NZ Herald ratifies outrageous rant

More response to the Coalition’s Statement of Claim against NIWA. Although it’s not by any measure a reasoned response.

Just four days after Brian Rudman’s diatribe against the Coalition, the Herald unleashed an opinion piece by one Sam Fisher. I’ve just discovered it but that’s no reason to let it stand unopposed.

I shall start at its rear end. His devastating conclusion:

In past years, the nutters were the ones with signs that said: “The world is ending.” Now, the nutters have the signs that say: “The world isn’t ending, it’s all fine.”

I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, for it is hard to fault. However, he omits mention of the sanity of those trumpeting the end of the world. So I would express it with a different slant, as it is on the masthead above:

For the first time in history, people shouting “the end is nigh” are somehow
the sane ones, while those of us who say it is not are now the lunatics.

Before that, he enlightens us with:

If the doubters are correct, we’ll be unable to breathe and, if they’re wrong, we’ll all die horribly. If we reduce greenhouse gases but it makes little difference to global warming, I’m happy to sit in a room for a month or so while the doubters go “nya nya nya”. I’ll still be breathing easier.

This is somewhat obscure, but I think that by “we’ll be unable to breathe” he imagines the atmospheric carbon dioxide building up to suffocating levels. But when he says “we’ll all die horribly” he guesses at a death by fire.

Neither has any scientific justification (there’s not enough oil and coal to produce that much CO2) and they are mutually exclusive (CO2 extinguishes fires). Life evolved when CO2 levels were ten times higher than now. This is the most stupendous nonsense. If this really is his opinion, which is hard to believe, his opinion is a soup.

He says:

Most scientists say we need to stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The doubters say: “It’s rubbish, keep polluting.”

But it’s not a pollutant. The pure, invisible, odourless, life-giving carbon dioxide that feeds all life on Earth and without which all humans would die was first described as “pollution” by misguided, militant environmentalists in the dying years of the 20th Century. Isn’t it amazing how the term has become popular among the ignorant?

Sam’s Challenge

I can understand that the CSC wants to believe that man-made climate change isn’t happening. I’d like to pretend it wasn’t happening as well. However, the scientific evidence continues to mount and, if we piled up all the research, it would reach the top of what’s left of our atmosphere.

The Coalition certainly believes that man-made climate change is happening, it only queries the magnitude. And why not query the magnitude? Instead of citing some evidence, Fisher claims we might pile it up. Have you noticed how everybody else does that?

Here is a challenge (let’s call it Sam’s Challenge): cite some evidence!

Sam, if you send us some evidence that human activity is dangerously warming the planet, or will do so, we’ll review it with the utmost speed. So please rush it over! Just leave a comment below containing your references, there’s no need for expensive couriers. We’re dying to see the evidence!

I note in passing Fisher’s stupid reference to “what’s left of our atmosphere.” Quite obviously, media relations people are not required to study the topics they “communicate.” Nobody is claiming that our atmosphere is being destroyed, so where he gets this notion from is a complete mystery.

Can Fisher think?

He makes a silly joke about CFCs, attempts a connection with US creationist beliefs, name-drops our favourite Boston Legal stars and descends to peurile hair jokes in a rant that defies belief while proffering no facts at all.

Finally, in the beginning of his little piece, Mr Fisher asserts:

Courts aren’t the best place to test science – for a start, there are no Bunsen burners.

And in resorting to a flippancy that reduces our legal adventure to a triviality he does the same to his opinion.

If only he had read our Statement of Claim, he would have had more material; if he had asked us a few questions, he could have sounded knowledgeable.

It is even less well-researched than Rudman’s article and possibly more one-eyed: it is pugnacious and uninformed. Fisher can perhaps write, but the jury must be out on whether he can think.

Is that par for the course for a Fellow of the Public Relations Institute and professional Social Media Strategist? You can read more about dear Sam here.

And shame on the Herald once again; their biased colours are again nailed firmly to their obstinate mast. I sent them an opinion piece just three days after they printed this which they declined to use.

To publish this empty bombast but give my voice no air in rebuttal shames their noble history.

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