"We should approach climate change with great skepticism" said Rupert Murdoch on Sunday...
Watching one of the wealthiest men in the world shrug off the notion that climate change is a big deal is pretty disheartening.
Especially when he is Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corporation, one of the world’s largest media conglomerates.
It's unsurprising that Murdoch's Fox News has been found to give its viewers the most inaccurate information on climate change of any American network. Let alone, that in a wide-ranging interview with Sky News Australia (which he partially owns) aired on Sunday to mark the 50-year anniversary of The Australian, Murdoch chose to reflect on climate change, saying he thought it should be approached with great skepticism.
Murdoch dismissed the alarming reports coming from scientists about the devastating impact that climate change is causing to the planet.
Murdoch said...
“At the moment the north pole is melting but the south pole is getting bigger” and that, “Things are happening. How much of it are we doing, with emissions and so on? As far as Australia goes? Nothing in the overall picture.”
I find this a gob-smacking and under researched statement that seems to point to Murdoch's total ignorance on climate change.
Number 1; obviously he doesn't know there's a difference between sea ice and land ice, and that Antarctica's land ice, or glaciers, have been melting at an alarming rate.
Number 2; because Australia is one of the most greenhouse gas intense economies in the world, relying heavily on coal exports! Not to mention, the current government led by Murdoch-supported prime minister Tony Abbott is trying to dismantle the carbon price that was passed in 2011.
But he didn't stop there.
Murdoch said that if temperatures rose under the worst case scenario 3C over the next 100 years ”at the very most one of those would be manmade.”
No one's quite sure where he pulled this fact from because he didn't give any explanation. Furthermore, current studies are finding that temperatures may rise by at least 4C by 2100, and whether it's 1 degree manmade or not, such levels could lead to widespread global devastation, especially along coastlines where much of the world’s population lives.
Oh but Murdoch also had a quick fix for this issue saying ”If the sea level rises six inches, that’s a big deal in the world, the Maldives might disappear or something, but OK, we can’t mitigate that, we can’t stop it, we have to stop building vast houses on seashores.”
Hmmm...stop building houses on seashores is his answer for entire low-lying coastal communities which can include millions of people such as is the case in Bangladesh. Murdoch shows how much he cares.
There's an outstanding opportunity for Australia to embrace renewable resources such as wind and solar, with a recent study finding that Australia could cut emissions from its energy sector to zero by 2050 and still grow GDP by an average of 2.4 percent over that period.
What does Murdoch say, "We can be the low-cost energy country in the world. We shouldn't be building windmills and all that rubbish".
Thank you Rupert Murdoch for your practical solutions to fighting climate change. Here's the video if you'd like to watch..