Congratulations go to Professor Andrew Griffiths of the University of Queensland Business School who has today been awarded the “ACM Idiotic Comment of the Day” gong for linking “climate change” to increased extreme weather events.

“As we move into a climate changing world, a lot of this is about the impact the environment can have on their company.

In case you hadn’t noticed, it has always been a “climate changing world”, and it always will be…

Professor Griffiths said extreme weather events such as Australia’s 2006 Cyclone Larry or last month’s Hurricane Ike, which narrowly avoided Houston in the US, had the capacity to devastate entire economies.

Read it here. UPDATE – and also here.

An Honest Climate Debate posts a link to an article in the UK Independent, a left-leaning newspaper that has no time for deniers and sceptics, but which has grudgingly published a series of short articles by a number of high profile individuals who question the dogma of “climate change”. Of course, the articles themselves are packaged in the usual condescending wrapping:

Should we give their opinions the time of day? Whether you agree or not (and chances are you won’t), the climate-change sceptics have no intention of shutting up.

Dead right, mate. And of course, if by any chance after reading the articles you are suffering from pangs of guilt because some of the points made are, you know, maybe a little bit valid, and yes, I can sort of agree with that, kind of, the Indy is there at the end to shake you out of it by reminding you of the “science”:

The other side of the story: Global warming in numbers

2-3ºC is the potential rise in the Earth’s temperature by 2100. Such an increase would be the most dramatic for 10,000 years (source: the IPPC)

11 out of the past 13 years rank among the warmest since records began (source: World Meteorological Organization, December 2007)

2035 is the year by which the Himalayan glaciers are likely to disappear (source: http://www.dfid.gov.uk)

Two-thirds of the world’s population could be suffering from global-warming-induced water shortages by 2025 (source: http://www.dfid.gov.uk)

94 million people in Asia will be at risk of flooding by 2100, based on current sea-level rises (source: http://www.dfid.gov.uk)

35 per cent is the proportion by which CO2 levels are greater now than they have been at any other time over the past 65,000 years (source: The Royal Society)

In case you’re worried by this, just look at the sources: IPCC, OK next; DFID is the UK Government’s Department for International Development, whose area of policy is aid to third world countries and has nothing whatsoever to do with climate science; WMO, records began after the Medieval Warm Period and the Holocene Climate Optimum; The Royal Society – widely ridiculed in the scientific community after its president claimed the debate on climate change was over (like a previous president stated heavier than air flight was impossible).

Read it here.

One minute, Malcolm Turnbull seems to be heading in the right direction on climate issues (see here), and the next, he’s done a complete U-turn, launching a “searing” attack on John Howard for his “hardline” stance on climate change and for failing to sign up to Kyoto.

“What the former government failed to recognise was that Kyoto had become a sacramental issue. It had become a very symbolic issue,” he told The Courier-Mail.

Symbolic maybe, but still pointless.

But Mr Turnbull’s attack on John Howard’s climate change legacy could spark anger among Coalition frontbenchers – especially climate change sceptics like Opposition Senate leader Nick Minchin.

The Opposition needs to have the courage of its convictions, stand up in the face of the inevitable shrill cries of “denier” and “sceptic” that will come from the Government, and call for a full and frank debate on the issue of “climate change” and Australia’s response to it. Rudd, Wong and everyone else at Rudd & Co are completely in thrall to the IPCC and whatever they say (hey, Kev, is it 2500 scientists or 4000 this week? Or maybe 10,000?) and want to shut down the debate, so it is up to the Opposition to take a stand.

Read it here.

The ACSC has its official launch today, and has a PDF press release on its website here.

Members of the ACSC, like many scientists in Australia and overseas, encourage people to discuss, question and debate key climate change issues and, in particular ask: where is the evidence for dangerous human- caused global warming?

“We do not believe that past and current climates are sufficiently well understood, nor even the best computer models adequate, to enable accurate predictions of future climate. There is a need to exchange scientific ideas and to encourage proper political and social debate on this intriguing subject,” said Dr John Nicol, Chairman of the ACSC.

Let’s wish them the best of luck with their mission.

You’d expect little else, of course. Bob Brown has told a rally in Canberra the Government cannot sideline its response to climate change because of the financial crisis.

“I would say to Kevin Rudd, listen to the people of Australia,” he said.

“I think you’ll find more ecological wisdom in our average primary school than you’ll find round your Cabinet table.”

If by “ecological wisdom” you mean indoctrination by repeated showings of AIT and brainwashing about “carbon pollution”, then sadly, you are probably right.

Read it here.

As noted in previous posts, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has suggested, given the current financial crisis, that introduction of an ETS should be delayed. It was therefore only a matter of time before someone at Rudd & Co got bored of trying to think up cogent arguments against this suggestion, and launched the personal attacks. First in the ring is Wayne Swan (who else?), drearily predictable as always in labelling Turnbull a “sceptic”. Speaking on ABC TV:

Mr Swan accused Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull of turning into a climate change sceptic.

“He used to behave like he believed in doing something about climate change,” he said.

“We are serious about it. We have a measured approach to dealing with it. But we are committed to dealing with it for the long-term economic and environmental health of the country.”

Swan is as clueless as Rudd and Wong on climate change, and clearly doesn’t understand that cutting our emissions to zero would make not an iota of difference to the environmental health of this country, while at the same time sending our economy back to the Dark Ages.

Read it here.

The great thing about being a politician is that you can tell people how they should run their lives in this post-climate change world, safe in the knowledge that it will have no effect whatsoever on your own life. John Brumby has already revealed himself as pretty clueless when it comes to matters climate, and he doesn’t exactly come out of this covered in glory. Glaring Hypocrisy Alert, as the Victorian Premier spends big and leaves a carbon footprint the size of the MCG during a trip to the US:

PREMIER John Brumby and his entourage kept a limousine waiting while they dined on a “high-level business dinner” 600m from their hotel on a recent overseas trip.

Mr Brumby and his team spent more than $17,600 on chauffeur-driven sedans, vans and sports utility vehicles on their nine-day US tour that cost taxpayers $78,905.

The extravagant spending was part of a whirlwind Brumby Government US expedition that cost taxpayers almost $9000 a day.

Wow – seventeen and a half big ones on SUVs – the enemy of the environment – I hope there isn’t anything to do with climate change in this story, or it could be really embarrassing…

[A spokesman] said Mr Brumby held talks on climate change and biotechnology with Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger…

Ouch. No comment required. Read it here.

The Australian has a piece by James Halliday, producer of the Australian Wine Companion, in which he talks a great deal of sense about the effect of the drought on the Murray-Darling basin and its causes.

Again and again we hear — from Kevin Rudd, Climate Change and Water Minister Penny Wong and Murray-Darling Basin Commission chief executive Wendy Craik — that this is due to climate change. As a headline grab and as an opportunity to castigate those who dare to suggest the Murray-Darling’s woes are due to drought and a century of profligate water extraction, it reinforces widespread popular belief.

And he correctly identifies the central flaw of the whole “carbon pollution reduction scheme”:

But let us suppose for a moment that rising CO2 emissions are the direct cause of the Murray-Darling’s plight. Australia could close down all mining and manufacturing industry overnight, throw away the keys to all the cars in the country, work only while sunlight and solar power were available and plunge itself into Third World poverty, all without making a blind bit of difference to global warming and the Murray-Darling.

He also suggests, again correctly, that adaptation is the key. I think I’ll open a nice bottle of Barossa Shiraz on that note…!

Read it here.

The SMH devotes acres of copy today (with a multimedia photo gallery) to the plight of people in Bhola, Bangladesh, whose island home is disappearing beneath them, blaming it all on sea level rises caused by “global warming”.

The earth is disappearing from under the feet of millions of impoverished Bangladeshis.

Nasir Ahmed is terrified of the full moon. In the dead of night three weeks ago it induced an unprecedented tidal surge that inundated his coastal village on the island of Bhola, in southern Bangladesh, leaving him, his wife Nasima, and their six children without shelter.

Skating over the fact that a tidal effect has nothing to do with climate change, this is all disingenuous, as it ignores the numerous other factors that are at work, not least the fact that sea levels have been rising steadily for many thousands of years (since the last Ice Age), but curiously less in the second half of the 20th century than the first, when CO2 emissions were much greater. However, this is the Herald we’re talking about…

Again, skating over the fact that “global warming” stopped in 2001, it drops in the usual chestnut about increased storm activity, which is widely regarded as a red herring:

If that wasn’t enough, Bhola is cyclone-prone and likely to experience more frequent and extreme storms as sea temperatures rise because of global warming.

…

The global warming threat was underscored last year when Bangladesh was hammered by a series of devastating weather events. Two unusually severe floods were followed immediately by cyclone Sidr, a category five storm that killed more than 3300 people and left about two million homeless.

The remainder of the article quotes the IPCC and Greenpeace, so we can all see where we’re headed here. The reality is that Bangladesh, and particular the Ganges Delta where Bhola is located, is an area where substantial erosion (and corresponding deposition) have always taken place, and some research indicates that Bangladesh’s total land area is in fact increasing.

Sea levels are rising, and have done so for centuries, and to blame all of this on whatever tiny anthropogenic effect there may be on top of this overall rise, is just pure alarmism.

Read it here.

The article yesterday about the Archbishop of Melbourne weighing in on climate change has been followed up by an article in the UK Church Times (thanks to Skeptics Global Warming):

“There are ways to reduce emissions, and Churches can contribute to solutions by proposing changes in lifestyle and behaviour patterns. We must look to reduce our greenhouse-gas emissions by around 95 per cent.”

In its final communiqué, the assembly said that acting against climate change was “a sign that Christ the Word of God comes into the world to give life and not death, and our appointed task is to preach this good news to all creation. The roots of human destruction of the environment are to be found not just in actions, but in our most deep-seated attitudes.”

I suppose it’s only a small step from Archbishop Gore of the Church of Global Warming preaching the word of AIT, to the Church of England preaching that it is part of God’s work that we should fight “climate change”. Read it here.