The 'other similar legislation' was nothing of the kind. That was the introduction of a 10% goods and services tax back in the early 2000s as a tradeoff for reducing and eliminating a bunch of other taxes. The only reason it was mentioned in the press release was to contextualise the spending level on the carbon tax advertising program.
They are both advertising for high profile tax legislation changes. I call that pretty similar...
The 'anti' advertising program was actually about something different. This was in opposition to a proposed mining tax the Australian government was introducing. Nothing to do with CO2, this was intended to fund a new superannuation program.
No, Im talking about the $10 million anti-climate-tax campaign by the Australian Trade and Industry Alliance. The anti-mining-tax campaign was a $22 million campaign from the Business Council of Australia. They both had extensive runs of television ads. See getcarbonpolicyright.com.au
Re the first item, my point is that the earlier advertising program was nothing to do with climate change. As far as I'm concerned, even though I think the Australian Government's climate change policy (in part a tax) is pretty silly, the $12 million in advertising seems perfectly reasonable. You have a new program, you advertise it. Nothing unusual there.
Re the second item, whoops! I did get the two things mixed up. Sorry.
However, as I responded in an earlier comment, my point wasn't so much to tote up the budgets for the different sides to see which has the edge, but to rebut the frequent assumption that all the money (big oil!) is on the sceptic's side.
On that point, today I stumbled across mention of the funding of a body called the Climate Works Foundation. This seems to be a hands-on kind of organisation that gets into all kinds of practical stuff internationally to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
http://www.climateworks.org/It has received funding from one of its founding organisations of $US100million this year, and $480 million in 2008.
http://www.hewlett.org/grants/search?order=field_date_of_award_value&sort=desc&keywords=ClimateWorks&year=&term_node_tid_depth_1=All&program_id=88While Heartland's $4.4 million may seem formidable in isolation, it pales in comparison. I know, different purposes and all that. But I think that the big-oil-funded-sceptics effectiveness is being vastly overrated.
A comparison with the creationists may be useful. What they have on their side is some funding, some museums, some 'scientific' institutes, and some scientists who either willingly or not are claimed to give them a patina of respectability. Has any of that been effective in drawing the uncommitted into their belief system?
Not directly, I'd submit. It has provided confirmation for those already believing this (probably prompted by their religious beliefs) and provided support to those who use church networks to promote creationism. But for those outside? Little effect, I suspect.
Now imagine if a group of evolutionary biologists were to start making predictions about, say, the evolution of new species. They would be moderate, expressing results within wide uncertainty bands. If, for some reason, the issue became politically important, and media outlets and certain politicised scientists, as often as not non-biologists, started taking the extremes of the predictions, embellishing them, drawing hard predictions, and widely demanding action be taken or else, then what might happen?
Well, by their nature the extremes of projected ranges are actually highly unlikely. The boring stuff in the lumpy bit in the middle of the bell curve is much more likely. The publicised claims scare people initially. But then they fail to eventuate. But more claims have been made in the meantime. And they also fail to eventuate, because they also are extreme, and therefore unlikely. Repeat for a couple of decades, and anyone who pays any attention at all to the news decides that, like celebrity relationships, this is a subject upon which all printed information is totally unreliable.
Ask people at that point to cough up real money to deal with the menace of real evolutionary dangers, and you have problems.
