A couple of weeks ago, we posed the question: The Coalition’s climate policy should be… and here are the results:

• less than 1% (1 vote): support Rudd’s ETS
• 4% (5 votes): carbon tax
• 95% (120 votes): neither – AGW is a myth

Glad to see that most ACM readers are healthily sceptical!

Thanks for voting!

In a long and rambling article about the Copenhagen meeting taking place to discuss how much worse climate change will be compared to what the IPCC predicted, these gems from Chris Field (well known to this blog…):

One of the lead authors of [the 2007 IPCC] report said last month it had probably seriously underestimated the consequences of climate change. Professor Chris Field, a Stanford University climate scientist, said ”we now have data showing that, from 2000 to 2007, greenhouse gas emissions increased far more rapidly than we expected, primarily because developing countries like China and India saw a huge upsurge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal”.

Yes, emissions have risen faster than expected, and what has happened to global temperature? It’s actually dropped in the same period.

Coal and other fossil fuels are large contributors to releases of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas [Wrong – the main greenhouse gas is naturally occurring water vapour, by a long, long way – Ed]. Professor Field, who co-chairs the IPCC working group charged with assessing the impacts of climate change, said he was particularly concerned about new evidence that tropical forests would dry out and catch fire…

That’ll really happen…

Read it here.

(Image from the Sydney Morning Herald)

Australia Post has become the latest organisation to inappropriately involve itself in the climate change debate by releasing stamps to remind people about Earth Hour, which as you will recall is organised by the radical environmental organisation WWF (and Fairfax media):

“Australia Post is a committed supporter of this important environmental initiative,” said the Group Manager of Philatelic, Noel Leahy. “The health of the environment is an important global issue and through this stamp issue we hope to engage the community in efforts to help combat global warming by reminding and encouraging them to turn off their lights at 8.30 pm on Saturday, 28 March.”

Australia Post provides a service for all Australians (not just card-carrying Kruddites, and AGW proponents), so it should not be taking sides on political matters such as climate change.

Read it here.

This is sort of good news, in the sense that at least the ETS will be subject to some parliamentary scrutiny. It’s also sort of bad news, because the Opposition and the Greens have joined forces and will probably try to replace it with something worse, to “out-green the Government”. As The Age reports:

Opposition emissions trading design spokesman Andrew Robb and Australian Greens climate change spokeswoman Christine Milne struck the deal on Monday.

The terms of reference will need to be ratified by the coalition’s Senate partyroom.

A new Senate select committee on climate policy would conduct the inquiry, to be chaired by the opposition and deputy chaired by the Greens.

“The terms of reference will be broad enough to allow a proper investigation into the scientific adequacy of the scheme and its targets,” Senator Milne said.

That last sentence is particularly worrying, because the inquiry will probably say that Rudd’s 5% by 2020 isn’t enough if you swallow all the IPCC propaganda and that we need something even tougher, heaven help us…

Read it here.

Bit thin on detail this one, but you can guarantee that “Tas Women Cooling It” (no, honestly, that’s what it’s called) will be money badly spent in a pointless feel-good gesture.

Sharon Dennis, from the Women’s Council, says the project aims to reduce feelings of isolation in the fight against global warming, and create an example by making a real and measurable contribution towards sustainable living. [Feelings of isolation? They should try being a sceptic for a few days… – Ed]

“What our objective is is to contact as many women in Tasmania as we can, who can make a small contribution, which leads onto a larger contribution towards their ideas of reducing their own carbon footprint.”

Read it here.

You won’t see this reported anywhere, of course. The Heartland conference is the largest gathering of sceptical scientists in the world and if you’re in New York, try to get along. Information can be found here.

UPDATE: You can follow the progress of the conference on Quadrant. Check out the regular posts by Professor Bob Carter in the Doomed Planet section.

Of course it is, you denier you. And the Sydney Moonbat Herald is there to make the link.

THOUSANDS of holidaymakers were evacuated from resorts and campsites yesterday as tropical cyclone Hamish moved south along the Queensland coast, amid concerns climate change is generating such severe storms.
…
Emergency Management Queensland’s deputy executive director, Bruce Grady, said climate change analysis that predicted tropical cyclones of greater intensity was driving the disaster response strategy for tropical cyclone Hamish.

Again, pure nonsense. This hoary old chestnut is still doing the rounds, despite it being debunked long ago. It’s plausible that any warming would lower the temperature differential between polar and equatorial regions which would actually reduce storm intensity. But hey, who cares about the facts? We have to push our scaremongering agenda…

Read it here.

UPDATE: As if by magic, this appears: Tropical cyclone activity [still] lowest in 30 years

Having been branded mentally deranged yesterday for daring to question the consensus on global warming, I read no less than six pages of barking climate alarmism in The Age this morning, all of which bears only tenuous links to reality. It’s like a summary of all the worst warmist propaganda condensed into a single article, full of scaremongering and misrepresentations. And yet I’m the one that’s deranged.

Entitled “Climate’s 11th hour”, I cannot be bothered to refute it all (life is too short), but I can focus on two factors, global temperature and global sea levels. Here’s the quote from the article:

Climate experts are increasingly worried, though. More than 2000 will meet in Copenhagen this week for an emergency summit to emphasise that the shift is happening much faster than expected.
…
UNSW Climate Change Research Centre co-director Matthew England, one of the summit’s key backers, says it is likely to find that the raw measures of climate change — global average air temperature, global sea-level rise and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations — are all happening at or above the worst-case IPCC scenario.

This is so wrong it is painful. Global temperature, however you measure it, has been falling or steady since 2001. How can that possibly be “at or above the worst-case IPCC scenario”? Sea levels have continued to rise at the same rate as they have for centuries – again, how can that possibly be “at or above the worst-case IPCC scenario”? Did this person actually look at the data? If so, how can he possibly make such a claim? I’m sorry, but if we’re now into the realm of discussing mental health, this is utterly delusional.

And yet The Age mindlessly continues to print it all.

Read it here (if you can stand it).

UPDATE: Of course, what these scientists gathering in Copenhagen should really be discussing is why the earth isn’t warming according to the IPCC models, so that we can better understand the climate system, instead of blundering ahead with their blinkered alarmist propaganda machine.

Back to posting, and in my brief absence, I discover that I, along with thousands and thousands of others, have been branded as deranged. That’s right – querying AGW is now regarded as a mental illness. Just another step in the battle to stamp out any form of dissent in environmental matters. From Spiked:

The idea that ‘climate change denial’ is a psychological disorder – the product of a spiteful, wilful or simply in-built neural inability to face up to the catastrophe of global warming – is becoming more and more popular amongst green-leaning activists and academics. And nothing better sums up the elitism and authoritarianism of the environmentalist lobby than its psychologisation of dissent. The labelling of any criticism of the politics of global warming, first as ‘denial’, and now as evidence of mass psychological instability, is an attempt to write off all critics and sceptics as deranged, and to lay the ground for inevitable authoritarian solutions to the problem of climate change. Historically, only the most illiberal and misanthropic regimes have treated disagreement and debate as signs of mental ill-health.
…
The psychologisation of climate change denial – even the very use of that term: denial – reveals how utterly aloof and cut off are the environmental elitists from mass society. They cannot comprehend, indeed are ‘baffled’ by, our everyday behaviour, our desire to have families, our resistance to hectoring, our dream of being wealthier, better travelled, our hopes of living life to the full. For them, such behaviour is irresponsible and it runs counter to the ‘extraordinary information’ provided by scientists. They seriously expect people to make life decisions on the basis of pie charts and graphs drawn up in laboratories in Switzerland, rather than on the basis of what they and their families need and, yes, what they want. That the green lobby is so perturbed by our failure to act in accordance with scientific findings shows the extent to which, for them, The Science is a new gospel truth and religious-style guide to life, and anyone who disobeys it is a sinner, heretic or deranged individual, a moral leper of the twenty-first century.

This is true climate madness!

Read it all here.

Posts may be a little irregular for the next couple of days as I will be travelling. However, armed with a laptop and wireless broadband I hope to get a few posts in.

In the mean time, don’t forget to vote in the ACM poll which has just 3 days left!

Check out the blog roll on the right —> to catch up on other great anti-warming blogs.