Climate hypocrisy in Victoria

This shouldn't surprise anyone, sadly. Following the Goracle's example, where those preaching the Word are not bound by the Word themselves:

A BRUMBY Government department responsible for protecting the environment and combating climate change has accumulated enough air kilometres to send staff to the moon and back more than six times.
...
Despite its website declaring the DSE [Department of Sustainability and Environment] to be "the driving force behind finding new ways of doing things so that Victorians can reduce their impact on the environment and live more sustainably", its staff were frequent flyers with 2,591,648km of air travel.

That is more than 1021km an employee.

So the loud and clear message from this kind of story is that it's only the rest of us that have to worry about saving the planet, not those safely aboard the climate change gravy train.

Read it here.

Canberra Times "borrows" ACM's "Dead Parrot" reference

You will recall on 26 May, I compared the ETS to the dead parrot in the Monty Python skit ("ETS not dead, just pining for the fjords"). Seems the Canberra Times have "coincidentally" come up with the same idea three days later, complete with cartoon...

The political debate on emissions trading is a bit like Monty Python's ''Dead Parrot'' sketch. The hapless customer (John Cleese) complains that his recently purchased Norwegian blue has joined the choir invisible, shuffled off its mortal coil, its metabolic processes are history. The pet shopkeeper (Michael Palin) disagrees. The bird is merely resting, stunned, tired after a prolonged squawk or perhaps pining for the fjords.

Coincidence? You decide. Ironic, really, considering the Canberra Times is one of the most alarmist media organisations in Australia (part of Fairfax) - surely they don't read a "denier" blog like ACM? An email to the Canberra Times seeking clarification has been sent.

Read it here.

Quote of the Day

From The Australian, referring to Greg Combet's thinly veiled threat to business to pressure the opposition into supporting the ETS (see here):

For all the Government's hot air about saving the planet, Mr Combet is playing coldly calculated politics.

So very true.

Read it all here.

Climate change "to kill 600,000 a year"

There really is no end to the madness. Yet more "modelling" has shown that a gentle warming of the planet will apparently cost 600,000 lives a year by 2030. And of course, one of the greatest moonbats of all, Kofi Annan, cannot resist climbing on the bandwagon:

A study commissioned by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, estimates that climate change seriously affects 325 million people every year, a number that will more than double in 20 years to 10 per cent of the world's population (now about 6.7 billion).
...
"Climate change is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time, causing suffering to hundreds of millions of people worldwide," Kofi Annan, former UN secretary-general and [Global Humanitarian Fund] president, said. [Where? How? Show me the evidence, please. No, hang on - it's probably a computer model - Ed]

Hey, testing testing? What about war, famine and disease, mate? Ludicrous. And then the inevitable banging on about Copenhagen:

Mr Annan urged governments due to meet at UN talks in Copenhagen in December to agree on an effective, fair and binding global pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol [which even if it had been fully implemented would have made zero difference to the climate - Ed] the world's main mechanism for tackling global warming.

"Copenhagen needs to be the most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated," he wrote in an introduction to the report. [Fat chance - Ed]

"The alternative is mass starvation, mass migration and mass sickness."

How about the start of a new cooling phase, do you think Kofi Annan would be happier with that? With temperatures dropping at the same time as taxes on fossil fuels are going up? Do you think might be a bit more likely to lead to mass starvation, mass migration and mass sickness? There are simply no words to describe the lunacy ...

Read it here (if you can [Polar] bear it).

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read!

Interview with Ian Plimer

Thanks to Al Gore Lied.

Watch it here.

Climate sense from Piers Ackerman

A fine analysis of the Government's ETS shambles:

Strip away business arguments and the proposed ETS legislation is exposed as futile.

It won’t affect the Great Barrier Reef, as Kevin Rudd claimed. Or put more water in the Murray-Darling or change the weather.

The Government’s claim that the Great Barrier Reef would be saved if Australians sacrificed the equivalent of $1-a-day is an absolute nonsense. Every MP who spouts this bilge should have their mouths rinsed out with untreated effluent and be charged with false advertising. It is just not true.

What it will do is take jobs away from the mining sector at the very time Australians are looking to the miners to rebuild the economy. It will drive energy-intensive industries offshore to developing nations.

Read it here.

Climate Madness from Steven Chu

This is the "Nobel Prize winning" physicist, who is now the US Energy Secretary in the Obama administration (don't forget that Al Gore won a Noble Prize, as did the IPCC, which dumbs the whole thing down somewhat). Chu's climate brainwave is to paint everything white, to reflect more sunlight back to space (no joke):

By lightening paved surfaces and roofs to the colour of cement, it would be possible to cut carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world's cars off the roads for 11 years, he said. [What they mean, of course, is that the greater reflection of incoming solar radiation would have the same effect as reducing emissions by taking all the world's cars off the roads for 11 years, but you can't expect mere journalists to understand this... - Ed]

Building regulations should insist that all flat roofs were painted white, and visible tilted roofs could be painted with "cool-coloured" paints that looked normal but absorbed much less heat than conventional dark surfaces.

With guys like this in charge, we're all in safe hands...

Read it here.

Government trying to blackmail business into opposing ETS delay

Desperate times call for desperate measures, especially if you're part of Spin & Co, I mean Krudd & Co, and are trying to force through pointless, expensive legislation at any price. Now, Greg Combet, without any hint of irony, is trying to blackmail the Australian business community by scurrilously claiming that delaying the ETS "will cost billions".

Addressing the Minerals Council of Australia this morning, Mr Combet said putting off a vote on the scheme until next year may force the Government "back to the drawing board" on its assistance package for emissions intensive, trade exposed (EITE) industries.
...
"Voting for the scheme in Parliament means Australia is locking in certainty and guaranteed assistance for Australian industry," he said.

"Delaying a vote would jeopardise that guarantee and remove certainty for industry that currently exists under the proposed scheme." Mr Combet has warned industry to carefully consider their response to any pressure to delay the scheme. "Billions of dollars worth of assistance are involved," he said.

Is Combet really suggesting that delaying by a few months to see what happens in Copenhagen is really worse than signing up now to the hopelessly flawed ETS? Is there no end to this government's spin and deception? Apparently not. There should be a law against it.

Read it here.

ETS not dead, just pining for the fjords

Despite talking absolute BS for 99.9% of the time, the Greens do occasionally say something which is right on the money, and this is one of those times.

Australian Greens climate change spokeswoman Christine Milne said the scheme was in trouble.

"(It) is dead in the water and it will not pass this year," she said, adding the Government needed to change tack.
...
Independent senator Nick Xenophon said the scheme could not pass in its present form, and urged the Government to allow more time for debate.

"If it's not dead, it's looking pretty sick," he said.

It's not dead, it's just pining for the fjords.

Read it here.

Cowardly opposition give "unconditional support" for emissions reductions

Rank idiocy. Malcolm Turnbull has announced that the Coalition has offered the Government "unconditional bipartisan" support for the carbon emissions target it plans to take to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change in December.

"In the light of the fact that the Copenhagen conference is only six months away and the Obama administration and US Congress are well advanced in finalising US legislation for an ETS, the Coalition believes that it would be premature to lock Australia into an emissions trading scheme that is out of step with the rest of the world," Mr Turnbull said.

The Government is proposing a minimum reduction target of five per cent below 2000 levels by 2020, up to a conditional target of 25 per cent dependent largely on a global agreement.

“We are offering unconditional five per cent,” Mr Turnbull said, adding it was a measure of the Coalition's sincerity.

WTF? The cowardly opposition do not have the guts to stand up to this "Emperor's New Clothes" ETS, and are backing it for fear of being branded "deniers" or "Flat Earthers" if they oppose it. But that is precisely what they should be doing. The ETS will wreck the Australian economy, and do nothing, repeat nothing to alter the climate of Australia, save the Barrier Reef etc etc, and it will do nothing, repeat nothing to alter global climate. They may as well take the money it will cost the economy, and burn it.

The only hope is the Nationals, who stand alone as the only party with the good sense to see this ETS for what it is - a pointless and dangerous political gesture.

Read it here.

Parliament House fails to go green

Hands up those of you who didn't see this coming! Rudd will force the Australian economy to move to "green power", but Parliament House can't even manage it, registering an almost laughable 10% energy from renewable sources. Maybe they'll eventually realise it isn't as easy to achieve such a target as acres and acres of empty rhetoric from Rudd & Co might indicate.

Before the last federal election Kevin Rudd set an objective of powering the national legislature entirely with renewable energy as part of a strategy of "leading by example" on climate change.

But the department that runs Parliament House revealed yesterday that only 10 per cent of the building's power will come from renewable sources under a new three-year electricity contract.

The secretary of the Department of Parliamentary Services, Alan Thompson, told Senate estimates it would have been too expensive to sign up to the 100 per cent "green power" option with a local electricity utility.

There's a surprise. Maybe the wind wasn't blowing hard enough for the wind turbines? Back to good ol' coal fired electricity generation, I guess.

Read it here.

Fielding backs ETS delay

More and more senators appear to be favouring a delay in the passing of the ETS legislation. The latest to go public is Family First senator Steve Fielding:

Senator Fielding says he would support any move by the Coalition to defer the vote.

"If they want to delay the emissions trading scheme to after Copenhagen, then I am on that side at this stage," he said. "The Rudd Government hasn't convinced me that we should be pushing through an emissions trading system before Copenhagen."

The Government wants its legislation passed in the Senate by June because it says it needs to give business certainty. But Senator Xenophon says that is too soon, but he has not backed delaying the vote until December either.

"I've told the Government and the Opposition that I see it as virtually impossible to get this legislation through by the end of June," he said. "I think it's better to come back after the winter break and we'll have a better idea then what's happening in the US."

Guess the chances of Rudd getting this through now in June are about zero.

Read it here.

UPDATED: Idiotic Comment of the Day - Sydney Morning Herald editorial

Those voices opposing change - or trying to delay it - are ignoring the expense of inaction. What is the cost of roads washed away, schools closed, homes inundated, and cities the size of Grafton and Lismore evacuated in the worst floods in 20 years in northern NSW? Insurance companies know, and you can bet premiums will rise. As an analyst from the global insurance giant Munich Re said last week, extreme weather disasters are on the rise while earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are not. How many glaciers need to melt, with potentially catastrophic consequences, before common sense prevails?

Beyond parody.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Even more idiotic comment from The Canberra Times:

A deal like this [between the US and China] will not end the climate crisis, even if all the other big emitters accept similar terms. Past emissions have already committed us to so much warming that there will be famines, waves of refugees and wars in some of the worst-hit regions no matter what we do now.

Beyond belief.

Read it here.

Fairytale Facts - ETS will "boost economy by $6bn"

Looks like someone has been using second hand IPCC climate models to do some financial predictions - another perfect example of "garbage in, garbage out".

THE Rudd Government's emissions trading scheme could deliver a massive investment surge that would add more than $6 billion a year to the economy, according to secret economic modelling work produced as Parliament considers the fate of controversial climate-change laws.

An internal report by National Australia Bank seen by The Sun-Herald suggests the emissions trading debate in Australia has been dominated by claims about the short-term costs, and scant attention has been paid to new investment opportunities.

Believe this at your peril. Common sense dictates that taxing energy will stifle economies not boost them, but common sense is something modellers seem to have very little of. The only thing it confirms is that you can model something to give whatever result you want. Bear that in mind next time you hear an outrageous climate scare.

Read it here.

Greens and Coalition agree on ETS legislation delay

But for completely opposite reasons! The Greens want the legislation delayed so that when the negotiations in Copenhagen result in a tough, binding, global agreement (including the US, China and India) to cut emissions by 50% by 2020, Australia can sign up to it.

And now back to the real world, the Coalition want to delay it so that when Copenhagen goes off like a damp squib, as climate gab-fests tend to do (see here and here), they can argue for reduced emissions cuts.

Opposition emissions trading spokesman Andrew Robb said yesterday: "It would be irresponsible to rush this deeply flawed scheme through parliament by the end of June. We can have the debate after the Copenhagen meeting at the end of the year, with all the information on the table, without affecting Mr Rudd's new start date."

Malcolm Turnbull has said his climate change plan, which could be discussed by shadow cabinet on Monday, will advocate targets at least as ambitious as those proposed by the Government. [WTF? - Ed]

The Government had assumed it could force the Coalition to vote on the legislation in June, but now the Greens, Family First senator Steve Fielding and independent senator Nick Xenophon are saying they would consider a delay.

What game is Turnbull playing here? Trying to out-green Rudd? Forget it.

Read it here.

Moonbat insurance companies blame climate change for "weather"

Of course it's climate change, you denier you. Floods in SE Queensland and NE New South Wales, which are simply "weather", are being blamed (without any evidence whatsoever) on climate change, because it's the thing to do these days. And the media just lap it up, with no tricky questions - "why?" might be a good one to start with, since all the indications are that warming, if there is any, will, if anything, reduce the intensity of severe weather events.

And the insurance companies can then award themselves a hefty profits increase. How? By increasing your premiums, mate. This is especially true of Munich Re, the most moonbattish insurer, that blames everything on climate change:

"If you calculate the trends in weather-related natural catastrophes you find a distinct difference in recent years," Dr [Peter] Hoeppe told the Herald.

"It's quite obvious that something has changed here and I think that is really the effects of global warming [oops, "climate change" I think you mean, since global warming stopped in 2001 - Ed] … We are seeing that serious weather events are becoming much more common, while the other kinds of catastrophes like the earthquakes and volcanoes are, of course, not changing."

And now back to reality, from my original post:

Let's look at the world's worst natural disasters. Of the top 10, five are unrelated to climate change (4 earthquakes, one dam failure) and the remaining five all occurred before 1970, i.e. before the global warming hysteria was even thought of - in 1970 we were all getting ready for the next Ice Age, remember?

Read it here.

Government blocking critical witnesses from ETS enquiry

Now why would they do that, I wonder, unless it was through fear of seeing their baby exposed as the pointless exercise we all know it to be? Climate hero Barnaby Joyce is again the one asking the tough questions:

Senator Joyce says the Government is trying to make sure the inquiry favours its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

"This is the same Labor Party that talked about the Howard government taking the Senate for granted as a rubber stamp," he said.

"Now we find that once the pressure is on them, the first thing they do is start scripting so the Australian people can only hear one point of view."

Can hardly expect the Kruddites to play fair, can you?

Read it here.

ETS to cost 23,000 mining jobs by 2020

That's the bleak outlook for mining in Australia, with three times that many jobs to go by 2030, thanks to the Rudd government's pointless emissions trading scheme:

[Minerals] Council chief executive Mitchell Hooke says this showed the government's proposed carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) was out of step with global efforts to reduce emissions, with other international trading schemes and with the development of the low emissions technologies needed to reduce emissions.

"It will impose the highest carbon costs in the world on Australia's mineral exporters," he said in a statement.

"We share the government's commitment to reducing emissions [why? - Ed] but this modelling shows the CPRS is fundamentally flawed. By imposing the highest carbon costs in the world on Australia's mineral exporters, it will eliminate jobs while failing to materially reduce global greenhouse gas levels."

That last sentence is certainly true - and it won't do zip for the climate.

Read it here.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read!

Queensland Rail indoctrinating passengers

Pity the poor residents of Queensland. Their mornings go something like this: First you open your morning copy of The Brisbane Times (or any other of the Fairytale-fax press), and you get your first shot of climate change hysteria before you've even brushed your teeth. Then you get into your car to drive to the station, tune in to ABC, and you get your second dose (in case the first shot has worn off). And then, you get on a Queensland Rail train, and get subjected to a showing of the doom-mongering BBC documentary Planet Earth, which has been described thus:

This is an activist piece, even by the greener-than-thou standards of previous BBC productions, seeking to appeal to the audience that turned out to see Al Gore’s slice of climate change alarmism, An Inconvenient Truth. There’s even a website, LoveEarth.com, for those who want to find out more about how we can save the world. And it’s a moral film, firmly directed at children. (source)

Fortunately, at least one QR commuter was incensed enough to complain:

The BBC-produced Planet Earth was shown on a trip from Miriam Vale to Brisbane on May 1, and upset passenger John McMahon.

Mr McMahon wrote to Transport Minister Rachel Nolan expressing his disgust that passengers would be subjected to such "entertainment".

"I find it disgraceful that a state government can inflict this mindless, apocalyptic, fear-mongering propaganda on to a 'captured' audience without providing a disclaimer that this is only one side of the debate," Mr McMahon said.

I encourage everyone to follow Mr McMahon's lead.

Read it here.

Where Obama goes, Rudd follows...

Appearing to "do something" about climate change trumps everything, of course - the economy, standards of living, auto manufacturers... Now Krudd & Co are proposing to impose mandatory limits on emissions for new cars in Australia, in a typical ill-considered "Kruddish" response to the holy words of the Obamessiah:

Transport and environment ministers will tomorrow consider options to improve energy-efficiency standards, including a recommendation for a mandatory standard to lower carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles.

A mandatory standard would be likely to provoke a backlash from car makers, who have campaigned for years to keep their system of pollution reduction a voluntary scheme.

Last night, the car industry warned the Government to think carefully about imposing a mandatory standard."We would be concerned to ensure there is not a knee-jerk response to events in the US," the chief executive of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries Andrew McKellar said. [Er, that's exactly what it is - Ed]

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday backed the US move, saying it was pleasing that America was adopting climate change measures.

No surprise there. Industry can go hang, where "tackling climate change" is concerned.

Read it here.

Obama puts the screws on the US auto industry

In pursuit of pointless "emissions reductions" to "tackle climate change" of course. So an industry which is teetering on the brink of collapse anyway will be forced to meet stricter emissions limits, which in turn, will put up prices for consumers. I'm all in favour of economical use of a limited resource, but given the fact that fuel efficiency has improved so much over the past decades anyway, this is madness.

The deal was forged in secret talks over the past few weeks between the car companies, environmentalists, unions and Mr Obama.

"For the first time in history we have set in motion a national policy aimed at both increasing gas mileage and decreasing greenhouse gas pollution for all new trucks and cars sold in the United States of America," Mr Obama said.

Under the new rules, American cars and trucks will have to get 15 kilometres per litre by 2016. At the moment they average 10 kilometres per litre.

Good luck with that.

Read it here.

City leaders in pointless climate gab-fest

A carbon-fuelled jolly which puts more CO2 into the atmosphere than their policies could ever hope to save. This year, they've all descended on Seoul, South Korea, for the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit - I'm guessing they flew there, rather than arriving on solar-powered bikes?

Former US president Bill Clinton [as clueless on climate as Hillary - Ed], whose Clinton Climate Initiative develops programs [and probably reaps huge profits - Ed] to help cities cut greenhouse gas emissions, called for commitments and concrete action at the meeting that ends on Thursday.

The issue of how cities “find a way to continue to thrive and prosper while reducing greenhouse gas emissions is one of the central questions in the whole struggle,” Clinton told a press conference.

The answer is they probably can't - given there are no real alternatives to fossil fuels at this stage... And then there's always one who's delusional:

Mayor David Miller of Toronto, who chairs this year's summit, said he was confident it could find balanced ways to combat climate change.

“We will be able to demonstrate not only how you can fight greenhouse gas emissions but how you can also build green sustainable neighbourhoods, create green jobs and contribute back to the fight against climate change,” Miller said.

I think a (swine-flu-infected) pig just shot past my window.

Read it here.

Idiotic Comment of the Day - Josh Massoud

A real cracker here from Joshy in the Daily Telegraph, for trying to link the climate change debate to the Matthew Johns fiasco:

The current debate about behaviour in rugby league is a lot like the one surrounding climate change. Although global warming is scientifically undisputed, stubborn naysayers are often granted equal airtime, which gives the impression that the issue is somehow in dispute.

Congratulations on your win.

Read it here.

Hypocrisy from the warm-mongers

Professor Ian Enting, of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems (what a mouthful) at the University of Melbourne, has written to The Australian complaining about Ian Plimer's book Heaven + Earth, and praising Michael Ashley's "excellent" (shonky) review (see here), so we know where this is going:

Of the 2311 footnotes (not all referring to different sources), many either contradict Plimer’s claims or are irrelevant to the point that he makes. Particularly blatant is footnote 2056 where the cited study reports New Orleans sinking by 15mm to 18mm in the three years prior to Hurricane Katrina, while Plimer cites this reference to support his claim that New Orleans sank by about 1 metre.

Once again, the warm-mongers choose a single point, and extrapolate it out to the entire book. And in this case, Plimer's point is very possibly correct. A comment on my post on Michael Ashley's review has pointed out the following:

Plimer does indeed cite work by Tim Dixon et al (2006) and they do indeed give a figure of 15mm-18mm in their paper but on June 12, 2006 Professor Dixon ALSO reported as follows and used the plural to cover each of his co-authors:

"in some cases, the ground had subsided a minimum of 3 feet".

I reckon this is very close to Plimer's "about a metre".

Enting has even started a web page pointing out the supposed "errors" in Plimer's book (see here) in which the points range from plausible to downright silly, such as this one:

IPCC computers don’t do clouds — totally unsurprising — IPCC computers don’t do climate modelling—presumably they do things like e-mail, desktop publishing, accounting etc. The climate modelling used by the IPCC is done by major research groups using models that do include clouds.

But the real issue, of course, as pointed out in one of the comments on Enting's letter, is the hypocrisy of subjecting Plimer's work to microscopic scrutiny whilst Al Gore's utterly fictional book/movie An Inconvenient Truth is treated as gospel.

Read it here.

US climate madness

The US Democrats have unveiled their climate change bill - 932 pages of pointless legislation, much like the draft ETS legislation here. Despite climate scientists having spent over $50 billion on climate research since the 1990s, they have still been unable to show evidence of a definitive link between anthropogenic CO2 and the late 20th century warming. Attempts to regulate CO2 such as this, and like the ETS in Australia, will wreck economies, lower standards of living, make most of the population worse off, make a few very rich (e.g. Al Gore), and do precisely nothing to "tackle climate change".

But the best part, by far, is the hyperbole, the misrepresentations and the spin that the Dems are pushing:

The Bill “will create millions of new clean energy jobs, save consumers hundreds of billions of dollars in energy costs, promote America's energy independence and security, and cut global warming pollution,” said [Henry] Waxman [chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee].

Translation: the bill will cost millions of jobs, punish consumers through higher energy costs and do nothing for global warming "pollution", and wreck our economy (and thereby our security) into the bargain. Next:

“This Bill marks the dawn of the clean energy age,” said Democratic Representative Ed Markey, who chairs the panel's subcommittee on energy and the environment, co-author with Waxman of the sweeping Bill.

It's incredible that elected officials of the worlds only remaining superpower can spout such utter nonsense, and not be laughed out of the room. Such is the power and influence of the AGW religion. Fortunately, however, the bill has virtually zero chance of ever making it into law - the Republicans and a significant number of Democrats who can see through this charade will see to that.

Bjorn Lomborg, in The Australian yesterday spelled out some home truths about reducing reliance on fossil fuels:

There are two fundamental reasons a focus on reducing carbon emissions is the wrong response to global warming.

First, using fossil fuels remains the only way out of poverty for developing countries. Coal provides half of the world's energy. In China and India, it accounts for about 80 per cent of power generation and is helping labourers in those countries enjoy a quality of life that their parents could barely imagine.

Capping emissions means, effectively, ending this success story for hundreds of millions of people. There is no green energy source that is affordable enough to replace coal in the near future. Instead, our increased research will make green energy cheaper than fossil fuels by mid-century.

Second, immediate carbon cuts are expensive and the cost significantly outweighs the benefits. If the Kyoto agreement had been fully implemented throughout this century, it would have cut temperatures by only an insignificant 0.2C, at a cost of $180 billion every year. In economic terms, Kyoto does only about 30c worth of good for each dollar spent.

Deeper emissions cuts such as those proposed by the European Union - 20per cent below 1990 levels within 12 years - would reduce global temperatures by only 1/60th of 1C by 2100, at a cost of $10 trillion.

For every dollar spent, we would do just 4c worth of good.

Read it here and here.

Climate change lawyers ready to pounce

Ashamed to say it, having trained as a lawyer as well as a scientist, but this is how the law works. There are armies of new "climate lawyers" waiting in the wings for the ETS to become law, so they can get to work charging huge sums for interpreting it and advising on it. Unfortunately, they are all a little bit nervous that their future cash cow may be delayed, as The New Lawyer reports:

CLIMATE change lawyers keen to get a new flow of work are waiting with fingers crossed for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) to pass through Parliament.

While firms are getting some work from both existing and new clients around the possibility of an upcoming CPRS, the real goldmine will be if it is actually implemented.

“If it’s passed in parliament, that is when we know whether it will affect the work. If it is passed, companies will want to know what their obligations are and they will want to start preparing for it,” said Charmain Barton, environment and climate change partner at DLA Phillips Fox.

"Goldmine" - that says it all! Virtually all corporates of any size will, when the ETS become law, require advice on their obligations under it, which will no doubt be convoluted and labyrinthine. And where do these corporates get the money to pay the lawyers bills? By charging their customers more for their products and services, which, at the end of a very long line, means you and me paying more for our products and services.

Although there is another side to the story, especially in the current financial crisis:

Another mid-tier Sydney law firm recently made the decision to close to its new climate change practice after the sole partner failed to make the practice profitable.

Speaking anonymously to The New Lawyer, that firm’s chief executive said the firm had given the partner eight months to bring in new clients and find means to make the practice profitable.

Read it here.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read!

Vaclav Klaus writes in The Australian

No time to precis just yet, but here's the link.

Climate madness from NSW government

Climate alarmism is running wild in the New South Wales government, as they legislate against (and waste your taxpayer dollars on) things predicted by hopelessly incomplete and unreliable computer models. The latest scare is about sea level rises, but there's a problem here - for some reason only Nathan Rees understands, sea level rises will be greater in NSW than in Queensland or South Australia - go figure:

The Government has predicted the state will be hit by 40cm-higher seas by 2050.

But that is at least 10cm higher than the level predicted by neighbouring states Queensland, Victoria and South Australia.

However, lobby group Urban Taskforce isn't letting the government off the hook, as revealed in a leaked letter:

"How can you be standing in ankle-deep water in Coolangatta and be knee-deep in Tweed Heads?" Taskforce chief Aaron Gadiel said. "It's ridiculous for anyone to suggest water levels will change on the state boundaries. Proposed sea-level benchmarks in NSW are the most extreme scenario."

The Department of Environment and Climate Change predicts that by 2100 NSW sea levels will rise by 90cm even though the CSIRO's website said the "average global sea level is expected to be 28-34cm higher than 1990 levels by 2100".

"It doesn't give anyone confidence when we have (these) significant differences against something as artificial as state boundaries," Mr Gadiel said.

Even the CSIRO prediction is likely to be way off beam. Sea levels have been rising steadily (and slowly) for the last few thousand years at a rate of about 2mm per year, with no measurable acceleration due to the late 20th century "global warming". This would mean that in 40 years we could expect a rise of just 8 cm, and by the end of the century, 18 cm.

And it's not just hot air - this kind of legislation costs you and me money.

Climate madness.

Read it here.

Greenie killjoys frown on iPods

... because they cause "climate change" of course. The greenies will be in their element this year, especially with Copenhagen fast approaching, scolding us about how we should restrict our use of 21st century technology, the products of a highly developed economy, and all go back to living in the Dark Ages, in order to "tackle climate change".

Demand for power-thirsty gadgets like mobile phones, iPods and big-screen TVs is undoing efficiency gains elsewhere, the International Energy Agency said today.

The agency urged developed governments to keep pace with the invention of new consumer devices when crafting efficiency standards and implored people to make thriftier choices.
...
Rising home energy use underlines how dramatic action on climate change would require action by individuals as well as governments. The report underlined the difficulty of cutting greenhouse gases as people's lifestyles became increasingly affluent.

"Thriftier choices" and barely concealed envy at "affluent lifestyles" - that sums up the enviro-headbangers attitude, pursuing pointless emissions reductions in order to stifle developed "capitalist" economies. Watermelon politics - green on the outside, red on the inside.

Read it here.

ETS bill introduced into parliament

Despite delaying the introduction of the ETS, the government is still desperate to have the legislation passed before the end of the year. Why? Two reasons, both of them ludicrous:

1. Business certainty: because business needs to know how much of their profits will go towards an utterly pointless emissions reduction scheme; and
   
2. Taking a lead: because clearly China, and India and the US are all going to look at what Australia's doing and think, gee, we can't not follow Australia (global emissions 1.5% of total) so let's savagely cut our emissions and cripple our economies just so we don't look bad compared to ... er, who was it again? And why not read this article to see just how little chance there is of Copenhagen achieving anything.
   

Greg Combet was talking it up, of course (but where's our Pen?):

Combet said the Government accepted the science on climate change [more fool the government - Ed] that growing carbon pollution was causing global warming.

"The carbon pollution reduction scheme [two errors in four words, Greg - Ed] is one of the most significant environmental and economic reforms in the history of our nation," he told Parliament.

"Global action is needed to reduce carbon pollution to avoid the dangerous impacts of climate change [that's despite temperatures having fallen since 2001 and continuing to fall - Ed] and Australia must play its part in this international action."

Pure 100% Australian climate madness.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Barnaby Joyce has the correct response to this nonsense here:

"You can go to Copenhagen, you can go to Disneyland, you can go wherever you like, but the position of the National Party on this will be quite clear," he said.

Why isn't Malcolm Turnbull saying this too?

Professor Ian Plimer at Abbey's Bookshop

I had the pleasure of meeting Prof. Plimer at a book signing at Abbey's in Sydney this afternoon. There was a steady flow of people and Prof. Plimer took the time to discuss with several of us issues raised in his book Heaven + Earth: Global Warming - The missing science.

A knot of warm-mongers, clearly threatened by the contents of Prof. Plimer's book, turned up as well and attempted to engage in "debate" with Prof. Plimer, although they didn't look the type to be able to argue the science cogently or at all, and spent most of the time attempting to discourage the public from buying his book!

Thanks to Prof. Plimer for taking the time to put together such an excellent resource.

Warming causes increases in CO2

After all the ballyhoo about my post on Sunday deconstructing Michael Ashley's review of Ian Plimer's Heaven + Earth in The Weekend Australian, a timely article from Roy Spencer about the origins of CO2 in the atmosphere:

So, I keep coming back to the question: If warming of the oceans causes an increase in atmospheric CO2 on a year-to-year basis, is it possible that long-term warming of the oceans (say, due to a natural change in cloud cover) might be causing some portion of the long-term increase in atmospheric CO2?
...
My primary purpose in presenting all of this is simply to stimulate debate. Are we really sure that ALL of the atmospheric increase in CO2 is from humanity’s emissions? After all, the natural sources and sinks of CO2 are about 20 times the anthropogenic source, so all it would take is a small imbalance in the natural flows to rival the anthropogenic source. And it is clear that there are natural imbalances of that magnitude on a year-to-year basis...

Read it here.

Atlantic warming debunked

From The Daily Bayonet:

You just know it’s going to be a tough week for climate alarmists when it starts with the BBC debunking one of their favorite global warming claims, the warming of the Atlantic Ocean. Turns out it’s another entirely natural cause, nothing to do with global warming, or man, or a trace gas.

Now let’s see if the National Geographic corrects itself on this story, or this one, or this one, or this one that all pushed junk science the BBC now reports as dead wrong.

What terrifies greens about inconvenient news like this is that people will ask what else were they wrong about?

Read it here.

The Australian - Michael Ashley reviews Ian Plimer's Heaven + Earth

The Weekend Australian publishes a dismissive review of Ian Plimer's book Heaven and Earth which has all the usual alarmist ingredients, in the following order:

1. ad hominem attacks (despite claims to the contrary);
2. choosing one isolated fact and then trying to discredit it;
3. extrapolating ingredient 2 to the entire book;
   
4. ignoring the main arguments completely; and
   
5. hints at censorship.
   

So firstly to ingredient 1, where the reviewer, Michael Ashley, a professor of astrophysics at UNSW, firstly associates Plimer with a bunch of scientific weirdos, then looks to the argument from authority to discredit his work:

ONE of the peculiar things about being an astronomer is that you receive, from time to time, monographs on topics such as "a new theory of the electric universe", or "Einstein was wrong", or "the moon landings were a hoax".

The writings are always earnest, often involve conspiracy theories and are scientifically worthless.

One such document that arrived last week was Ian Plimer's Heaven and Earth.
...
Before reading any further, I examined Plimer's publication list on the University of Adelaide website to see what he has published in refereed journals. There are a scant 17 such papers since 1994, two as first author with the titles "Manganoan garnet rocks associated with the Broken Hill Pb-Zn-Ag orebody" and "Kasolite from the British Empire Mine". Absolutely nothing on climate science.

Tick in the box (and, P.S. nothing in yours either, although there is a hilarious photoshopped image of a binary star system rising picturesquely over Sydney...). Moving on to ingredient 2. The reviewer has chosen a minor issue, covered in about half a dozen pages, and attempts to discredit it, in preparation for using it to discredit the whole work - and what does he choose? Measurement of CO2. All I can say, is that if this is the best the reviewer can come up with, it's weak as hell:

To appreciate the errors in Plimer's book you don't have to be a climate scientist. [That's fortunate, because you aren't - Ed] For example, take the measurement of the global average CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This is obviously important, so scientists measure it with great care at many locations across the world.

Precision measurements have been made daily since 1958 at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, a mountain-top site with a clear airflow unaffected by local pollution. The data is in excellent agreement with ice cores from several sites in Antarctica and Greenland. Thousands of scientific papers have been written on the topic, hundreds of scientists are involved from many independent research groups.

Plimer, however, writes that a simple home experiment indoors can show that in a week, CO2 can vary by 75 parts per million by volume, equal to about 40 years' worth of change at the present rate. He thinks this "rings alarm bells" on the veracity of the Mauna Loa data, which shows a smoothly rising concentration.

Actually, what Plimer says (if the reviewer had bothered to read it) is that measurement of CO2 is notoriously difficult. It was originally carried out by a careful chemical test (the Pettenkofer method) which accurately revealed the atmospheric concentration of CO2. This was abandoned in 1959 for a quick and dirty infra-red spectroscopy test, which has never been validated against the Pettenkofer method:

The raw data from Mauna Loa is "edited" by an operator who deletes what may be considered poor data. Some 82% of the raw infra-red CO2 measurement data is "edited" leaving just 18% of the raw data measurements for statistical analysis.
...
Some infra-red equipment has a cold trap to remove water vapour. However, CO2 dissolves in cold water and some CO2 is also removed. These other gases are detected and measured as CO2. Gases such as CFCs, although as parts per billion in the atmosphere, have such a high infra-red absorption that they register as parts per million CO2. Unless all these other atmospheric gases are measured at the same time as CO2, then the analyses by infra-red techniques must be treated with great caution.
...
The IPCC's Third Assessment Report of 2001 argued that only infra-red CO2 measurements can be relied upon and prior measurements can be disregarded. The atmospheric CO2 measurements since 1812 do not show a steadily increasing atmospheric CO2 as shown by the Mauna Loa measurements. The IPCC chose to ignore 90,000 precise CO2 measurements compiled despite the fact that there is an overlap in time between the Pettenkofer method and the infra-red method at Mauna Loa. If a large body of validated historical data is to be ignored, then a well reasoned argument needs to be given. There was no explanation. Just silence.

Seems a perfectly reasonable questioning of the accuracy of CO2 measurement techniques to me. This is only a side issue, yet it is the focus of the review. The reviewer then moves on to ingredient 3, the extrapolation to the entire work:

Incredible as it may seem, this quality of argument is typical of the book. While the text is annotated profusely with footnotes and refers to papers in the top journals, thus giving it the veneer of scholarship, it is often the case that the cited articles do not support the text.
...
All these ideas are so wrong as to be laughable: they do not offer an "alternative scientific perspective".

If a reviewer dismisses something so casually, he should at least have the courtesy to provide explanations. But there are none.

Moving on to ingredient 4, the ignoring of the main arguments. The IPCC claim that the present "warming", which has ceased since about 2001, is a direct result of anthropogenic CO2. Plimer uses the remaining 490 plus pages of the book to demonstrate that climate change is related to thousands of other factors, and has taken place for billions of years without man's help, and that the anthropogenic signal (if there is one) is simply lost in the noise. Where is the reviewer's response to that? Nowhere to be seen.

Finally, ingredient 5, hinting at censorship of publications which do not support the "consensus" (always remembering of course that science isn't about consensus, but politics is...), because they do a "disservice to science". And just to finish off, yet another ad hominem for good luck:

Plimer's book deserves to languish on the shelves along with similar pseudo-science such as the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and Erich von Daniken [see note below - Ed].

Unfortunately for you, Prof. Ashley, the publishers can't print copies fast enough!

Read it here.

Note: For those that may not know, Immanuel Velikovsky proposed that that Earth has suffered catastrophic close-contacts with other planets (principally Venus and Mars) in ancient times. Erich von Daniken is one of the key figures responsible for popularising the paleocontact and ancient astronaut hypotheses. So you can see how offensive it is for the reviewer to link Plimer's work with this genuine "pseudo-science".

Ian Plimer at Abbey's Bookshop, Sydney

Ian Plimer will be at

• Abbey's Bookshop, 131 York Street, Sydney, on
• Tuesday 12 May between 3.30 and 4.30pm,
  

where he will discuss his new bestseller Heaven and Earth - Global Warming, the Missing Science, and will be signing copies.

I hope to get along myself.

Link to Abbey's Bookshop here.

April 2009 anomaly down

Down from .206 to .091:



Read it here.

Yet more global warming indoctrination

In Victoria this time, where students are "invited to imagine a world 20 years from now where environmental solutions have not yet been found to pressing issues including global warming" [Which stopped in about 2001 - Ed].

Steve Cook, campus principal at Williamstown High School which has trialled the education resource, said students had responded with optimism and creativity to the program.
...
"The curriculum provides facts whilst capturing imaginations and developing skills to address environmental challenges." [I wonder if it provides "facts" about the natural climate cycles the earth has gone through over billions of years, or maybe it will just focus on evil CO2 - what do you think? - Ed]

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, the patron of curriculum developer the Global Green Plan Foundation, and federal Minister for Climate Change Penny Wong will launch the initiative.

Seems where the environment is concerned, the politicisation of education is just fine and dandy. Be thankful you don't live in Victoria.

Read it here.

UK Guardian - China "up for carbon deal"

As reproduced in The Age.

CHINA has signalled its readiness to abandon its resistance to limits on its carbon emissions and wants to reach an international deal to fight global warming.

According to Britain's Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, who met senior officials in Beijing this week, China is ready to "do business" with developed countries to reach an agreement to replace the Kyoto treaty.

Can't quite see how that's going to work, when China is building two new coal fired power stations each week, and has vowed to increase coal production by 30% by 2015...

Read it here.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read!

Idiotic Comments of the day - Leigh Dayton (again)

Congratulations, Leigh - your second award (see the first here) for comparing the effect of a small amount of CO2 in the air to the effect of a small amount of cyanide gas in the air. And to cap it all, there's a "D-word" alert. With science writers like this, there's no hope. Here's the winning quote:

He [Ian Plimer] says that as there's less atmospheric CO2 than nitrogen or oxygen, a bit more won't make much difference. Doubters of the small fraction-big action effect should try surviving with a whiff of cyanide in the room.

In a snide and snarky little article entitled "Denialist ark a wobbly craft", Dayton attempts (and fails) to counter the arguments in Ian Plimer's book, Heaven and Earth. Firstly, as always, the ad hominems, so let's get them out of the way. Referring to Plimer's case against a bunch of creationists:

Federal Court judge Ronald Sackville ultimately ruled that although the minister had indeed made false and misleading claims, they were not made in the course of trade or commerce. Plimer won the publicity war but lost the case and the family home.

Plimer brings this, uh, rock-solid track record of fighting for facts to the hot-button topic du jour: global warming.

Then we move on to reasoned argument:

It's all a load of old codswallop. What on (heaven) and earth is Plimer thinking?

Gee, that's convinced me. Dayton then goes on to misrepresent the science set out in Plimer's book, and makes unsubstantiated claims without any reference to facts:

Given it's incontrovertible that since the Industrial Revolution the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increased, it's wishful thinking to believe nothing significant will happen as a result. Yet Plimer does just that.

And of course, then backs unquestioningly the corrupt and politicised IPCC:

Plimer also wrongly claims that IPCC reports are based largely on computer modelling. Not so. Observational and paleoclimate data is also included. The idea is to learn from the past, assess the present and make the best possible predictions about future trends.

A dismal effort.

Read it here (if you can bear it).

John McLean writes in The Australian

Continuing its welcome focus on climate realists (as opposed to the hysterical alarmism of other media organisations I could mention, eg the ABC and Fairytale Facts), The Australian publishes an article by climate data analyst and member of the Australian Climate Science Coalition, John McLean, in which the politicisation of the climate debate is laid bare:

The IPCC has now delivered four scientific assessment reports, each accompanied by an increasingly urgent call to action regarding climate change driven by greenhouse gases. National governments, which are signatories to the UNFCCC, have almost without exception bought into the alarm, modulating it only to accord better with their own political philosophies. This, combined with the allocation research funding according to policy relevance, means governments now attempt to predetermine the findings of scientific research.
...
Vested interests now dominate climate science. Whether climatologists, their employers and other people believe the government-approved line has become irrelevant, because they all wish to retain an income stream and whatever reputations they've established. These people advise governments, which subsequently set policy and research funding regardless of any contradiction with observational data.

Read it here.

Kerry O'Brien lets Penny Wong off the hook

An embarrassing backflip by Labor, and had it happened to the Coalition, KO'B would have savaged them mercilessly. But not so our Penny, as Australian Conservative reports:

He handled Wong with kid gloves, allowing her to duck and weave with hardly a blow landed. It is exceedingly rare for O’Brien to allow one of his interruptions to be batted away but Wong got away with it.

O’Brien posed a tough question at the start: wasn’t this an embarrassing u-turn? he asked. Wong was allowed to avoid a yes or no answer, and instead was allowed to spin her way out of it. O’Brien also passed up a chance to push a very obvious point.

Wong argued that moves to tackle climate change would have to be delayed and watered down because of problems with the accuracy of economic forecasts.

With even global warming scaremongers like David Karoly accepting that the world has cooled in the last 12 years, could it be a fact that global warming computer modelling is similarly flawed?

Read it here.

Ian Plimer responds to critics

The Australian continues its support for Ian Plimer, offering him an opportunity to respond to the myriad uninformed and ad hominem attacks his book has received, mainly from people who haven't read it.

Well-known catastrophists criticised the book before they actually received a review copy. Critics, who have everything to gain by frightening us witless with politicised science, have now shown their true colours. No critic has argued science with me. I have just enjoyed a fortnight of being thrashed with a feather.

Despite having four review copies, ABC's Lateline photocopied parts of chapters and sent them to an expert on gravity, a biologist and one who produces computer models. These critics did not read the book in its entirety. The compere of Lateline claimed that he had read the book yet his questions showed the opposite. When uncritical journalists have no science training, then it is little wonder doomsday scenarios can seduce them.

In The Age (Insight, May 2), David Karoly claims that my book "does not support the answers with sources". Considering that the book has 2311 footnotes as sources, Karoly clearly had not read the book. Maybe Karoly just read up to page 21, which showed that his published selective use of data showed warming but, when the complete set of data was used, no such warming was seen.

Robert Manne (The Weekend Australian, Inquirer, April 25-26) claims to be a great democrat yet demonises dissent on a matter of science. He is not a scientist. The gains made in the Enlightenment, the scientific method, history and integrated interdisciplinary science are all ignored in an ideological push to remodel the economy.

Read it all!

Rudd likely to delay ETS, but increase targets

Breaking news:

The Federal Government is today expected to announce that it is delaying the introduction of its emissions trading scheme by a year.

The ABC understands that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is about to announce that the scheme will be delayed until 2011, while the range of proposed cuts will be increased to 5 to 25 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020.

The ABC also understands that the scheme will be changed to ensure that efforts made by households to reduce emissions will be factored in.

More comment to follow later. Read it here.

Indoctrination Alert: Australian Museum launches climate change exhibit

If you're visiting the Australian Museum in Sydney, I would advise you to steer clear of their latest climate change exhibition, entitled "Climate Change: Our Future, Our Choice" - even the title is misleading. We have no choice in it - climate changes, that's what climate does - and a glance at the kind of message the exhibition sends confirms my worst fears:

Developed by climate change experts and scientists [any sceptics among them, I wonder? I very much doubt it - Ed], in conjunction with Perth-based science centre Scitech, this exhibition gives you the rare chance to uncover the truth and consider how the decisions you make today will impact the future. Join us in thinking about the type of world you want for yourself and generations to come - and discover how you can personally make it a reality!

In other words, we need to do something to "save the planet"... and if that's not enough, here are some of the things you can do:

• Melt the ice caps and see which parts of Sydney flood first.

• Dance to the beat on a special dance floor and see how much green energy you can generate.

• Discover what makes up the carbon footprint of a simple hamburger and encounter a 36,000 litre cube showing exactly how much greenhouse gas they are responsible for each day.

Stop, stop - enough. Another supposedly impartial organisation sells out to the politics of climate alarmism, and thousands of our children will be indoctrinated as a result.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt comments on the sorry tale here.

Rudd quietly ditches climate ads

Remember "Think climate, think change" - probably one of the most vacuous and inane slogans of our time? You may recall that Krudd & Co were planning to spend $14 million of your tax dollars spruiking the whole climate change/ETS nonsense (see here). Now it appears they have given up on it, having spent "only" $8.8 million.

THE Federal Government has quietly scrapped a multimillion-dollar advertising blitz to promote its controversial emissions trading scheme amid widespread criticism that its plan is too complex and will do little to tackle global warming.

Documents given to The Sunday Age reveal a taxpayer-funded climate change call centre was also canned, after receiving an average of just 16 calls a day at a cost of $52 each. [It really is the greatest challenge to humanity since the dawn of time! - Ed]

The Government's campaign — "Think Climate, Think Change" — has already cost millions of dollars, with ads run on television and in magazines.

But documents from the Department of Climate Change show that a second phase of the campaign, which was to explain how emissions trading would work, has been dumped and "no further advertising is being planned".

Still spinning furiously, as only Krudd and Co know how, the government defends its decision:

The department said ads were cancelled because they had "already achieved substantial market coverage and penetration, and the campaign objectives of raising awareness of the impacts of climate change … were unlikely to be enhanced by further advertising at that time".

Read it here.

Fairytale-Facts: The Age takes 1600 words trying to rubbish Plimer

Funny, but I didn't notice The Age going to such extremes to pick apart the science in An Inconvenient Truth, which is the climate science colander of our times: full of holes. But it shouldn't surprise us. The Fairfax editors made up their minds years ago on climate change, and now have their brains firmly locked down to anything that dissents.

Amusingly, The Age also resents the fact that Ian Plimer has received "uncritical publicity", which is utter nonsense given every journo in the country has been trying to smack him down - think the ABC's Tony Jones, for example. If you want a real example of uncritical publicity, try Al Gore and AIT.

As usual, The Age focuses on one small fact, and ignores everything else, namely that temperatures have dropped since 1998. Take out the 1998 El Niño, and The Age triumphantly announces that:

the line turns upward. Global warming before your eyes.

The fact is that since about 2001, temperatures have declined. But also, since the earth is slowly recovering from the Little Ice Age, you would expect there to be "global warming" on a century scale. The argument is over whether it is human-induced.

Then, having "won" the argument on that, The Age launches into the usual warmist tactic of the ad hominem attack, describing Plimer as:

rambling and hard to pin down... his conversation is a grab-bag of arguments against human-induced climate change drawn from science and popular debate [nice touch - Ed]. It veers here and there...

The Age lines up some rent-a-quote warmists (e.g. David Karoly) to rubbish the claims in his book, backing the IPCC and telling some real porkies in the process. Matthew England from the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre defends the IPCC:

"That is an absolute no-brainer. He shouldn't be getting away with saying the IPCC ignores the past, it's absolutely untrue," he says. "The IPCC includes all relevant information from geology, geophysics, solar processes, oceanography, glaciology, right through to paleoclimate. Every area he claims he is bringing in for the first time is already there."

So why did the IPCC models fail to predict the cooling since 2001? Maybe it's because the effects of the sun are played down to almost nothing, and hardly figure in IPCC models, and neither does cloud cover. And also think Michael Mann and hockey sticks - erasing the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age in order to advance a political agenda - one of the worst examples of scientific dishonesty in history. (And, of course, if you conceded that climate change was natural and there was nothing we could do about it except adapt, you'd be out of a job.)

As a final flourish, the article quotes David Easterling of the US National Climatic Data Centre at length, but in the last few lines concedes:

Easterling hasn't read Plimer's book, but his analysis published last weekend also challenges Heaven + Earth.

It's getting harder and harder for The Age to defend it's blinkered, warmist agenda against the cool facts.

Read it here.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read! (And a new look too!)