Suddenly in the news again, being the first anniversary of the release of Garnaut’s report, but still spouting the same old nonsense. For some reason, in his mind, legislating CO2 reductions before everyone else decides what to do puts us in a stronger position than if we wait and see. Go figure. And the fawning media hangs on his every word:

“With the 2020 target on the table, if the rest of the world is prepared to accomodate strong mitigation [the key word there being “if”, and we don’t know yet – Ed], I think our interests would be served by passing ETS,” he said.

“Australia has a bit of a credibility problem; Australian signed Kyoto and then didn’t ratify it, and we’re the highest per capita emitter amongst developed countries. [Except Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain etc etc… Or are they not “developed” enough? – Ed]“

Read it here.

Businesses are starting to work out the harsh reality of the ETS, and the effect it will have on the Australian economy. The Business Council of Australia (BCA) has written to both political parties requesting amendments to give more compensation to energy intensive industries. But right on cue, Ross Garnaut emerges from his cave to make some distasteful remarks about the subject:

The demands came as the government’s climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, warned yesterday against more industry compensation under the “arbitrary” carbon reduction system devised by the government – against his advice – saying it had led to “ugly money politics” and unnecessary budgetary costs.

Professor Garnaut said demands for more compensation for electricity generators to make up for lost asset value because of the carbon price was an “abominable” policy idea.

Bad news for the Opposition as well:

The BCA has rejected the centrepiece of the Opposition Leader’s proposed “greener, cheaper, smarter” hybrid emissions trading scheme – the Frontier Economics’ proposal for a different treatment of the electricity industry – saying it does not solve industry’s problems.

“We sat down with Frontier Economics, but quite frankly you still end up with the same problems,” BCA president Greig Gailey said.

Opposition emissions trading spokesman Andrew Robb is consulting with industry before finalising amendments to be put to the deeply divided opposition partyroom, but the BCA’s rejection of the Frontier model undercuts the Coalition’s assertion that its proposal presents a cheaper alternative for households and businesses.

And the inevitable response from the government:

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said she would consider the BCA’s proposals, but welcomed the fact that “business wants us to get moving, so investors have certainty”.

Consider them, and then ignore them. That’s the government way.

Read it here.

From The Science is Settled Department. The IPCC and all the AGW alarmists discount the effect of the sun on climate change because, they argue, the variation in solar output is too small to have any effect on the climate (and therefore it must be evil CO2, because, er… we can’t think of anything else it could be):

A new study in Science demonstrates how two previously known mechanisms acting together amplify the Sun’s impact in an unsuspected way. Not surprisingly, the new discovery is getting a cool reception from the CO2 climate change clique.

Scientists have long suspected that changes in solar output may have triggered the Little Ice Age that gripped Europe several centuries ago, as well as droughts that brought down Chinese dynasties. Now, in a report in the August 28 issue of the journal Science entitled “Amplifying the Pacific Climate System Response to a Small 11-Year Solar Cycle Forcing,” Gerald A. Meehl et al. have demonstrated a possible mechanism that could explain how seemingly small changes in solar output can have a big impact on Earth’s climate. The researchers claim that two different parts of the atmosphere act in concert to amplify the effects of even minuscule solar fluctuations.
…
As I have previously reported, scientific evidence from NASA points to changes in the type of solar radiation arriving at the top of Earth’s atmosphere as a possible trigger for other powerful climate regulating mechanisms. Scientists have discovered, that while total solar irradiance changes by only 0.1 percent, the change in the intensity of ultraviolet light varies by much larger amounts. According to Judith Lean, a solar physicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., its possible that long-term patterns—operating over hundreds or thousands of years—could cause even more pronounced swings in solar irradiance (see “Scientists Discover The Sun Does Affect Earth’s Climate”). The discovery of the solar heat amplifying effect provides the causal link between historical changes in solar activity and climate change.

Previously, the direct impact of increased irradiance on global avarage temperature has been estimated at around 0.25°C last century—a three fold amplifying effect would raise that to 0.75°C. This leaves practically no warming effect for CO2 to account for and renders the whole anthropogenic global warming argument moot. In other words, if the atmospheric solar amplifier theory is correct anthropogenic global warming is wrong, a useless theory describing a nonexistent phenomenon. It seems like poetic justice that a modeling experiment may point the way to discrediting global warming once and for all.

Read it here.

We all know the much-hyped “new green economy” is a myth, but rarely will anyone have the guts to say it. So it is very refreshing when the political correctness is stripped away and the bare truth is set out:

ONE of Australia’s most powerful union leaders has lashed out at the push for green jobs, labelling it a “dopey term”, and has dismissed environmental campaigns against some of the nation’s major export industries as “judgmental nonsense”.

The president of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, Tony Maher, said existing industries such as coal and steelmaking would have an important place in the nation’s future economic prospects and in producing a lower carbon future.

He said carbon capture and storage and other hopes for cutting emissions such as solar and thermal, would require massive amounts of steel that should be made by Australian steel workers.

Mr Maher said much of the opposition to major industries – particularly the coal industry – was “well-intentioned naivete”.

“By mid-century we’ll be using twice as much coal and a lot more steel and plastic and concrete that aren’t the flavour of the month with environmentalists and green groups,” he said.

Read it here.

Back to normal for The Age as it blames the police for overreacting to protesters at Hazelwood power station. The noble climate warriors, who had warned in advance that they would break the law and enter the power station, were met with an understandably strong response from police. Instead of supporting the police in their action to prevent criminal offences being committed, The Age blames the police themselves, under the misleading headline “Police tactics under fire at Hazelwood” [under fire from whom? The protesters themselves, of course – Ed]:

Protesters expressed concern at the level of police force, particularly the tactic of charging police horses into crowded groups of protesters who were approaching the fence.

Jay Watkinson was one of several protesters knocked to the ground by police horses after approaching the fence.

”I don’t think there was any need for horses at all,” he said. ”Having horses there really escalated the situation.”

Morwell Police spokesman Neville Taylor said police had tried to keep the area safe for all.

Anyone trying to “save the planet” can get away with virtually anything these days, and when the police just do their job, they are the ones who are criticised by The Age. How about some comment or concern about the female officer injured by these protests? Nowhere to be seen.

Read it here.

Sunday madness, as The Age publishes a non-alarmist climate article, almost acknowledging that low solar activity coincides with cooler climatic conditions. Hope you’re all sitting down for this:

THE number of sunspots has declined dramatically in the past two years – but scientists say it is too early to tell if it is the start of a solar depression that could lead to cooler weather on Earth.

Over the past millennium, whenever the sun has had long periods of low sunspot numbers, Earth has weathered equally long cold snaps. The most famous of these was the Maunder Minimum of 1645 to 1715, when sunspots all but vanished for 70 years. It coincided with the coldest period of the Little Ice Age. [Excuse me while I just pick myself up from the floor. The Age acknowledges that solar activity may be linked to climate, and the existence of the LIA! – Ed]

For the past two years, sunspots – dark and intensely magnetic blotches on the sun’s surface – have been at their fewest since 1913.

”This is the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” said NASA solar forecaster David Hathaway. ”Since the space age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high … We’re just not used to this type of deep calm.’‘

Sunspots cause other solar activity such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, radiation from which can interfere with Earth’s magnetic field, upper atmosphere and, many scientists believe, climate.

Scientists expect to record 290 spotless days this year. Last year, there were 266, the most spotless days since 1913, when there were 311 recorded.

”People are wondering about whether we’re going into another Maunder Minimum or not,” said Iver Cairns, of the University of Sydney’s School of Physics. ”The balance of opinion is that it’s too early to tell. But it could be very significant.”

However, they still can’t resist the inevitable alarmist remark:

Monash University’s Paul Cally said that if a cooling period were to begin it would be interesting to see how it affected the global warming being caused by high greenhouse gas levels. ”We haven’t been in this situation in historical periods before.”

Note there is no “may be” in that highlighted sentence… of course not, the science is settled, right? Even so, a surprisingly balanced article (for once).

Read it here.

Whenever you buy tickets for flights these days, you can choose to waste another few dollars making your trip “carbon neutral”. Forget it, says Penny Wong:

GUILTY flyers may be encouraged to offset their carbon-intensive plane trips, but our elected representatives in the Government appear to think it’s a waste of time.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has informed Parliament that neither she nor her department are members of any so-called carbon offset schemes. In a written response to a question from Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt, Ms Wong’s office said the Government did not believe such schemes necessary.

The reason? Because the wondrous two-errors-in-four-words Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme would do all that hard work for us. Not only that, but the climate change wonks seem make quite a contribution to global CO2 themselves:

Other documents tabled in Parliament reveal the Government’s top climate change bureaucrat notched up $120,000 of plane travel and hotel bills in 20 months, delivering speeches and attending conferences and meetings.

Dr Martin Parkinson has spent $99,055 on air fares and $20,141 on accommodation and travel allowances since the Department of Climate Change was formed in December 2007.

That’s a lot of Frequent Flyer points as well.

Read it here.

I have no idea whether this will be useful for you or not, but you can follow ACM posts via Twitter @ ClimateMadness (link).

If I have configured it correctly, new posts here should appear automatically on Twitter. See you there!

More alarmist claptrap from the French president, speaking about his universally loathed carbon tax, and note how The Age just laps it up under the headline “Sarkozy to the rescue” – pitiful:

”There are no reserves left. It’s a question of survival of the human race.”

Read it here.

A revealing interview with Garth Paltridge, author of The Climate Caper, in The Australian, in which he describes the techniques used to silence critics of the AGW “consensus”:

Paltridge gives a crisp summary of the physics and economics of climate change, but I want to focus here on his account of the new green religion. “Perhaps the most interesting question in all this business is how it can be that the scientific community has become so over-the-top in support of its own propaganda about the seriousness and certainty of upcoming drastic climate change. Scientists after all are supposed to be unbiased in their assessment of a problem and are expected to tell it as it is. Over the centuries they have built up the capital of their reputation on just that supposition. And for the last couple of decades they have put that capital very publicly on the line in support of a cause which, to say the least, is overhung by an enormous amount of doubt. So how is it that the rest of the scientific community, uncomfortable as it is with both the science of global warming and the way its politics is being played, continues to let the reputation of science in general be put at considerable risk because of the way the dangers of climate change are being vastly oversold?”

Part of the answer lies in the way institutions find ways to silence their employees. Paltridge himself was involved in setting up the Antarctic research centre in the early 90s with the CSIRO. As he recalls: “I made the error at the time of mentioning in a media interview — reported extensively in The Australian on a slow Easter Sunday — that there were still lots of doubts about the disaster potential of global warming. Suffice it to say that within a couple of days it was made clear to me from the highest levels of CSIRO that, should I make such public comments again, then it would pull out of the process of forming the new centre.” The CSIRO, it turned out, was in the process of trying to extract many millions of dollars for further climate research at the time.

Read it here.