Writing in The Australian, Martin Ferguson lays into the “renewable energy” myth that claims that we can power future generations by wind and solar.

Those who oppose the development of Australia’s uranium and LNG resources, and low-emission coal technologies, need to answer the following two questions.

Do they want the world’s poor to have access to electricity? If so, how do they propose to generate it? The answers would be yes and renewables. Admirable, but impossible today. I have yet to meet anyone who opposes the use of cheap, reliable renewable energy. However, the factors limiting the uptake of renewables remain technical, not political. We must have a rational, science-based pathway to overcome those hurdles. Faith alone will not get us there. (source)

Bob Brown, never at a loss for a hysterical response to anything, is outraged, and clearly inhabits his own little green fantasy land:

“Martin Ferguson is a total, 100 per cent, lackey of the mining industry,” Senator Brown said.

“Renewable energy including baseload solar, but in particular energy efficiency, is not only ready to take down off the shelf but it’s cheaper and will create more jobs than coal or nuclear.”

You’re truly mad, Bob.

Read it here.

UPDATE: The Australian writes in favour of nuclear power in an editorial:

But if environmentalists insist on increasing the cost of coal to compensate for its environmental impact, alternatives are essential. And nuclear energy is the obvious option. Despite the opposition of ageing activists, still arguing as if it was the 1980s when the risk of nuclear war was real, the government is rightly encouraging uranium exports. (Although excluding India because it will not sign the non-proliferation treaty when it has an otherwise solid commitment to peaceful nuclear power makes no sense.) Nor should Canberra rule out ever allowing a nuclear power plant at home. With a permit price for greenhouse emissions the industry, and consumers, can afford, Australia’s enormous coal reserves make it impossible to beat as an energy source. But it is more than passing strange that people who hate coal are equally opposed to the only practical low-emission alternative. While it is essential Australia gets the ETS right, we need a broader debate on energy sources. And all who argue that solar and wind power are the universal answer deny powerless people all over the planet a human right we all take for granted: electricity.

Read it here.

A new research paper has been published by local ACM heroes Bob Carter, John McLean and Chris de Freitas which argues that the majority of the late 20th century warming was caused by factors other than man. I guess the pollies will ignore this like they ignore any other research that doesn’t obediently suck up to the “consensus” of man-made global warming [surely “climate change” – Ed]. And anyway, the science is settled, right? Debate’s over, you denier you.

Nature not man responsible for recent global warming

Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.

The research, by Chris de Freitas, a climate scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, John McLean (Melbourne) and Bob Carter (James Cook University), finds that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later. As an additional influence, intermittent volcanic activity injects cooling aerosols into the atmosphere and produces significant cooling.

“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.

“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”

Climate researchers have long been aware that ENSO events influence global temperature, for example causing a high temperature spike in 1998 and a subsequent fall as conditions moved to La Niña. It is also well known that volcanic activity has a cooling influence, and as is well documented by the effects of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption.

The new paper draws these two strands of climate control together and shows, by demonstrating a strong relationship between the Southern Oscillation and lower-atmospheric temperature, that ENSO has been a major temperature influence since continuous measurement of lower-atmospheric temperature first began in 1958.

According to the three researchers, ENSO-related warming during El Niño conditions is caused by a stronger Hadley Cell circulation moving warm tropical air into the mid-latitudes. During La Niña conditions the Pacific Ocean is cooler and the Walker circulation, west to east in the upper atmosphere along the equator, dominates.

“When climate models failed to retrospectively produce the temperatures since 1950 the modellers added some estimated influences of carbon dioxide to make up the shortfall,” says McLean.

And Bob Carter, a vehement opponent of any ETS in Australia sums up the effect of this on policy:

“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”

But don’t expect Rudd, Wong or Turnbull to take the slightest bit of notice.

Read the full abstract here (h/t Climate Depot)

That’s the amount the US government has spent on “climate change research” since 1989 … and they still can’t prove that CO2 has caused the late 20th century warming:

Despite the billions wasted, audits of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of “global warming” theory and to compete with a lavishly-funded, highly organized climate monopsony. Major errors have been exposed again and again.

Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks, which profit most, are calling for more. Experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 – $10 trillion in the near future. Hot air will soon be the largest single commodity traded on global exchanges. Meanwhile, in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying just $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government spends on alarmists, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in 2008 alone.

The large expenditure designed to prove the non-existent connection between carbon and climate has created a powerful alliance of self-serving vested interests. By pouring so much money into pushing a single, scientifically-baseless agenda, the Government has created not an unbiased investigation but a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Read it and weep.

This is the grim reality of an ETS – electricity generators put under huge financial pressure, and the additional costs will be passed on to … whom? That’s right, you and me, the consumers, with massive increases in our electricity bills. Until the public start to realise that this ludicrous legislation will hit them in the wallet, the government will be able to carry on regardless …

The government is already offering the generators 130 million free permits worth at least $3.5bn over the first five years of the ETS. However, the generators – which provide more than 20 per cent of Australia’s east coast power – claim that will not be enough to stop a looming financial crisis and possible future disruptions to power supplies.

Industry sources told The Australian this week the generators were claiming at least 300 million free permits would be necessary to avoid their asset value falling below debt levels, and some were claiming the industry needed as many as 700 million.

Having heard Penny Wong on ABC News Radio this morning, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Read it here.

What is it with politicians? Why are they unable to distinguish between climate change and the causes of climate change? We all agree that climate changes – it has since day one on earth, 4.5 billion years ago. What we don’t agree on is the cause. But that hardly subtle distinction is completely lost on most politicians, and Joe Hockey gets it wrong this morning:

“There are going to be people who do not believe that climate change is real,” he told ABC Television on Wednesday.

“Well, that is not the majority view of the parliamentary Liberal Party, fullstop.”

Read it here.

UPDATE: At least the Nationals are holding out, hardening their opposition to the ETS. As Barnaby Joyce states:

“I firmly believe that the changes that would be required would be so immense that it would no longer be an emissions trading scheme.” (source)

It’s an amusing dilemma for the warmenistas – amusing if you’re a casual observer, that is, not so funny if you happen to be directly affected by it. On the one hand they want to “save the planet” from the ravages of a harmless trace gas by banning coal and relying on sunbeams and fart power, yet on the other they flatly refuse to consider the only viable alternative to coal fired electricity generation – nuclear power. Even the mining companies are suggesting nuclear, but Penny Wong (surprise, surprise) is not having any of it:

Mining giant Rio Tinto has urged the government to consider nuclear power as a way to meet climate change targets.

Rio Tinto has reportedly told the government there are questions over the viability of renewable energy due to high costs.

That view was given in a response to a government white paper on energy.

“Rio Tinto is entitled to their view,” Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said. [That response is the political equivalent of shrugging one’s shoulders and muttering “Whatever…” – Ed]

But she said Australia had strong conventional and renewable energy sources, including solar power, wind, wave and geothermal.

“Our focus as a government is on developing those resources,” Senator Wong told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

We all know that all of those “alternative” sources do not come even close to the energy demands of a Western economy (solar, hopelessly inefficient and only works in daytime; wind, ugly windmills blotting the landscape and only works when it’s windy; wave, frighteningly expensive; geothermal, ditto) and if climate change was the greatest challenge to humanity since the dawn of time (© Al Gore), then they would be jumping at the nuclear option. But strangely they’re not.

Climate madness.

Read it here.

Malcolm Turnbull is off on a frolic of his own right now, apparently changing policy on the hoof, which has incensed backbencher Wilson Tuckey, who has branded the leader “inexperienced” and “arrogant”.

Mr Tuckey sent an email to all Opposition MPs and Senators criticising Malcolm Turnbull for suggesting the Coalition could back a scheme when the partyroom has declared it will not support any legislation before the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen at the end of the year.
…
The confidential email sent to all Coalition colleagues has leaked. Mr Tuckey says says he has received support from some, and criticism from others.

“The critics, they’ve criticised me, giving me all the old platitudes, ‘oh you’re doing damage to the marginal seat holders’,” he said.

“I’ll tell you what’ll do damage to the marginal seat holders, the Liberal Party prostituting its principles and supporting something they know in its own heart will not either deliver on emission reductions and will do severe damage to the Australian economy.”

The Nationals are the only party to openly oppose the ETS, and Barnaby Joyce, as he is so often, is right on the money in his comments this morning:

“I don’t think there are any amendments to this emissions trading scheme that will make it palatable.

“Emission trading scheme in essence is a brokers’, bureaucrats’, bankers’ bonanza, it will do nothing to change the climate.”

The Liberals are in a right fix. If they vote against the ETS twice, they will trigger a possible double dissolution, and an election they almost certainly will lose. If they support the ETS, they will be voting for the single worst piece of legislation foisted on the Australian public.

Read it here.

Alan Jones isn’t one to mince words, and convincingly lays bare the case against the AGW hysteria.

Enjoy.

Climate change is great news for governments. It gives them yet more ways to spend your tax dollars, and nobody (except ACM) bats an eyelid, because as we all know, “saving the planet” trumps just about everything. This time it’s the establishment of a nebulous Australian Carbon Trust, and even more embarrassing is the fact that a former Howard government minister, Robert Hill, has agreed to chair it:

“This will complement the location of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University, helping make Brisbane a hub of activity to tackle climate change in Australia,” Mr Rudd said. [Never thought of Brissy as much of a “hub” for anything… – Ed]

The government has set aside $76 million to establish the trust, which will promote ways for households and businesses to tackle climate change.

Would have been easier to burn it, really (although that would release even more CO2…).

Read it here.

And by doing so, renders pointless the Rudd government’s desperation to get the ETS into law before Copenhagen in order to give a “lead” to the international community. What is the point of Australia (1.5% of global emissions) crippling its economy when India has no intention of doing the same? Looks like there will be even more Aussie businesses migrating to the sub-continent if this madness continues:

During an awkward press conference with [Hillary] Clinton, India’s Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, stated bluntly that India would not give in to international pressure to cut emissions.

“India’s position is clear and categorical that we are simply not in a position to take any legally binding emissions reductions,” Mr Ramesh said.
…
Mr Ramesh is reported to have driven home his point at a separate closed-door meeting with Mrs Clinton, saying there was “no case for the pressure that we, who have among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions”.

Read it here.