You will recall the recent story about Kevin Rudd bizarrely following the Lincolnshire village of Mablethorpe on Twitter (Kevin Rudd: Twittering Idiot). This evening, ACM received a comment from Chris Flanagan, creator of the my-mablethorpe.com website at the centre of the intrigue we have now officially christened “Twitter-gate™”:

Mr Rudd’s spokesman is claiming that he followed Mablethorpe automatically because we were following him. This is untrue. We didn’t even know he Twittered until he became a follower. On the climate change front, Mablethorpe is in the front line of any rise in sea levels due to climate change, having already suffered a disastrous flood in 1953. So, if Mr Rudd is an expert on this, perhaps he can give us some pointers?

The most interesting thing about this is that the Rudd spin machine is alleging they were followed first by Mablethorpe – which Chris states is not the case…

Shh, don’t tell the IPCC, or else they won’t be able to blame CO2 and governments won’t be able to regulate and tax Western economies out of existence, but like it or not, the sun has a huge influence on our climate, far more than the alarmists want you to believe. This article, translated by Google from the original Danish and tidied up by Anthony Watts, is essential reading:

Global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning.

No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth, on the contrary. This means that projections of future climate is unpredictable, writes Henrik Svensmark.

The star which keeps us alive, has over the last few years almost no sunspots, which are the usual signs of the sun’s magnetic activity.

Last week, reported the scientific team behind Sohosatellitten (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) that the number of sunspot-free days suggest that solar activity is heading towards its lowest level in about 100 years. Everything indicates that the Sun is moving into a hibernation-like state, and the obvious question is whether it has any significance for us on Earth.

If you ask the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC, representing the current consensus on climate change, the answer is a reassuring ‘nothing’. But history and recent research suggests that it is probably completely wrong. Let us take a closer look at why.

Read it all. (Thanks to WUWT)

Earlier this week it was the Japanese, now Nicolas Sarkozy (who bizarrely I thought was a right-leaning politician, but in fact turns out to be a moonbattish lefty) has imposed a huge carbon tax in France. Good luck with that, mon ami.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday unveiled a new carbon tax to help combat global warming [surely “climate change” – Ed], calling it a “fiscal revolution” and overriding strong public opposition to the plan.

The new levy on oil, gas and coal consumption by households and businesses will come into effect next year, making France the biggest economy yet to impose a straight-up carbon tax.

“It is time to create green taxation,” Sarkozy said in an address in Culoz, a town near the French border with Switzerland.

“This is a major fiscal shift, an important innovation,” he said. “It is the first step of a fiscal revolution that will be developed.”

Sarkozy set the new carbon tax at 17 euros (25 US dollars) per tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) and said it would be gradually increased to penalise only those who refuse to abandon their wasteful ways.

The president insisted the new tax was not a ploy to fill state coffers hit by a gaping deficit [we believe you – Ed], and the additional revenues will be put back into taxpayers’ pockets through other tax cuts and “green cheques”.

Folie climatique.

Read it here.

If you thought the ETS was bad enough, watch how billions of dollars will flow from wealthy nations to poor ones as “compensation” for climate change. Where does this money come from? You and me, via our taxes. So not only will prices go up, but more of our tax dollars will get sucked away to assuage the developed economies’ collective climate guilt:

AUSTRALIA is under pressure to pledge hundreds of millions of dollars a year to an international fund to help developing countries adapt to climate change, after the European Union revealed it would be willing to chip in up to $25 billion a year by 2020.

An agreement on financing is seen as the only way to break an international deadlock in climate change negotiations before the UN meeting in Copenhagen in December. It is also a key topic for the G20 leaders’ meeting in Pittsburgh later this month and a special New York summit called by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, both to be attended by Kevin Rudd.
…
A spokesman for Climate Change Minister Penny Wong would not be drawn on Australia’s willingness to contribute or views about the structure of a fund, but acknowledged the issue was critical for the Copenhagen talks.

“We are extremely conscious of the close relationship between progress on finance and a global deal on climate change. It’s a key part of our negotiations moving towards Copenhagen,” the spokesman said.

Read it here.

This is a clever trick. By using per capita figures, The Age tries to make us all feel guilty (and therefore ram home the point that we should “tackle climate change” and pass emissions trading legislation), despite the fact that Australia emits less than 1.5% of global emissions.

AUSTRALIA has the world’s highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions from energy use, according to a British analysis.

The CO2 Energy Emissions Index, released by risk assessment company Maplecroft, found Australia’s overwhelmingly coal-based electricity supply meant the average person emitted 20.58 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Australia overtook the US – responsible for 19.78 tonnes per head – as the worst per capita emitter.

Canada was third, followed by the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia.

But what about the following countries, which are never mentioned?

• Qatar
• United Arab Emirates
• Kuwait
• Bahrain
• Aruba
• Luxembourg
• Netherlands Antilles

All have higher per capita emissions (Qatar in 2006 was 56.2 tonnes per capita!), but The Age strangely doesn’t pick a fight with them, but dumps on its own doorstep instead.

Read it here.

Two weeks ago we asked:

How should the Opposition respond to the ETS?

And the votes are pretty clear. Out of 151 votes, the results are:

• Pass un-amended: 0.5% (1 vote)
• Negotiate and then pass: 1% (2 votes)
• Vote against: 98.5% (148 votes)

Let’s just hope a few Opposition staffers read this blog!

Krudd likes to portray himself as a tech-savvy, switched-on kinda guy, uploading nauseating vids to YouTube, posting inane comments on Twitter etc. But in reality, I reckon a team of flunkies does it, and pretty carelessly at that. It looks like he’s been caught out randomly following Twitterers for reasons known only to himself, and in particular, the town of Mablethorpe in the UK:

When this quiet town on the Lincolnshire coast set up its own Twitter page recently one of the first followers to sign up was the Australian Prime Minister.

Kevin Rudd has no known connections with Mablethorpe. As far as The Times can establish, he has never been there and his own tweets are more likely to be about climate change or the Brisbane Lions than the delights of the Golden Sands Holiday Park.

However, when the mymablethorpe.com website set up a Twitter account KevinRuddPM signed up as a follower within two days. He was the third person to follow MyMablethorpe and, to date, remains one of just 27 followers.

Chris Flanagan, who set up the page, said: “At first I thought it had to be some sort of joke – there are a lot of Twitter accounts which purport to be celebrities.” A few days later Mr Flanagan looked into it more closely and discovered that KevinRuddPM was indeed the Twitter account of Kevin Rudd, PM.

So come on then, Kev. Why are you following Mablethorpe in the UK? Planning a holiday? Or was it just one of thousands of followers you’ve randomly added just to boost numbers to make it look like your an “in touch guy”? We’d really like to know (although by the time he gets asked about it, another of his flunkies will have fed him the line to spin…).

Caught out, I think.

Read it here.

If you haven’t voted yet, you only have a few hours left to do so!

What is it with the Left and climate alarmism? What is it with the Left and personal attacks? As soon as Senator Steve Fielding’s slip hit the airwaves, I suppose we should have known that there would be all kinds of smears, and we weren’t wrong. But one of the lowest has to be this letter, published in The Australian. All I can say is that it reflects far worse on the writer than Fielding:

I respect Senator Fielding’s courageous admission that he suffers from a learning disability. Perhaps other climate change sceptics may want to follow suit?

Luke Slawomirski
Highgate, WA

I guess petulant ad hominems such as that are par for the course from alarmists – especially when they have run out of cogent arguments against the sceptics.

At least Miranda Devine stands up for Fielding against the bullies.

Read it here.

More of the same, from our barking mad cousins in the EU. If you want to see what Australia will be like in 5 years under Krudd & Co, just look at the UK under Gordon Brown (and weep):

A group of European foreign ministers will meet on Thursday in Copenhagen in a bid to speed up negotiations ahead of a crucial UN climate change summit in December, the Danish government said on Tuesday.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller invited British counterpart David Miliband, Bernard Kouchner of France, Carl Bildt of Sweden and Alexander Stubb of Finland to send the world a “clear signal” of their commitment against global warming, Moeller’s office said in a statement.
…
“We must deploy all our strength in the battle to obtain a climate agreement,” Moeller said in the statement.

Yawn. Next.

Read it here.