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Our Sports Teams Are Turning Into Mouthpieces for the Climate Change Lobby

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The Epoch Times recently reported that test captain Pat Cummins held a “Cricket For Climate” forum in Sydney, which led to a push for cricket clubs to install solar panels and speculations surrounding sponsorship from energy suppliers that utilise fossil fuels.

It was also disclosed that a former netball captain sparked a revolt against sponsorship of Australia’s Netball team by mining company Hancock Prospecting.

This revolt resulted in Australia’s wealthiest person, Gina Rinehart, ending a $15 million (US$9.5 million) sponsorship deal because of disunity within the Netball sports community and inaccurate reporting on her company’s work with Indigenous people.

Not surprisingly, a torrent of personal abuse has been released on social media against this outstanding contributor to the wealth of this country.

In another case, the Fremantle Dockers, an Australian Rules (AFL) football team, were urged to cut ties with its major partner, Woodside, an Australian operator of oil and gas production.

Signatories of an open letter addressed to Fremantle Dockers President Dale Alcock claimed that “Climate change is already creating catastrophic and deadly conditions for communities here and overseas” and that the company’s “core activities are so clearly threatening our planet.”

The meddlesome interference of sportspeople in the climate change debate demonstrates that the world of sports, unfortunately, is enmeshed with the world of politics.

Epoch Times Photo
Gina Rinehart speaks to John Bertrand the Swimming Australia President during day five of the Australian Swimming Championships at the South Australian Aquatic and Leisure Centre in Adelaide, Australia, on April 11, 2016. (Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Increasingly, sporting teams, functioning as mouthpieces for the climate change lobby, are reluctant to accept sponsorship from resource companies. This is an ill-conceived attempt at virtue signalling because Australia’s state of well-being is entirely dependent on its primary resources and other secondary-dependent industries.

The demand that sporting teams sever their links with resource companies because of their alleged adverse effects on climate change is reminiscent of Charles Mackay’s book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” written in 1841.

This book has been continually in print ever since, with good reason: it lucidly describes the ease with which governments and their policymakers can generate mass hysteria by peddling popular but odious ideas.

But the latest and most amazing event in this sorry saga of mass hysteria is unfolding today.

It demonstrates how easily people can be misled and embrace illogical ideas based on the influence of popular opinion.

In these circumstances, the uninformed and disinformed opinion of the social change influencers must be challenged, especially if they purport to reflect the mindset of a large percentage of the electorate, and a more accurate picture of climate change needs to be offered.

The Politicisation of Climate Change

We know more about the surface of the Moon than we do about the interior of our planet Earth, or even about the hundreds of thousands of sub-sea fissures and volcanic vents constantly discharging heat and often toxic matter into the oceans and atmosphere.

Human recycling of a harmless trace gas that is not even listed as an atmospheric pollutant in any government document is a tiny fraction of natural releases of this gas.

A recent paper by Professor Wyss Yim on this issue concludes: “Volcanic eruptions are underestimated as a natural cause of climate change in contrast to the exaggerated but minimal impact of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions … Climate change is unfortunately politicized by the United Nations and numerous governments and there is no longer any debate based on scientific truth.”

Oceans, the largest lungs of the Earth, inhale and exhale carbon dioxide and other trace gases daily in response to temperature changes, according to Henry’s Law.

The temperature of oceanic waters is governed not by a capricious daily dose of sunshine (clouds of water vapour, dust storms or volcanic ash permitting) but by burps of hot stuff from a molten interior.

Doomsday Prediction Rush

Returning to the debate as to whether resources companies should be allowed to sponsor sporting teams, it is useful to bear in mind that some of the greatest inheritances enjoyed by untold beneficiaries today came from patrons of the arts and architecture.

A North Italian head of a great Australian construction company, John Panizza, once told me: “If you took all the money from all the rich people in Australia and gave it to all the poor people, the poor people would get ten dollars each.”

But then neither the rich people nor the poor would have jobs, ambition, or motivation.

This is the curse of the politics of envy, the reality of socialism, communism, and totalitarianism.

Epoch Times Photo
Two school students holding placards as they march in Melbourne, Australia, on Sept. 20, 2019. (Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)

Doomsday predictions, including those that predict the demise of the world because of climate change, are continually made on limited or incorrect knowledge and sadly and slavishly accepted by too many as an outlet for frustrations over totally unrelated issues.

From the Chicken Little fable (also known as Henny Penny) to the discredited report “Limits to Growth” published in 1972, gullible people have been driven to despair that the Earth is running out of resources.

But it has constantly been proven that the abundant resources of the Earth are more than enough to support life on its surface for eons into the future, but only if our talents are mobilised to access these resources. That requires cheap and reliable power.

But the enthusiasts attending the climate-controlled incubators of international talkfests held in Paris, Glasgow, and in November of this year in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, will undoubtedly continue to hatch and peddle their doomsday predictions.

It would, however, be better if the proponents of climate change were to reflect on the current innate inability of humankind to unravel the mysteries of changes in temperature on Earth.

If so, the wisdom of banning resources companies from sponsoring a sporting team might be reconsidered and sanity restored to this debate.

John McRobert is a former director of Hancock Prospecting. His input to this article is personal, and no consultation with anyone in the Hancock organisation has been involved.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

John McRobert

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John McRobert is a civil engineer and the founder of CopyRight Publishing, publishing over two hundred books, including seminal volumes by geologists and engineers on major Earth seismic events.

Gabriël Moens

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Gabriël A. Moens AM is an emeritus professor of law at the University of Queensland, and served as pro vice-chancellor and dean at Murdoch University. In 2003, Moens was awarded the Australian Centenary Medal by the prime minister for services to education. He has taught extensively across Australia, Asia, Europe, and the United States. Moens has recently published two novels “A Twisted Choice” (2020) and “The Coincidence” (2021).



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