Sunday madness, as The Age publishes a non-alarmist climate article, almost acknowledging that low solar activity coincides with cooler climatic conditions. Hope you’re all sitting down for this:

THE number of sunspots has declined dramatically in the past two years – but scientists say it is too early to tell if it is the start of a solar depression that could lead to cooler weather on Earth.

Over the past millennium, whenever the sun has had long periods of low sunspot numbers, Earth has weathered equally long cold snaps. The most famous of these was the Maunder Minimum of 1645 to 1715, when sunspots all but vanished for 70 years. It coincided with the coldest period of the Little Ice Age. [Excuse me while I just pick myself up from the floor. The Age acknowledges that solar activity may be linked to climate, and the existence of the LIA! – Ed]

For the past two years, sunspots – dark and intensely magnetic blotches on the sun’s surface – have been at their fewest since 1913.

”This is the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” said NASA solar forecaster David Hathaway. ”Since the space age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high … We’re just not used to this type of deep calm.’‘

Sunspots cause other solar activity such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, radiation from which can interfere with Earth’s magnetic field, upper atmosphere and, many scientists believe, climate.

Scientists expect to record 290 spotless days this year. Last year, there were 266, the most spotless days since 1913, when there were 311 recorded.

”People are wondering about whether we’re going into another Maunder Minimum or not,” said Iver Cairns, of the University of Sydney’s School of Physics. ”The balance of opinion is that it’s too early to tell. But it could be very significant.”

However, they still can’t resist the inevitable alarmist remark:

Monash University’s Paul Cally said that if a cooling period were to begin it would be interesting to see how it affected the global warming being caused by high greenhouse gas levels. ”We haven’t been in this situation in historical periods before.”

Note there is no “may be” in that highlighted sentence… of course not, the science is settled, right? Even so, a surprisingly balanced article (for once).

Read it here.

Whenever you buy tickets for flights these days, you can choose to waste another few dollars making your trip “carbon neutral”. Forget it, says Penny Wong:

GUILTY flyers may be encouraged to offset their carbon-intensive plane trips, but our elected representatives in the Government appear to think it’s a waste of time.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has informed Parliament that neither she nor her department are members of any so-called carbon offset schemes. In a written response to a question from Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt, Ms Wong’s office said the Government did not believe such schemes necessary.

The reason? Because the wondrous two-errors-in-four-words Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme would do all that hard work for us. Not only that, but the climate change wonks seem make quite a contribution to global CO2 themselves:

Other documents tabled in Parliament reveal the Government’s top climate change bureaucrat notched up $120,000 of plane travel and hotel bills in 20 months, delivering speeches and attending conferences and meetings.

Dr Martin Parkinson has spent $99,055 on air fares and $20,141 on accommodation and travel allowances since the Department of Climate Change was formed in December 2007.

That’s a lot of Frequent Flyer points as well.

Read it here.

I have no idea whether this will be useful for you or not, but you can follow ACM posts via Twitter @ ClimateMadness (link).

If I have configured it correctly, new posts here should appear automatically on Twitter. See you there!

More alarmist claptrap from the French president, speaking about his universally loathed carbon tax, and note how The Age just laps it up under the headline “Sarkozy to the rescue” – pitiful:

”There are no reserves left. It’s a question of survival of the human race.”

Read it here.

A revealing interview with Garth Paltridge, author of The Climate Caper, in The Australian, in which he describes the techniques used to silence critics of the AGW “consensus”:

Paltridge gives a crisp summary of the physics and economics of climate change, but I want to focus here on his account of the new green religion. “Perhaps the most interesting question in all this business is how it can be that the scientific community has become so over-the-top in support of its own propaganda about the seriousness and certainty of upcoming drastic climate change. Scientists after all are supposed to be unbiased in their assessment of a problem and are expected to tell it as it is. Over the centuries they have built up the capital of their reputation on just that supposition. And for the last couple of decades they have put that capital very publicly on the line in support of a cause which, to say the least, is overhung by an enormous amount of doubt. So how is it that the rest of the scientific community, uncomfortable as it is with both the science of global warming and the way its politics is being played, continues to let the reputation of science in general be put at considerable risk because of the way the dangers of climate change are being vastly oversold?”

Part of the answer lies in the way institutions find ways to silence their employees. Paltridge himself was involved in setting up the Antarctic research centre in the early 90s with the CSIRO. As he recalls: “I made the error at the time of mentioning in a media interview — reported extensively in The Australian on a slow Easter Sunday — that there were still lots of doubts about the disaster potential of global warming. Suffice it to say that within a couple of days it was made clear to me from the highest levels of CSIRO that, should I make such public comments again, then it would pull out of the process of forming the new centre.” The CSIRO, it turned out, was in the process of trying to extract many millions of dollars for further climate research at the time.

Read it here.

You will recall the recent story about Kevin Rudd bizarrely following the Lincolnshire village of Mablethorpe on Twitter (Kevin Rudd: Twittering Idiot). This evening, ACM received a comment from Chris Flanagan, creator of the my-mablethorpe.com website at the centre of the intrigue we have now officially christened “Twitter-gate™”:

Mr Rudd’s spokesman is claiming that he followed Mablethorpe automatically because we were following him. This is untrue. We didn’t even know he Twittered until he became a follower. On the climate change front, Mablethorpe is in the front line of any rise in sea levels due to climate change, having already suffered a disastrous flood in 1953. So, if Mr Rudd is an expert on this, perhaps he can give us some pointers?

The most interesting thing about this is that the Rudd spin machine is alleging they were followed first by Mablethorpe – which Chris states is not the case…

Shh, don’t tell the IPCC, or else they won’t be able to blame CO2 and governments won’t be able to regulate and tax Western economies out of existence, but like it or not, the sun has a huge influence on our climate, far more than the alarmists want you to believe. This article, translated by Google from the original Danish and tidied up by Anthony Watts, is essential reading:

Global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning.

No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth, on the contrary. This means that projections of future climate is unpredictable, writes Henrik Svensmark.

The star which keeps us alive, has over the last few years almost no sunspots, which are the usual signs of the sun’s magnetic activity.

Last week, reported the scientific team behind Sohosatellitten (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) that the number of sunspot-free days suggest that solar activity is heading towards its lowest level in about 100 years. Everything indicates that the Sun is moving into a hibernation-like state, and the obvious question is whether it has any significance for us on Earth.

If you ask the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC, representing the current consensus on climate change, the answer is a reassuring ‘nothing’. But history and recent research suggests that it is probably completely wrong. Let us take a closer look at why.

Read it all. (Thanks to WUWT)

Earlier this week it was the Japanese, now Nicolas Sarkozy (who bizarrely I thought was a right-leaning politician, but in fact turns out to be a moonbattish lefty) has imposed a huge carbon tax in France. Good luck with that, mon ami.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday unveiled a new carbon tax to help combat global warming [surely “climate change” – Ed], calling it a “fiscal revolution” and overriding strong public opposition to the plan.

The new levy on oil, gas and coal consumption by households and businesses will come into effect next year, making France the biggest economy yet to impose a straight-up carbon tax.

“It is time to create green taxation,” Sarkozy said in an address in Culoz, a town near the French border with Switzerland.

“This is a major fiscal shift, an important innovation,” he said. “It is the first step of a fiscal revolution that will be developed.”

Sarkozy set the new carbon tax at 17 euros (25 US dollars) per tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) and said it would be gradually increased to penalise only those who refuse to abandon their wasteful ways.

The president insisted the new tax was not a ploy to fill state coffers hit by a gaping deficit [we believe you – Ed], and the additional revenues will be put back into taxpayers’ pockets through other tax cuts and “green cheques”.

Folie climatique.

Read it here.

If you thought the ETS was bad enough, watch how billions of dollars will flow from wealthy nations to poor ones as “compensation” for climate change. Where does this money come from? You and me, via our taxes. So not only will prices go up, but more of our tax dollars will get sucked away to assuage the developed economies’ collective climate guilt:

AUSTRALIA is under pressure to pledge hundreds of millions of dollars a year to an international fund to help developing countries adapt to climate change, after the European Union revealed it would be willing to chip in up to $25 billion a year by 2020.

An agreement on financing is seen as the only way to break an international deadlock in climate change negotiations before the UN meeting in Copenhagen in December. It is also a key topic for the G20 leaders’ meeting in Pittsburgh later this month and a special New York summit called by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, both to be attended by Kevin Rudd.
…
A spokesman for Climate Change Minister Penny Wong would not be drawn on Australia’s willingness to contribute or views about the structure of a fund, but acknowledged the issue was critical for the Copenhagen talks.

“We are extremely conscious of the close relationship between progress on finance and a global deal on climate change. It’s a key part of our negotiations moving towards Copenhagen,” the spokesman said.

Read it here.

This is a clever trick. By using per capita figures, The Age tries to make us all feel guilty (and therefore ram home the point that we should “tackle climate change” and pass emissions trading legislation), despite the fact that Australia emits less than 1.5% of global emissions.

AUSTRALIA has the world’s highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions from energy use, according to a British analysis.

The CO2 Energy Emissions Index, released by risk assessment company Maplecroft, found Australia’s overwhelmingly coal-based electricity supply meant the average person emitted 20.58 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Australia overtook the US – responsible for 19.78 tonnes per head – as the worst per capita emitter.

Canada was third, followed by the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia.

But what about the following countries, which are never mentioned?

• Qatar
• United Arab Emirates
• Kuwait
• Bahrain
• Aruba
• Luxembourg
• Netherlands Antilles

All have higher per capita emissions (Qatar in 2006 was 56.2 tonnes per capita!), but The Age strangely doesn’t pick a fight with them, but dumps on its own doorstep instead.

Read it here.