Port Phillip Council, which houses the Melbourne Grand Prix track have had a sense of humour failure about the event, claiming:

it is “an outrage” that the race is held in Victoria while the state is “buffeted by climate change, dwindling oil reserves, water shortages and the global financial crisis”.
…
“After 14 years residents have had more than enough,” Cr Klepner said.

“Why should they have to suffer all that for a car race whose public price tag blew out to $41.3 million last year?”

Great – we’ll have it in Sydney, then. Sign here.

Read it here.

An Inconvenient Truth was far closer to fiction than fact (or so the UK High Court thought and there are 35 fundamental errors listed here), so you can bet the next one will be as well. That, however, will not prevent Gore from pocketing a substantial amount of money for writing this trash:

Nobel Peace Prize winner and former United States vice-president Al Gore will publish a follow-up to his global warming awareness bestseller An Inconvenient Truth in November. [Can hardly wait – Ed]

The book will be called Our Choice and will describe solutions to global warming, the environmental crusader and US publisher Rodale said in a statement. [I guess that would be the “global warming” that stopped in 2001, right? – Ed]

“An Inconvenient Truth reached millions of people with the message that the climate crisis is threatening the future of human civilisation and that it must and can be solved,” Mr Gore said.

Yawn. Next.

Read it here.

The Australian Workers Union lays into the ETS and Ross Garnaut, after Garnaut’s speech to the Greenhouse 2009 conference, in which he said the Government should scrap the compensation scheme for industry:

Workers union national secretary Paul Howes said Professor Garnaut was “bashing” emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries that needed help to change to the new international carbon trading system.

“The professor’s speech to the Greenhouse 2009 conference in Perth is an example of an ego gone mad,” Mr Howes said.

“His new stance might make him a hero to certain inner-city Green elements, but … is an attack on regional Australia.”

And to demonstrate just how out of touch with reality Garnaut is:

Professor Garnaut said he expected the local economy to be in recovery by the time an emissions trading scheme began in July next year.

How convenient. Another computer model told him that, perhaps, or just wishful thinking?

Read it here.

This article, reprinted in The Australian, is full of half-baked theories presented as indisputable facts – disappointing for what was once one of the world’s great newspapers:

• “shed light on how global warming will change the world”
• “how much of the ice sheet will melt”
• “temperatures forecast to rise 7 degrees C in the next 100 years”
• “temperatures resembled those that could be expected if greenhouse emissions are not controlled“
• “If the ice sheet melts entirely in the decades ahead, the seas would be expected to rise by 7m”
• “in a world of man-made climate change.”

Why does The Australian print such unadulterated rubbish?

Read it here (if you dare).

A warm welcome back to the blogosphere for The Daily Bayonet, and an excellent article describing the path to skepticism, which will resonate with many, and which warmists themselves would do well to consider:

AGW is nothing but junk science supported by flimsy computer models designed and operated by alchemists. That Al Gore, a lifelong failure in every academic endeavor he ever undertook, leads this movement is the icing on the cake.
…
Why am I a skeptic? Because the first time I heard about the issue of AGW, it was Al Gore and David Suzuki telling me that the science was settled and the debate was over. Really? Science is settled? Show me anyone making that claim and I will show you someone unworthy of the respect due a scientist. The arrogance of the claim raised a red flag in my enquiring mind, and when I started to investigate, the hubris and dishonesty of the AGW proponents became immediately apparent, and this blog was born.

Read it here.

Journalism in a bubble, unrelated to what’s happening in the real world, you know, temperatures falling, sea levels falling, cyclone energy at lowest for 30 years etc etc…

THE top government scientist advising on how to adapt the nation to climate change warns that Australia will be forced to abandon some coastal communities in a “planned retreat” because of rising sea levels caused by global warming.

Andrew Ash, who leads the CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship program, told the Herald that while some vulnerable coastal places could be protected by sea walls and levees, “there are going to be areas where that is not physically possible or it’s not cost-effective to introduce any engineering solution and planned retreat becomes the only option”.

Warning that climate change was accelerating much more quickly than predicted, Dr Ash said state and local governments needed urgently to identify coastal land unsuitable for new residential development because rising sea levels and more frequent big storms would flood them with seawater.

Now back to the real world…

Read it here.

Earth Hour is being criticised from all sides – the Greenies think it’s a pointless political gesture, and the sceptics think it’s, er, a pointless political gesture. Given the choice, The Age will only focus on the first of these, of course:

As the organisers prepare for the switch-off at 8.30pm next Saturday, the event, in its third year and rapidly expanding internationally, is being criticised from both the left and the right.

Clive Hamilton, climate campaigner and author of Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change, says that “we are well past the time for feel-good exercises aimed at raising awareness … it’s like the band playing on as the Titanic sinks”. There is a real danger that Earth Hour convinces people that we are making progress on climate change when we are not. And it lets business and government off the hook,” he says.
…
An analysis of the key sponsors of Earth Hour (among them Fairfax Media, owner of The Sunday Age) reveals that most have reported increased emissions in their most recent figures.

That’s because the reality of cutting emissions is nothing like the fairy-tale computer modelling carried out at the Treasury – it costs money and jobs… However, that doesn’t stop WWF from claiming some authority from the participation in Earth Hour:

WWF plans to interpret a huge switch-off as a global poll on climate change, a demand from 1 billion people that politicians take “strong action” at the international forums including the Copenhagen climate-change conference in December.

Read it here.

Another demonstration goes pear-shaped as the port of Newcastle gets one step ahead of the demonstrators (which, to be honest, ain’t that difficult) and cancels all shipping for the day. So the protestors end up blockading, er, nothing.

Writing in The Australian, Terry McCrann opens his article with the exact point I have made directly to Penny Wong – why does the Government refer to the harmless trace gas carbon dioxide as “carbon pollution”? The answer, clearly, is because it helps to massage public opinion into thinking that the “carbon pollution reduction scheme” is there to reduce belching soot from industrial chimneys.

What’s in a name? The lie. For the truth is that it is not a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, but a Carbon Dioxide — pollution or not — reduction scheme.

Just a minor difference? An understandable, even appropriate, abbreviation? No way. The difference is huge and quite deliberate. It’s not even “justified” on the basis of a snappy acronym. CPRS or CDPRS — neither has the vowel necessary for snappiness.

There’s no question the continual harping on “carbon pollution” is intended to send a subliminal impression. We’re getting rid of all those little bits of black stuff floating around in the air. And who can possibly be against that?

He then goes on to expose the utter ridiculousness of the Treasury’s ETS modelling for all to see:

The most ludicrous aspect of [Treasury official David] Gruen’s rationalisation is that cutting emissions is “just like tariff cuts which move the economy towards its true competitive advantage”.

I’ve pointed out that it is in fact the exact opposite; it is like embracing tariff increases. Cutting tariffs removed an artificial cost on the economy; the CPRS will impose an artificial cost on the economy.

The response is that, ah, I don’t understand “externalities”. That you have to properly price the external costs — climate change. I understand them only too well — I suggest, on the evidence, somewhat better than Gruen.
…
We cut our emissions to zero and what happens to the (supposed) cost? Nothing. We still incur it. Cutting our emissions to zero can have no impact on our climate. Irrespective of what the rest of the world does.

Read it here.

Always desperate to plug the green agenda, The Sydney Morning Herald gleefully swallows a WWF report that claims Australia could build a low-carbon economy based on solar, wind and geothermal power for less than half the cost of the Government’s economic stimulus package.

The WWF-commissioned report calculates the price for transforming the nation’s energy base, using technology that exists, would be $28 billion between 2010 and 2050 – less than half the Government’s stimulus handout, but spread over 40 years.

It was prepared by Climate Risk, a corporate analyst that advises the federal and local governments and businesses on climate modelling [and which is making very tasty profits out of climate change hysteria, see here for a list of their services – Ed]

It shows that a transition to renewable power is affordable, but that the proposed carbon trading scheme and renewable energy target could not achieve it. Extra government investment in energy of about $100 million a year from 2010 would be enough to make solar, wind and geothermal power dominant in the electricity and manufacturing sectors by the middle of the century.

Well I’m convinced, or I would have been if this report had any basis in reality. And so is Paul Toni of WWF Australia:

“Earth Hour shows that millions of Australians want this government to act to battle climate change. This report shows they can.”

Earth Hour shows nothing of the sort of course, as most of the participation comes from councils and organisations who fear being branded as non-environmentally aware if they don’t. And to all those councils and organisations who have signed up, Earth Hour isn’t just a jolly little bit of fun once a year, it has a deeply political agenda (dictated by WWF):

This will send a powerful message to our world leaders to support a new climate change agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference being held in Copenhagen in December 2009 (source)

Read it here.

P.S. If you are in the mood for some top quality Fairfax BS, look no further than here.

PP.S. In the interests of full disclosure, Earth Hour is run by WWF, and sponsored by Fairfax (coincidentally)