Still lurking in the shadows after his previous report to the UK government has been largely forgotten, “Lord” (formerly plain old Sir Nicholas) Stern is using bizarre logic in the Guardian to argue that the current economic crisis is even more reason why we should throw billions of dollars, pounds, Euros, you name it, at reducing CO2 emissions.

He said that the current financial crisis demonstrated the consequences of not dealing with dangerous risks early enough and with sufficient international co-operation.

Warning that there were “two kinds of danger” posed to efforts to tackle climate change by the present fear of recession, Lord Stern said: “One is people can only concentrate on a limited number of things at the same time.

“The second is people will be sensitive to cost increases, and those will have to be managed carefully… There’s a danger: it needs leadership.”

Given a choice between managing a global economic meltdown and spurious claims about tinkering with a harmless trace gas in the atmosphere, I think I know which most people would choose.

Read it here.

More common sense from Australia’s farming communities, as reported in the North Queensland Register.

IN the face of calls from climate change “experts” to farm kangaroos instead of cattle, the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association has called for a return to sanity in the debate on global warming.

Well said. Luke Bowen, of the NTCA said:

“We all support the need to reduce greenhouse gases, but imagine trying to master a herd of kangaroos, and the fuel emissions generated with all the extra driving around around after them.

“I doubt if it is possible to muster and transport kangaroos in the first place.”

Can’t expect Prof Garnaut to understand the niceties of roo farming, of course…

Read the rest here.

From the Department of Desperate Scare Stories (otherwise known as that organ of impartiality, The Age). Apparently, newborn babies who are exposed to air pollution in the womb have to breathe faster to get more oxygen into their lungs, according to research confirming environmental fumes can damage a child’s lungs before birth. Let me make it quite clear that I am all in favour of cutting pollution (by which I mean real pollution such as particulates and toxins, as opposed to non-pollution, such as CO2) from our towns and cities to improve quality of life and health, but guess what:

“Climate change is going to increase humidity and make the situation worse so we need to get smart about it now.”

Who’d have thunk it?

Read it here.

An organisation based in New York called the “Wildlife Conservation Society” has published a scaremongering report that lists a “deadly dozen” diseases which could threaten human health and global economies as a result of “climate change” (reports the UK Daily Telegraph).

The list of diseases we could all succumb to if we don’t tackle climate change includes avian flu, cholera, ebola, lyme disease, plague (!), rift valley fever, sleeping sickness, tuberculosis and yellow fever.

This is reminiscent of the spurious claim made in An Inconvenient Truth that “global warming” will spread a number of serious diseases. Even if temperatures are rising (which they haven’t been for many years now), many of these claims can be refuted – for example, ebola can only be contracted by eating or coming into contact with infected monkeys… how does that relate to global warming? In any event, the effect of global warming on the distribution of these diseases is miniscule compared to a great many other factors such as water purity, socioeconomic conditions and hygiene.

But again, for the alarmists’ cause, the more apocalyptic prophesies that can be linked to “climate change” (no matter how tenuously) the better.

Read it here.

UPDATE – The Australian now has a piece on this here.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, will address the Ninth World Congress of Metropolis in Sydney to be held on October 22 to 25. Metropolis is an organisation which represents global cities with a population of more than 1 million. The actor Cate Blanchett will be another speaker in her role as joint artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company.

Sydney Morning Herald – 7 October 2008

I suppose in a paper like the Herald, you don’t get published unless you subscribe to the AGW craze. Its green ooze seeps through the cracks in the tiles under the environmental desk and drips onto the technology desk on the floor below. Graeme Philipson, in a piece entitled “Weathering the Storm – how will the economic downturn affect the IT industry” manages to slip in a comment about “climate change” and “deniers” (Denier Alert again):

On another front, the necessity of confronting climate change will continue, even in the face of the naysayers. The best argument I have heard in favour of action is that even if climate change is not occurring, and even if it is not caused by human action, we should be acting on the basis that it is.

If that’s the best argument you’ve heard, I hate to think what the worst were…

The argument is analogous to insurance. Your house probably won’t burn down, but it is wise to insure against that fact that it might.

Yeah, right. The difference is, if your house burns down, the chances are the insurance will help you build another one. Spending billions of dollars reducing Australia’s emissions will make no difference whatsoever to the climate (even assuming CO2 is a driver of temperature).

Climate change – and its human causes – seems to me to be an incontrovertible fact, but many otherwise intelligent people remain in denial.

Denial Alert!! And note the cheap shot: “otherwise intelligent”. I suggest you stick to IT in future…

Read it here.

After dire warnings for the fishing industry in a recent alarmist CSIRO report, the Tasmanian fisheries industry is taking a calm and careful look at the situation, saying it is too early to become alarmed. Praise is due to them for not going off the deep end – it is good to see that not all industries run around like headless chickens at the sight of the latest scare story …

Read it here.

It certainly does if the Rudd government goes ahead with it’s mad “carbon pollution reduction scheme”, yet that same government opposes nuclear power. You would have thought that given their conviction that global warming is real and dangerous, that it’s the biggest crisis facing civilisation in the history of the planet, and we need to “do something” urgently, they would be prepared to move on from the clichéd “Nuclear Power? No thanks” response of the eco-warriors of yore. But it appears not.

The Opposition, on the other hand, are at least considering the nuclear option – which makes a great deal of sense in a country with such vast reserves of Uranium. It seems a no-brainer, but unfortunately, brains is something the Rudd government lacks…

Read it here.

UPDATE – And, guess what, Penny Wong has immediately hit back and confirmed that she believes renewable energy is a better option for power generation than nuclear.

“We are abundantly blessed with renewable resources and we believe it is far more appropriate, far better for us, to be investing in developing the technology to utilise and commercialise our renewable energy rather than going down the nuclear path.”

We’re abundantly blessed with Uranium as well… Typical head-in-sand politics that we have come to expect from Rudd & Co.

Read the rest here.

W(r)ong again…

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong goes into reverse gear to try and rescue the Government’s AGW agenda from “Kangaroo-gate”. As you will have seen in previous posts, the reaction to Prof Garnaut’s suggestion that we abandon beef and lamb because of their methane emissions and eat kangaroo instead (because they don’t fart so much) has been universally negative. Penny Wong said:

“The media made the whole issue more colourful than it was actually meant to be.”

Of course, when it all goes horribly wrong it’s the fault of the media… She also said:

“I don’t think that our response to climate change is driven by telling people what to eat.”

Interesting, because everything else about the entire climate change bandwagon in Australia is telling people what to do, whether it is what form of transport they should use, which form of energy they should use, what light globes to use in their houses, etc. etc. Why not what they should eat as well? Left-leaning governments like ours love nothing more than telling people what to do and how they should spend their money (usually spending it for them in the form of excessive taxation), and the hysteria of “global warming” is a perfect opportunity to do that in spades.

And to finish off, she throws in her trademark error of calling CO2 “carbon pollution”. Penny, for the umpteenth time, (1) it’s Carbon Dioxide, and (2) it’s NOT POLLUTION!!!

Read it here.

Following on from the last post, in this article from the UK Times Online, Bjørn Lomborg demonstrates the nonsense behind the hysteria to cut emissions in the UK (and by analogy, Australia – since their emissions are of a similar order), and the futility of it all.

Computer modelling – using DICE (dynamic integrated model of climate and the economy) – shows that the net effect of the UK renewables effort is impossibly tiny. The temperature increase by 2100 without Mr Brown’s plan would have been 2.4536181C. With the best-case scenario the huge UK effort means that the temperature at the end of the century would be 2.4532342C. The effect is a difference of about 0.00038C – or about one three-thousandth of a degree in a hundred years. This is the equivalent of delaying the temperature increase by the end of the century by a little less than a week.

And this is from a scientist who subscribes to the IPCC view of climate change, and believes that humans are causing it…

Read the rest here.