We’ve had emotional blackmail from Penny Wong, and now political shenanigans in order to force through the pointless, and almost universally loathed, ETS. The government is in hot water for trying to link another piece of legislation to the ETS to get it through by the back door.

The Coalition’s environment spokesman, Greg Hunt, says the Government is jeopardising a deal on renewable energy to score political points.

“We want to do the right thing. We are extremely sympathetic on renewable energy legislation. It would be a disgrace if this Government held up renewable energy projects for naked political gamesmanship,” Mr Hunt said.

Greens Senator Christine Milne says the Government is resorting to trickery to get its emissions trading scheme through.

“They are now sinking to low levels in order to wedge the Coalition on climate change policy, saying they have to pass both the renewable energy target and the CPRS or neither, because they have interlinked the two policy positions,” Senator Milne said.

ACM agrees with Christine Milne for the first (and probably the last) time.

Read it here.

The enviro-headbangers at the SMH are unable to comprehend how anyone isn’t taken in 100% by the misrepresentations and political posturing of the IPCC (like Fairfax has been), and goes into full slime mode, in an article entitled “Senator blows hot and cold on science”:

THE Family First senator Steve Fielding has challenged the work of thousands of the world’s top scientists, saying he is not convinced by the work done by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [Note no mention of the “thousands of top scientists” who disagree with the consensus – and I’m surprised they missed the chance to call it “the Nobel Prize-winning” IPCC – Ed]
…
Senator Fielding’s newfound scepticism is a result of his trip to the US to listen to the Heartland Institute of Chicago, an organisation that is funded by the fossil-fuel industry. The organisation also believes public health campaigns against smoking are based on “junk science”. [Note how the SMH attempts to smear the organisation, and avoids actually addressing Senator Fielding’s arguments. Typical alarmist tactics. It’s also amazing that no-one ever complains about the billions of dollars that flow from the green lobby to perpetuate climate alarmism, way more than has ever come from the “fossil fuel industry” – Ed]

One can almost hear the heads popping!

Read it here.

Given Steve Fielding’s heresy about solar activity being a possible cause of climate change, it’s an interesting coincidence that global temperatures are dropping (if you look at the satellite record, and ignore “urbanisation-measuring” surface stations on which other records, like GISS, are based) at the same time as the sun is the quietest it has been for a century. Could they possibly be related?

Watch here (from April 2009).

See also here.

No discussion of the science, you will note. Just thinly veiled threats if the crossbenchers don’t play ball. Note to Steve Fielding: DO NOT SUCCUMB TO THIS KIND OF BLACKMAIL.

Crossbench senators thinking about voting down Labor’s climate change legislation should consider how they’ll explain the decision to their constituents, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says.
…
“Every senator is going to have to front up to their electorate and tell people if they vote no, why they voted to ensure Australia’s emissions keep rising, voted to ensure our carbon pollution keeps increasing, voted to ensure we continue to contribute to climate change,” she told ABC TV on Wednesday.

I’m amazed she didn’t go on to say “for the sake of our children, and our children’s children, and our children’s children’s children… etc etc.” For what it’s worth, here’s what I would say, if I were explaining it to my constituents:

The theory of anthropogenic global warming is flawed. CO2 emissions are rising, yet temperatures are falling and have been for nearly a decade. The climate system is clearly affected by factors which the IPCC models, on which the Rudd government’s policy is based, do not include. Until or unless there is irrefutable proof that man-made CO2 emissions are directly causing dangerous climate change, I am not prepared to bankrupt our economy, and substantially lower the standard of living of all Australians, including you, based on flawed models which do not reflect reality.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Here’s Penny Wong’s latest “cracked-record” pronouncement on the theory of climate change:

Senator Wong has told ABC 2’s News Breakfast there is no doubt human activity is driving climate change. [Yeah, “no doubt” if you live in a hermetically sealed bubble, keep your hands over your ears and shout “la, la, la” all day, which I’m beginning to think you probably do, or maybe it’s because you’re trying to force through this legislation irrespective of the science… I wonder – Ed]

“We’ve had 13 of the 14 hottest years in history in the last 15 years,” she said. [Weasel Word Alert: “In history”. What does that mean, Penny? Do you mean since the earth cooled, 4.5 billion years ago, or do you mean since 1851, when records began and the earth was emerging from the cold period known as the Little Ice Age, which, oddly, coincided with a minimum in solar activity, known as the Dalton Minimum? It’s actually a porkie whichever, since the 1930s were warmer – Ed]

“Solar flares does not explain the phenomenon that we are seeing.” [Simple as that – Ed]

Gee, I’m convinced. Read it here.

Kevin Rudd and his government are full of empty promises. A while ago, it was changing Parliament House to 100% green power (failed – too expensive), and now it’s the fact that MPs’ cars that have a decidedly brown feel about them. And really, who can blame them, when the only viable hybrid car is the butt-ugly Prius. The Honda Insight, one of the latest hybrids, was described by Jeremy Clarkson as:

“Terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on purpose, so I didn’t have to drive it any more (source).”

Doesn’t exactly encourage me to take one for a test drive… And of course you’d have to drive a Prius for 70,000 years to save the same amount of CO2 produced in one day by a reasonable sized power station. All that aside, however, there is a strong smell of hypocrisy about the lack of use of hybrids in government, given their green posturing elsewhere:

Only a tiny proportion of the Commonwealth fleet of 8000 vehicles are hybrids or use LPG. There are almost as many eight-cylinder cars (160) as hybrids (172), which form just 2 per cent of the fleet.
…
Opposition frontbencher Michael Ronaldson blasted the situation: “Mr Rudd talks a lot about protecting the environment, but when it comes to fixing up his own back yard he is missing in action. In those few departments which actually have them, Prius vehicles are just there for show.”

One rule for the rulers and one rule for the ruled. In any case, none of this matters, since CO2 emissions aren’t driving global temperature anyway, so hybrid cars are little more than empty feel-good gestures.

Read it here.

Another excellent article about Steve Fielding’s approach to the climate debate, and well worth the read:

STEVE Fielding has had a conversion that could blow apart the great global warming scare.

No wonder the Rudd Government is scrambling and the ABC is already sliming the Family First senator. You see, Fielding has suddenly realised that global warming may not be caused by humans after all.

What has startled him out of merely accepting we’re heating the world to hell with our carbon dioxide emissions is one fact in particular.

While our emissions are increasing fast each year, satellite measurements show the world’s temperatures have still not risen above the 1998 record, and have actually fallen since 2002.

Of course, all this has been pointed out before. I’ve asked both Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong – to their faces – to explain why the world isn’t still warming as it should if their global warming theories are right.

Neither has given me an answer. Nor have they answered similar challenges from the few sceptics in Parliament who have dared to reveal themselves – notably the Nationals’ Barnaby Joyce and the Liberals’ Dennis Jensen.

Read it all here.

What an extraordinary headline: “Combet won’t guarantee Fielding’s access to scientists.” Why, you ask? Because “the science is in,” you evil denier you. Regular readers will know that I abhor ad hominems, but really, Combet is an utter dipstick. And these guys run the country – heaven help us all.

“We don’t discuss these things through the media, with all due respect. We’ll sit down with Senator Fielding and go through the issues,” he told The World Today.

Mr Combet says the Government remains determined to get the legislation passed despite Senator Fielding’s doubts. [Yawn, yawn, yawn, and yawn again. How many more times do we have to listen to Rudd, Wong and now Combet banging on about how this pointless ETS “is going through whatever happens”? Please spare me – Ed]

“One thing that we are determined about, that shouldn’t be underestimated, is to get this carbon pollution reduction scheme [two errors in four words again – Ed] through because we do accept the science,” he said.

“The science is in on this issue from the Government’s standpoint. Global warming is a reality.”

Guess which scientist they will put forward to “answer” Steve Fielding’s questions? None other than the über-alarmist Chief Scientist Penny Sackett, who chimes into the debate with a classic quote:

“What we’re seeing now is an unprecedented change and its primary cause is due to greenhouse gas emissions.”

We are really in cloud cuckoo land when the Chief Scientist approaches a scientific issue with such a closed-brain attitude and spouts misleading comments such as this. She is unworthy to call herself a scientist of any sort. Do I really have to put this graph up again…? I think I do. Please tell me where the unprecedented change is, when global temperatures are just 0.04˚C (four one hundredths of a degree) above the average from 1979-1998:

I sincerely hope that the public are slowly beginning to see how utterly untenable the government’s attitude to this legislation, and now towards Steve Fielding, is becoming. The more they try to force it through, the harder it will become…

Read it here.

UPDATE: Penny Sackett claims:

“the reason global warming is tracking along the upper prediction of the IPCC is because the greenhouse gases that humans emit have not been abated at all”.

Kinda like this:

Is it too much to call Sackett’s statement an outright lie? Link to audio here (MP3). (h/t Tom Nelson)

So threatened are the warmists by dissent. No-one is allowed to hold a contrary view, under fear of ridicule or punishment, and anyone that does is obviously deranged and needs to be “re-educated”. Maybe the next step will be the introduction of the “Climate Police”, like the Stasi, snooping around and bugging people’s homes to listen out for any dissenting views, and carting those responsible off to special facilities where they will be brainwashed into believing the true Word. It’s worse than East Germany before the Wall came down.

FAMILY First senator Steve Fielding has been offered a briefing from top scientists in a bid to change his view that climate change may not be caused by human activity.

Climate Change and Water Minister Penny Wong made the offer yesterday after Senator Fielding returned from a conference in the United States, saying he was not satisfied with the science behind the widely held view that global warming was a result of an increase in carbon dioxide levels caused by human activity.
…
“The Government’s approach to climate change is guided by the consensus science and we are able to provide a briefing on this to Senator Fielding,” Senator Wong said. “We are happy to facilitate a meeting between Senator Fielding and Australian Government scientists if requested.”

Read it here.

P.S. The moonbat papers are also falling over themselves to discredit Fielding, and those from whom he sought advice. Forgive me if I can’t be bothered to blog them – it’s just too depressing. All the usual stuff is trotted out, and you can read it here and here.

An excellent article on Steve Fielding’s trip to the US:

Astonishingly (for a politician) he stands out from the crowd for simply saying the obvious. He wants to “hear from both sides of the debate.”

A simple statement like this should not be remarkable—but it’s so rare. Steve Fielding assumed the mainstream thinking was right, but is now doing what anyone who hasn’t looked at the debate in detail ought to be doing. Some research. It’s a rare occasion when you can see the good side of democracy and free speech in action. He paid for himself to fly to the far side of the world to attend Heartland’s 3rd conference on Climate Change to hear from scientists who are not convinced carbon has a large role to play in our climate.

Read it here.

As you would expect, the threat of Steve Fielding challenging the received wisdom of the IPCC and Gore is too great for climate scientists in Australia, safely on the climate change funding gravy train, and heavily invested in the “consensus”. So out with the usual scaremongering and distraction:

• “We understand that there was probably some warming earlier last century, due to changes of emissions from the sun, but no evidence that the recent warming is due to that.” (Graeme Pearman) [Evidence please? None to be seen – Ed]
• “It’s absolutely rubbish.” (Pearman again) [There’s reasoned argument for you – Ed]
• “[He] seeks to get his information from a group of climate change deniers, an organisation that’s receiving sufficient funding from the fossil fuel industry.” (Yawn and yawn again: David “Asteroid hitting earth only solution to GW” Karoly) [Ad hominem – Ed]
• “He seeks to accept their scientific misinformation more than he accepts peer-reviewed scientific publications.” (Karoly again) [Oops, and another. By the way, there are plenty of peer-reviewed publications which disagree with the consensus – Ed]
• “We really don’t have time to wait – we have to get on with it. That doesn’t really mean that we’re absolutely sure about everything that is projected in climate change,” he said. (Karoly again, and yawn again – methinks the lady doth protest too much)

That last comment sums it up again – we really don’t know if the science is right or wrong, but we’re going ahead anyway, because (as always) we must act now!!

Read it here.

UPDATE: To Graeme Pearman, I suggest you read this: “NASA Study acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming“