My blog has moved! Redirecting...

You should be automatically redirected. If not, visit http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/ and update your bookmarks.

Australian Climate Madness

Monday, March 30, 2009

Fairfax Fantasy - "one in seven" took part in Earth Hour

That's nearly a billion people, according to the Sydney Moonbat Herald:
ABOUT one person in every seven around the world is believed to have followed Sydney's lead and switched off lights on Saturday night to call for stronger action against climate change.

Earth Hour has grown far beyond the expectations of its organiser, WWF Australia, in the year when nations must decide whether to commit to binding reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

"This is the foundation we needed to give political leaders a mandate to act on climate change, if they choose to take it," said Earth Hour's global director, Andy Ridley.

All complete BS, of course. The web is awash with before/during/after photos of Earth Hour, all looking remarkably, er, the same, such as this one in Times Square, New York:


Spot the one missing bulb (source)

And to add insult to injury, this whopper:
Half the population of Sydney again joined Earth Hour, which is supported by Fairfax Media, publisher of the Herald.

Andrew Bolt demolishes that by simply showing the electricity demand curves for Saturday which show no evidence of Earth Hour whatsoever ...

The more the evidence shows no warming, no rising sea levels, no link to CO2 etc, the more desperate the enviro-headbangers get, and the more ludicrous their lies and distortions become. Expect worse in the future.

Read it here.

Results of ACM poll

We asked:
ACM should no longer blog Fairfax news items

You said:
  • 51% (23 votes) said Agree, I'm bored of Fairfax Posts
  • 49% (22 votes) said Disagree, I think it's entertaining
It's such a close result that we'll be cutting down our Fairfax posts, but not eliminating them completely. And they will always be prefaced with "Fairfax Fantasy" so you can choose to ignore them! Thanks for voting!

Obama "takes lead on climate"

Although "taking a lead on climate" is like trying to hold back the tide, the US president is a card-carrying warmist who thinks we can stop the natural variations in the earth's climate by cutting emissions and as a result crippling the global economy.
Mr Obama announced over the weekend the formation of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate - a grouping of 17 major economies including Australia - with a ministerial meeting to be held in April and a leaders' meeting in Italy in July.

The President said that his aim was to "help generate the political leadership necessary to achieve a successful outcome in Copenhagen".

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, who is in the US for talks with key administration officials, said the Rudd Government "fully supported" the President's plan.

All sounds great, doesn't it? But how are they going to reconcile the huge increase forecast for China's and India's emissions with the plan to reduce them globally? China and India have more important things to worry about, like providing an economy strong enough to provide a decent standard of living for their populations.

Read it here.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

OT: Rudd's US triumph

Reports of ringtail possum's extinction exaggerated

You can bet your house that the enviro-moonbat media won't be covering this story. Despite shouting the original story from the rooftops (see here and a breathless Canberra Times article here), only The Australian publishes the follow-up. It's of course about the (alleged) extinction of the white lemuroid ringtail possum, caused - obviously - by "global warming", oops, "climate change".
"It is not looking good," James Cook University researcher Steve Williams told Brisbane's Courier-Mail last year. "If they have died out, it would be (the) first example of something that has gone extinct purely because of global warming." Professor Williams, director of the Centre for Tropical Biodiversity and Climate Change, said the white possum had been identified as highly vulnerable five years ago

But now the animal had apparently made a comeback, with the recent discovery of three, related, brown lemuroid ringtails a sign the white possums were also surviving. "I don't think there is any reason to believe the white ones are harder hit than the brown ones," he said.

Maybe it's because there hasn't been any "global warming" for nearly a decade.

Read it here.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Barking Archbishop wades in on climate change

Rowan Williams is a fruitcake of the first order, with the highpoint of his moonbattery being his assertion that sharia (Islamic) law would have to be introduced to some extent in the UK - yeah, right. So given that, it's no surprise that he has as little clue about climate as he has about the stealth jihad:
“Ecological questions are increasingly being defined as issues of justice ... both to those who now have no part in decision-making at the global level yet bear the heaviest burdens as a consequence of the irresponsibility of wealthier nations, and to those who will succeed us on this planet – [Emotional blackmail alert - Ed] justice to our children and grandchildren,” said Williams, who speaks frequently about environmental issues.

“The ecological crisis challenges us to be reasonable ... If you live in Bangladesh or Tuvalu, skepticism about global warming is precisely the opposite of reasonable: ‘negotiating’ this environment means recognizing the fact of rising sea levels ... for us to be reasonable and free and responsible is for us to live in awareness of our limits and dependence.”

Of course, by rising sea levels, he means, respectively, natural erosion and deposition, and falling land levels, and the last time I checked neither of those were caused by evil capitalist SUVs. Spout your environmental claptrap to god (in private) if you wish, but spare the rest of us.

Read it here.

Yet more indoctrination of our children

It's a very subtle and clever tactic - Earth Hour seems like a bit of fun, and the kids will love it, but the reality is that it has a deeply political message, urging governments around the world to "tackle climate change". Schools wouldn't dream of take sides in political matters such as the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, or workplace legislation, or advocating socialism over capitalism (or vice versa) [Although in New South Wales, they probably would - Ed], so why are they doing exactly that in relation to "climate change"?

More indoctrination dressed up as harmless fun from the Southern Highland News (also from the Fairfax stable):
IT'S lights out at Oxley College for Earth Hour this Saturday.

The Burradoo school will join more than 1000 towns and cities across the world, from the Chatham Islands to the Arctic Sea, in turning off their lights between 8.30pm and 9.30pm in a call for action on climate change.

Oxley College Parents and Friends (P&F) are inviting guests to their Earth Hour event to bring their own personal lighting, with a prize to be awarded for the most original (no naked flames).

The event is a great way to introduce young children to the importance of addressing climate change issues, as well as being a lot of fun.

Drip, drip, drip...

Read it here.

Krudd & Gore to discuss climate change

"Krudd & Gore" sounds more like the latest offering from Channel Ten... This should be some high intensity meeting though - Kevin Rudd has an intellect duller than a 10 watt light bulb (the non-CFL variety), and Al Gore is hardly a rocket scientist - in fact he isn't a scientist at all.
The two will meet in New York early tomorrow morning. Mr Gore, the former US vice-president, is a leading advocate for tackling climate change.

Mr Rudd and the US President, Barack Obama, discussed climate change when they met at the White House this week. Afterwards Mr Rudd expressed relief that the US was again showing global leadership on climate change.

But the news isn't all bad:
Mr Obama's budget plan for a cap-and-trade emissions reduction scheme is likely to be thrown out by Congress because of its effect on energy prices, including household bills, during the global economic downturn.

Hopefully the same will happen to the pointless ETS...

Read it here.

Students "urged to spread climate awareness"

Indoctrination Alert: The New South Wales government is urging school students to "spread awareness of climate change after Earth Hour this weekend."
NSW Deputy Premier and Minister for the Environment and Climate Change, Carmel Tebbutt, said the 2009 Beyond Earth Hour Challenge would encourage students to conduct energy audits and raise climate change awareness.

"These are significant savings that have made a huge impact thanks to a few simple measures," Ms Tebbutt said.

"The challenge calls for schools to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make energy savings aimed at fostering a culture of sustainability."
...
NSW Education Minister Verity Firth said the program was being expanded so more NSW secondary schools could get involved.

This isn't education, of course, it's pure political indoctrination, and is completely inappropriate in any school. But who cares? The left-wing NSW government doesn't give a rats for proper education, and it is happy to use any tactic it likes to spread its Marxist ideologies, including the indoctrination of future voters.

Read it here.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

OT: Statesman Rudd meets Obama

The Kruddster and the Obamessiah meet to discuss "climate change".

Earth Hour - ACM's contribution

Here at ACM headquarters we're all ready for Earth Hour:

Invasion of the Killer Weeds II - The Sequel

If you thought the first outing of this nonsense was bad enough, the sequel is worse:
The CSIRO predicts climate change will lead to an increase in weeds in South Australia, creating more fuel for bushfires.

Researcher Dr John Scott says areas such as Kangaroo Island can expect more herbicide-resistant weeds in the warmer weather.

Dr Scott says weed-eradication costs Australia $4 billion per year and smarter weed control is needed to prevent more devastating bushfires.

Read it here.

Fairfax Fantasy - Earth Hour splurge

Like it or not, Fairfax is splurging big on the pointless gesture that is Earth Hour (because it is a sponsor along with the enviro-headbangers at WWF), so here are the latest Fairfax Fantasy articles:
From today onwards, ACM is an "Earth Hour Free Zone", and will be switching lights on for Earth Hour.

ETS - it's a crock of sh*t

We all knew this anyway, but now an independent report, commissioned by the NSW government, has confirmed it:
The report by Frontier Economics shows the scheme will cost the national economy $2 trillion over the next 40 years, with the worst effects to be felt in regional Australia.

"The poorly designed Rudd Government emissions trading scheme will do very little for the environment, but do enormous damage to jobs - particularly in regional Australia," [Malcolm Turnbull] said.

"It will result in us exporting thousands of jobs and exporting the emissions as well."

"This report should set the alarm bells ringing at the highest levels in Government," Independent Senator Nick Xenophon said.

But guess what is the predictable government response? It's out of date, so chuck it in the nearest dumpster. Sort of like we should do with the Treasury modelling, I suppose?

Read it here.

Melbourne greenie killjoys slam grand prix

Port Phillip Council, which houses the Melbourne Grand Prix track have had a sense of humour failure about the event, claiming:
it is "an outrage" that the race is held in Victoria while the state is "buffeted by climate change, dwindling oil reserves, water shortages and the global financial crisis".
...
"After 14 years residents have had more than enough," Cr Klepner said.

"Why should they have to suffer all that for a car race whose public price tag blew out to $41.3 million last year?"

Great - we'll have it in Sydney, then. Sign here.

Read it here.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Gore's latest work of fiction

An Inconvenient Truth was far closer to fiction than fact (or so the UK High Court thought and there are 35 fundamental errors listed here), so you can bet the next one will be as well. That, however, will not prevent Gore from pocketing a substantial amount of money for writing this trash:
Nobel Peace Prize winner and former United States vice-president Al Gore will publish a follow-up to his global warming awareness bestseller An Inconvenient Truth in November. [Can hardly wait - Ed]

The book will be called Our Choice and will describe solutions to global warming, the environmental crusader and US publisher Rodale said in a statement. [I guess that would be the "global warming" that stopped in 2001, right? - Ed]

"An Inconvenient Truth reached millions of people with the message that the climate crisis is threatening the future of human civilisation and that it must and can be solved," Mr Gore said.

Yawn. Next.

Read it here.

Ross Garnaut - an ego gone mad

The Australian Workers Union lays into the ETS and Ross Garnaut, after Garnaut's speech to the Greenhouse 2009 conference, in which he said the Government should scrap the compensation scheme for industry:
Workers union national secretary Paul Howes said Professor Garnaut was "bashing" emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries that needed help to change to the new international carbon trading system.

"The professor's speech to the Greenhouse 2009 conference in Perth is an example of an ego gone mad," Mr Howes said.

"His new stance might make him a hero to certain inner-city Green elements, but … is an attack on regional Australia."

And to demonstrate just how out of touch with reality Garnaut is:
Professor Garnaut said he expected the local economy to be in recovery by the time an emissions trading scheme began in July next year.

How convenient. Another computer model told him that, perhaps, or just wishful thinking?

Read it here.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

UK Times - misrepresentations and alarmism

This article, reprinted in The Australian, is full of half-baked theories presented as indisputable facts - disappointing for what was once one of the world's great newspapers:
  • "shed light on how global warming will change the world"
  • "how much of the ice sheet will melt"
  • "temperatures forecast to rise 7 degrees C in the next 100 years"
  • "temperatures resembled those that could be expected if greenhouse emissions are not controlled"
  • "If the ice sheet melts entirely in the decades ahead, the seas would be expected to rise by 7m"
  • "in a world of man-made climate change."
Why does The Australian print such unadulterated rubbish?

Read it here (if you dare).

Skepticism explained - The Daily Bayonet

A warm welcome back to the blogosphere for The Daily Bayonet, and an excellent article describing the path to skepticism, which will resonate with many, and which warmists themselves would do well to consider:
AGW is nothing but junk science supported by flimsy computer models designed and operated by alchemists. That Al Gore, a lifelong failure in every academic endeavor he ever undertook, leads this movement is the icing on the cake.
...
Why am I a skeptic? Because the first time I heard about the issue of AGW, it was Al Gore and David Suzuki telling me that the science was settled and the debate was over. Really? Science is settled? Show me anyone making that claim and I will show you someone unworthy of the respect due a scientist. The arrogance of the claim raised a red flag in my enquiring mind, and when I started to investigate, the hubris and dishonesty of the AGW proponents became immediately apparent, and this blog was born.

Read it here.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Fairfax fantasy - it's all happening faster than we thought

Journalism in a bubble, unrelated to what's happening in the real world, you know, temperatures falling, sea levels falling, cyclone energy at lowest for 30 years etc etc...
THE top government scientist advising on how to adapt the nation to climate change warns that Australia will be forced to abandon some coastal communities in a "planned retreat" because of rising sea levels caused by global warming.

Andrew Ash, who leads the CSIRO's Climate Adaptation Flagship program, told the Herald that while some vulnerable coastal places could be protected by sea walls and levees, "there are going to be areas where that is not physically possible or it's not cost-effective to introduce any engineering solution and planned retreat becomes the only option".

Warning that climate change was accelerating much more quickly than predicted, Dr Ash said state and local governments needed urgently to identify coastal land unsuitable for new residential development because rising sea levels and more frequent big storms would flood them with seawater.

Now back to the real world...

Read it here.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Earth Hour - why bother?

Earth Hour is being criticised from all sides - the Greenies think it's a pointless political gesture, and the sceptics think it's, er, a pointless political gesture. Given the choice, The Age will only focus on the first of these, of course:
As the organisers prepare for the switch-off at 8.30pm next Saturday, the event, in its third year and rapidly expanding internationally, is being criticised from both the left and the right.

Clive Hamilton, climate campaigner and author of Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change, says that "we are well past the time for feel-good exercises aimed at raising awareness … it's like the band playing on as the Titanic sinks". There is a real danger that Earth Hour convinces people that we are making progress on climate change when we are not. And it lets business and government off the hook," he says.
...
An analysis of the key sponsors of Earth Hour (among them Fairfax Media, owner of The Sunday Age) reveals that most have reported increased emissions in their most recent figures.

That's because the reality of cutting emissions is nothing like the fairy-tale computer modelling carried out at the Treasury - it costs money and jobs... However, that doesn't stop WWF from claiming some authority from the participation in Earth Hour:
WWF plans to interpret a huge switch-off as a global poll on climate change, a demand from 1 billion people that politicians take "strong action" at the international forums including the Copenhagen climate-change conference in December.

Read it here.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

A smattering of greenies block a port that was closed anyway...

Another demonstration goes pear-shaped as the port of Newcastle gets one step ahead of the demonstrators (which, to be honest, ain't that difficult) and cancels all shipping for the day. So the protestors end up blockading, er, nothing.
Paddling in kayaks and home-made craft made from milk crates and old tyres [sounds real classy - Ed] the sea-borne protesters were joined by on-shore supporters on Saturday.

The rally at Newcastle's Horseshoe Beach aimed to bring attention to the coal industry's impact on climate change.

"These people sent a serious message that the government, if they are going to be serious about climate change, they must address the coal industry," protest participant and NSW Greens MP Lee Rhiannon said.

Oh well, better luck next time.

Read it here.

Terry McCrann - climate sense

Writing in The Australian, Terry McCrann opens his article with the exact point I have made directly to Penny Wong - why does the Government refer to the harmless trace gas carbon dioxide as "carbon pollution"? The answer, clearly, is because it helps to massage public opinion into thinking that the "carbon pollution reduction scheme" is there to reduce belching soot from industrial chimneys.
What's in a name? The lie. For the truth is that it is not a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, but a Carbon Dioxide -- pollution or not -- reduction scheme.

Just a minor difference? An understandable, even appropriate, abbreviation? No way. The difference is huge and quite deliberate. It's not even "justified" on the basis of a snappy acronym. CPRS or CDPRS -- neither has the vowel necessary for snappiness.

There's no question the continual harping on "carbon pollution" is intended to send a subliminal impression. We're getting rid of all those little bits of black stuff floating around in the air. And who can possibly be against that?

He then goes on to expose the utter ridiculousness of the Treasury's ETS modelling for all to see:
The most ludicrous aspect of [Treasury official David] Gruen's rationalisation is that cutting emissions is "just like tariff cuts which move the economy towards its true competitive advantage".

I've pointed out that it is in fact the exact opposite; it is like embracing tariff increases. Cutting tariffs removed an artificial cost on the economy; the CPRS will impose an artificial cost on the economy.

The response is that, ah, I don't understand "externalities". That you have to properly price the external costs -- climate change. I understand them only too well -- I suggest, on the evidence, somewhat better than Gruen.
...
We cut our emissions to zero and what happens to the (supposed) cost? Nothing. We still incur it. Cutting our emissions to zero can have no impact on our climate. Irrespective of what the rest of the world does.

Read it here.

Fairfax fantasy - green power is so cheap

Always desperate to plug the green agenda, The Sydney Morning Herald gleefully swallows a WWF report that claims Australia could build a low-carbon economy based on solar, wind and geothermal power for less than half the cost of the Government's economic stimulus package.
The WWF-commissioned report calculates the price for transforming the nation's energy base, using technology that exists, would be $28 billion between 2010 and 2050 - less than half the Government's stimulus handout, but spread over 40 years.

It was prepared by Climate Risk, a corporate analyst that advises the federal and local governments and businesses on climate modelling [and which is making very tasty profits out of climate change hysteria, see here for a list of their services - Ed]

It shows that a transition to renewable power is affordable, but that the proposed carbon trading scheme and renewable energy target could not achieve it. Extra government investment in energy of about $100 million a year from 2010 would be enough to make solar, wind and geothermal power dominant in the electricity and manufacturing sectors by the middle of the century.

Well I'm convinced, or I would have been if this report had any basis in reality. And so is Paul Toni of WWF Australia:
"Earth Hour shows that millions of Australians want this government to act to battle climate change. This report shows they can."

Earth Hour shows nothing of the sort of course, as most of the participation comes from councils and organisations who fear being branded as non-environmentally aware if they don't. And to all those councils and organisations who have signed up, Earth Hour isn't just a jolly little bit of fun once a year, it has a deeply political agenda (dictated by WWF):
This will send a powerful message to our world leaders to support a new climate change agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference being held in Copenhagen in December 2009 (source)

Read it here.

P.S. If you are in the mood for some top quality Fairfax BS, look no further than here.

PP.S. In the interests of full disclosure, Earth Hour is run by WWF, and sponsored by Fairfax (coincidentally)

Friday, March 20, 2009

Andrew Bolt - Dying for a heatwave

Minor crisis over, I will be back to blogging tomorrow, but in the mean time, here's a great article from Andrew Bolt, which explores the issue I discussed here (Mother Nature playing tricks on warmists, a sort of global version of the Gore Effect):
In 1956, US psychologist Leon Festinger became instantly famous for giving us "cognitive dissonance" -- the theory that humans couldn't tolerate two conflicting perceptions. One would have to go.

Ha! It's taken half a century, but warming believers are now making a monkey of old Festinger.

As proof, here are three recent news items about the latest pilgrimage to the North Pole of three scientists, all hot gospellers of our new faith and all convinced the ice cap is barely there.
...
March 18, 2009, from AFP: Project director and ice team leader Pen Hadow and his colleagues, Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels, are now down to half rations and fighting to survive in brutal sub-zero weather conditions.

Great stuff. Read it here.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

No posts for a while...

... due to unforeseen circumstances. But check out some of the other great blogs in my Blog Roll (at the right).

I hope to be back blogging very soon...

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Polar trek to measure "global warming": it's too cold!

It seems that whenever explorers try to get to the North Pole to measure some aspect of climate change, Mother Nature unleashes her evil streak and dumps on them from a great height. A British team trying to ski to the North Pole to measure how fast the ice is disappearing are being thwarted by bad weather.
Project director and ice team leader Pen Hadow and his colleagues Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels are now down to half rations and fighting to survive in brutal sub-zero weather conditions.

"We're hungry, the cold is relentless, our sleeping bags are full of ice and, because we're not moving, the colder we get," Hadow said Tuesday in a statement from the London headquarters of the Catlin Arctic Survey.
...
During the past 17 days temperatures have consistently dropped below minus 40 degrees Celsius, and have been accompanied by strong winds increasing the chill factor.

But SBS cannot resist playing the "global warming" joker at the end:
Global warming is believed to be the main culprit in the rapidly melting north polar ice cap that is freeing up new sea routes and untapped mineral resources on the ocean bottom.

Setting aside the humorous aspect of this, let's hope these explorers are rescued safely.

Read it here.

Wong talks but won't negotiate

It must be really tough being Penny at the moment. On the one hand, she has to appear to want the ETS legislation to go through the Senate, while at the same time really wanting it to all fall over so she can stamp her foot, scream and shout and say "the Liberals did it! Deniers! Deniers!" and then quietly dropping it so that the Government can get on with more important things, like screwing up its response to the financial crisis...
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says some critics would prefer no scheme at all if they cannot have their way. [Dead right - Ed]

"What they are actually doing is locking in continued emissions growth," she told ABC Radio.

The government was being "highly consultative", having met already with the Australian Greens and independent senators.

"So we are serious about engaging with the Senate about this issue," Senator Wong said, adding the government was not at the point of negotiating legislation.

i.e. talk to the hand, 'cos the face ain't listenin'.

Read it here.

"Curb climate change" to save polar bear

Although this is in The Age, it actually comes from Agence France-Presse (AFP), which has to be the most moonbattish news agency on the planet. It doesn't excuse The Age, however, which mindlessly regurgitates it all:
Countries around the Arctic must commit to curbing climate change to ensure the survival of the polar bear, Norway's environment minister said on Tuesday as an international meeting opened on the species' fate.

Do they honestly think that the emissions of Arctic countries will make any difference to the Arctic climate? If you believe that reducing emissions will stop climate change, it's the US and China you should be looking to.
With the mercury rising ever higher, as many as two thirds of the 20-25,000 polar bears that roam the Arctic could disappear by the middle of this century, according to a recent estimate from the US Geological Survey.

Rising ever higher - like this you mean?



All of which allows me to post my favourite picture once again:


(Thanks to Theo Spark)

Read it here.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Government "gives up" on ETS

As Lenore Taylor points out in The Australian, Krudd & Co really can't be bothered with the ETS any more:
The best argument the scheme's chief saleswoman, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, could put when she released draft legislation last week was that it was better than nothing.

If you compare it with the way the Government argues for things it really wants to get through, such as its stimulus plan, the defence of its major policy on climate change is largely devoid of passion. It would be a strange tactic for a government still vehemently determined to get its scheme through. It is entirely consistent with a government with far bigger problems, that wants to be able to say it has tried to meet its election promise and then blame the failure on someone else, while suffering none of the potential short-term political consequences of success.

All of which raises the following awkward question: if this is supposedly the greatest challenge to humanity since the dawn of time (as we keep being told), why does it have such a low priority?

Read it here.

Australia feels the chill

Weather isn't climate (as we all know) but the number of stories about extreme cold in the Northern hemisphere this last few months has been staggering (see here for a recent example). And now it appears the Southern hemisphere may be about to follow suit:
Parts of southeastern Australia are having their coldest nights since spring, colder than it's been this early in the year since 2005 for some.

Temperatures are plummeting five to 10 degrees below average across parts of inland Victoria, the ACT and western, southern and central NSW due to clear skies and dry winds. Bega on the NSW South Coast dipped to 5.6 degrees early this morning, the coldest it's been this early in the year in 15 years.

Do you think I should send this to Fairfax? What do you think they would make of it? The answer of course is nothing, because as it sayeth in the Holy Gospel according to Gore, extreme heat shalt be called global warming, but extreme cold shalt be called "just weather".

Read it here.

Climate sense from Terry McCrann

An excellent article in the Courier Mail skewers the whole "Australia should go it alone" myth:
For everyone else, you need to put together one basic reality and one utterly undeniable fact.

That our emission reductions can make absolutely no difference to the climate outcome. Either for the world, for Australia, or in relation to bushfires and floods.

One of the great deceptions from the climate believers is to imply the reverse. That if you turn off the lights, you will save us from bushfires. We produce just 1.5 per cent of total emissions. We cut to zero tomorrow and it makes not the slightest difference to the climate. And again to stress, not just the global climate but our own little piece of it.

We can't create a low carbon dioxide bubble over this continent. Our climate is in the hands of the US and China principally, and then India and Europe after that.

Read it all.

Barmy Prince Charlie - now we're all boiled frogs

The plants have clearly been talking back to Prince Charles this time, as he compares humanity to the behaviour of frogs in boiling water...
British tabloid The Sun reports the heir to the throne made his comments in the Amazon while on a tour of South America to raise awareness of climate change.

“The trouble is it's the old boiled frog syndrome," he said. "You can’t tell if you are in the water that it is gradually heating up. You just get used to the heat and you don’t notice until suddenly it reaches boiling point and it’s too late to do anything about it.”

Boiled frog syndrome refers to the idea that if you put a frog into boiling water it will jump out, but if you put it in cold water and slowly raise the temperature, it will be boiled alive. It isn’t true – when the water gets hot the frog will jump out, but it does make a nice metaphor.

So where is all this heat, your Royal Highness? Have a look at the global temperature record, and try again:



Read it here.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Xenophon and Turnbull - ETS is doomed

With every day that passes, the ETS slips through Penny Wong's clutches. Nick Xenophon has called on the government to accept the inevitable, that the ETS won't get through the senate.
"It should be pretty clear to the Government now that in its current form this legislation won't pass the Senate," Senator Xenophon said this morning.

The Government hoped to have its emissions trading legislation passed by the end of June ahead of a start date of July 1, 2010.

But [Opposition leader Malcolm] Turnbull said the Prime Minister was proceeding at a "reckless" pace.

"He's on an ideological crusade which is to have an emissions trading scheme," he told ABC Radio this morning. "He doesn't seem to care what's in it as long as he can tick that box. That's not good enough."

Despite the fact that the Opposition don't have a decent alternative, this has to be good news for Australia.

Read it here.

New Poll - Fairfax is no longer a credible news source

The alarmism in the Fairfax press, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times, is getting so bad that I am considering whether to even blog stories from these papers in future. The bias is so ridiculous that it's beyond parody, and it's almost not worth commenting any more. What do you think?

New poll has started - let me know what you think.

Simon, ACM

Now we have to feel sorry for the alarmists!

This gets more ludicrous by the day! The Age, or as it's known "Pravda on the Yarra", is wailing about how tough the life of a climate scientist is. My heart bleeds - no, really, it does.
"Science is exciting when you make such findings," said Konrad Steffen, who heads the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) in Boulder, Colorado.

"But if you stop and look at the implications of what is coming down the road for humanity, it is rather scary. I have kids in college -- what do they have to look forward to in 50 years?"

And that's not the worst of it, said top researchers gathered here last week for a climate change conference which heard, among other bits of bad news, that global sea levels are set to rise at least twice as fast over the next century as previously thought, putting hundreds of millions of people at risk.

What haunts scientists most, many said, is the feeling that -- despite an overwhelming consensus on the science -- they are not able to convey to a wider public just how close Earth is to climate catastrophe.

The Age just isn't a serious newspaper anymore - it's like Green Left Weekly gone posh. I am seriously considering expunging all future references to it from the pages of ACM. I feel a poll coming on.

Read it here (for probably the last time).

Quote of the day

QOTD comes from the UK Meteorological Office's Vicky Pope (see here), commenting on a plan to increase the reflectivity of clouds artificially:
"Anything that alters the climate in a different way from reducing carbon has inherent dangers because we don't understand the climate well enough."

But, conveniently, they seem to understand the climate well enough to make apocalyptic projections about the future of humanity unless we dramatically cut carbon [dioxide] emissions... The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Read it here.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Miranda Devine and the ICCC

As the only decent sceptic in the sea of moonbattish journalists at The Sydney Morning Herald, Miranda Devine must have a hard job getting anything published, but amazingly she has an article about the International Conference on Climate change, held last week in New York. Of course, the mainstream media were all working themselves up into a lather about the hysterical alarmism being spread about in Copenhagen, and nary a mention of the ICCC, so well done to Miranda for redressing the balance...
How can the courageous independent scientists in New York compete for attention with climate hysteria coming from such world leaders as Prince Charles, who in Rio de Janeiro this week claimed: "We have less than 100 months to alter our behaviour before we risk catastrophic climate change."

Australia's future head of state is on a 10-day eco-tour to South America, aimed at boosting his popularity. He will travel in a luxury private Airbus, delivering a carbon footprint estimated at more than 300 tonnes.

It just shows that what counts with climate hysterics is not the greenness of the planet but the brownie points they gain.

Read it all.

UPDATE: Link fixed - apologies.

Turnbull will not back ETS

The right decision, but for (partly) the wrong reasons: (a) it will cost jobs [valid reason], (b) is won't help the environment [invalid reason]:
In his keynote address to the Liberal council, [Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull] says the Opposition will use the Senate inquiry process to work on improving the design of a climate change policy. [It doesn't need improving, it needs dropping - Ed]

"Labor's ETS will cost jobs and fail the environment," he said.

"It fails to recognise Australia's greatest and most beneficial opportunities for emissions abatement.

"We will oppose it in its present form and on its current timetable because we have a better and a greener way. Better for jobs, the economy and the environment."

Mr Turnbull said that he is also firmly against the Government's proposed start date of 2010.

"The real issue is getting the design right," he said.

As any fule kno, Australia contributes 1.5% of global emissions, so even if it reduces its emissions to zero overnight, it will make not one skerrick of difference to global emissions, and absolutely no difference to the climate (assuming that CO2 drives temperature - which is far from proven). At least it looks like we won't have the economy crushing pointlessness of Rudd & Wong's ETS, but let's hope we don't get something worse...

Read it here.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Japanese scientists question AGW theories

Climate sense in a sea of alarmism and propaganda. Eventually, people will have to start taking notice, but at this stage only The Australian carries this story, and you certainly won't see it in The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald:
"Before anyone noticed, this hypothesis [of man-made global warming] has been substituted for truth," writes Shunichi Akasofu, founding director of the University of Alaska's International Arctic Research Centre.

Dr Kusano, Dr Akasofu and Tokyo Institute of Technology geology professor Shigenori Maruyama are highly critical of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's acceptance that hazardous global warming results mainly from man-made gas emissions.

On the scientific evidence so far, according to Dr Kusano, the IPCC assertion that atmospheric temperatures are likely to increase continuously and steadily "should be perceived as an unprovable hypothesis".

Dr Maruyama said yesterday there was widespread scepticism among his colleagues about the IPCC's fourth and latest assessment report that most of the observed global temperature increase since the mid-20th century "is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations".

When this question was raised at a Japan Geoscience Union symposium last year, he said, "the result showed 90 per cent of the participants do not believe the IPCC report".

Read it all.

ABC - impartial as always

Or not. Certainly not in the case of Lateline presenter Tony Jones, a full-blown card-carrying climate alarmist (see see here, here, and here) and Kruddite who gives Penny Wong a really rough ride about the ETS, as The Australian reports:
The first question Jones asked, as well as the following four, concerned how many renewable energy jobs the ETS would create. Not how many jobs the ETS will cost as export industries lose business to companies based in countries where they do not pay to pollute. Not the overall economic impact of a scheme that miners say will lead to workers being sacked. Jones is interested in jobs in the future, not people in the present. The future is green, so why worry now about unemployed workers who are blue?

Read it here.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Climate sense from Melanie Phillips

Writing in the UK Spectator, Melanie Phillips exposes the hysteria that has surrounded the gathering of alarmists in Copenhagen:
The atmosphere is cooling, the ice is expanding, the seas are not rising -- even though carbon emissions are increasing. The evidence is now crystal clear to anyone with an unwashed brain that man-made global warming theory is sheer unadulterated bunkum. So how do the warmers react to the ever more embarrassing evidence that they have hitched their reputations to the biggest anti-scientific scam in history? By ratcheting up the hysteria to fever pitch and shrieking that their predictions about the impending irreversible environmental apocalypse have grievously underestimated the catastrophe which is going to be far, far worse.
...
The BBC, whose Today programme yesterday devoted its prime 0810 slot to unchallenged ‘melting ice/rising seas/we are all doomed’ propaganda, has not even mentioned the New York conference [the International Conference on Climate Change - see here]. And as far as I can see, of the British papers only the Guardian attended it – not to report the proceedings, but to sneer. Thus Suzanne Goldenberg wrote:
It would be easy to dismiss this gathering as a pity party for people on the fringes of modern thought

which of course she proceeded to do. The attendees were
almost entirely white males, and many, if not most, are past retirement age

and worse still, other than the academics,
they are affiliated with rightwing thinktanks.

Well, say no more.

Indeed.

Read it here. (via Tom Nelson)

Government tries to scupper ETS enquiry AGAIN

This time by giving would-be participants only a week to consider nearly 500 pages of complex legislation. And for the first time (and probably the last) I find myself agreeing with a previous winner of the ACM ICOTD gong:
The rushed timetable has united all sides of the divisive emissions trading debate in outrage.

Australian Industry Greenhouse Network chief executive Mike Hitchens said: "It is absolutely unreasonable to expect anyone to respond to 500 pages of complex legislation in this time.

John Connor, chief executive of The Climate Institute, said the timetable made the inquiry a joke. "It leaves no time for any substantive consideration," he said.

"It can only encourage recycling of the submissions already prepared for the Garnaut inquiry. It will be submission Groundhog Day."

Looks like the government have seriously got something to hide.

Read it here.

Timewarp journalism from The Age

Just when people are becoming thoroughly bored by enviro-loonies banging on about the polar bear, The Age publishes another article wailing about how the polar bear is threatened by "climate change".
Polar bears are in danger of being wiped out unless urgent measures are taken to combat climate change and rapid warming in the Arctic, says environmental group WWF.

"No sea ice equates no polar bears. It's really that simple," WWF polar bear expert Geoff York told reporters.

Given that "global warming" stopped in about 2001, my response is equally simple:


(Image from Theo Spark)

Read it here.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Climate madness from James Hansen

Old Homer Simpson look-a-like James Hansen has been spreading his own particular kind of putrid BS around Copenhagen, ending with the usual "it's all happening faster than we thought, we must act now or else" spiel, as the Sydney Moonbat Herald reports:
Greenhouse gas emissions must be cut more quickly and deeply than thought only two years ago to avoid dire consequences [gee, there's a surprise - Ed], and a straight-up carbon tax is the only realistic way to do it, top climate scientist [barking propagandist - Ed] James Hansen says.

New research paints an even gloomier picture of global warming [surely "climate change" - Ed] than the already grim report put out in early 2007 by the UN's Nobel-winning scientific panel, he told AFP at the margins of a major climate conference.

Hansen's argument is as simple as it is sobering: continuing to drain earth's store of fossil fuels - oil, gas and coal - will lead humanity straight toward climate calamity.

Only an abrupt and profound change in the way we consume energy can stop the global warming juggernaut.

You all know the responses by now, so I don't even have to write them!

Read it here.

Climate sense from Barnaby Joyce

The Nationals Senate leader encapsulates all that is wrong with the government's climate policy:
"If you believe in solo crusades then go and depose the current leader of Sudan, go and get rid of Robert Mugabe, go do a whole range of things that are probably very good but a little bit peculiar for Australia to do by itself," he said.

"The way we're going down the climate change issue is just a solo crusade with no effect except on Australian domestic employment."

Climate sense for once.

Read it here.

Barmy Prince Charlie - only "100 months left"

He's clearly been talking to the plants again. On a 10-day trip to Latin America (carbon footprint the size of Peru) Prince Charles will argue that we only have "100 months" to save the planet from irreversible damage:
"I must insist that if we want to leave our children a better world [Emotional Blackmail Alert], we must act together, and we must act now," he said on Monday at a dinner hosted by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet in his honour at La Moneda Palace.

He is backed by the British government which has described countering climate change as one of its highest priorities this year.

The British government is clearly as barmy as he is...

Read it here.

Climate sense

As climate scientists in Copenhagen whip themselves up into a frenzy of alarmism, here, by way of contrast, is Christopher Monckton's list of deliberately misleading myths about climate change that are propagated by warming alarmists, delivered at the conclusion of the International Climate Change Conference in New York:
  • Global warming is happening now” – it’s actually cooling.
  • Global warming is getting worse” – it’s actually getting better.
  • “Arctic sea ice is disappearing” – in fact, there is no discernable trend in winter sea ice area over the last 30 years.
  • “Antarctic sea ice is disappearing” – in fact, the area of sea-ice around Antarctica reached a 30 year record high in 2007.
  • “The Great Barrier Reef is being damaged by global warming” – in fact, there is no trend in the sea surface temperature of the reef over the last 40 years.
  • “Hurricanes are being made worse by global warming” – rather, the accumulated cyclone energy index recorded its lowest value in the last 30 years in Oct. 2008.
Read Bob Carter's reports from New York here.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Scaremongering in Copenhagen

"Sea levels 'to surge at least a metre'" is the headline in The Australian, as delegates in Copenhagen hear that rises in sea level could be between 75 and 190cm by 2100. And the usual suspects are there to try and scare the world into turning the clock back to the economic dark ages with carbon taxes and emissions trading to "tackle climate change":
"The world has very little time," IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri told the meeting after the new findings were presented.

Indeed, there is very little time before this madness is entrenched so deeply it can't be undone.

Read it here.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Result of the ACM Poll

A couple of weeks ago, we posed the question: The Coalition's climate policy should be... and here are the results:
  • less than 1% (1 vote): support Rudd's ETS
  • 4% (5 votes): carbon tax
  • 95% (120 votes): neither - AGW is a myth
Glad to see that most ACM readers are healthily sceptical!

Thanks for voting!

Cognitive dissonance at the Canberra Times

In a long and rambling article about the Copenhagen meeting taking place to discuss how much worse climate change will be compared to what the IPCC predicted, these gems from Chris Field (well known to this blog...):
One of the lead authors of [the 2007 IPCC] report said last month it had probably seriously underestimated the consequences of climate change. Professor Chris Field, a Stanford University climate scientist, said ''we now have data showing that, from 2000 to 2007, greenhouse gas emissions increased far more rapidly than we expected, primarily because developing countries like China and India saw a huge upsurge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal''.

Yes, emissions have risen faster than expected, and what has happened to global temperature? It's actually dropped in the same period.
Coal and other fossil fuels are large contributors to releases of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas [Wrong - the main greenhouse gas is naturally occurring water vapour, by a long, long way - Ed]. Professor Field, who co-chairs the IPCC working group charged with assessing the impacts of climate change, said he was particularly concerned about new evidence that tropical forests would dry out and catch fire...

That'll really happen...

Read it here.

Australia Post supports Earth Hour


(Image from the Sydney Morning Herald)

Australia Post has become the latest organisation to inappropriately involve itself in the climate change debate by releasing stamps to remind people about Earth Hour, which as you will recall is organised by the radical environmental organisation WWF (and Fairfax media):
"Australia Post is a committed supporter of this important environmental initiative," said the Group Manager of Philatelic, Noel Leahy. "The health of the environment is an important global issue and through this stamp issue we hope to engage the community in efforts to help combat global warming by reminding and encouraging them to turn off their lights at 8.30 pm on Saturday, 28 March."

Australia Post provides a service for all Australians (not just card-carrying Kruddites, and AGW proponents), so it should not be taking sides on political matters such as climate change.

Read it here.

Monday, March 9, 2009

ETS - Senate enquiry to go ahead

This is sort of good news, in the sense that at least the ETS will be subject to some parliamentary scrutiny. It's also sort of bad news, because the Opposition and the Greens have joined forces and will probably try to replace it with something worse, to "out-green the Government". As The Age reports:
Opposition emissions trading design spokesman Andrew Robb and Australian Greens climate change spokeswoman Christine Milne struck the deal on Monday.

The terms of reference will need to be ratified by the coalition's Senate partyroom.

A new Senate select committee on climate policy would conduct the inquiry, to be chaired by the opposition and deputy chaired by the Greens.

"The terms of reference will be broad enough to allow a proper investigation into the scientific adequacy of the scheme and its targets," Senator Milne said.

That last sentence is particularly worrying, because the inquiry will probably say that Rudd's 5% by 2020 isn't enough if you swallow all the IPCC propaganda and that we need something even tougher, heaven help us...

Read it here.

Token Gesture Alert - Tasmanian women to "tackle climate change"

Bit thin on detail this one, but you can guarantee that "Tas Women Cooling It" (no, honestly, that's what it's called) will be money badly spent in a pointless feel-good gesture.
Sharon Dennis, from the Women's Council, says the project aims to reduce feelings of isolation in the fight against global warming, and create an example by making a real and measurable contribution towards sustainable living. [Feelings of isolation? They should try being a sceptic for a few days... - Ed]

"What our objective is is to contact as many women in Tasmania as we can, who can make a small contribution, which leads onto a larger contribution towards their ideas of reducing their own carbon footprint."

Read it here.

2009 International Conference on Climate Change

You won't see this reported anywhere, of course. The Heartland conference is the largest gathering of sceptical scientists in the world and if you're in New York, try to get along. Information can be found here.

UPDATE: You can follow the progress of the conference on Quadrant. Check out the regular posts by Professor Bob Carter in the Doomed Planet section.

Cyclone Hamish - it's climate change

Of course it is, you denier you. And the Sydney Moonbat Herald is there to make the link.
THOUSANDS of holidaymakers were evacuated from resorts and campsites yesterday as tropical cyclone Hamish moved south along the Queensland coast, amid concerns climate change is generating such severe storms.
...
Emergency Management Queensland's deputy executive director, Bruce Grady, said climate change analysis that predicted tropical cyclones of greater intensity was driving the disaster response strategy for tropical cyclone Hamish.

Again, pure nonsense. This hoary old chestnut is still doing the rounds, despite it being debunked long ago. It's plausible that any warming would lower the temperature differential between polar and equatorial regions which would actually reduce storm intensity. But hey, who cares about the facts? We have to push our scaremongering agenda...

Read it here.

UPDATE: As if by magic, this appears: Tropical cyclone activity [still] lowest in 30 years

Acres of alarmism in The Age

Having been branded mentally deranged yesterday for daring to question the consensus on global warming, I read no less than six pages of barking climate alarmism in The Age this morning, all of which bears only tenuous links to reality. It's like a summary of all the worst warmist propaganda condensed into a single article, full of scaremongering and misrepresentations. And yet I'm the one that's deranged.

Entitled "Climate's 11th hour", I cannot be bothered to refute it all (life is too short), but I can focus on two factors, global temperature and global sea levels. Here's the quote from the article:
Climate experts are increasingly worried, though. More than 2000 will meet in Copenhagen this week for an emergency summit to emphasise that the shift is happening much faster than expected.
...
UNSW Climate Change Research Centre co-director Matthew England, one of the summit's key backers, says it is likely to find that the raw measures of climate change — global average air temperature, global sea-level rise and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations — are all happening at or above the worst-case IPCC scenario.

This is so wrong it is painful. Global temperature, however you measure it, has been falling or steady since 2001. How can that possibly be "at or above the worst-case IPCC scenario"? Sea levels have continued to rise at the same rate as they have for centuries - again, how can that possibly be "at or above the worst-case IPCC scenario"? Did this person actually look at the data? If so, how can he possibly make such a claim? I'm sorry, but if we're now into the realm of discussing mental health, this is utterly delusional.

And yet The Age mindlessly continues to print it all.

Read it here (if you can stand it).

UPDATE: Of course, what these scientists gathering in Copenhagen should really be discussing is why the earth isn't warming according to the IPCC models, so that we can better understand the climate system, instead of blundering ahead with their blinkered alarmist propaganda machine.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Now sceptics are mentally deranged

Back to posting, and in my brief absence, I discover that I, along with thousands and thousands of others, have been branded as deranged. That's right - querying AGW is now regarded as a mental illness. Just another step in the battle to stamp out any form of dissent in environmental matters. From Spiked:
The idea that ‘climate change denial’ is a psychological disorder – the product of a spiteful, wilful or simply in-built neural inability to face up to the catastrophe of global warming – is becoming more and more popular amongst green-leaning activists and academics. And nothing better sums up the elitism and authoritarianism of the environmentalist lobby than its psychologisation of dissent. The labelling of any criticism of the politics of global warming, first as ‘denial’, and now as evidence of mass psychological instability, is an attempt to write off all critics and sceptics as deranged, and to lay the ground for inevitable authoritarian solutions to the problem of climate change. Historically, only the most illiberal and misanthropic regimes have treated disagreement and debate as signs of mental ill-health.
...
The psychologisation of climate change denial – even the very use of that term: denial – reveals how utterly aloof and cut off are the environmental elitists from mass society. They cannot comprehend, indeed are ‘baffled’ by, our everyday behaviour, our desire to have families, our resistance to hectoring, our dream of being wealthier, better travelled, our hopes of living life to the full. For them, such behaviour is irresponsible and it runs counter to the ‘extraordinary information’ provided by scientists. They seriously expect people to make life decisions on the basis of pie charts and graphs drawn up in laboratories in Switzerland, rather than on the basis of what they and their families need and, yes, what they want. That the green lobby is so perturbed by our failure to act in accordance with scientific findings shows the extent to which, for them, The Science is a new gospel truth and religious-style guide to life, and anyone who disobeys it is a sinner, heretic or deranged individual, a moral leper of the twenty-first century.
This is true climate madness!

Read it all here.

Friday, March 6, 2009

ACM away for a few days

Posts may be a little irregular for the next couple of days as I will be travelling. However, armed with a laptop and wireless broadband I hope to get a few posts in.

In the mean time, don't forget to vote in the ACM poll which has just 3 days left!

Check out the blog roll on the right ---> to catch up on other great anti-warming blogs.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Kevin Rudd - like a cracked record

I have lost count of the number of times Rudd & Wong have spouted the same response to the genuine concerns of business and industry about the introduction of the ETS (i.e. a tax) during the worst economic times since the 1920s. They are like the kid in the playground who covers his ears and shouts "la-la-la-la" so he can't hear what the other kid is saying... it's little short of pathetic.
"When we framed the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme [two errors in four words again. Where's my answer from Penny Wong? - Ed] we did so to get the balance right between protecting jobs on the one hand and dealing with the long term challenge of greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

"We believe we have got the balance right [modest as always - Ed] and our intention is to legislate the scheme.

"We think it's the right long-term strategy for Australia and the planet."

It will do nothing, repeat nothing for the climate of the planet, or Australia, and the only thing it will do is damage our already weakened economy.

Climate madness.

Read it here.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Sydney Morning Herald has premature "Earth Hour" meltdown

Strange goings on at the Herald which is wildly issuing feeds for news stories about Earth Hour which were published, er, last year... like this one, which is dated 29 March 2008... Check the URLs - they've all got today's date embedded in them.



I know you're greener than a crate of cabbages, guys, but control yourselves, there's plenty of time yet to bore us all rigid with endless stories about the pointless feel-good gesture that is Earth Hour - it's on 28 March. And get your RSS feed-bot working again.

Read it here, and here, and here, and here (and about a dozen others as well)

Climate sense from Tom Switzer (almost)

In an article in The Australian, former Liberal adviser Tom Switzer points out that the climate policy of former leader Brendan Nelson was the right one all along. The policy, which raised serious doubts about the economic viability of an emissions trading scheme, and which was received with near-universal hostility, is now the preferred course of action for much of Australia's industry.
The issue that cost Nelson his leadership could yet be a political godsend for Malcolm Turnbull. The financial crisis has given industry more political ammunition to criticise the scheme. The many commentators who berated Nelson for his wait-for-the-world policy are now writing obituaries for the Government's emissions trading model. A Lowy Institute poll revealed that most Australians are far more concerned about their jobs and hip pockets than any campaign to save the planet.

Labor, meanwhile, is spooked. The Prime Minister himself has walked away from Garnaut's proposals and significantly downgraded the Government's target range to as low as 5 per cent by 2020. So much for Rudd's claim that "climate change is the great economic, environmental and moral challenge of our time".

In this environment, the Liberal and Nationals parties should oppose the Government's legislation outright and spell out a different way of meeting the climate challenge in the most forceful and coherent language they can find.

Unfortunately, Switzer then goes on to list a number of alternative ways of reducing carbon dioxide emissions (all of them pointless in terms of influencing global climate), and warns that the Opposition should not question the science:
Forget about questioning the science underlining global warming and leave that debate to the climate scientists, policy wonks and media columnists on the sidelines. To reopen this debate in parliament now would merely allow the Government to portray the Opposition as climate change deniers: a foolish and offensive charge, but nonetheless a politically damaging one to a party still struggling to recover from John Howard's refusal to ratify the Kyoto protocol.

Whilst it may be politically damaging, it is the right and proper thing to do. I say bring it on. The Opposition should vigorously question the science, especially that from the IPCC on which the Government's climate policy is based, which is misleading and politicised. Until or unless there is proper debate on the science, the whole issue of "climate change" is fatally flawed.

Doing the right thing is not necessarily the easiest thing.

Read it here.

Forget the Gore Effect, now it's the Hansen Effect

Gore Effect: The phenomenon that leads to unseasonably cold temperatures, driving rain, hail, or snow whenever Al Gore visits an area to discuss global warming (source)

And now it seems James Hansen is having a similar effect on the weather. The juxtaposition was perfect - Hansen and a bunch of warmists (that numbered in the hundreds rather than thousands) protesting in the worst snow storm of the year in Washington DC. As The Australian reports, under the headline "Big chill buries global warming protest":
The storm ... buried under 15cm of snow any hope of global warming activism.

Reports said the activists had hoped to swarm Washington in an effort to force the Government to close the Capitol Power Plant, which heats and cools government buildings, including the Supreme Court and the Capitol.

Fox News said the scene was reminiscent of a day in January 2004, when Al Gore made an address on global warming in New York -- on one of the coldest days in the city's history.

In a press release supporting the protest against the coal-fired plant, Greenpeace wrote that "coal was the country's biggest source of global warming pollution" and "burning coal cuts short at least 24,000 lives in the US annually". But Fox News said it might be worth noting the US Government's own stark numbers: pneumonia kills twice as many each year.

Enjoy. Read it here.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

ETS: Garnaut weighs in

Ross Garnaut (remember him??) has emerged from the cave he's been in since his report was issued last year, and put his 2c worth into the debate about the ETS by urging the Government to "act now on climate change". Never saw that coming. This is despite emissions dropping anyway as a result of the global financial crisis. The article is helpfully illustrated by the following misleading image:


Since when was CO2 black? Looks more like particulate pollution to me, but hey, who cares?
(© ABC)
"It looks as if we've transferred back two years the emissions levels that we were expecting - might turn out to be longer than that if this turns out to be an even worse economic crisis," he said. [Anyone understand that sentence? - Ed]

"We've got a little bit of breathing space but we need it because the world's a long way from where it needs to be."
Go back to your cave, Prof.

Read it here.

Shove off

After the (relative) sanity of that last editorial in The Canberra Times, it's back on form with ACM's least favourite journo, Rosslyn Beeby, who interviews some barking mad professor about how our daily shower will be the latest victim of "climate change" (no, really, stick with it).
Climate change will change our social habits, and in 50 years time we won't be showering every day, and maybe not at all, British sociologist Professor Elizabeth Shove says.

''No, we won't be dirty, smelly and unhygienic. This kind of social change isn't about people being forced to give up showers it's about new habits, new ideas about cleanliness that will become more acceptable, and probably even more popular and enjoyable, than standing under a hot shower."

To paraphrase The Italian Job, it's a long way back to England, Professor ... and it's that-a-way.

Read it here.

Embrace nuclear to reduce emissions

This one issue lays bare the hypocrisy in the "green" movement for all to see. On the one hand, they whine about reducing emissions to "tackle climate change", yet on the other they refuse to accept the only feasible emission-free source of electricity: nuclear generation.

Still bogged down in the "Nuclear Power? No thanks!" bumper-sticker mentality of the 1970s, they claim that climate change is the greatest threat to humanity, yet spurn the technology that would do more to reduce emissions (assuming, of course, that CO2 drives climate) than countless ugly wind farms or acres of hopelessly inefficient solar panels. Yes, of course there are issues with nuclear power, like the storage of spent fuel. But this is something we have the capability to deal with, as evidenced by the widespread use of nuclear power throughout the developed world.

An editorial in The Canberra Times makes the point well:
For countries planning to rely on ''clean coal'' and ''renewables'' [such as Australia - Ed] there will come a day of reckoning. Emission trading costs on top of high energy costs will result in decades of global disadvantage and loss of competitiveness.

Not surprisingly for most participants at the KL conference, Australia's ''clean coal'' and ''renewables'' energy policy appeared to be an unnecessary and expensive gamble. And many remembered the December 2007 Bali climate conference, where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ratified Kyoto and Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, stated ''I have never seen a credible scenario for reducing emissions which did not include nuclear energy.''

For once I agree with Yvo de Boer.

Read it here.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Another bleating letter from "climate groups"

Not another one, I hear you cry. Yes, and all the usual guff is recycled, that every unusual weather event is linked to "climate change", that the emissions target is far too low, etc etc, wrapped up in loads of emotive claptrap:
"By locking in a low target now, Australia will effectively undermine the Copenhagen UN climate process in December, betraying not only the Australian people in its duty of care, but also people and nations across the globe," the letter from Climate Action Groups states.
...
"It is not the Australian way to do as little as we possibly can at the expense of the millions of people, species and habitats that will be affected by climate change.

"This is not the legacy we wish to leave for our children."

Probably written in green ink. Pop it in the special filing drawer - you know, the round one on the floor over there...

Read it here.

More ETS woes

Even those that believe that AGW is real and dangerous think that the ETS is the wrong way to go. Richard Denniss, executive director of The Australia Institute, appears to be such a person, referring to CO2 as "pollution", and clearly convinced that Australia should "tackle climate change." But even he picks holes in Penny Wong's "Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme" in The Australian today, particularly the fact that efforts by individuals to reduce emissions will have no effect whatsoever under the ETS, as they will merely allow others to emit more:
The question is: Why has the Government obfuscated and misled the Australian people? Rather than explaining the strengths and weaknesses of her scheme to the Australian public, the Minister for Climate Change has instead sought to cover up and conceal the fundamental problem. And when the first glimmerings of realisation began to spread among the Australian people, she worked hard to suggest, without actually stating it, that individual action could indeed reduce emissions. This was in addition to accusing those who were attempting to blow the whistle that they were indulging in a little misleading of their own.

It is interesting to speculate on a deeply disturbing question. Why has the Minister worked so hard to convince the citizenry that their efforts will be counted and that there is nothing amiss with the design of the carbon pollution reduction scheme? If only she and the Government had put as much effort into examining and fixing the flaws as they have put into their disingenuous denials of the problems, both they and Australia would be a lot further ahead by now.

The High Priestess does not suffer heretics gladly.

Read it here.