Who is denying what?

We could believe what 'the science' is telling us, and act appropriately, based on the certainty that a major increase in carbon emissions is inevitable. This will almost certainly affect the climate. The effects will be somewhere between mildly beneficial and major catastrophe.

The sea might rise 5 metres or not at all. Temperatures may increase by a lot or a little or not at all. Storms and other natural disasters may or may not increase in frequency and severity.

A carbon tax – or any of the other bright ideas being promoted by our betters - will not save the Great Barrier Reef. Bondi Beach will disappear – sell now! Australia will be subject to droughts, flood and bushfires.

Scheme after scheme to control the climate is failing around the world. No need for us to try to create a new way of tilting at windmills, but we should probably be prepared to follow any international consensus that emerges, even if only to protect our trade.

The world might end up in a lot of trouble – but it already is.

In 2000, all 192 member states of the United Nations agreed to eight development goals that they agreed to achieve by 2015. They are to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality rates, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development.

The need for all goals to be achieved is quite independent of climate change, although they may become even more urgent if the calamities predicted eventuate.

To concentrate, as we are, on one factor of one of these goals, as politically attractive as it may be, is a diversion from the realities of this world.

It sure makes me wonder who is denying what.