“We think that, by 2020, the cost of electricity will be threefold what it is today, given the current policy of large amounts of renewables being forced into the system, un-costed charges for those renewables given the current policy settings and a substantial increase in transmission and distribution costs.”

Grant King, CEO Origin Energy

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/energy-prices-to-triple-says-origin-chief/story-e6frg8zx-1225853385647

“I’ve gotten 90,000 emails and faxes on this bill and over 85,000 of them are against it. After all the debate we’ve had, I can’t believe so many people still don’t get it!”

US Senator Diane Feinstein, March 2010. She was speaking on the Health Care Bill, but it could have been Penny Wong on her Ration-N-Tax Scheme.

“Whatever the climatic role of human induced emissions of carbon dioxide, it is not a pollutant. CO2 is, as we know, a clear, odourless, colourless gas vital to life on earth. Indeed, CO2 is essential to a healthy environment.”

Senator Nick Minchin, Opposition Leader in the Australian Senate, August 2009.

“There is virtually only one factor that has the power to make people unfree – tyrannical public opinion. The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs, but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.

“It is not the struggle of the many against the few but of minorities – sometimes of a minority of but one man- against the majority. The worst and most dangerous form of absolutist rule is that of an intolerant majority. Such is the conclusion arrived at by Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill.”

Ludwig von Mises, “Theory and History – An interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution” (Yale University Press 1957), pages 66 – 67.

“We have policy-based evidence making – we need evidence-based policy making.”

Christopher Monckton

“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”

Stephen H. Schneider, author of the book Global Warming (Sierra Club), in an interview in Discover Magazine, October 1989.

“The idea that raising the cost of energy will induce the emergence of new technologies could only be proposed by people completely ignorant of economic history and the history of technology. I cannot think of a single instance of this happening. Taken to its logical conclusion we can argue that the Romans would have developed the steam engine — if not the car — if only the emperors had have had the foresight to put a heavy tax on horses and bullocks…

“And if taxes are all that is needed to bring about technological progress why haven’t heavy petrol taxes in Europe led to new transport technologies?”

Gerard Jackson, Economics Editor Brookes News
http://brookesnews.com/100103alternativenergy.html

The right response to the non-problem of global warming is to have the courage to do nothing.

Christopher Monckton

“Manmade global warming, for many, is an Earth-worshipping religion. The essential feature of any religion is that its pronouncements are to be accepted on the basis of faith as opposed to hard evidence. Questioning those pronouncements makes one a sinner. No one denies that the Earth’s temperature changes. Millions of years ago, much of our planet was covered by ice, at some places up to a mile thick, a period some scientists call “Snowball Earth.” Today, the Earth is not covered by a mile of ice; a safe conclusion is that there must have been a bit of global warming. I don’t know the cause of that warming, but I’d wager everything I own that it was not caused by coal-fired electric generation plants, incandescent light bulbs and SUVs tooling up and down the highways.”

By Dr Walter Williams
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2010/01/13/global_warming_is_a_religion

“The Age of Reason has ended. This is the Age of Belief.”

John McLean, Australia