Krudd - King of Inanity

Kevin Rudd has shown himself not to be the sharpest chisel in the toolbox, and to prove it he seems to be doing most of his communication via Twitter. For those of you who are interested, Kev's twittering can be found at http://twitter.com/kevinruddPM, but if you can't wait, here are a few thoughts from the mind of our great leader (these are not made up, in case you wondered):

• Blues played hard. Tough game. Congrats to NSW for last night and to Qld for the series. Fantastic atmosphere at Suncorp. KRudd. [Translation - Sport. Man of the people.]
• Good chat w Obama on climate change. Together w other leaders launched Carbon Capture & Storage Institute. Much to do b4 Copenhagen. KRudd [Translation - I am a very important person.]
• Great to be home. Test draw painful! Got update mid flight. Family well. Dog happy. Cat grumpy. Situation normal. Now back to work. KRudd [Translation - Family man.]
• Starting my blog tomorrow on Climate Change. Like to hear your ideas on practical action. KRudd [Translation - I'm a guy who will take action on climate change, because I don't understand anything except what the IPCC and Penny Wong tell me]

I mean, really, who would possibly want to read such vacuous and inane comments from their Prime Minister? Then there's the blog, of course, which parrots, almost verbatim the usual cracked record nonsense and misrepresentations we hear every day from Penny Wong:

Australia is determined to be on the front foot in global efforts to tackle climate change [Why? - Ed]. We know that our nation is more exposed to the impact of climate change than perhaps any other developed economy. Without strong global and national action, climate change will permanently damage our natural environment and hit our jobs and our economy hard. The Great Barrier Reef – one of Australia’s most iconic natural wonders which generates jobs for around 60,000 people and more than $4.9 billion in tourism revenue – is particularly vulnerable to climate change.

The next step for Australia is to take strong action at home through Parliament passing the [two errors in four words] Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in August. This scheme will for the first time put a limit on Australia’s [two errors in two words] carbon pollution. By taking action at home in Australia, we can give businesses certainty and give momentum to the international negotiations that are so crucial for our national interest.

ACM's advice is to avoid both at all costs.

Did Gore meet Fielding? Three guesses…

(I'll give you a clue, the answer's "no".) Why not, we ask? As any fule kno, Al loves a good debate about global warming [surely "climate change" - Ed] so why his reluctance to demonstrate easily to the misguided Steve Fielding that the debate's over and the science is settled? Should have been easy, right? Apparently not...

Climate change sceptic [why not just "Senator"? - Ed] Steve Fielding says he is still searching for answers after receiving the brush-off from environmental crusader Al Gore.

Senator Fielding, who holds a crucial vote in the emissions trading debate, had been trying to pin down the former US vice-president to explain one of his key climate change concerns.

But Mr Gore only managed to find time for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd during his flying visit to Australia this week.

Having offered to meet him at any time and fly to wherever he was, Senator Fielding said it was ridiculous the 2007 Nobel Prize winner didn't have five minutes to spare.

"He was aware of how important my vote was ... but obviously he felt more comfortable running to someone - our prime minister - who actually supports and believes in what's he doing," he told Fairfax Radio Network on Friday.

Don't waste your breath next time Senator - the High Priest Gore will only preach to the converted.

Read it here.

Climate models "fundamentally wrong" on CO2

Don't forget that these models are the same ones on which governments around the world are basing their misguided policies on "climate change". And now it appears that there are serious problems with the way in which they model the effect of CO2. A study has found that climate models explain only about half of the heating that occurred during a well-documented period of rapid global warming in Earth's ancient past, known as the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM:

“In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record,” said oceanographer Gerald Dickens, a co-author of the study and professor of Earth science at Rice University. “There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models.”

During the PETM, for reasons that are still unknown, the amount of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere rose rapidly. For this reason, the PETM, which has been identified in hundreds of sediment core samples worldwide, is probably the best ancient climate analogue for present-day Earth.
...
The conclusion, Dickens said, is that something other than carbon dioxide caused much of the heating during the PETM. “Some feedback loop or other processes that aren’t accounted for in these models — the same ones used by the IPCC for current best estimates of 21st Century warming — caused a substantial portion of the warming that occurred during the PETM.”

Hang on - how many of you have spotted the obvious problem with all this? Yes, that's right. The science is settled - debate's over. Move along. Nothing to see here...

Read it here (h/t Watts Up With That)

Even RealClimate.org admits world cooling

Thanks to Climate Depot:

The recent global cooling has now been happening for so long that the cooling is even admitted by the pro-AGW-propaganda web site which calls itself RealClimate.org.

Here they say:

Excerpt: “We hypothesize that the established pre-1998 trend is the true forced warming signal, and that the climate system effectively overshot this signal in response to the 1997/98 El Niño. This overshoot is in the process of radiatively dissipating, and the climate will return to its earlier defined, greenhouse gas-forced warming signal. If this hypothesis is correct, the era of consistent record-breaking global mean temperatures will not resume until roughly 2020.”

So, even RealClimate (i.e. the Alamo of discredited so-called climate scientists) now admits the fact that the Earth is experiencing global cooling and suggests that global warming will not resume "until roughly 2020." And they are trying to provide excuses for the cooling.

In other words, these global warming propagandists have recognized that their natural climate change denial of the last decade is not sustainable anymore. So, they have abandoned any pretence that global warming exists at the moment, and they are presenting their excuses for why the globe is cooling together with their assertions of when global warming will resume (presumably they will claim with a vengeance).

Simply, nobody can now plausibly deny that the globe is cooling while the emissions and the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide both continue to increase.

Read it here.

Gore and friends create climate of McCarthyism

Bjørn Lomborg writes yet another excellent article in The Australian today, exposing the anti-democratic ways in which climate alarmists wish to push their own agenda, and the pointlessness of emissions reductions schemes:

The Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman goes further. After the narrow passage of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill in the US House of Representatives, Krugman said that there was no justification for a vote against it. He called virtually all of the members who voted against it "climate deniers" who were committing "treason against the planet".

Krugman said that the "irresponsibility and immorality" of the representatives' democratic viewpoints were "unforgivable" and a "betrayal". He thus accused almost half of the democratically elected members of the house, from both parties, of treason for holding the views that they do, thereby essentially negating democracy.

Less well-known pundits make similar points, suggesting that people with "incorrect" views on global warming should face Nuremberg-style trials or be tried for crimes against humanity. There is clearly a trend. The climate threat is so great -- and democracies are doing so little about it -- that people conclude that maybe democracy is part of the problem, and that perhaps people ought not be allowed to express heterodox opinions on such an important topic.

And then nails the key point squarely:

Even if every Kyoto-obligated country passed its own, duplicate Waxman-Markey bills -- which is implausible and would incur significantly higher costs -- the global reduction would amount to just 0.22C by the end of this century. The reduction in global temperature would not be measurable in 100 years, yet the cost would be significant and payable now.

Is it really treason against the planet to express some scepticism about whether this is the right way forward? Is it treason to question throwing huge sums of money at a policy that will do virtually no good in 100 years? Is it unreasonable to point out that the inevitable creation of trade barriers that will ensue from Waxman-Markey could eventually cost the world 10 times more than the damage climate change could ever have wrought?

Read it here.

Fielding writes to senators about ETS

Steve Fielding certainly isn't convinced by the woolly thinking of Rudd & Wong on climate change, and is now encouraging other senators to do their own research:

In a letter to senators yesterday, Senator Fielding -- who has recently emerged as parliament's most vocal climate change sceptic -- said carbon emissions had "skyrocketed" over the past 15 years, but temperatures had remained steady.

Senator Fielding said Climate Change Minister Penny Wong and Australia's chief scientist had failed to explain why this was the case.

He said it ran counter to assumptions underpinning the carbon pollution reduction scheme that carbon emissions were the leading cause of global warming.

"Therefore, I ask you to think carefully before voting on the CPRS legislation, a multi-billion-dollar tax that could cripple our economy with little benefit to environment," he wrote.

He has also asked Al Gore for a meeting to discuss the science. All I can say to that is he'll be waiting an awful long time. Gore doesn't "do" science, or debates for that matter. Just propaganda.

Read it here.

Al Gore - just please, please go home

Al Gore is spreading his own special brand of lies and alarmism around Australia at the moment, and the sooner he clears off the better. Check out the blatant untruths in the following, and note that none of those who jump down the throats of sceptics has anything to say about this lot:

"The planet now has a fever," Mr Gore warned today's breakfast gathering [Odd comment, given that "global warming" stopped in 2001 - Ed].

"We have to act [Because I want my money - Ed]."

"It's difficult to ignore the fact that cyclones are getting stronger [wrong, hurricane intensity is at its lowest for decades - Ed], that the fires are getting bigger [wrong again, Victoria had worse fires in the 1800s - Ed], that the sea level is rising [yeah, at the same rate, if not slower, than it has for thousands of years - Ed], that the refugees are beginning to move from places they have long called home [because their islands are sinking, you idiot - Ed]" he said.

Excuse the gratutious ad hom there, but this man talks nothing but unadulterated CRAP.

Two words: GO HOME.

Read it here.

Mark Steyn - 96 months to save the planet!

The excellent Mark Steyn takes apart the latest barking mad announcement from Bonnie Prince Charlie:

It takes a prince, heir to the thrones of Britain and Canada and Australia, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, and a bunch of other places, to tell it like it is: You pampered consumerists are ruining the joint. In the old days, we didn’t have these kinds of problems. But then Mr. and Mrs. Peasant start remodeling the hovel, adding a rec room and indoor plumbing, replacing the emaciated old nag with a Honda Civic and driving to the mall in it, and next thing you know, instead of just having an extra yard of mead every Boxing Day at the local tavern and adding a couple more pustules to the escutcheon with the local trollop, they begin taking vacations in Florida. When it was just medieval dukes swanking about like that, the planet worked fine: That was “sustainable” consumerism. But now the masses want in. And, once you do that, there goes the global neighborhood.

By contrast, as an example of an exemplary environmentalist, the prince hailed his forebear, King Henry VIII. True, he had a lot of wives, but he did dramatically reduce Anne Boleyn’s carbon footprint.

Brilliant stuff.

Read it all.

Yoof climate conference in Sydney - it's all about "social change"

"The Kids" are the new climate warriors. Funny how when a sceptic with serious credentials publishes a book, the alarmists are all over it like a rash. But when a bunch of kids and pollies get together to whine about climate, nobody bats an eyelid, before we even start on the whole indoctrination aspect of this. And the Fairytale-facts media goes into full slaver mode:

THEY are the new generation of climate warriors. They are smart, politically savvy, idealistic, apparently indefatigable and very young. They have more technology in their mobiles and laptops than NASA had when it sent men to the moon, and they are "beginning to use them for tools, not toys", as one campaigner said.

For the next three days they will be at Power Shift, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition's first major summit.

About 1500 Australians aged 16 to 26 are descending on the University of Western Sydney to learn about organising and to hear speeches from Tim Flannery, senators Nick Xenophon and Christine Milne, the NSW Premier, Nathan Rees, and via video link from Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations panel on climate change, and the former US vice-president Al Gore, who is training an older generation of climate change campaigners in Melbourne this weekend.

Here's an extract from the web site:

Conference attendees will learn the best practices of climate organising, including campaign and event planning, recruitment, media liaison, public speaking, lobbying, leadership development, coalition-building, campaign strategy and community and campus organising. (source)

What's the very important thing missing from all this? Any discussion of the actual science of climate change. In fact, "science" just one tiny session out of nearly 60, but there are the following sessions (I'm not making these up):

• Graphic design and climate change
• Media training
• Gender and climate change [useful one that - Ed]
• Climate change & Hip Hop workshop [seriously]

This workshop will ask participants to explore an issue around climate change using hip hop. The hip hop debate combines traditional debating with the MC Battle and is an interesting and challenging platform for exploring different sides of an issue. The young ‘Eco Ninjas’ crew from Alstonville High School will be performing their hip hop debate piece at Powershift and will also be assisting with facilitating the workshop. (source)

They're not interested in boring old stuff like science, of course - hey, the debate's over, you denier you. What they are interested in is something quite different, as this session indicates:

Civil disobedience - It’s Role in the Movement
Non violent direct action has played a crucial role in creating social change throughout history. This session will reflect on the history and discuss the future of non-violent direct action in the climate movement.

In other words, non-democratic means to force "social change". This conference has little if anything to do with averting climate change, just imposing "social change" through the back door of environmentalism. It stinks.

Read it here ("Sick Bag Required" Alert - you have been warned...!)

WSJ - King Canute at the G8

The Wall Street Journal expertly pulls apart the climate change hubris at the G8 in an excellent opinion piece. Not only have the G8 moved away from setting emissions targets in favour of setting nebulous climate targets (2˚C temperature rise above pre-industrial levels), but there are so many caveats and exclusions that the end result is basically the square root of sweet FA.

When King Canute of lore wanted to teach his citizens a lesson, he set his throne by the seashore and commanded the tides to roll out. Canute's spirit was back in business this week at the G-8 summit in Italy, where the assembled leaders declared that the world's temperature shall not rise: "We recognize the scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2 degrees [Celsius]," or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, said the summit declaration.

So let it be written, so let it be done.

As for how they will achieve this climate-defying feat, well, the leaders were somewhat less definitive: "we will work . . . to identify a global goal for substantially reducing global emissions by 2050."

Translation: Since the heads of the world's leading economies couldn't agree on an actual policy on climate change, they opted instead to command the clouds, the seas and all of the Earth to cool. Or maybe they were finally admitting that this whole climate business is getting too expensive, so let's just throw out a goal that everyone knows is beyond the reach of kings, much less democratic leaders.

Read it all here.

Quote of the Day - Kevin Rudd

Picked up by a stray microphone at L'Aquila, Rudd's unguarded comment to Danish Prime Minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen:

Right now I don't think we are on track to get an agreement at Copenhagen.

Read it here.

Pachauri - the quote that got away

I heard this in the middle of the night on ABC News Radio, and I should have written it down, because guess what, it isn't anywhere to be found in the mainstream media. All the stories are talking about how IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri was "cautiously optimistic" about progress at L'Aquila.

But this is the quote nobody wants you to read, which I found as a transcript on a Chinese web site. In it Pachauri refers to the lack of a baseline against which to measure the 80% cut by 2050:

“It’s pretty ridiculous if you ask me, I mean I’m surprised I didn’t see the fallacy that they were introducing in this pledge by not defining the baseline at least. How can you say you will achieve a cut of 'x' amount if you don’t even define what the baseline is, what the benchmark is?”

If anyone can find a reliable source of this quote, please let me know. You can listen to an MP3 of the quote here.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read!

Incomprehensible Rudd-speak baffles climate summit

Always the last refuge of someone who hasn't a clue what they are talking about, speaking in long complicated words which actually mean nothing is Rudd's speciality.

While addressing German press and Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr Rudd said it was unlikely any progress [on climate change] would emerge from the Major Economies Forum "by way of detailed programmatic specificity".

The line had German translators scrambling for a meaning.

It also has this particular native English speaker scrambling for a meaning as well...

When asked about the Prime Minister's choice of words today, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull said Mr Rudd would be better to use clear, plain English.

Mr Turnbull admitted he personally had "no idea what (programmatic specificity) means".

"As I understand it, I heard part of his speech was not only incomprehensible in English, but so incomprehensible the German translators were unable to translate," Mr Turnbull said.

Read it here.

Deluded G8 leaders think they can play god…

… and by wrecking western economies with pointless emissions reduction schemes, somehow overcome nature and stop temperatures rising more than 2 degrees C.

The aim, agreed at a G8 summit in the central Italian town of L'Aquila, is to cut overall world emissions by 50 per cent in order to limit global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius, a declaration said.

But the world's largest emitters, including China and India, have backtracked, and are refusing to cut emissions by 50% by 2050.

Major polluting nations meeting at a G8 summit in Italy have dropped a pledge to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a European Union official said.

"There is indeed a very strong commitment to identify the global goal for substantially reducing global emissions by 2050, but there is no 50 per cent" mentioned in a draft declaration, the official said on condition of anonymity.

All of which means that anything the developed world does will be even more pointless that we first thought.

Read it here and here.

Rosslyn Beeby - more alarmism

ACM's favourite journo, from the "it's all happening faster than we expected" department, all based on flaky models, of course:

Climate change is occurring faster than predicted across the Snowy Mountains, but little research is being funded by governments and universities to track its impact, scientists say.

CSIRO climate modelling predicts an 8 per cent decline in rain and snowfall across the mountains by 2020, with an average temperature rise of up to 1 degree.

Under this ''worst-case'' trend, temperature would rise by 2.6 degrees by 2050, with a 97 per cent loss of snow cover lasting at least two months.

But studies of snow records by NSW parks scientist Ken Green show average snow depths in some areas are already tracking at, or close to, levels predicted for 2020.

''We've arrived roughly a decade before we were supposed to get there,'' he said.

Yawn. Read it here.

Climate gab-fest kicks off

But don't expect anything important to be decided - these are just talks about talks, after all. Still, it's a nice jolly to Italy in the Northern hemisphere summer, where Rudd can pretend that he's important, rubbing shoulders with leaders of the other 16 countries in the Major Economies Forum. It doesn't change the fact that the whole thing is a pointless waste of effort, and spews more CO2 into the air than any agreement will probably ever save:

The MEF leaders will consider signing an agreement to stop global temperatures rising by more than two degrees Celsius, a level many scientists consider potentially disastrous for the environment.

The MEF, which includes emerging economies of China, India, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil as well as the powerful G8 members, will also be asked to back the "aspirational" goal of halving emissions by 2050.

But after holding talks in Berlin yesterday, Mr Rudd and Ms Merkel said while they hoped the MEF would make progress towards a global goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it would be up to leaders at the United Nations climate change meeting in Copenhagen in December to sign off on a new pact to limit global emissions.

Mr Rudd said it was "highly unlikely" the MEF would come up with a detailed plan to slash emissions by a certain time.

"That is what Copenhagen is about," he said.

So what exactly is all this about? Answers on a postcard... no don't bother.

Read it here.

Climate madness from Oxfam

I wonder if the people that write these reports ever look out the window? Or look at the global temperature record? As is common today in climate science, the output from flaky models replaces empirical observation - it's true: models actually replace reality. And of course, Fairytale-facts prints it all, unquestioningly.

MOST of the gains made by the world's poorest countries over the past half a century will be lost unless action is taken on climate change, Oxfam says.

A report by the international aid agency says up to 375 million people may be affected by climate-related disasters by 2015.

"Climate change is becoming quite rapidly the central issue to do with poverty today", Oxfam Australia's chief, Andrew Hewett, told the Herald. "That also raises deep ethical dilemmas because the people least responsible for this crisis have the least resources to deal with it, and they are also those who are on the front line."

We will have to suffer the endless reports from the G8 summit in the days ahead. All the usual climate clowns will be there - Obama, UK's Gordon Brown, Rudd & Wong - spouting their usual brand of nonsense, including laughably regarding the climate as if a quick twiddle on the 'CO2 dial' will miraculously adjust the temperature, like turning down the electric blanket:

A key issue at both [G8 and major "polluters"] meetings will be whether the US President, Barack Obama, publicly embraces the scientific goal [Scientific? Don't make me laugh - Ed] of keeping the world's temperature from rising above 2 degrees Celsius in order to avoid dangerous climate change.

Note the use of the word "polluters" again, in order to obfuscate and mislead the public (and, clearly, the media). I am all for reducing pollution. CO2 is not pollution. CO2 is plant food. Got it? Barking madness.

Read it here.

Al Gore in Melbourne - 13 July 2009

Those readers in Melbourne are invited by the Climate Sceptics Party to attend a protest against Al Gore's Safe Climate breakfast next Monday.

Press Release - The Climate Sceptics
Monday 6th July, 2009

Those attending the "Safe Climate" 7am breakfast with Al Gore on Monday July 13th will be met by a peaceful educational protest where they will be greeted by signs showing graphs and reasons why CO2 is not the main cause of climate change.

Leon Ashby, president of the new political party "The Climate Sceptics" is organising the event for anyone doubting CO2 is the cause of climate changes to attend and put their voice to say the science is not settled and a proper debate must occur before any country signs up to an emissions trading scheme.

The centenary medal recipient for services to the environment will lead the educational protest calling for Al Gore to admit his movie contained significant factual errors and, since Arctic ice is now back at 1980 levels and the Earth has stopped warming, the idea that rising CO2 causes runaway global warming is false.

Mr Ashby is asking for members of the public who are doubtful that human carbon emissions are causing catastrophic global warming to join the protest with their own placards. Leaflets with 10 questions that Al Gore needs to answer will be handed to those attending the breakfast with Al Gore.

Anyone wanting to attend the protest can visit The Climate Sceptics web site (www.climatesceptics.com.au) for more details or meet on Harbor Esplanade outside Etihad Stadium in Melbourne Docklands at 6.15 am on Monday 13th July.

www.climatesceptics.com.au
contact: info@climatesceptics.com.au
--
Steve Murphy
The Climate Sceptics - advocating open scientific debate.
www.climatesceptics.com.au

Rudd goes on another fossil-fuelled jolly to discuss "climate change"

Another week, another round of pointless climate talks, this time in the earthquake ravaged town of L'Aquila in Italy (you'd have thought they had suffered enough...). Rudd will be spreading his own special brand of "toxic boredom" around, however. I think these poor unfortunates should be warned in advance, and given a secret stash of "No Doz" caffeine tablets:

After a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday, he will stop briefly in Zurich to lobby world soccer body FIFA chief Sepp Blatter on Australia's bid to host the world cup in 2018 or 2020.

Later in the week, Mr Rudd will spend two days in Italy where he will meet Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Rome.

Mr Rudd will also visit the Vatican for an audience with Pope Benedict XVI where they are expected to discuss the potential canonisation of Josephite order founder, the Blessed Mary MacKillop.

Rudd and the Pope? Knowing his flair for protocol and dignity (see here for a truly awful video of him with Obama), Rudd will probably slap him on the back and say "G'day mate" and make some kind of cringeworthy attempt at a joke …

Read it here.