In time, as more people come to appreciate what Professor Garnaut and Professor Flannery have done for coal mining, there might even be a public fundraising to pay for the erection of statues in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales to “the men who saved coal”

There is, somewhat obviously, a touch of irony in what the Hog is suggesting. But there is actually more truth than some readers realise.

After all, these are the two men charged with killing the coal industry: Garnaut as the Australian government’s chief climate change adviser and Flannery as the chief climate change commissioner.

Why they have jobs which effectively sound the same is a topic for another day, though it does look awfully like the government is paying two men to do the same thing.

Whatever the job title the point is that Garnaut’s role has been to behave like Chicken Little, the famous cartoon character who ran around in circles crying out “the sky is falling, the sky is falling”

In Garnaut’s case it was more about saying the sky is filling with carbon – while pointing a finger at coal miners.

In Flannery’s case it was to pick up this “end of the world” theme and come up with suggestions as to how we might “de-carbonise” the world.

To the deep green communes of inner Sydney and Melbourne this was a siren song, creating an enemy and solution at the same time. If you look back into some of the darker annals of history you will find that there is a process of creating a demon and then slaying the demon to please the masses.

Unfortunately or, in this case, fortunately, the demonisers have over-played their hand and the masses can see that the case against carbon is being spectacularly over-sold, and that the recommended medicine could turn out to be far worse than any possible disease.

Proof that the people cannot be fooled all the time came last Saturday when the government’s proposed carbon tax was voted on by the people of outer Sydney and rural NSW.

The result was the spectacular dumping of the NSW government. While part of the cause for the biggest electoral swing in Australian history was self-inflicted, there is no doubt that fear of the carbon tax and what it would do to petrol and electricity prices was just as big.

Garnaut, four days after the NSW government was turfed out of office, made sure that people in every other state got the message clearly about what the carbon tax would do to the cost of living for ordinary families when he said coal-fired power station operators would receive no compensation for paying the tax.

Instead of helping the power stations, and helping families with their power bills, he proposed a bizarre loan guarantee and the creation of an “energy security council” to protect the community from power black-outs.

The Hog will watch with interest what happens next but suspects that Garnaut might soon become a man overboard because the NSW election result will be ringing in the ears of the Australian government and the last thing it wants is for the petrol and power cost debate to spread beyond the state’s borders.

Flannery will also soon find himself in the same lifeboat as Garnaut after his utterly astonishing comment that the “de-carbonising” process will take 1000 years.

Good grief. As if the Chicken Little act wasn’t enough, now we have a man asking us to all bed down for roughly 55 generations before anything might be achieved – or might not.

His exact words were: “If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow, the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop for several hundred years, perhaps over 1000 years.”

Stunning. Unbelievable. Remarkable. Pick an adjective, because we are now being told by Garnaut that coal-fired power production deserves to be priced out of business – and that ordinary families will pick up the cost (while also praying that totally uncommercial renewable power-generating systems miraculously become economic).

Capping off that nonsense is Flannery saying that if you hang around for 1000 years you might see a result for the pain you are about to endure – and might not.

Between them, Garnaut and Flannery have let the carbon cat out of the bag – a cat that the voters of NSW recognised as a rat, as will the rest of Australia very soon.

• In Hogsback of March 18, mention was made of a Sky News broadcast story entitled Mine vs Mine in Australia's Hunter Valley, which looked at the relationship between the wine-growing district, coal mining and the proposal for coal seam gas. Hogsback commented on the industry’s lack of response. Although interviewed for the program, a statement by NSW Minerals Council chief executive Dr Nikki Williams presenting the coal industry response, was not included. However, in the online version of the story, Dr Williams' comments did appear as follows: But whether or not the coal seam gas project takes off, traditional coal mining will continue to expand, causing alarm which the industry's representatives are trying to deal with. Dr Nicki (sic) Williams from the New South Wales Minerals Council told Sky News: "I think what's different now is the scale of the industry, and it is forecast to double in size over the next five or so years. Now, that does create extra pressures. It creates pressures on communities, on infrastructure, on air quality and all those sorts of matters."