The following was extracted from RenewEconomy of 2013/09/17:
In an opinion piece written for the Australian Financial Review, Newman said
much of the public service infrastructure would be resistant to change
because of their "vested interests" in the status-quo.
"The CSIRO, for example, has 27 scientists dedicated to climate change,"
Newman wrote.
"It and the weather bureau continue to propagate the myth of anthropological
(sic) climate change and are likely to be background critics of the
Coalition's Direct Action policies."
If PM Abbott has as the head of his Business Advisory Council a man who
believes that anthropogenic climate change is a 'myth' what does that say
about
Mr Abbott's
beliefs?
In August 2014 Mr Newman warned that people are spending too much time and
effort in worrying about global warming.
He apparently believes, against all the science research findings of the
world's climatologists, that the world is actually
cooling.
Extract from article by Michael J. I. Brown in
The Conversation, 2014/08/19
Michael is a lecturer at Monash University
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Maurice Newman warned about imminent global cooling and cited Professor
Mike Lockwood's research as evidence.
But Lockwood himself stated last year that solar variability this century
may reduce warming by:
"... between 0.06 and 0.1 degrees Celsius, a very small fraction of the warming
we're due to experience as a result of human activity."
Newman's claims were debunked, by his expert, before he even wrote his article.
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That this deluded man is head of our Prime Minister's Business Advisory
Council is a terrible indictment on our present government and no less than
a matter for national shame.
How has my country sunk so low?
On the last day of 2013 The Australian newspaper quoted Mr Newman as saying
"Global temperatures have gone nowhere for 17 years".
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Greg Jericho wrote an informative piece for
The Drum
about Maurice Newman's ignorant stance on climate change.
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The facts are so different from Mr Newman's claim that you would have to
wonder where he has been for the past 17 years.
From
Renew Economy
"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US has
released its global temperature analysis for 2013.
It has found that the year 2013 ties with 2003 as the fourth warmest year
globally since records began in 1880 and it marks the 37th consecutive year
(since 1976) that the yearly global temperature was above average."
and
"Over land, every one of the last 13 years (2001-2013) is in the list of the
warmest 14 years on record."
I could go on.
The most depressing thing about all this is that an Australian Prime Minister
can chose to have a man who is so divorced from the facts, so ignorant of
the truth and the science, as the leader of his Business Advisory Council.
The following was published in
Climate Spectator regarding the proposed Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council and its leader Maurice Newman, supposing that the Liberals got into government.
On wind power Mr Newman wrote in the publication The Spectator (not associated
with Business or Climate Spectator) on January 21, 2012:
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Comment:
Impressive, nine fallacies in one sentence!
I have given links to seven of the fallacies to provide the facts.
Wind farms are less 'socially inequitable' than other forms of energy
generation, consider
community funding for
example.
Wind farms are much less
environmentally harmful than coal, coal-seam gas,
gas and nuclear.
Whether they are a 'blot on the landscape' is subjective.
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Comment:
The IPCC is composed of climate scientists.
There is a
strong consensus among
climate scientists about anthropogenic climate change.
It seems Mr Newman either doesn't trust science or doesn't understand
how it works.
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"Even before they threatened my property, I was opposed to wind farms.
They fail on all counts.
They are grossly
inefficient,
extremely
expensive,
socially inequitable, a danger to human
health,
environmentally harmful,
divisive for communities, a blot on the landscape, and don't even achieve
the purpose for which they were designed, namely the
reliable
generation of electricity and the
reduction of CO2
emissions."
On the issue of whether human activity is leading to warming of the
atmosphere he wrote in The Australian on November 5 last year:
"When Mother Nature decided in 1980 to change gears from cooler to warmer,
a new global warming religion was born, replete with its own church (the
UN), a papacy, (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and a global
warming priesthood masquerading as climate scientists."
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That a man with such opinions and capable of such misrepresentations could
ever be chief of a business advisory committee to a Prime Minister of
Australia can only be called depressing.
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Mr Newman is, in effect, saying the Americans and Chinese are stupid
Why are the Americans and Chinese building so much wind power if it is as
useless as Mr Newman claims?
He must think that they are incapable of seeing the facts.
Is this likely?
Are the Americans and Chinese stupid, or is Mr Newman's opinion naïve
and foolish in the extreme?
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If Australia was to follow the opinions of people like Mr Newman it would
put us very much out of step with our trading partners who recognise the
need to act on climate change, on reducing the air pollution resulting from
burning coal and can see the
value of sustainable energy, wind power in particular.
For example the
USA installed a record 13.2GW and
China 14GW of wind power in 2012.
(Australia's total wind power at the end of 2012 was 2.7GW.)
If people like Mr Newman have their way, Australia will be left behind with
the most climate-polluting power generation system in the developed world
while the more progressive nations change to modern, clean energy.
Is it good international relations for Australia to have a Prime Minister's
chief advisor who believes our main trading partners to be stupid?
In an
article published in the Sydney Morning
Herald 2014/07/05 it was reported that Mr Newman and six associates have
threatened to sue their neighbouring landholders should a proposed wind farm
at Crookwell go ahead.
(Mr Newman bought an 800ha property near Crookwell for $5.5 million in 2007.)
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Crookwell wind farms update, June 2021
The original Crookwell Wind Farm was commissioned in July 1998. Presumably the law suite must have been about Crookwell 2 (constructed in 2018) or more likely Crookwell 3 which seems to have been given final court approval in October 2020.
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While the seven signatories of the threatened suite may own land near the proposed wind farm "The letter listed the names and addresses of the seven signatories, all but two of whom lived in Gladesville, Mosman, or Phillip Street, Sydney."
One would have to wonder what grounds Mr Newman and his associates would have for any suite.
There is no evidence that wind turbines make much
noise (either audible or
infrasound),
make anyone
ill, cause any substantial impact on
property
values, or cause neighbours any harm or
significant inconvenience in any other ways.
The dishonest and aggressive
Heartland Farmers group
of wind turbine opponents on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula have also
resorted to engaging lawyers to write threatening letters.
The ABC
reported
on 2014/07/28 that:
"Union Fenosa has withdrawn the invitation of Maurice Newman, from its
Crookwell 2 and 3 Community Consultative Committee.
The developer says it's taken the action because of a pattern of Mr Newman's
behaviour including his support for unsubstantiated legal threats being sent
to its landholder stakeholders.
In a statement, the company says Mr Newman's actions also included his
apparent intervention to block Office of the Environment and Heritage
employees from attending CCCs because they were providing material about NSW
Health findings that wind turbines are harmless."
Lisa Cox, writing in the
Sydney Morning Herald
on 2015/05/08 listed some of Mr Newman's most outstanding quotes:
"Man-made 'carbon pollution' has become the shorthand rallying cry that
unites global warming believers. The notion is a figment.
It is made up. It is rooted in anti-capitalist, anti-growth green ideology
that, for too long, has been bullied into our consciousness as science."
– The Australian, March 27, 2015
"Back in the real world, the poor are dying of the cold while the political
elites and their friends bask in the warmth of cosy conferences, taxpayer
subsidies and research grants.
They seem indifferent to the hardship that their actions, based on dubious
science, impose on the world's underprivileged." – The Australian,
February 6, 2015
"The political left has seized on climate change as the new Marxism.
It rejects empirical evidence which is inconvenient and promotes dubious
and sometimes fabricated science as proven.
In true totalitarian style it seeks to shut down debate and ruin the careers
and reputations of those who dare to oppose the orthodoxy."
– The Australian, January 20, 2015
"[Christine] Milne's prescription for a vibrant Australian economy includes
'keeping the renewable energy target at 41,000 gigawatt-hours', 'stopping
new coalmines', 'no coal-seam gas' and 'no new ports'.
'Jobs will come from green energy,' Milne assures us.
She could have added, there are fairies at the bottom of her garden."
– The Australian, November 7, 2014
"At the same time, like primitive civilisations offering up sacrifices to
appease the gods, many governments, including Australia's former Labor
government, used the biased research to pursue 'green' gesture politics.
If the world does indeed move into a cooling period, its citizens are
ill-prepared." – The Australian, August 14 2014
It is not surprising that these quotes were printed in The Australian, which
is a right-wing Murdoch newspaper that frequently prints climate science
denial and anti-renewable energy material.