Memo to al-Goracle

Czech president again warns of panic over global warming

"Global warming alarmism is marching on," Czech President Vaclav Klaus said in his speech at an international conference on climate held by the conservative Heartland Institute in New York Tuesday.

"We have to therefore concentrate not only on adding new arguments to the already existing ones, but also on the winning of additional supporters of our views," Klaus added.

The Heartland Institute has questioned the extent and importance of climate change and opposed the efforts to take global restricting measures over them. One of the conference's main goals is to explain the often "overlooked" other side of the debate on climate change.

"The insurmountable problem as I see it lies in the political populism of its exponents and in their unwillingness to listen to arguments... The only way out is to make the domain of their power over our lives much more limited," Klaus said in his speech.

Klaus pointed out that people "tend to blindly believe in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s conclusions despite the fact that from the very beginning, the IPCC has been a political rather than a scientific undertaking."

"Many politicians, media commentators, public intellectuals, bureaucrats in more and more influential international organisations not only accept them but use them without qualifications which exist even in the IPCC documents," he said.

Klaus objected that to really decrease carbon dioxide emissions, the countries would have to "either stop the economic growth and thus block further rise in the standard of living, or stop the population growth, or make miracles with the emissions intensity."

"I am afraid there are people who want to stop the economic growth, the rise in the standard of living and the ability of man to use the expanding wealth, science and technology for solving the actual pressing problems of mankind, especially of the developing countries," Klaus said.

He stressed that this ambition goes very much against the past human experience which has always been connected with a strong motivation to go ahead and to better human conditions.

"There is no reason to make the from above orchestrated change just now - especially with arguments based on such an incomplete and faulty science as is demonstrated by the IPCC," Klaus concluded in his speech.

Klaus recalled his words at a meeting commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1948 communist coup in then Czechoslovakia where he warned against the repetition of similar events in the future.

Klaus noted that such events would certainly not arise from the same ideology, but that he is convinced that the substance will be the same.

"What I had in mind is naturally environmentalism and its currently sharpest form - climatic alarmism," Klaus said.

He noted that junior ruling Greens chairman Martin Bursik, Czech deputy PM and environment minister, had "dramatically criticised" these statements.

"I suppose it is very good he [Bursik] has understood them," Klaus added.

He explained he decided to attend the conference in New York to stand up to the tendencies pushed through by environmental activists headed by former U.S. vice-president Albert Gore.

"I am not able to accept the one-sided attacks concerning global warming by people around Al Gore," Klaus told ČTK.

"I think that every freedom-loving and rationally thinking person must say no, it is not so, it is infinitely more complicated," Klaus added.

Klaus said previously he is convinced that courage is needed for a discussion on global warming, which, in his opinion, environmentalists reject as they are short of their own arguments.

Klaus told CNN Headline News last night [Monday, ed.] he is aware of the fact that such stances like his are considered politically incorrect. However, he added, though everybody in the Czech Republic knows his views of global warming and climate change, he was recently re-elected president for the second [and his last] five-year term.

Klaus will be on Glenn Beck's CNN/HN show tonight.

Klaus has in the long run challenged the opinion that people's behaviour must change over the alleged global warming. He has repeatedly called for a serious discussion and warned against the threatening of freedom and prosperity by the efforts to prevent climate change.

Klaus talked on these issues at a conference on climate change at the U.N. seat last autumn.

Some environmentalists have often expressed disagreement with Klaus's opinions. They argue that global warming is obvious and information on this phenomenon has been available for decades.

Bursik has criticised Klaus for weakening the Czech Republic's authority in the climate change agenda.

al-Goracle was unavailable for comment.

Via ČeskéNoviny.cz