop any global warming, or cooling, but further enriches banks, middlemen, and the misanthracist, malfeasant UN, predicated on the ludicrous, pseudo-scientific conjecture that man’s puny contributions to the atmosphere are warming the world dangerously.

“What we need to do is put a price on carbon so that we don’t have to continue to pay the price of carbon,'' she said.

Christiana Figueres, clearly, is seriously deluded, but her “What we need to do is put a price on x so that we don’t have to continue to pay the price of x” game seems like fun.  I’ll have a go:

What we need to do is put a price on the silly but expensively corrupt UN so that we don’t have to continue to pay the price of the silly but expensively corrupt UN!

Furthermore:

What we need to do is put a price on those deluded, misanthropist, enviro-mentalist lunatics who won’t allow burnoffs but then have the gall to blame preventable or deliberately lit bushfires on non-existent AGW so that we don’t have to continue to pay the price of those deluded, misanthropist, enviro-mentalist lunatics who won’t allow burnoffs but then have the gall to blame preventable or deliberately lit bushfires on non-existent AGW!

Or, logically enough:

What we need to do is put a price on putting a price on things so that we don’t have to continue to pay the price of putting a price on things.

See also Tim Blair’s “Tell It to Ixchel”. 

UPDATE I:  see “UN climate chief breaks down in tears over global warming”.  See also “Why the Global Warming Agenda Is Wrong”.

UPDATE II:  see “What Is Christiana Figueres Thinking?” by Donna Laframboise:

Christiana is a supremely well-connected child of wealth, power, and privilege.  At this moment, she’s the Executive Secretary of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  […] Ban Ki-moon, the head of the UN, reached out his hand and appointed her to that prominent position on the world’s stage.
Let us be clear about what this means:  She is a bureaucrat, a hand-picked UN employee.  She speaks for no one other than her UN bosses.
As the person tasked with trying to secure a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, Figueres is supposed to be a diplomat.  Her job is to coax nearly 200 countries to come to a common agreement.
So what in the world is she doing criticizing Australia’s shiny new, democratically elected government?  According to an article in today’s Australian newspaper,

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres has told CNN the Abbott government will pay a heavy political and economic price for walking away from Labor’s commitments on climate change.

But Figueres has things backward.  Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s freshly-minted government is doing exactly what he promised on the election trail.  It is reflecting the will of the people by scrapping that country’s hated, economically destructive carbon tax.

UPDATE III:  Prime Minister Tony Abbott today dismissed the irrational comments of Christiana Figueres, rightly asserting that bushfires, sadly, have always been “part of the Australian experience”; he explained to Fairfax Radio that the deluded woman was “talking through her hat”.

UPDATE IV (25 October):  US Congressman (and candidate for the US Senate) Paul Broun writes:

[S]ixty-eight years ago a clandestine organization was born.
It was the birthdate of the United Nations.
And now, sixty-eight years later, our nation is in danger because of this very institution.  The United Nations is threatening our everyday way of life, the freedoms and liberties we enjoy and the privacy our families deserve. 
I want to get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US.  That’s why one of the first bills I introduced this year in Congress was HR 75 to end all US participation in the United Nations.
If you agree that our nation is better off alone then cohorting with this organization that allows dictators into this country, then add your name to my petition today.
As the United Nations grows in power and authority, the United States sovereignty dwindles with it.  Our country, under the dismal direction of the Democrats, is spending millions of dollars supporting a organization that undoubtedly endangers our children and grandchildren’s future.

UPDATE V (25 October):   see “Al Gore Throws Another Climate Lie on the Barbie” from Investor's Business Daily: 

Al Gore, patron saint of climate fraud, argues with Australia’s prime minister that its brushfires [brushfires!] are not caused by warming and that the record shows the koala bear, like the polar bear, is quite safe.
They were the largest Australian bushfires in a populous region in recorded history, consuming half the state of Victoria, claiming 12 lives and destroying an estimated 1 million sheep and thousands of cattle.  And they occurred in February 1851 during one of the coldest years on record.
Bushfires have been part of Australian life for centuries, long before the Industrial Revolution and the sale of the first SUV.
Since the 1851 fires, there've been the 1898 fires in Victoria, which consumed 2,000 buildings, fires in Victoria in 1938 that killed 71 and destroyed 3,700 buildings, and the Ash Wednesday fires in the early 1980s that left 71 dead in the state of South Australia.
Australia has been battling another round of massive bushfires west of Sydney for more than a week now, fires not unlike those that have occurred throughout its history.  The difference is that this time we have Al Gore and his climate co-conspirators at the U.N., the corrupt and fraudulent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to blame the fires on climate change.
Gore is upset with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s insistence that the recent New South Wales wildfires are not linked to climate change and his statement on Australian radio that “these fires are certainly not a function of climate change, they are just a function of life in Australia.”  […]
“It reminds me of politicians here who got a lot of support from the tobacco companies and who argued to the public that there was absolutely no connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer,” Gore said on ABC’s Los Angeles affiliate Wednesday night.
This echoes the mantra of the climate scammers that climate change “deniers” have long had their science-based skepticism subsidized by energy companies.
Yet it is Al Gore and others like him who have gotten rich peddling their climate fiction, while leading governments to stunt economic growth and divert scarce billions to chase a mirage.
The inconvenient truth for Gore et al is that wildfires have been decreasing as have been instances of drought that cause them.
“Historical analysis of wildfires around the world shows that since 1950 their numbers have decreased globally by 15%,’ wrote Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and the Copenhagen Business School in the Wall Street Journal.  […]
Domestically, the number of wildfires across the U.S. this year is on pace to be the fewest in the past 10 years and the acreage involved is at the second lowest level in that same period, according to an analysis by the National Interagency Fire Center.

See “Al Gore: Tobacco Hypocrite”
See also “‘Lack of political will’ the trigger” by John Ferguson and Stephen Fitzpatrick:

The Blue Mountains bushfire crisis was the result of a lack of political leadership over bush management issues and had nothing to do with climate change, says one of Australia's foremost disaster management experts.
It also demonstrated a failure to learn lessons from the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria that killed 173 people and left thousands homeless, said David Packham, a former deputy director of the Australian Counter Disaster College.
Mr Packham said while issues such as power assets were crucial when it came to bushfires—and moving them underground would be an important step—ignition would remain a given, whether man-made or by lightning.
A spokesman for Endeavour Energy, which covers the Blue Mountains region, said more than 100 damaged poles had been replaced since the blazes began last Thursday.  However, he questioned a finding by the NSW Rural Fire Service that one of the biggest fires, in Springwood, was started “as a result of powerlines during strong winds”.
“These were extreme conditions and any time there [are] winds over 90km/h predicted that’s bad news for electricity providers,” he said.  […]
Mr Packham said “a little” had been learned from the Black Saturday fires—five of which, out of 11, were caused by electrical assets—but said the Blue Mountains had been allowed to accumulate fuel, with the predictable outcome being large-scale, uncontrollable burning.  “What is happening in NSW is exactly what happens every 10 or 20 years, right back to 1915,” he told The Australian.  “If you have lots of … fire fuel you will have lots of unpleasant fire.”
Mr Packham also said linking the NSW fire disaster with global warming was “nonsense” because climate change was incremental and could not be blamed for dire fire events such as this.

“Where’s the Wascally Warming?”

A transcript of the Climate Council’s search for hidden global warming.

In his well-appointed office, the very silly Prof. Tim Flannery is becoming more and more frustrated.

Prof. Tim Flannery:  Warming? I know you’re somewhere, Global Warming; please stop hiding.  Warming?  Where are you?  All right, warming, we’ve had our fun, but it’s time to stop hiding now.  Are you there?  Look, I’ve had enough of this, so I’m going now.  [He walks to his door noisily.]  This is the sound of my leaving.  Yes, I’m heading out the door right now.  [He slams the door.]  Okay, everyone’s gone now.  You can come out now.  HEY!  Look, it’s no use pretending you’re not here because I know you exist—or, more to the point, I’ve been telling anyone who might send me a bob or two that you exist.  [He whistles.]  Here, Warming!  Warming?  COME ON, WARMING!  WARMING, COME OUT RIGHT NOW OR I’LL GET MIGHTY ANGRY WITH YOU!  Oh, please stop hiding.  Are you in the thermosphere?  Are you concealed by those pesky, democratic ants?  Are you, perhaps, under— [he lifts his couch] THIS COUCH?  Are you in my wallet?  No.  Are you there at all, Global Warming?  Please, I know you’re here somewhere!  Answer me!

Prof. Will Steffen:  [from behind an armchair]  I’m in the deep oceans!

Prof. Tim Flannery:  Warming? I knew you existed!  Hey, wait a bit; you sounded just a little like my fellow propagandist of climate doom, Will Steffen.  Was that you, Will?

Prof. Will Steffen:  [giggling]  Not at all!

Prof. Tim Flannery:  So it really is you, Global Warming? Proof at last!  Hang on, if you’re hiding in the deep oceans I shouldn’t be able to hear you—  [Flannery sees Steffen crouching behind the chair.]  What?  Professor, I have better things to do than play games; I’m going away!  [Flannery stomps to the door, slams it shut without leaving, tiptoes over to his desk, and crouches down under it.]

Prof. Will Steffen:  [rising slowly]  Oh, I so wanted to find Global Warming too.  I hope that I didn’t hurt Tim’s feelings; not that it matters, of course, because, frankly, he’s a bit of a loony cove.  I do wonder where Global Warming is sequestered or secreted or lying low.  Hallo?  Global Warming, it’s no use hiding because I can see you!  Come out, come out, wherever you are!  Can you hear me?  Are you in this room, Global Warming? 

Prof. Tim Flannery:  [giggling]  No!  I’m not!
Prof. Will Steffen:  Oh, darn; I’ll have to look somewhere else then.  [Steffen exits.]

UPDATE (16 October):  meanwhile, throughout the land, followers of the two silly but greedy professors have gullibly accepted those duplicitous propagandists’ pseudo-scientific, fallacious, self-serving arguments, and foolishly expect to rely on giant-whirligigs for their power in the future:

Comedian Confesses to “Climate Clive” Con

A Western Australian comedian, Matt Hayden, has finally confessed that he had been pretending to be, between stand-up gigs, a deranged believer in the debunked, pseudo-scientific conjecture of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.  Under his assumed identity of “Prof. Clive Hamilton”, Mr. Hayden finessed a professorship of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics; he also persuaded the previous federal government to appoint him to the board of the Climate Change Authority; he is the founder and former Executive Director of the The Australia Institute; and he was even appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for “service to public debate and policy development, particularly in the fields of climate change, sustainability and societal trends”.

Mr. Hayden admitted that, for the last fifteen years, he had made increasing sillier statements in support of neurotic, totalitarian responses to the non-problem of global warming in the hope that the escalating idiocy of his statements—rising in alarmist hysteria as the supposedly dangerous rise of a posited “average global temperature” actually slowed to a stop—would make the gullible believers of that foolish, conjecture rethink their adherence to an irrational, misanthropic, neo-Luddite, neo-Malthusian, catastropharian cult.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “even my most ridiculous, sarcastic and, frankly, immoral utterances have been reported as sensible comments by our sloppy, fawning, unthinking journalists.  No matter how over the top I spewed idiocy—such as, for example, when I suggested that all who doubt the most alarmist claims of global-warming doom should have ‘denier’ tattooed on their foreheads, or that scientists who correctly explain that science has never depended on a consensus should be executed, or that anyone who opposes my corrupt colleagues must be a paid stooge of a wicked cabal of deliberately destructive oil companies—the unprofessional, bootlicking morons in the mainstream media have just lapped up my extremist, hypocritical crap and demanded more.  I’ve had enough of feigning such stupidity.  It’s been a lark (and a very profitable one) but, sadly, too few people in the media can spot satirical parody.”
Mr. Hayden apologised both to the people deceived by his ruse and to the taxpayers whom the arrogant “Prof. Hamilton” has been defrauding as well as calumniating for so long.

Guillermo del Toro’s Couch Gag for “The Simpsons”