The day the Stern Report was released, Senator Ian Campbell tried to laugh it off by flippantly referring to SIr Nicholas Stern as "Nick", "Old Nick" and other references that were aimed at trivialising his message and reducing the gravity of his warning by reducing his standing as an economist. Stern's was not the first dire warning by an eminent ecconomist, but it carried weight because of who Stern was and is. And the Howard Government sent a minor actor to shut him down. Sir Nicholas Stern was the Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 2000 to 2003, and is now the chief government economic advisor in the United Kingdom. Senator Campbell is a backbencher in a government that is proving itself wrong for the times in every way it possibly can."Old Nick's inclined to make dire predictions" was the tenor of the Senator's remarks. Howard's team of climate change deniers use the Bush Administration's playbook to denigrate scientific and expert reports. President 29% Approval once dismissed a key US Government EPA report, that the Administration failed to intercept and rewrite as they did with others, as 'just soemthing done by bureaucrats'. Senator Ian Campbell has written several times to the Coalition in response to our appeals for a hearing on the soil carbon issue. We didn't get to 'nick name' status.
PS> "Boned" was the Sunday Telegraph's headline today. Strangely, that News Limited paper still features regular columns by climate sceptics. Very democratic.
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