So why should we radically reallocate the global resources of all the developed nations on the planet in such a way that would crater the world economy and head us all back in the direction of pre-industrial standards of living at the very moment when the science that supports anthropogenic global warming is melting faster than Nixon’s Watergate alibis in the August 1974 noonday sun? The answer, according Australian parliamentarian Malcolm Turnbull, is: “Just in case!”

In what has got to be one of the worst arguments for emptying our pockets into the global warming scammers’ collection plates that I’ve ever heard-a sort of elementary school drop-out’s adaptation of Pascal’s Wager-the feckless Mr. Turnbull (he admits that he lost his leadership role in Australia’s Liberal party because he supports an emissions trading scheme, which U.S. liberals actively promote as “cap-and-trade’) urges those of us who believe that the science fiction of global warming is at best a farce and at worst Marxism redivivus (“Green” is the new “Red”) to simply treat it as an exercise in risk management.

In an article in the Times Online titled, “It’s reckless to be a sceptic on global warming,” Mr. Turnbull writes:

I recognise that many people are sceptical about the science. But as Margaret Thatcher pointed out 20 years ago, this is an exercise in risk management. Given that the consequences of unchecked global warming would be catastrophic, responsible leaders should give the planet the benefit of the doubt. Few of us imagine our house is going to burn down tonight, but most of us will have taken out insurance.

Realizing that your typical climate change skeptic or fence straddler will not be moved by the typical liberal breast-beating over the levels of First World consumption that produce that nasty “pollutant,” carbon dioxide, he completely bypasses their modern scientific sensibilities and appeals directly to their business sense.

“I recognise that many people are sceptical about the science,” goes his little canned presentation, “But…” And then comes the trillion-dollar “but,” which can supposedly be broken down into “easy monthly payments” to tree nurseries in Central America or the Congo or wherever.

Like any good insurance salesman whose job it is to sell add-on coverage, Turnbull’s smooth hand deftly slides an attractive brochure under our noses.

“You really need to consider the possibility that your planet could fall into a black hole. Cosmologists estimate and one out of every hundred thousand planets will come dangerously close to a black hole in its lifetime. Now we have this convenient policy rider… Uh, you can’t afford fifty quadrillion dollars per decade? … Well, not all experts agree that it’s really necessary. Besides, the technology to protect a planet from a black hole is unproven, to say the least. On the other hand, since our company recently reclassified global climate change from ‘an act of God’ to ‘an act of humanity,’ I think you should really take a look at our new global warming coverage. It’s much more affordable for the average seven continent planet…”

And, as they say, nothing is too expensive to the person who doesn’t have to pay for it himself. For Turnbull, shooting craps with the global economy makes more sense than questioning hyperventilating alarmists who have (by pure coincidence, I’m sure) made massive financial investments in the very technologies that they are demanding our governments replace carbon-based energy sources with.

At the end of his 1975 film, Love and Death, Woody Allen’s character Boris Grushenko famously quipped, “After all, there are worse things in life than death. If you’ve ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, you know what I’m talking about.” Yes. We’ve been spending the last several years listening to Al Gore. There are things worse than death.

But it’s one thing to purchase insurance and quite another thing to pay off people who are threatening you. The former is risk management; the latter is extortion. The global warming kool aid drinkers aren’t asking us simply to hedge our bets here. They are threatening us with planetary catastrophe and species extinction (perhaps our own), and with a presumed exponentially higher degree of certainty than the possibility that I might crash my car or drop dead from the latest flu virus, and have based their alarmism on manipulated statistics and “peer-review” bullying of dissenting scientists. This isn’t about risk management. If it is, why aren’t our governments planning a summit to extort money from us to deal with possible catastrophic asteroid strikes, which are more scientifically plausible than the notion of carbon dioxide as a “pollutant?”

And as they say, “Hard work never killed anyone, but why take the chance?” So perhaps we should all be forced to pay for insurance against the possibility of fatally-diligent labor as well. But-and not to demean yet another worthy profession here-politicians like Mr. Turnbull will never miss a chance to pick the people’s pockets faster than a used car salesman can tack on a list of add-on fees and service charges to the price of an old beater.

For real information on issues pertaining to climate change, I recommend the following:

1. Climate Depot (a kind of “Drudge Report” for climate issues).
2. Climate Audit (Steve McIntyre is the man who demonstrated that Al Gore’s infamous “hockey stick” graph was a statistical absurdity.)
3. Watts Up With That? (one of the best global warming skeptic blogs, edited by former TV meteorologist Anthony Watts).
4. “U. S. Senate Minority Report: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims Scientists Continue to Debunk ‘Consensus’ in 2008 & 2009”
5. Cornwall Alliance (a conservative evangelical response to global warming alarmism).

Source: “It’s reckless to be a sceptic on global warming,” by Malcolm Turnbull | Times Online.

Related Article: “Climate, Caution, and Precaution,” by Willis Eschenbach | Watts Up With That?