We’ve all assumed the following sequence of events: opposition votes down ETS in the Senate twice, Rudd calls for a double dissolution and election, Rudd wins landslide, Rudd passes ETS, game over. However, it appears that it may not be as straightforward as all that:

KEVIN Rudd’s plans for an early double dissolution election have been sunk, with the discovery of a legal defect in his Emissions Trading Scheme.

The Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, is understood to have confirmed that even if Mr Rudd were to go to a double dissolution election to get his ETS through Parliament, the scheme could still be blocked by the Senate.

Mr Evans an expert on Senate practice is understood to have based his argument on the fact that most of the ETS relies not on law, but on regulation.

The Standing Orders of the Parliament state those regulations could still be struck down by the Senate even if the laws establishing the ETS were passed at a joint sitting of Parliament following a double dissolution election.

The same thing happened to Bob Hawke in relation to the Australia Card back in 1987.

He won the election and was preparing for a joint sitting of the Parliament when it was discovered by the Opposition that the start-up date for the card was governed by regulation and a hostile Senate would vote it down.

In a humiliating backdown, Mr Hawke had to abandon the ID card.

Mr Evans believes Mr Rudd is now in the same position.

The Opposition will almost certainly lose the next election, whenever it is held. If this news is correct, the Opposition should now firmly reject this disaster of a bill at both Senate votes, and save the country from the worst piece of legislation in living memory.

Read it here (and here).

A bit of a hero of these pages, Barnaby Joyce has always been the voice of sanity in the climate madness of Canberra, but ACM is concerned by the following article in the Courier Mail, in which Senator Joyce appears to endorse some kind of ETS. As regular readers will know, any kind of ETS will achieve nothing in terms of climate, and everything in terms of destroying Australia’s economy, employment, and competitiveness:

The Queensland Senator has revealed that on Monday he will likely back a new CPRS model to be released by the Coalition, which they say will be greener, cost less, give more concessions to coal, exclude agriculture and allow farmers to use their land to make money.

But in a thinly veiled swipe against Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull, Senator Joyce signalled he was looking forward more to voting down the Government’s emissions trading scheme than selling the Coalition’s new plan.

Senator Joyce said when the ETS was defeated next week, Nationals should get most of the credit.

“The only thing I have to worry about is the one (ETS) that I have to vote on,” Senator Joyce said.

“I do not think Malcolm Turnbull will change her (Climate Change Minister Penny Wong’s) mind.

“She will not accept any amendments.”

Of course she won’t. She inhabits a bizarre ivory tower into which nothing (not even common sense) can permeate. And our advice to Senator Joyce is to be very careful about giving even a hint of support for an ETS of any kind.

Read it here.

Today’s must-read article, from The Australian, in which Terry McCrann lays bare the reality of an emissions trading scheme – it’s a tax (but we all knew that, didn’t we?). It’s a sobering and painful read:

THE first and most important thing to note about Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme is that it is a tax.

It’s not called a tax, but if it waddles like one, quacks like one, and most pointedly raises money like one, it’s a tax. And not just any old tax — it’s a huge and continually growing tax.

It starts out in 2012-13 raising about a quarter as much as the GST. The budget in May put a number on it for the first time. Almost $12 billion in its first full year, 2012-13.

It is the equivalent of increasing the GST from 10 per cent to 12.5 per cent in that year. And in its impact on people it won’t be all that different from doing exactly that.

In year one, that is, which if we actually get the ETS should be retitled Year Zero, because it will be the beginning of the end of Australia as we know it.

And when conventional energy becomes prohibitively expensive as a result, we will all have to rely on “alternative” or renewable power:

Where will this power come from? We can play around, in somewhat different ways, with gas and solar, but in the main there is only one answer: wind.

Except there’s one problem with wind — it’s useless.

In a brief but utterly devastating analysis, Andrew Miskelly and Tom Quirk tracked the power output of all the now quite substantial wind farms in South Australia, Victoria, NSW and Tasmania for every minute of June. The simply devastating conclusion: when the wind don’t blow, it don’t blow everywhere at the same time.

This utterly shreds the claim that if you build enough wind farms nationally the wind will be blowing somewhere. You have to keep fully equivalent coal power up and running, not just when the wind is not blowing, but all the time. So, we have a government that is proposing a massive new tax. It then proposes to waste most, if not all, of the money from it. Either by compensating people for higher costs, or by pouring it into “alternative” energy production that can’t work.

All this, of course, is to absolutely no purpose. Even cutting our CO2 emissions to zero would make zero difference to global emissions.

Anyone who votes for the ETS next week — or indeed any week — is betraying both common sense and their basic duty to the national interest and every Australian.

Read it here.

As always, a great read!

Speaking about climate change at the Pacific Islands forum:

“For so many of my colleagues here on the platform before you, this is not just a matter of importance. It is not just a matter of urgency. It is a matter of national survival. The very viability of certain of the island states is at stake.”

But how imposing economy-crippling reductions in emissions will help islands that are sinking due to tectonic influences remains to be seen. Unless he’s suggesting that evil CO2 affects the earth’s crust as well…

Read it here (and enjoy the swipe at Rudd and the fake ETS urgency by Michael Kroger)

… you’ll eventually get the correct answer. Someone high up (either in government or at the ABC) wasn’t particularly happy with Yvo de Boer’s comment last week about it not making the slightest bit of difference whether the Australian ETS was in place before Copenhagen. Can’t possibly have that, they thought. So they promptly asked the question again, and no doubt gave a few subtle hints (“Hey, Yvo, we’re in a bit of a tricky spot with our ETS, everyone hates it, and to be honest, that comment of yours last week didn’t help a whole lot either. D’ya think you could rephrase that answer a bit?”), and as if by magic, a story appears:

Australia will undoubtedly benefit from having its emissions trading scheme in place before the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen, the head of the UN’s climate change agency says.

Although Yvo de Boer conceded last week it wouldn’t matter if Australia arrived at the global talks with its scheme in place, he clarified on Thursday it also wouldn’t hurt.

“That’s clearly going to give you a much stronger position in that process,” he told ABC Radio.

Phew, we knew it all along, didn’t we?

Read it here.

They just don’t get it. Someone who actually takes their time to investigate the whole “global warming” issue, and realises that there’s something fishy about it, and the government just can’t cope with it. Greg Combet goes postal and smears Fielding:

Addressing the Sydney Chamber of Commerce on emissions trading, he started proceedings with a critique of Senator Fielding’s inability to understand “clear facts and compelling rationale”.

“The government accepts the consensus scientific view that human activity is responsible for observed climate change,” Mr Combet said in his written speech.

“However, in the face of this consensus view, Senator Fielding and others are still publicly promoting sceptical arguments, more often than not using populist, non-peer reviewed science.” [Er Greg, don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers that do not agree with the consensus, but conveniently, the government and the alarmist media choose to ignore them completely – Ed]

Mr Combet, who is the minister charged with assisting Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, wasn’t done there.

He went on to suggest Senator Fielding had wasted the time of Australia’s chief scientist Penny Sackett. [It’s the other way round, of course. Fielding should not have even wasted a second of his time trying to winkle answers out of the warming apologists in the government – Ed]

“It is clear that some people are not looking to understand clear facts and compelling rationale to assist in the formulation of good public policy – even when their questions are addressed by climate change experts and Australia’s chief scientist,” Mr Combet said. [They weren’t!! – Ed]

“Instead they are looking for more reasons to justify delaying action.”

Maybe all this would be slightly less objectionable if Wong and Sackett had actually bothered to answer Senator Fielding’s three basic questions on the science behind the ETS, which, oddly, they failed to do.

Read it here.

It will be interesting to see how the magistrate deals with these clowns. I wonder if they will be treated like any normal person, or whether, because they will bleat about “saving the planet”, they will be let off with a slap on the wrist…

Greenpeace activists say they are happy with yesterday’s protest at a north Queensland coal terminal, despite failing to interrupt activity at the port. [Easily pleased, clearly – Ed]

The protesters had planned to block ships from docking at the Bowen terminal but none were scheduled to berth. [Oops, bad luck! – Ed]

Instead, three protesters chained themselves to a crane – three men from Papua New Guinea and Sydney and one woman from San Francisco have been charged over the incident and are due to face the Bowen Magistrates Court next week.

Read it here.

More unsightly protests from Greenpeace, who think that the “climate crisis” allows them to break the law:

SIX Greenpeace activists have climbed the Abbot Point coal terminal in north Queensland to protest Australia’s inaction over climate change.

Abbot Point, 25km north of Bowen, is Australia’s most northerly coal port, operated by Xstrata Coal subsidiary, Abbot Point Bulk Coal.

Greenpeace said the protest was timed to coincide with this week’s Pacific Islands Forum where a regional approach to climate change will be discussed.

Let us hope that when this bunch get to court, the judge will treat them for what they are – criminals. And coincidentally on the same day, we have another bunch of greenies calling for “civil disobedience” in the name of saving the planet:

Organisers of a rally in the Latrobe Valley, calling for civil disobedience, have defended the event.

Environment groups have posted news of a major rally, at the Hazelwood power station next month, on the internet.

Friends of the Earth spokeswoman Louise Morris says organisers have spoken to police about the event.

Or is the usual democratic process too trivial when we are supposed to be tackling climate change? It’s a very slippery slope…

Read it here.

Penny Wong is heaping blame on to the Opposition for the alleged future loss of national treasures such as the Sydney Opera House and the Great Barrier Reef. Yet no-one appears to have picked up the very obvious point that even if the Opposition supported the ETS fully, and it was implemented fully, and CO2 was the primary driver of temperature on earth, it would make no difference whatsoever to the fate of those treasures.

“It is now up to one politician to determine whether Australia’s carbon emissions will continue to rise or whether we will start to reduce emissions for the first time ever,” Senator Wong said.

“In 10 days from now, he must decide whether he wants to finish what he claims to have started.”
…
What Mr Turnbull called design principles were nothing but a “string of wilted fig leaves”, Senator Wong said, adding there was no reference to reality.

“It is simply an attempt by Mr Turnbull to look to the public as though he is engaged, while at the same time telling his party room he is holding the line.”

It was “a disappointing low” for or someone who once led the way on emissions trading.

Wong is a fine one to talk about having “no reference to reality”, given that she continues to refuse to answer Steve Fielding’s three basic questions on the science (or lack of it) behind the push for an ETS, which have now been answered by astrophysicist Professor Willie Soon and climatologist Professor David R. Legates:

The brief answers to Senator Fielding’s questions are –

1. Yes, temperatures did fall after 1998 while carbon dioxide rose;
2. Yes, late 20th century warming was indeed not unusual in either its rate of change or magnitude; and
3. Yes, all IPCC models did project warming through a ten year period when instead cooling occurred.

…
Taken together, the correct answers to Senator Fielding’s questions indicate that the hypothesis of dangerous global warming caused by human carbon dioxide emissions is invalid. It follows that costly emissions trading legislation is at best pointless. Doubtless this is why it has been so hard to elicit clear statements on the matter from Minister Wong and her supporters. (h/t Andrew Bolt)

Read it here.

P.S. I actually laughed out loud when I read this headline on ABC:

Govt seizes on ANU climate change report

The Federal Government says a study backs its warning World Heritage-listed sites including the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu National Park and the Sydney Opera House are threatened by climate change. (source)

The study was, er, commissioned by the government itself from the ANU, and the head of the climate change department there is none other than Will Steffen… Wong’s alarmist advisor, who for some reason couldn’t answer the three questions set out above.