Pity the poor residents of Queensland. Their mornings go something like this: First you open your morning copy of The Brisbane Times (or any other of the Fairytale-fax press), and you get your first shot of climate change hysteria before you’ve even brushed your teeth. Then you get into your car to drive to the station, tune in to ABC, and you get your second dose (in case the first shot has worn off). And then, you get on a Queensland Rail train, and get subjected to a showing of the doom-mongering BBC documentary Planet Earth, which has been described thus:

This is an activist piece, even by the greener-than-thou standards of previous BBC productions, seeking to appeal to the audience that turned out to see Al Gore’s slice of climate change alarmism, An Inconvenient Truth. There’s even a website, LoveEarth.com, for those who want to find out more about how we can save the world. And it’s a moral film, firmly directed at children. (source)

Fortunately, at least one QR commuter was incensed enough to complain:

The BBC-produced Planet Earth was shown on a trip from Miriam Vale to Brisbane on May 1, and upset passenger John McMahon.

Mr McMahon wrote to Transport Minister Rachel Nolan expressing his disgust that passengers would be subjected to such “entertainment”.

“I find it disgraceful that a state government can inflict this mindless, apocalyptic, fear-mongering propaganda on to a ‘captured’ audience without providing a disclaimer that this is only one side of the debate,” Mr McMahon said.

I encourage everyone to follow Mr McMahon’s lead.

Read it here.

Appearing to “do something” about climate change trumps everything, of course – the economy, standards of living, auto manufacturers… Now Krudd & Co are proposing to impose mandatory limits on emissions for new cars in Australia, in a typical ill-considered “Kruddish” response to the holy words of the Obamessiah:

Transport and environment ministers will tomorrow consider options to improve energy-efficiency standards, including a recommendation for a mandatory standard to lower carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles.

A mandatory standard would be likely to provoke a backlash from car makers, who have campaigned for years to keep their system of pollution reduction a voluntary scheme.

Last night, the car industry warned the Government to think carefully about imposing a mandatory standard.”We would be concerned to ensure there is not a knee-jerk response to events in the US,” the chief executive of the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries Andrew McKellar said. [Er, that’s exactly what it is – Ed]

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday backed the US move, saying it was pleasing that America was adopting climate change measures.

No surprise there. Industry can go hang, where “tackling climate change” is concerned.

Read it here.

In pursuit of pointless “emissions reductions” to “tackle climate change” of course. So an industry which is teetering on the brink of collapse anyway will be forced to meet stricter emissions limits, which in turn, will put up prices for consumers. I’m all in favour of economical use of a limited resource, but given the fact that fuel efficiency has improved so much over the past decades anyway, this is madness.

The deal was forged in secret talks over the past few weeks between the car companies, environmentalists, unions and Mr Obama.

“For the first time in history we have set in motion a national policy aimed at both increasing gas mileage and decreasing greenhouse gas pollution for all new trucks and cars sold in the United States of America,” Mr Obama said.

Under the new rules, American cars and trucks will have to get 15 kilometres per litre by 2016. At the moment they average 10 kilometres per litre.

Good luck with that.

Read it here.

A carbon-fuelled jolly which puts more CO2 into the atmosphere than their policies could ever hope to save. This year, they’ve all descended on Seoul, South Korea, for the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit – I’m guessing they flew there, rather than arriving on solar-powered bikes?

Former US president Bill Clinton [as clueless on climate as Hillary – Ed], whose Clinton Climate Initiative develops programs [and probably reaps huge profits – Ed] to help cities cut greenhouse gas emissions, called for commitments and concrete action at the meeting that ends on Thursday.

The issue of how cities “find a way to continue to thrive and prosper while reducing greenhouse gas emissions is one of the central questions in the whole struggle,” Clinton told a press conference.

The answer is they probably can’t – given there are no real alternatives to fossil fuels at this stage… And then there’s always one who’s delusional:

Mayor David Miller of Toronto, who chairs this year’s summit, said he was confident it could find balanced ways to combat climate change.

“We will be able to demonstrate not only how you can fight greenhouse gas emissions but how you can also build green sustainable neighbourhoods, create green jobs and contribute back to the fight against climate change,” Miller said.

I think a (swine-flu-infected) pig just shot past my window.

Read it here.

A real cracker here from Joshy in the Daily Telegraph, for trying to link the climate change debate to the Matthew Johns fiasco:

The current debate about behaviour in rugby league is a lot like the one surrounding climate change. Although global warming is scientifically undisputed, stubborn naysayers are often granted equal airtime, which gives the impression that the issue is somehow in dispute.

Congratulations on your win.

Read it here.

Professor Ian Enting, of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems (what a mouthful) at the University of Melbourne, has written to The Australian complaining about Ian Plimer’s book Heaven + Earth, and praising Michael Ashley’s “excellent” (shonky) review (see here), so we know where this is going:

Of the 2311 footnotes (not all referring to different sources), many either contradict Plimer’s claims or are irrelevant to the point that he makes. Particularly blatant is footnote 2056 where the cited study reports New Orleans sinking by 15mm to 18mm in the three years prior to Hurricane Katrina, while Plimer cites this reference to support his claim that New Orleans sank by about 1 metre.

Once again, the warm-mongers choose a single point, and extrapolate it out to the entire book. And in this case, Plimer’s point is very possibly correct. A comment on my post on Michael Ashley’s review has pointed out the following:

Plimer does indeed cite work by Tim Dixon et al (2006) and they do indeed give a figure of 15mm-18mm in their paper but on June 12, 2006 Professor Dixon ALSO reported as follows and used the plural to cover each of his co-authors:

“in some cases, the ground had subsided a minimum of 3 feet“.

I reckon this is very close to Plimer’s “about a metre”.

Enting has even started a web page pointing out the supposed “errors” in Plimer’s book (see here) in which the points range from plausible to downright silly, such as this one:

IPCC computers don’t do clouds — totally unsurprising — IPCC computers don’t do climate modelling—presumably they do things like e-mail, desktop publishing, accounting etc. The climate modelling used by the IPCC is done by major research groups using models that do include clouds.

But the real issue, of course, as pointed out in one of the comments on Enting’s letter, is the hypocrisy of subjecting Plimer’s work to microscopic scrutiny whilst Al Gore’s utterly fictional book/movie An Inconvenient Truth is treated as gospel.

Read it here.

The US Democrats have unveiled their climate change bill – 932 pages of pointless legislation, much like the draft ETS legislation here. Despite climate scientists having spent over $50 billion on climate research since the 1990s, they have still been unable to show evidence of a definitive link between anthropogenic CO2 and the late 20th century warming. Attempts to regulate CO2 such as this, and like the ETS in Australia, will wreck economies, lower standards of living, make most of the population worse off, make a few very rich (e.g. Al Gore), and do precisely nothing to “tackle climate change”.

But the best part, by far, is the hyperbole, the misrepresentations and the spin that the Dems are pushing:

The Bill “will create millions of new clean energy jobs, save consumers hundreds of billions of dollars in energy costs, promote America’s energy independence and security, and cut global warming pollution,” said [Henry] Waxman [chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee].

Translation: the bill will cost millions of jobs, punish consumers through higher energy costs and do nothing for global warming “pollution”, and wreck our economy (and thereby our security) into the bargain. Next:

“This Bill marks the dawn of the clean energy age,” said Democratic Representative Ed Markey, who chairs the panel’s subcommittee on energy and the environment, co-author with Waxman of the sweeping Bill.

It’s incredible that elected officials of the worlds only remaining superpower can spout such utter nonsense, and not be laughed out of the room. Such is the power and influence of the AGW religion. Fortunately, however, the bill has virtually zero chance of ever making it into law – the Republicans and a significant number of Democrats who can see through this charade will see to that.

Bjorn Lomborg, in The Australian yesterday spelled out some home truths about reducing reliance on fossil fuels:

There are two fundamental reasons a focus on reducing carbon emissions is the wrong response to global warming.

First, using fossil fuels remains the only way out of poverty for developing countries. Coal provides half of the world’s energy. In China and India, it accounts for about 80 per cent of power generation and is helping labourers in those countries enjoy a quality of life that their parents could barely imagine.

Capping emissions means, effectively, ending this success story for hundreds of millions of people. There is no green energy source that is affordable enough to replace coal in the near future. Instead, our increased research will make green energy cheaper than fossil fuels by mid-century.

Second, immediate carbon cuts are expensive and the cost significantly outweighs the benefits. If the Kyoto agreement had been fully implemented throughout this century, it would have cut temperatures by only an insignificant 0.2C, at a cost of $180 billion every year. In economic terms, Kyoto does only about 30c worth of good for each dollar spent.

Deeper emissions cuts such as those proposed by the European Union – 20per cent below 1990 levels within 12 years – would reduce global temperatures by only 1/60th of 1C by 2100, at a cost of $10 trillion.

For every dollar spent, we would do just 4c worth of good.

Read it here and here.

Ashamed to say it, having trained as a lawyer as well as a scientist, but this is how the law works. There are armies of new “climate lawyers” waiting in the wings for the ETS to become law, so they can get to work charging huge sums for interpreting it and advising on it. Unfortunately, they are all a little bit nervous that their future cash cow may be delayed, as The New Lawyer reports:

CLIMATE change lawyers keen to get a new flow of work are waiting with fingers crossed for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) to pass through Parliament.

While firms are getting some work from both existing and new clients around the possibility of an upcoming CPRS, the real goldmine will be if it is actually implemented.

“If it’s passed in parliament, that is when we know whether it will affect the work. If it is passed, companies will want to know what their obligations are and they will want to start preparing for it,” said Charmain Barton, environment and climate change partner at DLA Phillips Fox.

“Goldmine” – that says it all! Virtually all corporates of any size will, when the ETS become law, require advice on their obligations under it, which will no doubt be convoluted and labyrinthine. And where do these corporates get the money to pay the lawyers bills? By charging their customers more for their products and services, which, at the end of a very long line, means you and me paying more for our products and services.

Although there is another side to the story, especially in the current financial crisis:

Another mid-tier Sydney law firm recently made the decision to close to its new climate change practice after the sole partner failed to make the practice profitable.

Speaking anonymously to The New Lawyer, that firm’s chief executive said the firm had given the partner eight months to bring in new clients and find means to make the practice profitable.

Read it here.

As always, a great read!

No time to precis just yet, but here’s the link.