I have lost count of the number of times Rudd & Wong have spouted the same response to the genuine concerns of business and industry about the introduction of the ETS (i.e. a tax) during the worst economic times since the 1920s. They are like the kid in the playground who covers his ears and shouts “la-la-la-la” so he can’t hear what the other kid is saying… it’s little short of pathetic.

“When we framed the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme [two errors in four words again. Where’s my answer from Penny Wong? – Ed] we did so to get the balance right between protecting jobs on the one hand and dealing with the long term challenge of greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.

“We believe we have got the balance right [modest as always – Ed] and our intention is to legislate the scheme.

“We think it’s the right long-term strategy for Australia and the planet.”

It will do nothing, repeat nothing for the climate of the planet, or Australia, and the only thing it will do is damage our already weakened economy.

Climate madness.

Read it here.

Strange goings on at the Herald which is wildly issuing feeds for news stories about Earth Hour which were published, er, last year… like this one, which is dated 29 March 2008… Check the URLs – they’ve all got today’s date embedded in them.

I know you’re greener than a crate of cabbages, guys, but control yourselves, there’s plenty of time yet to bore us all rigid with endless stories about the pointless feel-good gesture that is Earth Hour – it’s on 28 March. And get your RSS feed-bot working again.

Read it here, and here, and here, and here (and about a dozen others as well)

In an article in The Australian, former Liberal adviser Tom Switzer points out that the climate policy of former leader Brendan Nelson was the right one all along. The policy, which raised serious doubts about the economic viability of an emissions trading scheme, and which was received with near-universal hostility, is now the preferred course of action for much of Australia’s industry.

The issue that cost Nelson his leadership could yet be a political godsend for Malcolm Turnbull. The financial crisis has given industry more political ammunition to criticise the scheme. The many commentators who berated Nelson for his wait-for-the-world policy are now writing obituaries for the Government’s emissions trading model. A Lowy Institute poll revealed that most Australians are far more concerned about their jobs and hip pockets than any campaign to save the planet.

Labor, meanwhile, is spooked. The Prime Minister himself has walked away from Garnaut’s proposals and significantly downgraded the Government’s target range to as low as 5 per cent by 2020. So much for Rudd’s claim that “climate change is the great economic, environmental and moral challenge of our time”.

In this environment, the Liberal and Nationals parties should oppose the Government’s legislation outright and spell out a different way of meeting the climate challenge in the most forceful and coherent language they can find.

Unfortunately, Switzer then goes on to list a number of alternative ways of reducing carbon dioxide emissions (all of them pointless in terms of influencing global climate), and warns that the Opposition should not question the science:

Forget about questioning the science underlining global warming and leave that debate to the climate scientists, policy wonks and media columnists on the sidelines. To reopen this debate in parliament now would merely allow the Government to portray the Opposition as climate change deniers: a foolish and offensive charge, but nonetheless a politically damaging one to a party still struggling to recover from John Howard’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto protocol.

Whilst it may be politically damaging, it is the right and proper thing to do. I say bring it on. The Opposition should vigorously question the science, especially that from the IPCC on which the Government’s climate policy is based, which is misleading and politicised. Until or unless there is proper debate on the science, the whole issue of “climate change” is fatally flawed.

Doing the right thing is not necessarily the easiest thing.

Read it here.

Gore Effect: The phenomenon that leads to unseasonably cold temperatures, driving rain, hail, or snow whenever Al Gore visits an area to discuss global warming (source)

And now it seems James Hansen is having a similar effect on the weather. The juxtaposition was perfect – Hansen and a bunch of warmists (that numbered in the hundreds rather than thousands) protesting in the worst snow storm of the year in Washington DC. As The Australian reports, under the headline “Big chill buries global warming protest”:

The storm … buried under 15cm of snow any hope of global warming activism.

Reports said the activists had hoped to swarm Washington in an effort to force the Government to close the Capitol Power Plant, which heats and cools government buildings, including the Supreme Court and the Capitol.

Fox News said the scene was reminiscent of a day in January 2004, when Al Gore made an address on global warming in New York — on one of the coldest days in the city’s history.

In a press release supporting the protest against the coal-fired plant, Greenpeace wrote that “coal was the country’s biggest source of global warming pollution” and “burning coal cuts short at least 24,000 lives in the US annually“. But Fox News said it might be worth noting the US Government’s own stark numbers: pneumonia kills twice as many each year.

Enjoy. Read it here.

Ross Garnaut (remember him??) has emerged from the cave he’s been in since his report was issued last year, and put his 2c worth into the debate about the ETS by urging the Government to “act now on climate change”. Never saw that coming. This is despite emissions dropping anyway as a result of the global financial crisis. The article is helpfully illustrated by the following misleading image:

Since when was CO2 black? Looks more like particulate pollution to me, but hey, who cares?
(© ABC)

“It looks as if we’ve transferred back two years the emissions levels that we were expecting – might turn out to be longer than that if this turns out to be an even worse economic crisis,” he said. [Anyone understand that sentence? – Ed]

“We’ve got a little bit of breathing space but we need it because the world’s a long way from where it needs to be.”

Go back to your cave, Prof.

Read it here.

After the (relative) sanity of that last editorial in The Canberra Times, it’s back on form with ACM’s least favourite journo, Rosslyn Beeby, who interviews some barking mad professor about how our daily shower will be the latest victim of “climate change” (no, really, stick with it).

Climate change will change our social habits, and in 50 years time we won’t be showering every day, and maybe not at all, British sociologist Professor Elizabeth Shove says.

”No, we won’t be dirty, smelly and unhygienic. This kind of social change isn’t about people being forced to give up showers it’s about new habits, new ideas about cleanliness that will become more acceptable, and probably even more popular and enjoyable, than standing under a hot shower.”

To paraphrase The Italian Job, it’s a long way back to England, Professor … and it’s that-a-way.

Read it here.

This one issue lays bare the hypocrisy in the “green” movement for all to see. On the one hand, they whine about reducing emissions to “tackle climate change”, yet on the other they refuse to accept the only feasible emission-free source of electricity: nuclear generation.

Still bogged down in the “Nuclear Power? No thanks!” bumper-sticker mentality of the 1970s, they claim that climate change is the greatest threat to humanity, yet spurn the technology that would do more to reduce emissions (assuming, of course, that CO2 drives climate) than countless ugly wind farms or acres of hopelessly inefficient solar panels. Yes, of course there are issues with nuclear power, like the storage of spent fuel. But this is something we have the capability to deal with, as evidenced by the widespread use of nuclear power throughout the developed world.

An editorial in The Canberra Times makes the point well:

For countries planning to rely on ”clean coal” and ”renewables” [such as Australia – Ed] there will come a day of reckoning. Emission trading costs on top of high energy costs will result in decades of global disadvantage and loss of competitiveness.

Not surprisingly for most participants at the KL conference, Australia’s ”clean coal” and ”renewables” energy policy appeared to be an unnecessary and expensive gamble. And many remembered the December 2007 Bali climate conference, where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ratified Kyoto and Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, stated ”I have never seen a credible scenario for reducing emissions which did not include nuclear energy.”

For once I agree with Yvo de Boer.

Read it here.

Not another one, I hear you cry. Yes, and all the usual guff is recycled, that every unusual weather event is linked to “climate change”, that the emissions target is far too low, etc etc, wrapped up in loads of emotive claptrap:

“By locking in a low target now, Australia will effectively undermine the Copenhagen UN climate process in December, betraying not only the Australian people in its duty of care, but also people and nations across the globe,” the letter from Climate Action Groups states.
…
“It is not the Australian way to do as little as we possibly can at the expense of the millions of people, species and habitats that will be affected by climate change.

“This is not the legacy we wish to leave for our children.”

Probably written in green ink. Pop it in the special filing drawer – you know, the round one on the floor over there…

Read it here.

Even those that believe that AGW is real and dangerous think that the ETS is the wrong way to go. Richard Denniss, executive director of The Australia Institute, appears to be such a person, referring to CO2 as “pollution”, and clearly convinced that Australia should “tackle climate change.” But even he picks holes in Penny Wong’s “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” in The Australian today, particularly the fact that efforts by individuals to reduce emissions will have no effect whatsoever under the ETS, as they will merely allow others to emit more:

The question is: Why has the Government obfuscated and misled the Australian people? Rather than explaining the strengths and weaknesses of her scheme to the Australian public, the Minister for Climate Change has instead sought to cover up and conceal the fundamental problem. And when the first glimmerings of realisation began to spread among the Australian people, she worked hard to suggest, without actually stating it, that individual action could indeed reduce emissions. This was in addition to accusing those who were attempting to blow the whistle that they were indulging in a little misleading of their own.

It is interesting to speculate on a deeply disturbing question. Why has the Minister worked so hard to convince the citizenry that their efforts will be counted and that there is nothing amiss with the design of the carbon pollution reduction scheme? If only she and the Government had put as much effort into examining and fixing the flaws as they have put into their disingenuous denials of the problems, both they and Australia would be a lot further ahead by now.

The High Priestess does not suffer heretics gladly.

Read it here.

Apparently that is the nickname for Penny Wong doing the rounds in business circles at the moment. As the Daily Telegraph puts it:

They call her “The High Priestess”, reflecting the view that Wong has been overtaken by religious zeal – rather than rationality – in her campaign to impose the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme on Australia.

How appropriate.

Read it here (and the rest of the article too).

P.S. Still no response from Senator Wong on the “Carbon Pollution” moniker.