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Friday, August 25, 2023

Mike Hosking: The alarmism has to stop


One of the growth industries these days is alarmism.

There has been some solid reading to be done this week in Australia as they trumpeted some stunning so-called facts on climate change, based on "ground-breaking new research".

The first claim is that globally we will be paying $1.5 trillion more each year on our debt as a result of the world not being contained, climate wise.

The second is that, in Australia specifically, it will cost the economy over $400 billion over the next 40 years.

To be fair, the estimate is between $135 and $423 billion, so it's a fairly wide target. What an amazing talent it is to be able to bring the estimate into within a million or so, 40 years out from the actual event.

"Tourism will be damaged because people won't come because the beaches wont be there". Think about that for a moment; the beaches wont be there. What an astonishing thing to claim.

Perhaps even more astonishing is the Treasurer has embraced this report and will be using it as part of his ongoing thinking, in terms of the Australian economy.

It leads to a question or two around just how much energy you want to put into scaring the bejesus out of people. How much do you want to hobble your economic prospects by accepting as gospel what must be, surely, little more than a guess?

Forecasts, as we have learned over and over during the Covid period, are famous for being hopelessly wrong.

The Treasury here forecast in May, as part of the Budget, a series of numbers, whether it be debt or tax paid that are now, just two short months later, completely and utterly wide of the mark.

And we think we can nail down a number 40 years down the track do we?

In that is the danger of obsession and ideology. Nothing wrong with thinking about things like climate change, maybe even worrying a bit about climate change.

Just this week we have seen the Auckland flood damage buyout deal, on the back of the Hawkes Bay buyout deal. Disruption is real, storms are real and change and an element of upheaval for some seems an increasing reality.

But setting off the alarms screaming “fire” 40 years in advance and taking in no real estimates of scientific advancement strikes me as being ever-so slightly premature, if not immature.

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

But that's what the CORPORATE media have been set up to do mike.
Fear porn for the masses, problem reaction solution.
Man made climate change is the invented problem with the fear reaction created by the corporate media, allowing the globalists to save us with the solution.
Depopulation, wealth transfer, 15 minute digital gulags, programmable CBDC's fake food and other safe and effective measures.

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