Carbon Sense - Barnaby Joyce is now the real leader of the Opposition

Press release from the Carbon Sense Coalition:

The Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition, Mr Viv Forbes, today called for Liberals who oppose the ALP Ration-N-Tax Scheme Bill (the RATS Bill) to leave the Liberals and join the Nationals.

Forbes explains:

“Barnaby Joyce has become the real leader of the Opposition and deserves to be supported. Malcolm Turnbull no longer serves liberal values and actually promotes the interests of big business mates who aim to do very well out of trading carbon credits.

“The Liberal leadership has lost all idea of their philosophical base and are now the paralysed party of the extreme centre. They should have learnt from the history of Don Chipp’s Democrats and The Australia Party that parties of the extreme centre end up standing for nothing and are abandoned by their supporters.

“The Liberal Party is now on that dead-end road.

“Mr Turnbull should also ponder the philosophical goals of the deep green zealots who promote the Green Religion. He will find them consistent with the philosophies of Mao and Stalin, and totally opposed to the beliefs of freedom supporters such as Menzies, Thatcher and Regan.

“Once our Parliaments held people like Bert Kelly and John Hyde of the Liberals and Peter Walsh and Michael Costa of the ALP who supported the freedom philosophy for both business and workers. Today, liberty finds few friends in Parliament.

“Mr Turnbull determines his policies by “Business Feedback”. He should talk to more than organisations such as the Business Council of Australia, where 60% of the membership has no direct carbon tax liability and many of them expect to benefit greatly by participating in the new Bubble Business to be created from trading hot air certificates.

“Big banks, national law firms, transnational accounting firms, Wall Street traders and the merchant bank millionaires are not the real industry of Australia – they are the froth and bubble floating on the real rivers of productive industry.

“Since the days of the Wool Boom and the Gold Rush, Australian prosperity has always rested on the primary wealth created by its outback industries. Mr Turnbull needs to pull on his RM Williams boots, don a hard hat and venture out of the air conditioning to find the opinion of the real businesses of Australia. He should talk to farmers and graziers, fishermen and foresters, miners and explorers, those who process our minerals and food into things of real value, and those who run the trucks, trains and planes that keep the swarming cities functioning.

“Far from the genteel cocktail circuit of the Sydney-Melbourne Clubs, the Nationals have sensed the growing grassroots revolt against the Rudd road to carbon penury. They have done what every good politician does – find out where the people are heading and jump in front calling “Follow Me”. Many others will now join that revolt.

“Barnaby Joyce is right. The RATS Bill cannot be made acceptable - it must be destroyed in the Senate.”

www.carbon-sense.com

UK Royal Society - officially a "credibility-free zone"

The Royal Society, that formerly learned institution dating back to 1660, has once again shown that it has gone completely off the rails. Having decreed that the debate on global warming was over (just see this page to see how hysterically the Society reacts to any opposing view on AGW), they are now backing research into "simulated volcanic eruptions" to "stave off climate change":

The society will this week call for a global program of studies into geo-engineering - the manipulation of Earth's climate to counteract global warming - as the world struggles to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

It will suggest in a report that pouring sulphur-based particles into the upper atmosphere could be one of the few options available to humanity to keep the world cool.

The intervention by the Royal Society comes amid tension before the climate talks in Copenhagen in December to agree on global cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. Preliminary discussions have gone so badly that many scientists believe geo-engineering will be needed as a "plan B".

Let's remember that a former president of the Royal Society said that heavier than air flight was impossible…

Read it here.

More climate nonsense from The Age

The Age's headline screams:

It's not drought, it's climate change, say scientists

The reality:


(source: Bureau of Meteorology)

Read it here, but honestly, I wouldn't bother.

The Spectator: Joyce is right

The Spectator Australia publishes an excellent opinion piece which just about sums up everything ACM stands for, applauding Barnaby Joyce for standing up to the nonsense of an ETS, and urging the Coalition to have the guts to fight an election on climate change and Rudd's spending spree:

Barnaby Joyce, leader of the National Party in all but name, gave a formative speech on Sunday at the Party Federal Council in Canberra. He underlined his party’s opposition to any emissions trading scheme, and called for a referendum on the use of nuclear power in Australia. His determination to stake out a National Party position independent of his Liberal coalition colleagues is understandable. The ETS is a political boon for the Nationals. Long a party in decline, they are now the only major Australian party that is outright opposed to an ETS. Many Australians support this position, and far more will support it once the full cost and futility of an ETS become widely apparent.

…

Polls show most Australians support an ETS. But that is because it is bound up with the popular yet asinine notion of ‘doing something for the environment’. Only an election campaign provides the resources and political focus to blast away the moral hype. All that would remain is a giant tax to fix a debatable problem of disputed cause, a totally ineffective tax to boot. The world’s climate is never going to change because a country that produces about 1 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions decides to restrict its contribution a bit. And that is assuming all the science about anthropogenic global warming is correct. The ETS could end up being the Labor government’s own WorkChoices.

Read it all!

Emissions scheme like "GST from hell"

Sounds promising, you think, but then the moonbats cop out and suggest something almost as bad:

The federal government's proposed emission trading scheme is like as a "GST from hell", says an independent think-tank.

The Committee for Economic Development (CEDA) says the planned carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) - which the government is preparing to re-submit to parliament later this year - is an invitation for trouble.

The government should look instead at a carbon tax, which would be more workable in reducing carbon-emitting activities in Australia, it says.

Only if you believe, without question, the pronouncements of the IPCC…

Read it here.

Cost of tackling climate change to rise

Now there's a surprise! Never saw that coming, did we? Just check out the figures in this article:

With just 100 days to go before the crucial Copenhagen Climate Conference, world leaders are being warned they have seriously underestimated the cost of adapting to the dangers of global warming.

In December, delegates from up to 192 countries will congregate for two weeks to negotiate a global emissions reduction deal to replace the existing Kyoto Protocol.

The new report by the International Institute for Environmental Development and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change says the figure of $100 billion the UN estimates might be needed for adaptation could actually be as much as three times higher.

Tackling climate change is a bottomless pit into which Western governments seem only too happy to throw your money. Turkeys voting for Christmas, yet again.

Read it here.

Another gas condemned

Soon there won't be any gases left which aren't "pollutants" or in some other way deemed "harmful" for the environment. In a weird throwback to the 1980s, the ABC runs a story on the depletion of the ozone layer. So get out your Aviator sunnies, put on an episode of Miami Vice and enjoy:

New research shows that nitrous oxide, also known as happy gas, is now the most abundant ozone-depleting substance in the atmosphere.

A paper published in the journal Science reveals the increasing levels of the gas will cause more damage to the ozone layer than the more commonly known chloroflourocarbons (CFCs).

The research found emissions of nitrous oxide are now present in such large amounts that it will remain the most damaging ozone-depleting substance throughout the 21st century.

Dr A Ravishankara from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says an international treaty has stemmed the use of CFCs, but nitrous oxide is still not regulated. [Give it time, give it time - Ed]

"Currently ozone depletion in the stratosphere is largely due to the chlorofluorocarbons that have been already put in the atmosphere," he said.

"But if you continue to put nitrous oxide it will contribute more and more to the ozone layer depletion in the future."

Maybe they should regulate oxygen next, that evil, harmful gas without which bush fires would be so much less intense. Each person is entitled to their own allowance of oxygen each day, and if they use it up too quickly, they will have to purchase oxygen credits in order to, er, stay alive.

Read it here.

Rural support for Rudd plummets

Hopefully, this is a sign of what will happen nationally when people wake up to the realities of the ETS:

SUPPORT for the Rudd Government has slumped in country areas in the past two months, with experts pointing to the emissions trading scheme (ETS) for Labor's crashing popularity in the bush.

While the Government had enjoyed a major lead in both city and country areas in the Nielsen polls compiled for Fairfax, those figures have fallen away sharply between June and August.

In mid-June, 58 per cent of rural voters surveyed said on a two-party preferred basis they would vote Labor, while 42pc said they would support the Coalition if an election was called at that time.

Figures released by Nielsen last week reveal the two-party preferred rural vote was now neck and neck at 50-50.
…
Senior lecturer in politics at Monash University, Dr Nick Economou, said the dramatic swing back to the Opposition in rural seats would most definitely be as a result of the Government's climate change and emissions trading policies.

Dr Economou said rural voters often had a very sharp focus on the impacts of government actions because of their more narrow economic bases.
…
"The only conclusion you could make about these figures is the shift in support is to do with climate change policy.

"City voters want to do something about climate change but they don't understand the impacts of what's being proposed in the same way country voters do."

Indeed they don't. Let's see if we can change that, shall we?

Read it here.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read!

And when you get to the comment about the Ashes, I'm actually an expat Pom, so I'm celebrating!

Farmers to march on Canberra to protest ETS

Little by little, drop by drop, the public seem to be ever so slowly waking up to the reality of the ETS. It's far too late of course - this should have been happening years ago - but the efficient spin machine of the Krudd government has made sure that the reality has not escaped into the public domain. Farmers are going to be one of the hardest hit industries under the new tax and they are not happy about it:

FARMERS are about to be "ambushed" by the Government's emissions trading scheme and it's time they marched on Canberra in protest, according to Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan.

Senator Heffernan believes farmers need to send a loud message to politicians and Australia's urban consumers that food security is under attack and the future of farming will not survive a tax on carbon.

Senator Heffernan, who is also a farmer from Junee in Southern NSW, told Rural Press this week that urgent action was needed to force the Government to make an immediate decision to exclude agriculture from an emissions trading scheme, but allow farmers to generate credits voluntarily.

He says various studies have proven that farmers will be forced to bear massive cost increases from the start of the scheme and from 2013 when a decision is made on the treatment of agriculture – regardless of whether the sector is included or not.
…
"The farm sector is beginning to understand just how serious an emissions trading scheme is going to be.

"They need to be drumming this into the Government and urban consumers who take the availability of clean green food for granted and believe it will always be there in the supermarket.

"I know many farmers are mentally, physically and financially exhausted but this new tax will be the end of family farming, so I think it's time we march.

"This is something which will affect all farmers – not just wheat growers, not just dairy farmers, but everyone. No matter what you grow, you're going to face significantly higher costs."

Read it here. Note that this doesn't get any press in the other Fairfax media, such as The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald - it is relegated to the North Queensland Register...

100W incandescent bulbs "banned in EU"

More interference and micro-regulation in everyone's lives from the EU in the name of "tackling climate change". Europeans will no longer be able to buy 100W incandescent bulbs from next week:

From September 1, 100-watt versions of the old incandescent bulbs will be banned from Europe's shops and other bulbs with lower wattage will follow in the ensuing years, under a system agreed by EU experts last December.

New technology light bulbs, such as compact florescent lights (CFL) can save up to 80 per cent of the energy used by the worst old-style lights in homes.

The move will also cut carbon dioxide emissions as part of the European Union's wider climate change package.

Admittedly, CFLs are more efficient and last longer, but on the downside, they produce a horrible light, are hideously expensive, take ages to warm up to full brightness, look ugly in light fittings, and are actually more damaging for the environment than traditional incandescents:

However the [European consumer group BEUC] added, in a statement, that removing the old-style light bulbs from the market also holds drawbacks for some consumers.

There are concerns "about the risks to health from the high mercury content of the new bulbs," the group warned.

The EU plan also "falls short of the needs of some consumers who need to use the old-style light bulbs for health-related reasons such as light sensitivity," BEUC added.

But none of that matters when we're talking about "saving the planet".

Read it here.

New Poll - Opposition's response to ETS

A new poll is starting today (see right -->). What do you think the Opposition's response to the ETS should be? There are three options:

1. Pass the ETS unamended in November;
2. Negotiate amendments with the Government prior to voting for it in November; or
3. Vote against the ETS, whether amended or not.

Poll will be open for two weeks.

Climate madness in Queensland

From the "I'm more moonbattish than you" department. Huge swathes of coastal Queensland are being declared off-limits for developers as the government bases its planning decisions on the IPCC's sea level predictions:

Queensland is a coastal development "hotspot", and in the past few years several local councils have been forced to make their own estimates of future rises in sea levels due to global warming [er, surely "climate change" - Ed], and have applied them to development applications. However, Queensland is believed to be the first state to put a figure on how much the sea will rise.

The Bligh government policy is based on the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and predicts sea levels will rise 30cm by 2050 and 80cm by 2100. Government and industry figures yesterday predicted that if these guidelines were adopted by local councils, it would have an effect on coastal development in all major coastal towns.

That, you would have thought, was moonbattish enough, given that sea levels have risen at the same rate of 2 or 3 mm a year for the past few thousand years, and if anything are slowing down. The likely maximum sea level rise would be about 30cm by 2100.

But no! The Queensland Conservation Council picks a ridiculous figure out of the air, and runs with that instead:

QCC spokesman Simon Baltais says recent data shows sea levels will rise by up to 1.5 metres.

"When you look at the latest science coming out of all of the countries - Australia, Europe - they're all talking sea level rises greater than one metre," he said.

"So they're using the easy way out by saying they're using IPCC data. The truth of the matter is, contemporary science is saying it's a lot higher."

What contemporary science is saying 1.5 metres? Answers on a postcard… no, forget it. Climate madness.

Read it here and here.

Turnbull: ETS is Liberal policy

Malcolm Turnbull appears to be getting tough on those in his own party who oppose an emissions trading scheme:

Emboldened by a lift in his Newspoll ratings, Mr Turnbull challenged colleagues today, telling a business breakfast in Melbourne: “Those people who say an emissions trading scheme is an anathema must have been asleep during the last term of the Howard government.

“Not only did we establish an emissions trading scheme, which is a market-based way of putting a price on carbon, we commenced legislating for it. It remains our policy.”

Just because it was Howard policy doesn't necessarily make it right. It must always be remembered that Liberal policy on climate change is the vacuous statement that "we give the planet the benefit of the doubt"… hmm.

And in other news, Brendan Nelson will announce his retirement from parliament, sparking a by-election in the seat of Bradfield:

He will quit politics at the end of September, more than 12 months before the next scheduled election, for a defence industry job. He was a Defence Minister in the Howard Government.

Nelson had previously said he would end his 13 years in Parliament, in the super-safe Liberal seat of Bradfield, at the next scheduled election.

However, he now wants to leave earlier and called a press conference for Tuesday afternoon to explain why.

Could turn into a mini-referendum on climate change? More to follow on the Nelson story as it happens.

Read it here and here.

Climate sense from Ian Plimer

A breath of fresh air in the stench-laden atmosphere of alarmism that pervades all our olfactory organs at the moment. Ian Plimer dissects the current climate madness in Quadrant:

The government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme has the potential to ruin Australia’s productive economies and to build an even greater bureaucracy. Even the name of this bill should ring warning bells as carbon is the foundation of life and is not a pollutant.

It is claimed that there is a scientific consensus about human-induced climate change. Consensus is a process of politics not science. There is certainly no scientific consensus about human-induced climate change and the loudest voice does not win scientific discussions. Science is married to evidence, no matter how uncomfortable.

Read it all.

High temperatures in NSW and Qld "due to global warming"

Of course they are, you denier you. It only took a matter of hours before the alarmist Fairfax press made the inevitable link between the record temperatures in NSW and Queensland and "long term warming" - hang on, wasn't that "climate change" last week? Hey, just use whichever term fits the agenda best!

THE north is sweltering and, in historical terms, the south is rarely cold. The result, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, has been a winter of record-breaking warmth across the continent.

Temperatures in Queensland, northern NSW and the Northern Territory pushed up to 15 degrees above average over the past week. Brisbane yesterday reached 35.4 degrees, nearly 3 degrees warmer than the previous August high.
…
No weather event can be attributed to climate change alone [there's a "but" coming here - Ed] but [and there is is] Dr Jones said he believed it was impossible to divorce the current variability from a long-term warming.

''We've always had heatwaves, we've always had warm spells in winter, but what we're seeing now is this combination of the warming trend and the extremes coming together to see very large and very long-lived records broken and often by substantial margins.''

I will wait with bated breath for The Age article that links record cold to "global cooling". In any event, we all know the planet is on a gradual warming trend, as it recovers from the Little Ice Age, so in many ways it's not surprising that records will get broken. However, whether humanity is to blame is an entirely different question.

Read it here.

Ron Boswell on the ETS

Queensland Nationals Senator Ron Boswell sets out his views on the ETS:

HOW many Greens does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is none because the Greens want to put all the lights out. During Senate debate last week on the renewable energy legislation, Australian Greens senator Christine Milne mentioned the objective of a zero-carbon economy. The extreme nature of this vision is the ultimate driver in the emissions trading scheme debate. The most significant political achievement this century is the ability of extremist Green policies to dictate the agenda of otherwise mainstream governments.

The coalition between Labor and the Greens is the throne on which the philosopher king, Kevin Rudd, sits. Everything, especially the ETS, must be seen through this red and green prism.
…
There is one thing that will ensure that the canary-fatal ETS can fail a second time. Business must muscle up and tell its so-called spokespeople to defy the red-green alliance and put industry and the economy first. Reasonable thinkers know emissions reductions come at a price, so only successful business can invest in reduction technology and adaptation measures. Business must stand firm and that will keep the Liberal-Nationals Coalition strong in opposing the ETS. Groups such as the Business Council of Australia cannot serve two masters, the rent-seekers and the producers of real goods. It is strange how much of the public comment seems to have got these two mixed up.

Read it here.

Australian public hasn't a clue about the ETS

We suspected this, but an (admittedly) small poll has revealed that the Australian public are mind-numbingly ignorant about the ETS (even what is stands for), and its effect on prices:

Only about 15 people out of 100 surveyed for The Punch could correctly say what ETS stood for, while only one person in the survey correctly named the expected increases on household power bills - and he guessed.

The ETS, currently expected to come into operation in 2011, will transform the Australian economy by forcing businesses to buy licences to emit carbon.

The scheme has been at the core of political debate in Canberra for the past two weeks and is threatening to split the Coalition, with the Nationals entirely opposed to the introduction of the scheme.

It will lead to increases in the prices of a range of goods and services. If the price of emitting a tonne of carbon is $25, the federal government estimates average monthly electricity and gas bills will go up by $6 and $2 respectively.

And Krudd & Co will be very happy to keep it this way, because if the public really understood what the ETS would do to the Australian economy, to jobs, to everyday life, they would never get it through the door.

Read it here.

Nationals to take lead on climate

This is looking like it will turn into a big issue for the Coalition. The Nationals are hoping to take the lead away from the Liberals on the ETS - and given Turnbull's flirtation with Labor, his greener-than-thou position on the ETS sadly makes a lot more sense. From The Australian:

THE Nationals have directly challenged Malcolm Turnbull's authority on climate change, boasting that Liberal MPs are beginning to back their blanket rejection of a carbon emissions trading system.

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce said yesterday that despite the Opposition Leader's efforts to negotiate with Kevin Rudd on emissions trading, Liberal MPs were telling him that they, like the Nationals, did not believe in an ETS.

Asked if the Nationals' advocacy was "bringing Liberals along", Senator Joyce said: "I think on this one we are. I think on this one the National Party are leading."
…
Senator Joyce said he was aware of many Liberals who were fervent opponents of the ETS, despite the Liberal leader's search for common ground with the government. "People have woken up to what the ETS is," he said. "It's not going to change the climate. It's just a massive new tax." Senator Joyce said he hoped the Liberals would vote against the ETS when it returned to the parliament for a second vote.

If the Liberals backed the legislation, the Nationals would not budge, he said, arguing that voters would accept that his party had the right to disagree with its Coalition partner.

Read it here.

BREAKING: Nationals reject emissions bill

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The National party has unanimously rejected the federal government's emissions trading scheme legislation at the party's annual council in Canberra today.

The motion was first on the agenda and has opened the way for a potential split between the coalition parties in the Senate when the vote on the ETS comes up again in November.

Prior to the council vote, outspoken Senator Barnaby Joyce said it was a most "dangerous scheme for regional Australia."

"The emissions trading scheme will do nothing to affect the climate of the globe," he told delegates at the council.

Senator Joyce said it would be an "insidious tax" which would "completely undermine the structure for which this country is built on".

Liberal MP Darren Chester, who seconded the motion, said if the unions were too gutless to stand up for regional Australia and country jobs, then it was up to the Nationals to do so.

The motion was passed unanimously by the more than 50 members present at the council.

Read it here.

Seth Borenstein: catalogue of alarmism

Following on from the previous story on "record SSTs", Marc Morano at Climate Depot lists the alarmism and hysteria of AP reporter Seth Borenstein (first link is currently down):

• AP's Borenstein in a PANIC: 'Obama left with little time to curb global warming'...'cooling trend illustrates how fast the world is warming' - December 14, 2008
  
• Scientists Denounce AP's Borenstein For Hysterical Global Warming Article - December 15, 2008
• Say it ain't so! AP's Borenstein Reports: 'The Wind seems to be dying down...the cause may be global warming' - June 10, 2009 - Excerpt: Scientist mocks wind claims: 'How can they have more intense storms from the same effect that is lessening winds?'
• Two dozen prominent scientists denounce AP's Borenstein's article promoting sea level fears in the year 2100 - September 24, 2007
• AP's Borenstein excludes scientists and peer-reviewed studies countering claims of allegedly 'melting' Antarctic - March 27, 2008
• AP's BORENSTEIN INCORRECTLY CLAIMS SCIENTISTS PRAISE GORE'S MOVIE - June 27, 2006
• AP's Borenstein inaccurately described scientist as "one of the few remaining scientists skeptical of the global warming harm caused by industries that burn fossil fuels' - July 27, 2006
• Kudos to AP's Seth Borenstein for writing the most balanced of all the media's articles about this new Antarctic study - January 21, 2009
• Arctic Scare! AP's Borenstein out of control (again) - Warns of 'Tipping Point' - Quotes James Hansen, Bob Corell & a Greenpeace 'scientist' – August 28, 2008 - Excerpt: More ominous signs Wednesday have scientists saying that a global warming "tipping point" in the Arctic seems to be happening before their eyes: Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is at its second lowest level in about 30 years. [...] Five climate scientists, four of them specialists on the Arctic, told The Associated Press that it is fair to call what is happening in the Arctic a "tipping point." NASA scientist James Hansen, who sounded the alarm about global warming 20 years ago before Congress, said the sea ice melt "is the best current example" of that. [...] On top of that, researchers were investigating "alarming" reports in the last few days of the release of methane from long frozen Arctic waters, possibly from the warming of the sea, said Greenpeace climate scientist Bill Hare, who was attending a climate conference in Ghana.

And that's just the start - read the rest here.

Fairytale Facts: The Age on "record" sea temperatures

Any records for temperature in the upwards direction are inevitably caused by "global warming", whereas any records in the opposite direction are "just weather". So it's no surprise that The Age gleefully trumpets the high SSTs in July:

JULY was the hottest [not "warmest" of course, but "hottest", even though we are talking about fractions of a degree here - Ed] month for the world's oceans in almost 130 years of record keeping.

The average water temperature worldwide was 17 degrees Celsius, according to the National Climatic Data Centre, the branch of the US Government that keeps world weather records.

June was only slightly cooler, while August could set another record, scientists say.

The previous record was set in July 1998 during a powerful El Nino in the Pacific. The coolest recorded ocean temperature was 15 degrees in December 1909.

Meteorologists say there is a combination of forces at work: a natural El Nino weather pattern just getting started on top of worsening man-made global warming [which is a given at The Age, of course - Ed], and a dash of random weather variations.

I love that: "a dash of random weather variations" - I wonder if the records broken for cold in the US this summer are just a "dash" of random weather variations too? No, they're 100% random weather variations, obscuring the underlying warming, you denier you. Borenstein, the author of the piece, is a well known alarmist. Whilst July 2009 was warmer than usual, it was certainly not the warmest, and Anthony Watts picks the whole thing apart nicely:

The Borenstein article also claims that Arctic SST anomalies are as high as 10 deg F (5.5 deg C) above average. Wow!! Really?? I used the SST map-making feature of the NOAA NOMADS system to create the map of high latitude Northern Hemisphere SST anomalies for July 2009. The Contour Interval was set at 1 deg C to help find the claimed excessively high SST anomalies. Alas, Borenstein was right, BUT, as you will note, the ONLY area that reaches the 5 to 6 deg C range is the White Sea off the Barents Sea.

And to put that in perspective, Figure 6 is the global map. Based on the Kartesh White Sea Biological Station website the surface area of the White Sea is approximately 90,000 sq km. If the surface area of the Arctic Ocean is 14 million sq km, the White Sea represents less than 0.6% of it. And for those who want to compare it to the surface area of the global oceans, its surface area is 361 million sq km. Too many zeroes after the decimal point to worry about.

And the SST anomalies of one miniscule area do not represent the SST anomalies for the Arctic Ocean, as is obvious in Figure 7. Arctic SST anomalies have declined over the past few years.

To sum up the Borenstein article, it’s factually incorrect in places, and in others, it raises alarmism to ridiculous levels by dwelling on a meaningless statistic, the July SST anomaly of the White Sea.

Read Anthony's article here.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read!

Senate passes RET legislation

So you can expect to see a whole lot more of these pointless monuments to 21st century enviro-lunacy:


Bird shredders at work (photo © ABC)

Read it here.

The shape of things to come

Many people have said that the ETS will create a bureaucracy ripe for criminals, scammers and fraudsters, and if this story from the UK is anything to go by, they are dead right:

The British tax office has arrested seven people in London in a suspected $76 million value-added tax fraud in the European market in carbon allowances.

Officers from HM Revenues and Customs (HMRC) searched 27 properties around London and arrested six men and one woman in early morning raids.

"Those arrested are believed to be part of an organised crime group operating a network of companies trading large volumes of high-value carbon credits," HMRC said in a statement.

"It is thought that the proceeds of this crime have then been used to finance lavish lifestyles and the purchase of prestige vehicles."

The HMRC said further arrests were likely but it could not give the names of those arrested or the companies involved, nor could it estimate the total scale of the suspected fraud or say if it was isolated to Britain.

My advice is get used to it - the carbon trading arena will be a haven for criminal gangs in the future.

Read it here.

Nationals may split from Liberals

It wouldn't be surprising if this happened to be honest. On climate change, the Nationals are extremely unlikely to accept Malcolm Turnbull's position on negotiating the ETS. From The Australian:

THE Nationals have discussed quitting the Coalition amid growing frustration with the Liberal Party and the opposition's poor performance in opinion polls.

Senior Liberals have told The Australian they fear that the numbers in the Nationals' partyroom are tight on the issue and that lower house members are set to openly defy the Liberals on policies and political tactics.

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce, whose Senate team is unafraid to buck the Liberals, last night confirmed a recent Nationals meeting discussed ending the Coalition agreement.

But Senator Joyce played down the possibility of a split, saying some Nationals were "kite-flying" and that no vote had been taken. "I don't think it will happen," he said. "Some of the most peculiar things get floated at party meetings. But it doesn't mean they will happen."

The discord follows months of poor polling results and tension between the Coalition partners on key policy issues, including climate change and carbon emissions trading.

Read it here.

Shock: BBC journo exposes Greenpeace alarmism

The BBC has always been a fully paid up member of the Holy Church of Global Warming [surely "climate change" - Ed] and has always swallowed all the usual fear-mongering claptrap whole, publishing anything and everything that any enviro-moonbat chooses to say. So it is refreshing (and to be honest, little short of astonishing) to see one BBC journalist, Stephen Sackur, give Greenpeace a rough ride, and get them to admit to exaggeration and alarmism:

The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has admitted his organization's recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was "a mistake."

Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled "Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts," which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.

Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the "Hardtalk" program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.

"I don't think it will be melting by 2030. ... That may have been a mistake," he said.

Sackur said the claim was inaccurate on two fronts, pointing out that the Arctic ice is a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle, and that it had survived much warmer periods in history than the present.

The BBC reporter accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing "misleading information" and using "exaggeration and alarmism."

Leipold's admission that Greenpeace issued misleading information is a major embarrassment to the organization, which often has been accused of alarmism but has always insisted that it applies full scientific rigor in its global-warming pronouncements.

Although he admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization's practice of "emotionalizing issues" in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.

See the whole interview here. (via Climate Depot)

High priestess Wong to "burn sceptics at stake"

Wong has been called the High Priestess before, and punishment for heresy the obvious next step, as Liberal Senator David Bushby pointed out:

"There is no doubt that she approaches such heretical behaviour as if she was the high priestess of the religion," he told the Senate on Tuesday night.

"If she was allowed to, I suspect she would like to burn at the stake all who dare question the truth of the science behind climate change."

Senator Bushby said extreme weather events such as hurricanes, droughts and bushfires were occurring less severely than in the past.

"I have no choice but to refuse to believe what I am told is true, and to declare myself a sceptic when it comes to the issue of mankind's impact on the climate."

Excellent - another one joins the party! However, on a much more distasteful note, that pitiful excuse for a Premier, Nathan Rees, has opened his not inconsiderably sized mouth and placed a size 11 boot in it, by comparing climate sceptics to "Nazi appeasers" - how charming - the alarmists can use that one when they're not branding us "Holocaust deniers":

In a speech about good policy based on good science [Ha, Rees wouldn't know good policy or good science if they came and smacked him in the head], Mr Rees said it was important not to ignore the messages scientists were giving about the environment.

''The threat of climate change is catastrophic [it certainly is if you're a pea-brained pollie who believes every word the IPCC says]. In fact, the current wave of climate change scepticism smacks of 1930s-style appeasement: 'Hide under the blankets and it will go away'. But it won't go away.''

The election in NSW just can't come soon enough.

Read it here and here.

Renewable energy target is "mad, bad tokenism"

The RET isn't just a feel-good gesture that the Opposition should wave through, it will achieve what all climate related legislation achieves: nothing in terms of climate, everything in terms of increased costs for consumers:

HURRAH, the Rudd government and Turnbull opposition have agreed to pass the Renewable Energy Target, an initiative unjustified in economic terms that makes emission reduction costs three times more expensive than the price of permits under cap and trade and resurrects government planning that Australia spent half a century trying to escape.

This is an initiative driven totally by politics. In a new world of climate change tokenism it means Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull are heroes. Government support to create new renewable industries otherwise untenable has become the test of being "serious" about climate change.

Perhaps it is time to be grateful for small mercies since in the scale of climate change policy atrocities this is modest. But it illuminates a greater truth: a fundamental change in policy values produced by global warming and a new hypocrisy about solutions running from renewables to nuclear power.

And the Nationals (and some Liberals) aren't going to let it pass without a fight:

MALCOLM Turnbull will be forced to seek Coalition partyroom approval before signing a deal over the government's renewable energy target, after several backbenchers expressed concerns yesterday he was not driving a hard enough bargain.

In a sign of how hard the Opposition Leader will have to fight to get backing for any kind of climate change legislation, Nationals senators Ron Boswell, Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash said the opposition should insist on all of its proposed amendments before allowing the bills through the Senate.
…
The Nationals were backed by Liberal senators Cory Bernardi, Mathias Cormann and backbenchers Bronwyn Bishop and Wilson Tuckey, with many arguing that opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt should drive a harder bargain in the talks he is holding with Climate Change Minister Penny Wong.

Read it here and here.

Film to avoid at all costs: "The Age of Stupid"

Right title but for the wrong reason.

The film is a wake-up call with an elegiac tone — not quite hectoring but pressing. It goes well beyond the arguments about science that Al Gore tried to straighten out in An lnconvenient Truth. This is about human nature, greed and personal responsibility. It aims to scare and galvanise — and it's pretty good at both.

Al Gore "straightened out" the science? I guess that's right in a way - he flattened the temperature record for the last 1000 years to eliminate the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age - in fact, given his enormous bulk, he probably sat on it.

You have been warned. Read it here.

Climate sense from Terry McCrann

Terry McCrann sets out the plain common sense, which for some reason appears to elude almost everyone in Canberra:

REMINISCENCES of Woodstock are all the rage this month – in many cases proving the accuracy of the dictum about remembering the 1960s.

Perhaps this is why we seem to be literally living through a never-ending episode of the 1960s science fiction TV show The Outer Limits – where aliens take control of people's minds, from the prime minister down.

How else to explain the otherwise inexplicable? Where we have Kevin Rudd, Penny Wong and previously rational people like Lindsey Tanner and Craig Emerson marching in lockstep, as if down one of those dodgy 1960s mainstreet USA film-sets, chanting: "emissions must be reduced, emissions must be reduced".
…
That – literal or figurative – mind possession also demonstrates the pointlessness of posing the obvious question: why?

There is of course, no answer. Rational discourse is completely impossible – given the absolute commitment by Rudd and Turnbull et al to doing something so utterly pointless.

Australia reduces its emissions of carbon dioxide by 100 per cent and the – purportedly beneficial – consequences, are zero. We reduce by the suggested 20 per cent and the answer remains exactly the same – 20 per cent of zero is still zero.

Read it here.

UPDATED: Global warming is the Y2K of our generation

Ian Plimer said it first, but the similarities between the scaremongering of today, and those associated with Y2K (and the ozone layer) are too hard to ignore:

REMEMBER Y2K? This was the new millennium bug that we were told threatened to throw the world's computer systems into chaos as we entered the year 2000.

Aircraft could fall from the sky and businesses crash in a global digital catastrophe, we were warned. Panic set in and billions of dollars were spent across the world to head off this impending armageddon.

In this mad rush there was no room for sceptics. The evidence of the looming danger was overwhelming and undeniable, regardless of the fact that it sounded like something out of a science-fiction movie. Action had to be taken and no price was too high.

Well, the tsunami turned out to be nothing more than a ripple in a pond, if that.

Does all this have a familiar ring to it? Of course. It is the same type of argument that is being foisted on us by the Rudd government over global warming and its threat to the future of civilisation as we know it.

Read it here.

UPDATED: Actually, Chris Abood claims first prize for this, see here (thanks for the link, Chris)

Global warming to blame for everything on earth

Crazy story of the day, reprinted, where else, in The Age:

PROMINENT French chefs have warned that the country's wines will lose their complexity and the best produce will come from Scotland if the effects of climate change are not tackled.

A group of chefs, sommeliers and chateaux has issued a call to action, urging the country to secure ambitious targets to limit global warming.

So in 50 years time, the Scots can drink fine home-produced cabernet sauvignon with their haggis and fried Mars bars.

Read it here… on second thoughts, don't bother.

What a surprise…

Only took a matter of hours:

The federal government has rejected predictions grocery prices will rise by up to seven per cent under its planned emissions trading scheme.

"Those figures are wrong," junior climate change minister Greg Combet told Fairfax Radio Network on Monday.

Phew, that's OK then.

Read it here.

Public back ETS (which they don't understand…)

Worryingly, the public appears to have been successfully brainwashed by the Rudd government into believing that the ETS will effect a painless transition to a utopian green economy which will at a stroke save the Barrier Reef from certain destruction, and save the planet from "dangerous climate change". The reality, of course, is that they haven't the slightest clue about the ETS, or its effects on their way of life or standard of living:

The latest opinion poll shows the Federal Government has strong public support for another attempt at getting its emissions trading scheme through Parliament.

The Nielsen poll published in Fairfax newspapers shows 55 per cent of people want the Government to reintroduce its rejected emissions trading scheme to Parliament in three months' time.

Only 29 per cent want the Government to wait to see what other countries will do.

Yet I wonder what proportion of the public really understand what the ETS is about? Are they really aware of the spiralling electricity prices that will result, or even this:

Grocery prices are expected to rise by 7 per cent under the federal government's emissions trading scheme (ETS).

Large retailers have warned the government that the proposed scheme would add between 4 and 7 per cent to shopping bills, the Australian newspaper reports.

The warnings have prompted calls for the government to come up with a compensation package to help low and middle-income families.

The government says it plans to compensate households for increased energy prices when the ETS is expected to be introduced in 2011.

But it is yet to announce how it will cover the rise in grocery prices.

I wonder if the results would have been different if they knew about that?

Read it here and here.

Labor splits RET bill from ETS

Labor has backed down and split off the Renewable Energy Target bill from the ETS. The RET is still crazy, however, as there is not a chance in hell that 20% of the nation's energy will come from renewable sources by 2020, but that's another story:

THE federal government's decision to detach its renewable energy target (RET) assistance package from its emissions trading scheme is a victory for common sense, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull says.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong confirmed today that the government would separate the RET section from the rest of its carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) so it could be voted on separately.

The move comes after the coalition and all cross-bench senators voted against Labor's 11 climate change bills in the Senate on Thursday.

Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull said today he was pleased that the government had backed down from holding renewable energy “hostage” to the passage of the emissions trading scheme.

He said the coalition would now happily sit down with Senator Wong this week and negotiate constructively to ensure the RET section passed parliament.

“We'll certainly negotiate with her in good faith in the course of this week with the view of getting the renewable target legislation passed,” Mr Turnbull told reporters in Sydney.

Read it here.

Even UN thinks there's little chance of global agreement in December

This may be a tactic on the part of Yvo de Boer to scare governments into more action to "tackle climate change" in advance of Copenhagen, or it might be really what he thinks (unlikely). Either way, it shows how idiotic Rudd's desperate push for the ETS to be legislated this year really is…

"If we continue at this rate we are not going to make it," Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said at the end of a five-day negotiating session in Bonn.

"Momentum for a strong result is building at the highest political level," he said, referring to individual pledges by rich nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

"But that action is not ambitious enough, and it is only half of the solution. The negotiations need to move forward much faster," he said in a webcast press conference.

Some 2,400 delegates from about 180 nations, riven by major differences, made scant headway toward hammering out a draft treaty, negotiators said.

On Friday, a document of 200 pages -- little more than a "laundry list" of national positions, according to one negotiator -- still contained "about 2,500 brackets in the text, each indicating an area of disagreement," de Boer said.

"This shows how much ground there is still to be covered."

Sharp divisions remain over how deeply wealthy economies should slash their carbon emissions by 2020, and whether commitments by developing nations should be binding.

Read it here.

Rudd plays politics with ETS (again)

Kevin Rudd is once again using the most important piece of legislation since GST to play politics and force the Opposition to pass the ETS:

KEVIN Rudd is calling Malcolm Turnbull's bluff on climate change, with a surprise agreement to key Opposition demands surrounding his Emissions Trading Scheme.

The move is an attempt to embarrass the Coalition into passing in full the Government's climate legislation, which is blocked in the Senate.

The Government will announce the move today, then unleash senior ministers to begin wedging Mr Turnbull on the issue, claiming the Opposition is now duty-bound to pass the legislation in full.

Mr Rudd will agree to an Opposition demand that he split the legislation package into two separate Bills - one that forces energy-intensive industries to meet renewable energy targets and the other that will set the ETS into action.
…
Mr Rudd will now argue that today's concession meets Opposition demands and Mr Turnbull should, in return, agree to pass the ETS unamended.

Unamended? Are you serious? Let's hope Malcolm Turnbull has the guts to stand up to this cheap political stunt.

Read it here.

The deniers are back

And I don't mean the sceptics, I mean the alarmists, or as we should now call them, the "natural climate cycle deniers" - those who are so blinkered by the whole AGW message, and have their feet so firmly in the never-ending funding trough, that they refuse, despite clear evidence to the contrary, to acknowledge natural variation may explain at least part of the current warming. One of those is Wong-bot climate adviser, Will Steffen, quoted in a breathless article in The Alarmists' Journal, sorry, The Canberra Times:

Remarkably, [Senator Steve] Fielding is still arguing about the science of climate change as experts shake their heads in disbelief at the senator's ignorance and eagerness to embrace views based on according to the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute director, Professor Will Steffen ''flawed logic, misleading and inaccurate statements, and confused and inconsistent analyses''.

Why is it remarkable, given there are 30,000 odd scientists worldwide who dispute the theory of AGW? Note that the quote above doesn't address Fielding's points, just a list of smears.

The alarmists are the deniers now.

Read it here (if you can stand it).

Quote of the Day - Kevin Rudd

Let's see how this holds up in November, if the ETS is voted down again:

“I have not the slightest intention of going to an early poll,” he told Melbourne radio 3AW this morning.

What, you mean, you're going to abandon the habit of a lifetime and not try to score cheap political points out of all this? Given past experience, I find that very hard to believe.

Read it here.

Nick Minchin exposes the ETS lie

Bravo Nick Minchin, leader of the Opposition in the Senate, for pointing out so clearly the fraud that is the two-errors-in-four-words "Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme" on Tuesday (h/t Andrew Bolt):

Not only is the timing of this legislative initiative to be condemned, so too should the very name given to this package of legislation be condemned by this parliament… For no more than base political purposes, the government has called its emissions trading scheme a ‘carbon pollution reduction scheme’. This is of course the perpetuation of a cruel hoax on the Australian people, childishly simplistic and misleading. The scheme proposed does not deal with carbon. It purports to deal with something quite separate—carbon dioxide emissions—and the scheme does not deal with pollution.

Whatever the climatic role of human induced emissions of CO2, CO2 is not by any stretch of the imagination a pollutant. CO2 is, as we know, a clear, odourless, colourless gas vital to life on earth… Indeed the Rudd government knows it too. Its own environment department’s website has a link to the official Australian National Pollutant Inventory, which lists 93 pollutants. Surprise, surprise, carbon dioxide is not listed among them....

It is also typical of this deceitful and spin-driven government to so cynically misrepresent the nature of carbon dioxide. Of course this whole extraordinary scheme, which would do so much damage to Australia, is based on the as yet unproven assertion that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are the main driver of global warming… The Rudd government arrogantly refuses to acknowledge that there remains a very lively scientific debate about the extent of and the main causes of climate change, with thousands of highly reputable scientists around the world of the view that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are not and cannot be the main driver of the small degree of global warming that occurred in the last 30 years of the 20th century…

Australia contributes a little over one per cent of the planet’s CO2 emissions. If we were to completely shut down the Australian economy tomorrow, Australia’s
CO2 emissions would be fully replaced by China within nine months. It is indisputably the case that nothing Australia does on its own can have any impact whatsoever on the earth’s climate. The deceit perpetrated by climate change fanatics that an Australian ETS will save the Barrier Reef is utterly contemptible…

The cruel joke is that all those thousands of jobs to be destroyed by Labor’s CPRS will be in vain, because this scheme will make absolutely no difference to the global climate.

See here for Senate Hansard.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read!

UPDATED: Penny Wong is a robot

"Exterminate, exterminate!"

I'm convinced of it. Strip away that icy façade, and there's nothing but a tangle of wires and motors. At the end of the day, I think they switch her off, plug her into the mains to recharge, and then shove her in a cupboard until morning. It's a great plan, but I think there are a few problems - the program has got a bug and is now stuck in an infinite loop, causing the Wong-bot to repeat the same hackneyed climate nonsense over and over again; and the aural receptor module has burnt out, causing her to not hear anything anyone says.

Senator Wong is maintaining the pressure against the Coalition for its stance and says today's Senate showdown is a "day of reckoning" for the Parliament.

"What is certain today is that Labor senators will vote for the national interest and what appears certain is that Opposition senators and the crossbenchers will not," she told ABC Radio's AM program. [i.e. the national interest is what I say it is - Ed]

"Today is the big day, it's the day of reckoning on this issue.

"This is a reform that is long overdue, that is in the national interest, that both major political parties said they would implement."

The Wong-bot doesn't even acknowledge that the problem lies with Labor, with Kevin Rudd, and with herself. They have arrogantly refused to even consider that their dog's breakfast of an ETS may be less than perfect, and may benefit from some changes (i.e. chucking it in the dumpster).

Time for a CTRL-ALT-DEL reboot, Penny.

Read it here.

UPDATED: The evidence piles up. The voice synthesizer is on an endless loop as well:

We will bring this bill back before the end of the year because it is the right thing to do.

We will bring this bill back before the end of the year because it is the responsible thing to do.

We will bring this bill back before the end of the year because we on this side understand we have to start the economic transformation we need.

And we will bring this bill back before the end of the year because if we don't this nation goes to Copenhagen with no means to deliver our targets.

Sounds like something from an episode of The Jetsons...

Read it here.

Senate votes down ETS

We knew it would happen, so no real surprise. What will be interesting is what happens next:

MALCOLM Turnbull has accused Climate Change Minister Penny Wong of "pedantic bloody-mindedness" after the emissions trading scheme was voted down by the Senate today.

“A few days ago we'd showed her a few alternatives that would make for a scheme that was greener, cheaper and smarter,” the Opposition Leader told ABC Radio, “and she just dismissed it out of hand.”

The Government and the Coaltion did not hold discussions over the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bills although Senator Wong indicated earlier this week that the Government was open to talks.

“If Mr Turnbull puts up serious and credible amendments that have the support of his partyroom then I'm prepared to discuss them with him,” she said. “He has not.”

Mr Turnbull said the Opposition would “work through” amendments during the next few weeks and months but wanted to discuss their formation with the Government.

“If Penny Wong is saying she will not have any discussion with us until such time as we present formal, legislative amendments, then that will take some time,” Mr Turnbull said.

“This is really pedantic bloody-mindedness, stubbornness on her part.”

Read it here.

Climate sense from Andrew Bolt

I am unfortunately busy on other things this morning, so won't be able to post for a while, but in the mean time, Andrew Bolt does a superb job of exposing the hysteria of the government in trying to pass its fraudulent "Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme":

WE’VE seen mass hysteria before, but we weren’t then mad enough to make it government policy.

Four years ago, Melbourne airport was closed when staff caught a bad case of panic from each other, imagining that they, too, had got a whiff of some toxic gas that no investigator could find and no passing passenger could smell.

Forty-seven people were whisked to hospital to be treated for vague illnesses no doctor could detect, in a farce psychologists later blamed in part on our new paranoia over pollution.

But that’s nothing when compared with today’s galloping paranoia over invisible gases, which threatens to shut not just one airport, but entire industries and power stations.

This is the mass hysteria over global warming - a hysteria caught by millions of Australians who can no more explain why they’re sure the world is heating to hell than they can explain why it’s now cooling instead.

All this would be frightening enough—another sign of our retreat from reason—but what makes it worse is that this hysteria is not being fought by governments, but hyped, in the grossest dereliction of duty I’ve seen from our politicians in my lifetime.

READ IT ALL!!

Coalition agrees to vote down ETS

At least it's a start:

A meeting of federal coalition MPs has agreed to vote down the government's emissions trading legislation when it goes to a Senate vote on Thursday.

But the meeting did not endorse an alternative scheme, unveiled by Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull on Monday.

Instead, MPs welcomed the concept, which aims to double Labor's carbon reduction target of five per cent yet cost 40 per cent less than the government's model.

Under Mr Turnbull's model, developed by Frontier Economics, electricity generators would operate under a separate baseline scheme.

Doing so would limit an increase in household electricity bills to $44 a year, compared to the $280 estimated in Labor's carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS).

One coalition MP spoke against emissions trading in any form, expressing concern about the impact on power generators.

Earlier, Mr Turnbull took coalition's climate change message onto the internet, calling on the government to negotiate on its doomed CPRS.

In the 90-second message posted on YouTube on Tuesday morning, Mr Turnbull says Labor is being reckless in pursuing its scheme without considering alternatives such as the "hybrid" scheme he launched on Monday.

Read it here.

Nationals split from Liberals on ETS policy

At least we can still put our collective faith in the Nationals, the only party left in Australia (apart from the recently formed Climate Sceptics) to see through the IPCC spin. The Nationals have confirmed they will continue to oppose an ETS, splitting from the Liberal policy of negotiation with the government.

Nationals sources confirmed the plan yesterday as the party's Senate leader, Barnaby Joyce, hardened his opposition to an ETS, and insisted his party had a right to its own policy for the sake of diversity and proper representation of voters.

Senator Joyce's comments came as other senior Nationals sources said there was growing frustration within the junior Coalition partner over the Liberal Party's preparedness to work with them on policy development.

Yesterday's release of a Frontier Economics research paper proposing an ETS with lower impacts on electricity prices than the Rudd government's proposed scheme highlighted the policy differences between the Liberals and the Nationals.

While the Liberals are open to negotiation with the government over an ETS, the Nationals have made it clear for months that they would require major and fundamental change to even consider supporting a scheme.

The government, on the other hand, are showing no sign of compromise, if Penny Wong's poker-faced performance on ABC this morning is anything to go by.

Read it here.

Turnbull's flawed ETS policy

Malcolm Turnbull, flanked by Andrew Robb and Senator Nick Xenophon, proudly announced today that he engaged an economic research organisation (doubtless at not inconsiderable cost) to analyse the economic impacts of Rudd's proposed ETS, and to propose a way to make it "greener" whilst at the same time cheaper. The report runs to over 100 pages, and I really don't have the inclination (nor the time) to review it in detail, for reasons which will become apparent. If you wish to read it, however, it can be found here.

The entire premise of this document is fundamentally flawed. As Andrew Bolt pointed out this morning, Turnbull seeking to out-green Rudd is a tacit acknowledgement that he accepts the argument (also flawed) that emissions of CO2 are causing dangerous climate change and must therefore be reduced. I was horrified to see that the document uses, without question or criticism, the government's term "Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme" and "CPRS" throughout - falling headlong into the government's trap of labelling the harmless trace gas carbon dioxide, plant food and essential for all life on earth, as "pollution".

And the subtext of all this is that we need deeper cuts in emissions. How wrong can Turnbull, Robb and Xenophon be? They have accepted, again without question, the word of the IPCC, which we know to be a politically motivated organisation whose terms of reference require it to focus solely on "human-caused" climate change. You should also bear in mind the ultimate aim of the UN - global governance and control. There is nothing that is more likely to deliver such global governance into the hands of a grateful UN than the hysteria of climate change.

The science is not "settled" - the debate is not over. New discoveries about the hugely complex climate system are being made literally every day. New research shows that solar variation has a huge part to play in major climatic variations, and that cosmic rays also have a significant effect on climate - both issues that the IPCC chooses to downplay significantly. How can Turnbull therefore be so blinkered as to believe the IPCC's (and the government's) spin on the causes of climate change, and be certain enough in their predictions of catastrophic climate change to burden future generations with this disastrous tax?

Regrettably, ACM hopes that the Government refuses to entertain any change to the ETS either at this vote or the next (which looks like happening), thereby forcing the Coalition to do what it should have decided to do long ago, namely vote against it at any and every opportunity.

Editorial: Crucial week in Australian climate policy

So, the ETS senate vote is nearly here, and all the indications are that it will be voted down - but for nearly all the wrong reasons.

The barking mad Greens will vote it down because they don't believe the two-errors-in-four-words Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme goes far enough. In the fantasy world inhabited by Bob Brown and his ilk, environmental issues trump anything and everything, and the cost to the average Australian is just the price that has to be paid, despite the fact that nothing Australia does will make the slightest difference to the climate. It is amazing that anyone votes for the Greens, because if they actually stopped to think about it, a vote for the Greens is like a turkey voting for Christmas. Green politics does not care about people, or their welfare - in fact it despises humanity. It only cares about the imaginary Gaia, the god to which we should all make the ultimate sacrifice.

The Liberals will vote it down because they are waiting for Penny Wong to listen to some of their "amendments", dangling the carrot that they might vote for it next time around. Furthermore, Malcolm Turnbull is desperately trying to appear more green than Rudd, as Andrew Bolt points out. As we all know, this is the completely the wrong direction for the Coalition to be taking, but Turnbull is in such strife politically that he probably is more concerned about his own future than doing the right thing for Australia.

The Nationals are the only party that will vote down this legislation for the right reasons, namely:

• it will achieve no benefit whatsoever for the climate;
• it is nothing more than a politically correct gesture towards environmentalism;
• it is a stealth tax dressed up as a "scheme" and has huge revenue generating potential for the government, and which smacks of wealth redistribution; and,
  
• it will cost the Australian people dear, in terms of employment, competitiveness and standard of living, for decades to come.

As mentioned yesterday, every parliamentarian in Canberra should be forced to read Quadrant Online's ETS Forum from beginning to end, and ACM urges readers to email links to these articles to their local senators.

The public still appear ambivalent about the ETS and climate change in general. I fear that it may take the introduction of this dreadful legislation, and the doubling of energy prices, for the electorate to realise the horrible mistake they have made. Again, readers of this blog are encouraged to raise awareness of this issue as widely as they can. Until the public realise the seriousness of this, Australia will sleepwalk into oblivion.

Quadrant Online's ETS Forum

A number of must-read articles in this excellent resource, the ETS Forum, edited by Professor Bob Carter. In the run up to the ETS vote on Thursday, more articles will be added. ACM believes these articles should be required reading for every Senator, in fact every parliamentarian.

Joyce clarifies position against an ETS

ACM is glad to read this article in Australia.TO, in which Barnaby Joyce clarifies his position on an ETS - it appears the Courier Mail were a little to hasty in painting Joyce as a potential supporter of an ETS (see here), even a modified version proposed by the Coalition:

I didn’t think this needed to be said again however after some media speculation today I feel that I need to clearly put on the record, and this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, I won’t be supporting the ETS.

Furthermore I believe that the ETS, which I’ve said so many times, will be the Employment Termination Scheme or the Extra Tax System, take your pick, is nothing more than a moralising revenue raiser for a Government going broke.

The ETS will fit hand in glove with a new wave of bureaucracy which will entangle the lives of ordinary Australians, whether it’s through the price of food at the supermarket or the capacity for Australians to hold onto jobs especially in the manufacturing, coal and agriculture industries.

The ETS is a new form of tulip-mania type economics that possesses the human species from time to time throughout history.

Calling the ETS a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is misleading; carbon is not pollution, if it was rainforests would be rubbish tips.

There will be benefactors to this scheme but it won’t be the environment or the Australian people or the working families who have to pay for their groceries or the farmers who produce our food or the coal miners who have contributed to the standard of living all Australians have grown accustomed to for the last 40 or so years.

The benefactors from this scheme will bankers, brokers and bureaucrats who will be making an almost immoral amount of money from trading a product that relies on a very nebulous form of accounting but at a very, very real cost.

In the hypothetical world of suggestions of how would you vote if it’s amended this way or how would you vote if its amended that way, the simple truth is Minister Wong says it wont be amended at all, so there is no point even addressing this scenario.

Because you don’t contemplate an amended scheme is read by some that you would contemplate voting for it. I don’t know how they make this leap but they seem to have done it today.

Some of the suggested amendments that are making the rounds are so holistic such as what if we amended a cow to have a beak, little yellow wings and get it to lay eggs; would you, or would you not vote for that cow. Well the problem is it’s no longer a cow, it’s a bird!

So let us just cut to the chase, there is only one ETS and that’s the one being put forward by Minister Wong and Mr Rudd, it’s an economic suicide note for so many areas in Australia and I will not be voting for it.

Read it here.

Double dissolution blow for Rudd

We've all assumed the following sequence of events: opposition votes down ETS in the Senate twice, Rudd calls for a double dissolution and election, Rudd wins landslide, Rudd passes ETS, game over. However, it appears that it may not be as straightforward as all that:

KEVIN Rudd's plans for an early double dissolution election have been sunk, with the discovery of a legal defect in his Emissions Trading Scheme.

The Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, is understood to have confirmed that even if Mr Rudd were to go to a double dissolution election to get his ETS through Parliament, the scheme could still be blocked by the Senate.

Mr Evans an expert on Senate practice is understood to have based his argument on the fact that most of the ETS relies not on law, but on regulation.

The Standing Orders of the Parliament state those regulations could still be struck down by the Senate even if the laws establishing the ETS were passed at a joint sitting of Parliament following a double dissolution election.

The same thing happened to Bob Hawke in relation to the Australia Card back in 1987.

He won the election and was preparing for a joint sitting of the Parliament when it was discovered by the Opposition that the start-up date for the card was governed by regulation and a hostile Senate would vote it down.

In a humiliating backdown, Mr Hawke had to abandon the ID card.

Mr Evans believes Mr Rudd is now in the same position.

The Opposition will almost certainly lose the next election, whenever it is held. If this news is correct, the Opposition should now firmly reject this disaster of a bill at both Senate votes, and save the country from the worst piece of legislation in living memory.

Read it here (and here).

Joyce loses his nerve...

A bit of a hero of these pages, Barnaby Joyce has always been the voice of sanity in the climate madness of Canberra, but ACM is concerned by the following article in the Courier Mail, in which Senator Joyce appears to endorse some kind of ETS. As regular readers will know, any kind of ETS will achieve nothing in terms of climate, and everything in terms of destroying Australia's economy, employment, and competitiveness:

The Queensland Senator has revealed that on Monday he will likely back a new CPRS model to be released by the Coalition, which they say will be greener, cost less, give more concessions to coal, exclude agriculture and allow farmers to use their land to make money.

But in a thinly veiled swipe against Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull, Senator Joyce signalled he was looking forward more to voting down the Government's emissions trading scheme than selling the Coalition's new plan.

Senator Joyce said when the ETS was defeated next week, Nationals should get most of the credit.

"The only thing I have to worry about is the one (ETS) that I have to vote on," Senator Joyce said.

"I do not think Malcolm Turnbull will change her (Climate Change Minister Penny Wong's) mind.

"She will not accept any amendments."

Of course she won't. She inhabits a bizarre ivory tower into which nothing (not even common sense) can permeate. And our advice to Senator Joyce is to be very careful about giving even a hint of support for an ETS of any kind.

Read it here.

Terry McCrann: ETS is a tax

Today's must-read article, from The Australian, in which Terry McCrann lays bare the reality of an emissions trading scheme - it's a tax (but we all knew that, didn't we?). It's a sobering and painful read:

THE first and most important thing to note about Kevin Rudd's emissions trading scheme is that it is a tax.

It's not called a tax, but if it waddles like one, quacks like one, and most pointedly raises money like one, it's a tax. And not just any old tax -- it's a huge and continually growing tax.

It starts out in 2012-13 raising about a quarter as much as the GST. The budget in May put a number on it for the first time. Almost $12 billion in its first full year, 2012-13.

It is the equivalent of increasing the GST from 10 per cent to 12.5 per cent in that year. And in its impact on people it won't be all that different from doing exactly that.

In year one, that is, which if we actually get the ETS should be retitled Year Zero, because it will be the beginning of the end of Australia as we know it.

And when conventional energy becomes prohibitively expensive as a result, we will all have to rely on "alternative" or renewable power:

Where will this power come from? We can play around, in somewhat different ways, with gas and solar, but in the main there is only one answer: wind.

Except there's one problem with wind -- it's useless.

In a brief but utterly devastating analysis, Andrew Miskelly and Tom Quirk tracked the power output of all the now quite substantial wind farms in South Australia, Victoria, NSW and Tasmania for every minute of June. The simply devastating conclusion: when the wind don't blow, it don't blow everywhere at the same time.

This utterly shreds the claim that if you build enough wind farms nationally the wind will be blowing somewhere. You have to keep fully equivalent coal power up and running, not just when the wind is not blowing, but all the time. So, we have a government that is proposing a massive new tax. It then proposes to waste most, if not all, of the money from it. Either by compensating people for higher costs, or by pouring it into "alternative" energy production that can't work.

All this, of course, is to absolutely no purpose. Even cutting our CO2 emissions to zero would make zero difference to global emissions.

Anyone who votes for the ETS next week -- or indeed any week -- is betraying both common sense and their basic duty to the national interest and every Australian.

Read it here.

The Daily Bayonet - GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

As always, a great read!

Idiotic comment of the Day - Kevin Rudd

Speaking about climate change at the Pacific Islands forum:

"For so many of my colleagues here on the platform before you, this is not just a matter of importance. It is not just a matter of urgency. It is a matter of national survival. The very viability of certain of the island states is at stake."

But how imposing economy-crippling reductions in emissions will help islands that are sinking due to tectonic influences remains to be seen. Unless he's suggesting that evil CO2 affects the earth's crust as well…

Read it here (and enjoy the swipe at Rudd and the fake ETS urgency by Michael Kroger)