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Australian Climate Madness

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Rudd "begs" to get ETS through

How pathetic can you get? The proper response, of course, is "Get of your knees and clear out of here. The ETS is a crock of sh*t, and you know it." Let's hope that's what the Opposition will tell him.
Mr Rudd tried to keep the ETS alive during a news conference in Hobart on Thursday following a meeting of the Council of Australian Governments.

"I'd appeal to all politicians in the Australian Parliament, in the upper house; this is serious stuff for the nation in the 21st century," he told reporters. [No it isn't, it's bad law based on bad science. It needs to be chucked in the dumpster - Ed]

"Our job is to try and punch this through ... we're going to give it a damn good go."

Jolly good, old chap, you punch away, for all the good it will do you.

Read it here.

Coalition report on ETS: it's a crock

But we all knew that anyway. It will damage the economy and do nothing for the climate (even if CO2 drives climate, which it almost certainly doesn't). Maybe Krudd & Co should tax the sun instead to encourage it to reduce its output of harmful radiation (heat and light)!
The analysis, prepared by David Pearce from the Centre for International Economics, warns that the Government has failed to adequately assess the level of environmental benefits the CPRS will achieve for its cost, its ability to deal with uncertainty and whether it explicitly accounts for international developments.

Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change Greg Combet effectively conceded yesterday that the Government will have to deal with the Coalition to pass the CPRS.

He said the Greens had "made themselves irrelevant" with demands that amounted to "lunacy".

Mr Robb said the CIE report "clearly establishes that the design of the Government's proposed emissions trading scheme needs to be reconsidered and compared empirically with alternatives.

"For the Government to have ignored the impact of the global financial crisis beggars belief,” he said.

"The costs over the next 20 years of lost competitiveness and lost jobs must be established, along with the likely impact, or not, on CO2 emissions.”

But the Opposition have still got it wrong at the core. They should not be questioning just the effect of the ETS on the economy, they should be questioning the whole purpose of the ETS at all. The science on climate change is not settled, despite what Rudd, Wong, Combet, Gore and Obama say, and there is no evidence, either from recent past or geological times, that CO2 is a driver of temperature. Tinkering with a harmless trace gas will do nothing, and the Opposition should have the guts to say that. Spend money on adaptation, not control.

Read it here.

Emerson peeks out of the closet, then goes back in again

As Andrew Bolt reports:
Days after being challenged here to come out of the closet, Craig Emerson peeks out:
FEDERAL Small Business Minister Craig Emerson has split from Kevin Rudd and ministerial colleagues by declaring science is undecided on key aspects of the global warming debate.

Dr Emerson yesterday became the first minister in the Rudd Government to cast doubt on the assertion that scientific evidence was conclusive for a catastrophic meltdown of the polar icecaps if global warming was not curtailed.

He said he would like to see scientists settle the question of what would happen to sea-level rises and the polar icecaps as a result of climate change.

Sadly, Emerson embarrasses himself - and will once day blush at his timidity - by still hiding behind this deceitful evasion:
“The science is in that we are experiencing climate change and we need to act to deal with it,” Dr Emerson told The Australian.

Give it time. Being sceptical will soon be the new cool.

Read it here.

New Australian temperature record set - for cold

Weatherzone reports that Charlotte Pass in NSW recorded the lowest ever April temperature:
This is the lowest temperature recorded anywhere in Australia in April and is 13 below the average. Nearby at Perisher it dipped to minus 11 degrees and at the top of Thredbo it dipped to minus 10.

Across the border, on the Victorian Alps April records were broken at Mt Hotham where it chilled to minus eight degrees and Mt Buller and Falls Creek where it got as low as minus seven.

Global warming sure is a bitch.

Read it here.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Photo of Wilkins Ice Shelf used 13 months after it was taken

In the same story in The Australian, it transpires that a photo of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, taken 13 months ago and used widely to spread alarm about climate change, has been used again last month to, er..., spread alarm about climate change.
British newspaper The Observer this month published prominently a story with a photograph of breaks in the Wilkins shelf.

"A huge ice shelf in the Antarctic is in the last stages of collapse and could break up within days in the latest sign of how global warming is thought to be changing the face of the planet," the story began.

In March last year, US news agency msn published the same photograph with a similar story that began: "A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming's impact on Earth's southernmost continent." The photograph was published by numerous other outlets, including The Australian.

A spokeswoman for the British Antarctic Survey said the photograph in both stories was taken in March last year.

Nationals Senate leader and climate hero Barnaby Joyce is rightly hopping mad:
Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce said the misuse of the photograph and the similar story lines 13 months apart reflected how the Wilkins ice shelf break-up was being recycled annually to fuel global warming concerns.

Senator Joyce said Mr Garrett's entry into the debate demonstrated how it was being hijacked by misinformation.

"We are on the edge of a possible pandemic that could cause untold misery and people are running around tilting at windmills," he said.

Read it here.

Government at war with Greens (and themselves)

The government, increasingly desperate to keep the ETS going, has launched an attack on the Greens for adopting an "unrealistic" emissions stance, and at the same time, Penny Wong and Peter Garrett are squaring up for handbags at ten paces about sea level rises.

To the Greens first, who have been spanked down by Greg Combet for their emissions reduction proposals:
"The Greens currently are arguing for a 40 per cent cut in emissions by 2020," he said.

"That's like taking the back of the axe to the economy potential in the absence of a wider international agreement. [Economy potential?? - Ed]

"They need to get towards a far more realistic position."

But on the other hand, the government's proposal, assuming CO2 were involved in climate change (which it isn't), would make not a kangaroo's fart of difference, Australia contributing only 1.5% to global emissions. The line they are treading here is about a micron thick...

On to Wong and Garrett, who are slugging it out about sea level rises due to melting of the Antarctic (last time I checked, Antarctic ice was way above average, but I'm splitting hairs...):
Federal government sources said Climate Change Minister Penny Wong was disappointed with the way her ministerial colleague, Peter Garrett, weighed into the debate about global warming [surely "climate change" - Ed], claiming sea levels could rise by 6m as a result of melting in Antarctica. Senator Wong yesterday pointedly refused to indicate whether she supported Mr Garrett's view.

"The impacts of climate change are being seen in many ways, from sea level rise through to extreme weather events," Senator Wong said yesterday. [Wrong on both counts, Penny - Ed]

"Climate change is a clear and present danger to our world that demands immediate attention." [Adaptation, maybe. Attention? No - Ed]

Senator Wong declined to nominate potential levels to which seas could rise.

Why so coy, Penny? Debate's over - science is settled. Let's have the figure please.

Read it here and here.

Clinton: the new King Canute

Just as King Canute tried to stop the tide coming in (and failed miserably), so the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton will try to "tackle climate change", and likewise, they will fail miserably. The only difference being that this time, it will cost billions of people trillions of dollars, and probably cost millions of lives in developing countries.
''Climate change is a clear and present danger to our world that demands immediate attention,'' she said.

''It is a threat that is global in scope but local and national in impact.

''We know climate change threatens lives and livelihoods. Desertification and rising sea levels generate increased competition for food, water and resources. [Show me the rising sea levels and desertification, please - Ed]

''But we also have seen the dangers that these trends pose to the stability of societies and governments. We see how this can breed conflict, unrest and forced migration.

''So no issue we face today has broader, long-term consequences, or greater potential, to alter the world for future generations.''

Climate changes, that's what it does. Trying to stop it is nonsensical. Adaptation is the key. But you can't expect governments to pass up the opportunity to tax people out of existence, can you?

Read it here.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

George Carlin on "saving the planet"

Because some people are now, finally, beginning to realise that humanity cannot control nature, and it cannot "tackle climate change", I thought you would enjoy this famous routine by comedian George Carlin, which sums up the whole conceit brilliantly. Warning: contains strong language.

Enjoy!

Quote of the Day: Obama - unintended joke alert

This disaster of a President goes from bad to worse, as evidenced by this unintended hilarious utterance on climate change, said without any hint of irony:
"We have watched as scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicised in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas," Obama said.

Er, how about the IPCC for starters? Obama's intellect is so dull he probably won't get the joke...

Read it here.

The Australian backs Ian Plimer

This is excellent news. The Australian has always shown itself to be the only newspaper with a balanced approach to the issue of climate change, but in an editorial today it goes several steps further, by harshly criticising Robert Manne's hysterical diatribe in response to Ian Plimer's book:
Surely a measure of scepticism is healthy for a scientist. Professor Manne's dogmatic approach is questionable in light of the complexities surrounding climate change. Much of Antarctica is cooling, for instance, and ice is expanding in much of the region. Contrary to popular belief, extensive Antarctic melting would be required to raise sea levels substantially. Not that the trend is new. As long ago as 1995, this newspaper reported that the sheet of snow and ice covering Antarctica was growing. Scientists speculated it was an early indicator of global warming, and that the extra ice would increase sea levels when it eventually melted over 10,000 years.

Such a scenario does not support Professor Manne's belief that "humanity is at present marching, with eyes wide open, towards disaster". It lends greater credence to Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg's view that the immense cost of cutting greenhouse emissions in nations such as Australia would be better spent redressing malnutrition and preventable disease.
...
That the climate is changing is undisputed - it has done so for millions of years, notably before the Industrial Revolution. Given that the levels of carbon emissions have been measured only relatively recently, it remains to be be proved that their rise is the major driver of global warming. In the meantime, The Australian accepts the IPCC finding that the evidence of climate change calls for global intervention [This sentence is the only black mark. No-one should accept anything the IPCC says, but at least we're moving in the right direction - Ed]. A pragmatic approach, including investment in carbon sinks, renewable energy and clean coal research, is prudent. And nuclear power cannot be discounted forever in Australia. Professor Plimer's sceptical eye on climate science is not to be dismissed as the "zealotry" of a "pseudo-sceptical scientist".

And in a separate article, another convert (apparently as a result of Plimer's book) writes about the "hubris" of believing that humanity can affect climate:
According to this scenario, human beings are the most important players in the history of the planet; they are the lords and masters who can destroy things as well as set them right. This belief in the capacity of humans to control the environment is very old. In some ancient civilisations the ruler was supposed to have the power to create a beneficial climate. If there were a prolonged drought, then the ruler sometimes was expected to make the ultimate sacrifice to propitiate the gods. During the depths of the Little Ice Age in Europe, some communities asked God for forgiveness of their sins so that a better climate might return.
...
Yet, reading Ian Plimer's excellent Heaven and Earth, what impresses one about his extraordinary account of the Earth's history and its climate is the many forces of nature that are beyond human control. These range from cosmic radiation to the movement of continents and the force of volcanoes. In so many ways we are just spectators, pilgrims who spend a short time on Earth.

That so many people need climate change in the face of the immense forces of nature can be put down to human hubris. They want the illusion of control, and the tool that they use to further that illusion is no longer religion but the state.

Bravo, The Australian!

Read it here and here.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Comment - the left-wing intelligentsia don't have a clue

An article in The Guardian this morning (reprinted in The Sydney Morning Herald), in which the current solar inactivity is dismissed as irrelevant in the whole "climate change" debate, made my hackles rise:
[Professor Nigel Weiss of Cambridge University] said there was even a chance that Earth might be heading for a low as deep as the historic lows of the 17th century, known as the Maunder minimum. Either side of that trough, Europe shivered through the Little Ice Age, when frost fairs were held on the Thames. [At least The Guardian acknowledges the existence of the LIA, unlike most of the IPCC - Ed]

Should we expect another freeze? Those who claim the rise in temperatures we have seen over the past century are predominantly the result of intense solar activity might argue that we should, but they are in the minority. [Science isn't about consensus, or who has the greater numbers - Ed]

Most scientists believe humans are the main culprit when it comes to global warming, and Professor Weiss is no exception. [Note the use of "no execption" i.e to the rule - Ed]

Even if we had another, similar low, he said, it would probably only cause temperatures on Earth to drop by the order of a tenth of a degree - peanuts compared to recent rise. So do not pack the sunscreen away just yet.

So a previous solar minimum was enough to cause a mini-Ice Age, but this one will only drop temperatures a tenth of a degree? The logic is baffling.

The Left-wing elite, and their attendant media, have such a high opinion of themselves, and the powers of the human race, that they genuinely believe that they can have an effect on the climate of this planet. They never look beyond their lattés at the reality of earth and its environment within the solar system and the universe. The universe is a hostile and violent place, and earth has, for much of its existence, been far from benign. We are fortunate that we live in an era of relative stability on earth, but as Ian Plimer demonstrates in his book, Heaven and Earth, the planet has gone through some unimaginable times - extinctions, Ice Ages, massive volcanic eruptions, cosmic ray bursts from nearby supernovae - all of which humans have no control over.

And anyway, what's so special about humanity anyway? We are little more than a scum on the surface - a product of evolution in very fortunate circumstances - and we have no special place in the universe, certainly not one powerful enough to affect a climate controlled by a raging thermonuclear reaction which has been burning on our doorstep for 4.5 billion years. The forces at work in the universe, and the scales involved, are immense, far beyond comprehension even for cosmologists, so it's hardly surprising that politicians and journalists do not have an inkling.

"Look at the IPCC models," they cry. The IPCC models hardly take any notice of solar effects, water vapour, cloud etc. They are all too hard, so they're left out. And the result is that the earth has cooled since 2001, and not a single model predicted it correctly. And then you look at the history of climate change over the past billion years, as recorded in ice cores and other proxies, and there are clear correlations with the activity of the sun, the orbital position of the earth, and even the position of the solar system in the galaxy.

I hope that solar inactivity continues, and that cooling continues. Something like a repeat of the Maunder Minimum might just be enough to shock the liberal elite out of their cosy belief that the earth and its surroundings are benign and pure, and have been defiled only by the evils of humanity.

Friday, April 24, 2009

More climate sense from The Australian

Where will it end? I'll be out of a job in a minute! Bring back the climate madness! In two more excellent articles, The Australian brushes up its sceptic credentials, firstly on the science:
The science of climate change continues to evolve and regardless of the outcome of the climate debate, observational data suggests that we may be served well by basing our climate agenda, scientifically and economically, on a broader perspective than that in the IPCC outlined scenarios. Our pollution abatement and energy diversification goals could then be formulated, and likely implemented, with less pain.

And secondly, on the propaganda machine:
Popular acceptance of the widely contested theory that climate catastrophe threatens us because of our clogging the atmosphere with carbon dioxide emissions gains ground with even the most frivolous and deceptive claims for its validity.

Attempts made to attribute the Victorian bushfires to climate change did not take root. But claims that climate change caused the collapse of an Antarctic ice bridge received worldwide and largely uncritical attention. Collapsing is what ice bridges do and have done for countless millennia.

All good stuff! Read them here and here.

But the science is settled, right?

For once in a blue moon, a story about something that isn't as dire as first thought. There were fears (i.e. alarmism) that the methane locked at the bottom of the world's oceans could be brought to the surface by "global warming", but apparently, the science isn't as settled as some (Rudd, Wong, Gore, Hansen etc etc) would have us believe:
The concern has been that as the world gets warmer, some of the clathrates [methane compounds] would escape into the atmosphere and have a dramatic amplifying effect on global warming.

The CSIRO's Dr David Etheridge says the circumstantial evidence was not good.

"There's evidence in the long-term past, millions of years ago, that this may have occurred," he said.

"It is circumstantial evidence only. What we needed to know for the future is whether the warming that we are currently seeing and which will increase in the future will destabilise these clathrates."
...
"I think this confirms that source of methane, that potential source of methane, is more stable than we previously thought and that gives us some upper bounds to the future releases that we might expect with a warming world."

A non-alarmist article from the ABC? Heresy - that journo should be burnt at the stake!

Read it here.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read!

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Earth Day predictions from 1970

Thanks to reader David F. Here are some of the Earth Day predictions from 1970. Some of them will sound scarily familiar to those being made today, which will be just as wrong:
“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

Read the rest here.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Fact or fiction: Fatties cause climate change


Eww, put it away, love... (© Sun newspaper)

Global fatsters are causing global warming (no, honestly, it says so on news.com.au so it must be true...). So away we go, let's bash the lard-arses:
Scientists warned that the increase in big-eaters means more food production - a major cause of CO2 gas emissions warming the planet [note the lack of any qualifying "may be" or "might" or "could" - hey, the science is settled, you denier, you - Ed], according to a report in English newspaper The Sun.

The environmental impact of fat humans is made even worse because they are more likely to travel by car - another major cause of carbon emissions. ["Fat humans" - hilarious!]

Each fat person is said to be responsible for a tonne more of climate-warming carbon dioxide per year than a thin one due to factors including higher food and fuel consumption.

Read it here, or here for the original Sun article [with lots more illustrative photos like the one above - Sun readers don't have much imagination, so when a story mentions fat people, it is accompanied by copious pictures of, er, fat people. Oh, and, because it's a story about climate change, a picture of a polar bear. Sadly not this one...]


ETS shock - Wong doesn't call Opposition "deniers"

But calls them "Howard government Kyoto sceptics", which is perfectly fair comment. Maybe she and the government are realising that it's just a teensy-weensy bit hypocritical to brand the Opposition as "deniers" when in fact it is the government, the IPCC, Krudd and Wong herself that are the true deniers - denying that the IPCC models have failed to predict the last decade of cooling, denying that the cooling is even happening, and pretending that "it's all happening faster than we thought" (© Al Gore and James Hansen).

Ever more desperate to keep her ETS ship afloat, despite it being holed many times below the waterline and now listing heavily to starboard, Penny goes on the offensive, blaming the Opposition for its likely failure:
"Wrecking this reform is about much more than Australia's domestic political debate. Wrecking this reform shortens the odds of not getting a global deal on climate change."
...
Senator Wong said the emissions trading scheme represented "an opportunity to go to Copenhagen with a responsible position".

But she refused to countenance any changes to the scheme, despite lack of support from industry and environment groups.

So business as usual there, however.

Read it here.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Chief Scientist Sackett a raving alarmist

Seems if you have a name like Penny, there's no hope. Back in October last year, only a few days after I started this blog, I posted on the new Chief Scientist and was optimistic about things:
Here's a great opportunity for someone with a genuine scientific approach and significant influence in Government to cut through the usual AGW hysteria and take a dispassionate look at the science, not just the propaganda.

She said at the time:
"I believe that the people of Australia, if they have the choices that confront them clearly articulated in an open atmosphere of dialogue and if that is underpinned with scientific evidence, then I believe that Australians will make the choice that is the best for them and for their children."

A promising start, I thought. How wrong can you be, for Penny Mark II has revealed herself to be even more away with the Gore-fairies than Penny Mark I:
Professor Sackett has also warned the world only has six years to decrease its emissions to avoid damaging climate change.

"We know that the rate at which we are putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is increasing rather than decreasing," she said.

"We also know that if we want to maintain that level of climate change which we could measure by the increase in global average temperature to 2 degrees then we have six years to reverse the trend from increasing CO2 emissions to decreasing CO2 emissions.

"It's not long, which is why we need to begin to act now."

All recycled, political, IPCC-speak. Sadly, Ms Sackett, you are unfit to call yourself a scientist of any kind, let alone the chief one.

Read it here.

Hilarious! Penny Wong fails to name a single supporter of the ETS

That's because there aren't any, clearly:
Federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has been unable to name a single supporter of her government's embattled Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

This prompted the opposition to claim the scheme would "wander the corridors of Parliament looking in vain for a friend".

Senator Wong struggled to answer a reporter in Sydney who asked her to name any supporter of the scheme outside her own party.

"This is a reform that was a commitment of the Rudd Labor government, made prior to our election," was her response.

Too funny! Read it here.

Climate sense from The Australian

Yet more climate sense, with even a dash of scepticism thrown in. What's going on? In an opinion piece entitled "Wong is wrong on ETS", The Australian skewers the utter nonsense that is the ETS:
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong was as intractable as ever yesterday in her insistence that "the time is right" to proceed. But if the Prime Minister does not prevail on her to change her mind, the Senate is likely to vote down the scheme. That would be the responsible course at this time, and one that more pragmatic members of the Rudd Government would welcome. It would enable them to keep faith with those who want action and blame the Opposition and minor parties for the defeat, while avoiding the economic difficulties of pressing ahead.
...
A more prudent course would be to wait and allow the outcome of the [Copenhagen] summit to inform the legislation. Even then, the uncertainties of climate change, including significant expansion of ice in east Antarctica, suggest a cautious approach is warranted.
...
Senator Wong's likening the scheme to "getting fit" is off course. Starting the ETS during a recession would be akin to starting a fitness plan in the midst of a bad bout of 'flu.

The Australian is thinking like a proper scientist for once, and actually taking note of what's happening in the real world, rather than relying blindly on the woefully inadequate computer models of the IPCC, in which Rudd and Wong have put all their faith.

Read it here.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Penny Wong - like a cracked record

I am tiring of Penny Wong's arrogance, and I hope the general public will soon do likewise. Senate enquiry? Don't care. Opposition left, right and centre to the ETS? Not listening [sticks fingers in ears and shouts "la, la, la" molto fortissimo]. Almost as boring as the constant repetition of the "two errors in four words" Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, is Penny Wong's insistence that the scheme will go ahead whatever - like Catherine Tate: am I bovvered? As the ABC reports:
Federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says she is determined to push ahead with the proposed emissions trading scheme despite strengthening opposition to the plan.

"Malcolm Turnbull and every Senator is going to have to make a decision whether they will vote to allow Australia's carbon pollution to continue to rise, or whether they will finally say it's time for us to turn this around and start to reduce Australia's emissions," she said.

There's unfortunately no other word for it - idiotic.

Read it here.

Protest against EPA's proposed ruling on CO2

To all my US readers, I urge you to submit comments to the EPA protesting against the madness of classifying CO2 as a pollutant (from Justin at I ♥ CO2):
In a landmark decision long pushed for by some environmentalists and money-hungry politicians, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has almost officially declared CO2 -- AKA plant food, the air you exhale, the bubbles in beer, and the basis of all life -- a "pollutant".

As the Earth continues to cool and the rest of the world has begun to realize that CO2 is neither a pollutant nor a climate driver, the EPA and the Obama administration continue to push the hoax of the century on an increasingly skeptical public. It seems as though Al Gore and the lobbyists are also ramping up their campaigns against science and reason in light of the fact that more and more people are waking up to the reality of this scam.

If the EPA succeeds in its proposed finding, this will in effect give the government the LEGAL ABILITY to tax and severely control nearly everything in our lives, ranging from driving your car all the way to switching on a television, using a hairdryer, mowing your lawn, or heaven forbid burning a candle.

This EPA "finding" cannot be allowed. All the factual science has been thrown into the trash in favour of a fatally flawed ideology and completely unfounded fear of a hypothetical human-caused climate change which is not happening, and we will all pay dearly for it.

In fact, millions of people in the third world will pay with their lives for this outrageous way of thinking, especially if this type of unscientific policy spreads around the world as many environmentalists are hoping for. Countless souls have already starved to death thanks to the nonsensical push for biofuels which has taken over food crops around the world. This madness must be stopped.

The EPA is taking comments from the public for 60 days before their decision is finalized, so please make your voices heard. Tell the legislators and politicians that we aren't going to fall for it, and tell them to throw their junk science out the window along with this ridiculous idea that carbon is "pollution". More and more honest politicians and unbiased (IE: non-government funded) scientists are speaking out daily but their voices are heavily suppressed and effectively silenced by Big Environment and socialist green agendas.

Please visit this link to submit your comments to the EPA. Do it now, and spread the word to everyone you know.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

Oops a day late, sorry! But still, a great read!

Ian Plimer at the Sydney Mining Club

Fellow sceptic blogger Magnus over at Klimathot-Gameover has sent some links to YouTube videos of Ian Plimer's talk to the Sydney Mining Club on 6 November 2008. It's in five parts:

Climate sense from The Australian

An editorial and two excellent articles from The Australian today. Here's the editorial, with links to the other articles:
The science on global warming is certainly not settled

DELIGHTED doomsayers who applauded the announcement last week that an ice sheet on the west Antarctic cost was collapsing should leave the champagne on ice. Because, as Greg Roberts reports in The Weekend Australian, it appears everything is icier in most of Antarctica. This is not to deny that other parts of the planet appear to be warming up, or even to argue against the orthodoxy that human activity is responsible. But every warning of what global warming will lead to is not inevitably accurate. As Adelaide geologist and Eureka Prize winner Ian Plimer points out in an interview with Jamie Walker in the paper this morning, predictions of what will happen to the planet under a range of climate conditions to come will not necessarily occur simply because they are predicted by computer models. As any economist will explain, models deliver on the data provided by the programmers. "Garbage in, garbage out" as one anonymous expert famously put it. And as our understanding of the environment changes, so will what we expect to happen. "Always changing the future is" as a famous, if fictional, futurologist says.

For environmental activists, any suggestion prophecies of planetary peril should be considered carefully is heresy. Climate change doubters are apologists for Western consumer lifestyles that produce the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming, they argue. But there is more sociology than science in such suggestions. For people who believe it is wrong for all Australians to have electricity when many Africans do not, global warming is a statement of faith. Many scientists are equally upset, saying the evidence is in and people who question the cause and effect of global warming should defer to those who have done the work. The problem is, as Professor Plimer demonstrates, expert irritation does not disguise the fact that the science is anything but settled. Atmospheric scientists dominate the global warming debate, he says, and their focus on carbon dioxide emissions excludes other disciplines and obscures other issues that may describe what is going on and why.

Perhaps scientists who say there is a 90 per cent certainty that global warming is human-induced are correct. But as Professor Plimer argues, such claims are impressive-sounding figures of speech - scientists can believe them, but they do not know. No one does. This is not to deny the need for ever-more research on global warming or the case for development of economically sustainable sources of alternative energy. In Australia there is bipartisan support for both. But to assume we know how much the planet will warm this century and what effect this will have is a matter of faith, not reason. And faith-based research is less science than secular religion.

Read it here.

US Environmental Protection Agency deems CO2 a health risk

These are the crazy depths to which we have sunk. The harmless gas, carbon dioxide, essential to all life on earth, but demonised by governments all over the world, has now been branded a health risk by the moonbats at the US EPA:
"After a thorough scientific review ordered in 2007 by the US Supreme Court, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a proposed finding... that greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare," an EPA statement posted on the agency website said.

"This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations. Fortunately, it follows President Obama's call for a low carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation," Administrator Lisa Jackson said.

"This pollution problem has a solution - one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country's dependence on foreign oil."

Science or politics? You decide. Maybe they should think about deeming oxygen a health risk - after all if it weren't for all that pesky oxygen in the atmosphere, there wouldn't be any bushfires...

Read it here.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Even Ross Garnaut thinks the ETS is worse than nothing

Ross Garnaut is, of course, Krudd's handpicked climate change advisor, and in front of the Senate enquiry into the ETS, even he urged significant changes to it.
"If there were no changes at all it would be a line-ball call whether it is better to push ahead or say we still want the [emissions trading scheme] at the centre of our mitigation effort but we'll have another crack at it and do a better one when the time is right," he said.

Wow, that's high praise indeed. The criticism of the ETS has been universal, yet Penny Wong, in her ivory tower, brushes it all aside, saying that starting again is not an option:
"People have their own opinions. The Government's made decisions in the national interest," she said.

"Going back to the drawing board on emissions trading would significantly increase business uncertainty."

We'll see.

Read it here and here.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

CSIRO scientists spout alarmism to Senate enquiry on ETS

Of course, they are doing it in their "personal capacity", but all the media reports are plastered with references to CSIRO, which does nothing for that organisation's reputation as an impartial scientific body. Penny Wong must be rubbing her hands with glee...

And the reality is that whatever the climate science, the ETS will do nothing for the Australian climate, nothing for the global climate, but everything to destroy jobs and the Australian economy, so everything that follows is ultimately pointless!
Dr James Risbey says if applied across all nations, the Government's targets imply a 50 to 90 per cent chance of exceeding the dangerous threshold of a 2 degree global warming.

He writes: "In other words this is Russian roulette with the climate system with most of the chambers loaded."

Three others have made a joint submission, saying the Australian targets will not achieve climate protection and that even if every nation on earth adopts and succeeds in meeting Australian targets, global emissions would still be above a pathway consistent with long-term climate protection.

And the ABC is only to happy to help out the alarmist cause:
The views of these climate researchers are widely held in Australia's scientific community. [That doesn't make them correct - Ed]

"I think that the scientific community as a whole, including every climate scientist that I know in CSIRO [sorry, I thought this was a personal submission... - Ed], is of the view that first; climate change is a very serious problem, second; that global strategies at the moment are inadequate to provide the satisfactory path forward and I think also people hold the view that Australia needs to be doing more," he said.

I hope they take a hefty submission from Ian Plimer to counterbalance the nonsense these guys are spouting...

Read it here.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Fairytale Facts - Climate nonsense from The Sydney Morning Herald

Phew, that's more like it. The Herald is back to peddling the usual alarmism after the brief flicker of enlightenment yesterday... I'm not even going to quote it, but you can go there and have a laugh (or cry) if you wish.

Read it here.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Climate sense from The Sydney Morning Herald

No, you did read that correctly, and it's not from Miranda Devine. In a balanced and intelligent article about Ian Plimer's latest book, Heaven and Earth, the author, Paul Sheehan, openly questions his own views on "climate change":
What I am about to write questions much of what I have written in this space, in numerous columns, over the past five years. Perhaps what I have written can withstand this questioning. Perhaps not. The greater question is, am I - and you - capable of questioning our own orthodoxies and intellectual habits? Let's see.

This is the point which most believers in AGW are unable to get beyond. Ian Plimer's arguments against the alarmism of AGW are compelling:
"To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable - human-induced CO2 - is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science."
...
The setting up by the UN of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988 gave an opportunity to make global warming the main theme of environmental groups. "The IPCC process is related to environmental activism, politics and opportunism. It is unrelated to science. Current zeal around human-induced climate change is comparable to the certainty professed by Creationists or religious fundamentalists."

It's a small step, but an important one. The book is published tomorrow and I hope to get a copy as soon as possible.

Read it here.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Opposition environment spokesman criticises Government "brainwashing"

Finally, the opposition climate change spokesman, Greg Hunt, has gone on record criticising Penny Wong and the Kruddites for using stealth techniques to brainwash our children into believing the government's AGW agenda:
[She] announced a taxpayer-funded competition for students in grades 3 to 9, awarding prizes such as iPods and Nintendo Wii consoles to students who best answer the question, "What does climate change mean to me?" using short stories, poems, songs or art.

Ms Wong — charged with selling the Government's emissions trading scheme amid a global recession — has written to every federal MP urging them to write to local schools to promote the competition.
...
Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt accused the Government of politicising schools "with a campaign that supports an unpopular and widely regarded as flawed Government policy".

"It is Orwellian to impose this political campaign on our young students when almost every single school is still waiting for the solar panels Mr Rudd promised them in 2007. If Mr Rudd is so worried about emissions, why is he holding a competition that promises a return jet trip and gadgets that use electricity as prizes?"

Read it here.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Marc Morano's new site - Climate Depot

One of the great warriors against the AGW madness, Marc Morano, has launched a new site:

www.climatedepot.com

I'm sure it will become essential reading for sceptics the world over.

Victorian Governor wades in on "climate change"

He's just following the lead of GG Quentin Bryce, of course, who has already discredited her appointment by becoming heavily involved in political matters (see here, here, here, here and here):
In a speech to an environmental sustainability conference at Monash University, Professor [David] de Kretser suggested a carbon tax might be a more effective weapon in the fight against global warming [surely "climate change" - Ed] because it would drive high-polluting developing countries towards renewable energy.

Because clearly we have runaway global warming:



And inevitably, the bottom line is more regulation to stifle our economy to fight this non-existent threat:
He called on individual Australians to reduce their "environmental footprint", and on governments to legislate "to change people's lifestyle".

i.e. to return Western civilisation to the Dark Ages.

Read it here.

Friday, April 10, 2009

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read!

Yet more indoctrination - where will it end?

Another day, another example of children being indoctrinated about environmental issues. The fact that there exists an "Australian Youth Climate Coalition" says it all:
Anna Rose, from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, which encourages young people to take action on climate change, says these concerns often lead young people to want to do more.

"We definitely have had a lot of parents talk to us about how they've changed their habits because their kids have been pushing them," she says.

That's it - get the kids to badger the parents...
She says the green message is understood and accepted by children because, unlike their parents, who see the environment as a political football, their "future is inextricably bound up in it".

Maybe it's because children are naïve about the harsh realities of life... I am all for teaching children that we should reduce waste, save energy and care for the environment, but when children are brainwashed into believing a political ideology, that's indoctrination.

Read it here.

Climate talks fizzle (again)

Remember Poznan? That fizzled. Now yet another round of climate negotiations has ended in a "familiar stalemate". But hang on, "climate change" is the greatest threat to humanity since the dawn of time, isn't it? We should be doing something, now!
Despite high expectations, the first United Nations climate meeting attended by the Obama Administration fizzled out without a clear plan for reaching a post-Kyoto climate deal, due to be signed in December in Copenhagen.

Climate Institute policy director Erwin Jackson, a 20-year observer of climate talks, said most countries were "sleep-walking" towards the year-end deadline. "There is no sense of momentum, no sense of building trust and no sense within the negotiations about how we are going to resolve the outstanding issues," he said after the end of the 10-day talks in Germany.

Maybe, despite all the hype and spin, governments really have bigger worries to deal with...

Read it here.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Fairytale Facts - "global warming" blamed for heat deaths

The models are hopeless, the climate is cooling, but still Fairytale-facts (formerly Fairfax) news continues to print alarmist stories by the sackload. The University of NSW has looked at the IPCC climate models (on which most western governments are basing their misguided climate policies), discovered that most of them were total crocks, then used those that were left to grudgingly concede that the temperature rise by the next century might by only 2 - 3 degrees. But guess what? No let up in the alarmism:
One of the authors, Andy Pitman, said the research should not be interpreted as diminishing the climate change problem for Australia. [Course not, gotta keep that funding bandwagon rollin' - Ed] He said the study found the 2- to 3-degree temperature rise would generate even fiercer heatwaves than Victoria and South Australia had this year and would have a big impact on human health and the ability of societies to cope. "The lower figures are not as bad as 3 to 5 degrees but they're still very bad and emphasise the need to aggressively cut greenhouse gases on a global scale," Professor Pitman said.

The report then blamed the higher deaths in heatwaves on "global warming" (which stopped in 2001, and since when the earth has cooled...):
"What we are saying is that with global warming, those temperatures that are rare, like those in Melbourne, will be 3 degrees warmer," Dr Pitman said. "That has really major impacts on infrastructure, power grids and human health."

I there was me thinking it was because the moonbat premiers told people to keep their air-conditioners turned off to cut emissions...

Read it here.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

OT: Obama's Turkish Delight

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

UPDATED: Indoctrination Alert as school kids question Penny Wong

UPDATE: Cory Bernardi, Liberal Senator in South Australia, correctly identifies this cheap stunt as "brainwashing":
"Encouraging children to look after the environment is laudable aim but this seems to have more in common with the ministry of propaganda than the balanced education of our children," he told AdelaideNow.

"One can only guess that the only children eligible to win this competition will be those who conform to the Rudd Government and Minister Wong's extreme political propaganda about climate change.

"I doubt the competition materials will include any discussion of how the Rudd Government ETS (emissions trading scheme) will export Australian industry overseas and result in hundreds of thousands of job losses for Australian workers."

Well said indeed. Read it here.

Original Story:

Year 6 students at Cammeray Public School have written to Penny Wong to ask about how the government is "tackling climate change" [I wonder if the students came up with that idea themselves, or whether they were "encouraged" to do so by their bearded lefty public school teachers? - Ed]. Anyway, Saint Penny graced them with her presence today:
Senator Wong explained how the government's planned carbon trading scheme would work and fielded many questions about hybrid cars. [I wonder if she answered the one about how many years you need to drive a Prius before it saves one day's worth of emissions from a coal fired power station? Answer: 70,000 - Ed]

"One of the really great things about being climate change minister is how interested in the issue so many young Australians are," Senator Wong said afterwards. [You mean, how interested in the issue so many public school teachers are - Ed]

She also launched a competition for students in grades three to nine across Australia.

In the Think Climate Think Change competition, children are encouraged to express what climate change means to them through art, poems or short stories.

All of which is just pure political indoctrination dressed up as a bit of harmless fun. Disgraceful. Be grateful your kids don't go to Cammeray Public School, or probably any other public school in NSW...

Read it here.

P.S. Winners will be flown to Canberra in August to discuss their ideas with Krudd, Gillard and Wong. Losers get to do exactly the same, twice.

Clinton - clueless on climate

From a conference in Washington:
With the collapse of an ice bridge that holds in place the Wilkins Ice Shelf, we are reminded that global warming has already had enormous affects [effects? - Ed] on our planet and we have no time to lose in tackling this crisis.

And Steve Campbell from Greenpeace also cannot wait to ring the climate change bell:
Well, if the collapse of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in the last few days is not a huge wake-up call for our political leaders at a global level, I really don't know what is.

Time for the international community to bite the bullet and come to the table in international climate negotiations, and make sure that particularly developed countries agree to deep emissions reductions [read "huge redistribution of wealth and the destruction of western economies" - Ed], so we can start to really help to solve the climate crisis at the global level.

In reality, however, even Crikey thinks the whole Wilkins ice shelf business is nothing but hot air:
Only a small part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf is affected by this event. It is also located in the Antarctic Peninsula, which is milder and subject to higher snowfall than the main mass of the continent.

The mass of ice involved is dwarfed by many larger ice shelf breakouts studied in great detail over the last 60 years in Antarctica.

It is embarrassing to see scientists and newspapers prostitute themselves in this manner. Are they that desperate to seek inclusion in the politically correct but unscientifically sound association of anything and everything with the truly serious matter of climate change?

Ice shelves are dynamic. Just as dynamic as they have been for millions of years, during glacials and interglacials. (source)

And these guys believe in AGW!!

Read it here.

Monday, April 6, 2009

A Tale of Many Headlines

All the media of course focuses on the Antarctic when it suits them, despite the fact that there has been no appreciable rise in temperature there over the past 30 years, which seems to indicate all of these ice shelf losses have arisen from other factors (but let's not permit the facts to get in the way of a good scare story):
Whereas the Catlin Arctic Survey team (see here) are wishing that they hadn't packed their bermuda shorts and sun screen and are discovering that it is "stupidly cold" in the Arctic. Also, that the RSS temperature data show the March Arctic temperature below the 30 year average. So for comparison, here is the list of news articles reporting those stories:
  • [silence]
  • Er, ...
  • That's it.
And who said the media was biased?

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Climate madness from Reuters

And shame on The Australian for repeating it without a sanity check. It's another in the long line of "it's-all-happening-faster-that-we-thought-quick-do-something" articles that the media are so keen on. And of course, like Pavlov's dog when the bell rang, the climate scientists slaver and cry "global warming"...
ONE Antarctic ice shelf has quickly vanished, another is disappearing and glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought due to climate change, US and British government researchers said. [That's despite "global warming" having stopped in 2001 - Ed]

The Wordie Ice Shelf, which had been disintegrating since the 1960s, is gone and the northern part of the Larsen Ice Shelf no longer exists.

But hang on, "since the 1960s"? So during a period of significant global cooling when all the climate scientists (and the media) were predicting the next Ice Age, this ice shelf was disappearing, right? What do you think that might say about the possible cause? Maybe, like, something else? Winds, ocean currents, volcanoes perhaps. It's like teaching a junior science class...
More than 8300 sq km have broken off from the Larsen shelf since 1986. [In perspective, that's about 6 one hundredths of one percent of 14 million sq km globally, and the global sea ice extent is still higher than 2004, 5, 6 and 7 - Ed]

Climate change is to blame, according to the report from the US Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey, available here. [Of course it is, you denier you, and, by blaming "climate change", we can disengage our brains, score some cheap alarmist headlines from moonbat press agencies like Reuters, collect our next funding cheque, and disappear off to the boozer - Ed]

"The rapid retreat of glaciers there demonstrates once again the profound effects our planet is already experiencing - more rapidly than previously known - as a consequence of climate change," US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said.

What else would you expect from an Obama appointed politician? 0/10 for The Australian - must try harder.

Read it here.

Aussie Greens' misplaced hope in US

The Greens have been pointing to the "ambitious" US draft [daft? - Ed] climate change legislation as proof that Australia was not going far enough in its emissions reduction targets. But the reality is that the legislation has "zero chance" of being passed any time soon:
The bill, introduced by chairman of the energy and commerce committee Henry Waxman, stunned climate change proponents with its aggressive call for carbon emissions to be cut by 20 per cent by 2020, from 2005 levels. But it is seen by many in Washington as simply an ambit claim in US climate change legislation stakes.

Moves towards a comprehensive cap and trade system are being blasted by Republicans as a tax increase and senior Democrats and moderate Republicans have been pouring cold water this week on expectations of anything happening this year.

While Australian Greens senator Christine Milne characterised the Waxman bill this week as a sign the US had seized the leadership role and was surpassing countries such as Australia, the reality is very different in the US capital.
...
"The Democrats' plan to raise energy taxes in the midst of a serious recession is the wrong thing to do and the worst possible time to do it," said Republican leader of the house John Boehner.

Sorry Christine. Back to the drawing board.

Read it here.

Friday, April 3, 2009

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read!

I love the Fairytalefax comment - I think I may change it slightly to Fairytale Facts, which is what Fairfax prints most of the time.

Climate Madness from Greg Combet

The climate change hierarchy goes like this: Rudd, Garrett, Wong, Combet. Rudd is too busy toadying up to Obama at the G20 to give a monkey's about climate change, Peter Garrett - sorry, who's he again?, Wong - so last year, and we're left with Combet to spout the government's pitiful "climate change policy" - which is sort of like having a policy to "tackle the sun turning into a red giant and swallowing the earth whole in 4.5 billion years". Anyway, Combet is learning the ropes of double-speak and spin with announcements like this:
"Many industries which are affected by the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme or potentially affected by it of course are also being severely impacted by the global economic downturn, and so its increasingly in the commentary of the industries becoming mixed up between the two issues," he said.

"We're obviously very concerned to ensure that we support jobs in all the current industries, but I can assure you the principal driver of the job insecurity at the moment is the global economic downturn, not the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme draft legislation."

So let's just analyse this - industries are being affected more by a global downturn than a bunch of draft legislation which has no effect whatsoever? Gee, that's a surprise. How does he imagine businesses are currently affected by the draft legislation, which, until made law, isn't worth the paper it's printed on?

So much to learn, so little time, Greg.

Read it here and weep.

Climate change ignored at G20

Can you believe it? The greatest challenge to humanity since the dawn of time (© Al Gore, James Hansen, IPCC etc etc) but the G20 choose to sidestep it completely. As the understandably miserable sounding Ohn Sauven, Executive Director of Greenpeace, puts it, sounding for all the world like a kid whose just lost his favourite teddy bear:
"Hundreds of billions were found for the IMF and World Bank, but for making the transition to a green economy there is no money on the table, just vague aspirations, talks about talks and agreements to agree.

"A clear financial commitment to green investment and jobs could have helped kick-start a green economy and tackle climate change." (source)

No it couldn't. At least the G20 are right on this issue.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

UPDATED: Dog-on-a-string brigade attack G20

Any gathering of world leaders, no matter how left wing or moonbattish (think Obama, Brown and Rudd) will bring all the anti-globalisation headbangers out of the woodwork for a free punch-up. Thus, the G20 summit has become the target of thousands of protesters, resulting in one death:
The man fell over unconscious, prompting a member of the public to call emergency services.
...
Police "made extensive efforts to resuscitate him both there and on the way to hospital'', an emergency services spokesperson said.

The man's death came as police, many dressed in riot gear, were out in force as thousands demonstrated through the city's financial district, outside the US embassy and in Trafalgar Square.

Chanting anti-capitalist, anti-war and anti-pollution slogans, they vented their fury as G20 leaders prepare to discuss the world financial crisis tomorrow.

Read it here.

UPDATE: It turns out that the police who tried to administer first aid to this person, who was a passer-by, were themselves pelted with missiles - disgusting. The UK Daily Mail has the full story.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

IATA turns warmist

IATA, the International Air Transport Association, a global airline trade organisation, has signed up to the full "CO2-causes-global-warming" script by announcing that it wants to reduce emissions during the landing phase of an aircraft's flight in order to "combat climate change":
In all, airlines are hoping to save 500,000 metric tons of carbon gas this way each year, said IATA's head of infrastructure Guenther Matschnigg.

The measure - the first continent-wide plan of its kind - is part of the airline industry's effort to combat climate change, IATA said.

500,000 metric tons is about 2 thousandths of one percent of global emissions. Let's hope it doesn't compromise safety.

Read it here.

Barking Bishop links bush fires to climate change

Another day, another bishop wading in on the climate debate feet first. This time it's George Browning, former bishop of Canberra and Goulburn, and a renowned expert on atmospheric physics and meteorology in his spare time, who has blamed the Victorian bush fires on "climate change". Speaking at a memorial service in Westminster Abbey, attended by Krudd and his Kronies, he said:
Weather patterns are changing and the human footprint is a major contributor.”

[Arse-lick Alert] I am therefore grateful and proud that the Australian Government has made a significant contribution to reduce the Australian contribution to the adverse effects of the human footprint.

“We dare not contemplate a future without learning the lessons this experience has taught us.”

As with wacky Rowan Williams (see here), he should stick to bothering god, not the rest of us with his ill-informed claptrap.

Read it here.