Rank idiocy. Malcolm Turnbull has announced that the Coalition has offered the Government “unconditional bipartisan” support for the carbon emissions target it plans to take to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change in December.

“In the light of the fact that the Copenhagen conference is only six months away and the Obama administration and US Congress are well advanced in finalising US legislation for an ETS, the Coalition believes that it would be premature to lock Australia into an emissions trading scheme that is out of step with the rest of the world,” Mr Turnbull said.

The Government is proposing a minimum reduction target of five per cent below 2000 levels by 2020, up to a conditional target of 25 per cent dependent largely on a global agreement.

“We are offering unconditional five per cent,” Mr Turnbull said, adding it was a measure of the Coalition’s sincerity.

WTF? The cowardly opposition do not have the guts to stand up to this “Emperor’s New Clothes” ETS, and are backing it for fear of being branded “deniers” or “Flat Earthers” if they oppose it. But that is precisely what they should be doing. The ETS will wreck the Australian economy, and do nothing, repeat nothing to alter the climate of Australia, save the Barrier Reef etc etc, and it will do nothing, repeat nothing to alter global climate. They may as well take the money it will cost the economy, and burn it.

The only hope is the Nationals, who stand alone as the only party with the good sense to see this ETS for what it is – a pointless and dangerous political gesture.

Read it here.

Hands up those of you who didn’t see this coming! Rudd will force the Australian economy to move to “green power”, but Parliament House can’t even manage it, registering an almost laughable 10% energy from renewable sources. Maybe they’ll eventually realise it isn’t as easy to achieve such a target as acres and acres of empty rhetoric from Rudd & Co might indicate.

Before the last federal election Kevin Rudd set an objective of powering the national legislature entirely with renewable energy as part of a strategy of “leading by example” on climate change.

But the department that runs Parliament House revealed yesterday that only 10 per cent of the building’s power will come from renewable sources under a new three-year electricity contract.

The secretary of the Department of Parliamentary Services, Alan Thompson, told Senate estimates it would have been too expensive to sign up to the 100 per cent “green power” option with a local electricity utility.

There’s a surprise. Maybe the wind wasn’t blowing hard enough for the wind turbines? Back to good ol’ coal fired electricity generation, I guess.

Read it here.

More and more senators appear to be favouring a delay in the passing of the ETS legislation. The latest to go public is Family First senator Steve Fielding:

Senator Fielding says he would support any move by the Coalition to defer the vote.

“If they want to delay the emissions trading scheme to after Copenhagen, then I am on that side at this stage,” he said. “The Rudd Government hasn’t convinced me that we should be pushing through an emissions trading system before Copenhagen.”

The Government wants its legislation passed in the Senate by June because it says it needs to give business certainty. But Senator Xenophon says that is too soon, but he has not backed delaying the vote until December either.

“I’ve told the Government and the Opposition that I see it as virtually impossible to get this legislation through by the end of June,” he said. “I think it’s better to come back after the winter break and we’ll have a better idea then what’s happening in the US.”

Guess the chances of Rudd getting this through now in June are about zero.

Read it here.

Those voices opposing change – or trying to delay it – are ignoring the expense of inaction. What is the cost of roads washed away, schools closed, homes inundated, and cities the size of Grafton and Lismore evacuated in the worst floods in 20 years in northern NSW? Insurance companies know, and you can bet premiums will rise. As an analyst from the global insurance giant Munich Re said last week, extreme weather disasters are on the rise while earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are not. How many glaciers need to melt, with potentially catastrophic consequences, before common sense prevails?

Beyond parody.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Even more idiotic comment from The Canberra Times:

A deal like this [between the US and China] will not end the climate crisis, even if all the other big emitters accept similar terms. Past emissions have already committed us to so much warming that there will be famines, waves of refugees and wars in some of the worst-hit regions no matter what we do now.

Beyond belief.

Read it here.

Looks like someone has been using second hand IPCC climate models to do some financial predictions – another perfect example of “garbage in, garbage out”.

THE Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme could deliver a massive investment surge that would add more than $6 billion a year to the economy, according to secret economic modelling work produced as Parliament considers the fate of controversial climate-change laws.

An internal report by National Australia Bank seen by The Sun-Herald suggests the emissions trading debate in Australia has been dominated by claims about the short-term costs, and scant attention has been paid to new investment opportunities.

Believe this at your peril. Common sense dictates that taxing energy will stifle economies not boost them, but common sense is something modellers seem to have very little of. The only thing it confirms is that you can model something to give whatever result you want. Bear that in mind next time you hear an outrageous climate scare.

Read it here.

But for completely opposite reasons! The Greens want the legislation delayed so that when the negotiations in Copenhagen result in a tough, binding, global agreement (including the US, China and India) to cut emissions by 50% by 2020, Australia can sign up to it.

And now back to the real world, the Coalition want to delay it so that when Copenhagen goes off like a damp squib, as climate gab-fests tend to do (see here and here), they can argue for reduced emissions cuts.

Opposition emissions trading spokesman Andrew Robb said yesterday: “It would be irresponsible to rush this deeply flawed scheme through parliament by the end of June. We can have the debate after the Copenhagen meeting at the end of the year, with all the information on the table, without affecting Mr Rudd’s new start date.”

Malcolm Turnbull has said his climate change plan, which could be discussed by shadow cabinet on Monday, will advocate targets at least as ambitious as those proposed by the Government. [WTF? – Ed]

The Government had assumed it could force the Coalition to vote on the legislation in June, but now the Greens, Family First senator Steve Fielding and independent senator Nick Xenophon are saying they would consider a delay.

What game is Turnbull playing here? Trying to out-green Rudd? Forget it.

Read it here.

Now why would they do that, I wonder, unless it was through fear of seeing their baby exposed as the pointless exercise we all know it to be? Climate hero Barnaby Joyce is again the one asking the tough questions:

Senator Joyce says the Government is trying to make sure the inquiry favours its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

“This is the same Labor Party that talked about the Howard government taking the Senate for granted as a rubber stamp,” he said.

“Now we find that once the pressure is on them, the first thing they do is start scripting so the Australian people can only hear one point of view.”

Can hardly expect the Kruddites to play fair, can you?

Read it here.

That’s the bleak outlook for mining in Australia, with three times that many jobs to go by 2030, thanks to the Rudd government’s pointless emissions trading scheme:

[Minerals] Council chief executive Mitchell Hooke says this showed the government’s proposed carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) was out of step with global efforts to reduce emissions, with other international trading schemes and with the development of the low emissions technologies needed to reduce emissions.

“It will impose the highest carbon costs in the world on Australia’s mineral exporters,” he said in a statement.

“We share the government’s commitment to reducing emissions [why? – Ed] but this modelling shows the CPRS is fundamentally flawed. By imposing the highest carbon costs in the world on Australia’s mineral exporters, it will eliminate jobs while failing to materially reduce global greenhouse gas levels.”

That last sentence is certainly true – and it won’t do zip for the climate.

Read it here.

As always, a great read!