Skewering the clueless
As always, a great read!
The Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup
15 January, 2010 by
Breaking: Peter Spencer ends hunger strike
13 January, 2010 by
From The Australian:
HUNGER striker Peter Spencer has ended his 52 day protest over farmers’ property rights and Australia’s climate change responsibilities but will continue his fight “on the ground” supporters said today.
In a statement released shortly after 9:30 am today, his supporters said he would now be hospitalised until doctors could determine his medical condition.
“As much as the nation is concerned about me, my concerns are directed at the families of the hundreds of farmers who have suicided and the politicians who have failed to show any concern, compassion or morality for what the government has done to these families and the nation’s Constitution. My committed stance on the tower was to press the point,” Mr Spencer said.
His spokesman Alistair McRobert said Mr Spencer has been under increasing pressure from supporters about his welfare and in response has said, “On day 52 of his hunger strike, which was initiated to correspond with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Copenhagen, Peter Spencer (61 years old) comes down from the suspended platform part way up a wind monitoring tower on his Shannon’s Flat property “Saarahnlee” near Cooma, NSW,” the statement said.
“Spencer’s passive protest is not in vain. It has placed issues at the forefront of every Australian and gained unprecedented attention across Australia, and the world concerning thousands of Australian farming family’s property rights which have been stolen to meet Australia’s entire Kyoto Protocol International Treaty Obligations and in so doing, breaching Australia’s Constitution.”
As I have commented on this blog before, I still need to see evidence that this was a conspiracy between the Commonwealth and the States. If anyone has such evidence, let us see it.
Read it here.
Countdown with Penny Wong, the clock starts now
13 January, 2010 by
Tick tock
From The Australian. Penny Wong, the robotic climate change minister keeps resetting her internal clock:
The Climate Change Minister tells journalists on July 22 last year:
IN 22 days Malcolm Turnbull will have to show some leadership and be clear about what his party’s position is.
Wong on ABC Sydney 702 the next morning:
THE Liberal Party is in disarray on this issue and Mr Turnbull really needs to do something about it and he has got 21 days to do that.
Wong on August 3:
MR TURNBULL has 10 days to decide whether he is going to continue to be led by the climate change sceptics or whether he is going to show some leadership on this important issue.
The clock starts ticking again on October 15 as the minister issues a press release:
WITH less than 55 days to go before the climate change conference in Copenhagen, it is vital that all countries do as much as possible.
Wong in Copenhagen on December 17:
IN these next three days, we must seal the deal.
Yesterday, Wong hits the reset button and restarts the countdown:
MR Abbott has indicated he will provide a detailed and fully costed climate change policy by the time parliament resumes in February. That is just 21 days away.
Yawn. Time for a firmware update, Penny.
Read it here.
Extreme weather the witchcraft of the 21st century
13 January, 2010 by
Another climate sceptic gets what's coming…
Frank Furedi, writing in The Australian, correctly compares the hysteria of climate alarmists today to the paranoia of witch-hunters of the Medieval:
The term extreme weather speaks for itself and has become the new normal. “Extreme weather on the rise,” warns the website of the Australian Weather Channel. It communicates a sense of helplessness: “But our emergency response teams are under stress” so “who is going to help you”? This is a rhetorical question.
Extreme weather is not so much a scientific as a cultural metaphor that expresses the anxieties of our time. The conceptual linkage of weather with extreme symbolises a growing tendency to endow natural phenomena with moral meaning.
We can no longer accept that sometimes harsh climatic conditions just happen. As in ancient times when superstition reigned, we interpret bad weather as a symptom of divine displeasure.
Today unexpected weather conditions are blamed on the impact of human beings on the environment. In medieval times unusual climatic episodes were seen as the handiwork of wicked demonic forces. Witchcraft was used to account for virtually every misfortune and unpleasant act. It was the climatic change brought by the so-called Little Ice Age in the 16th century that led to a resurgence of witch-hunting in Europe. From 1380 onwards, accusations of magic and weather-making increased dramatically in inquisitorial trials.
The resurgence of witch-hunting in the late 16th century was influenced by the belief that witches possessed demonic powers that could manipulate the climate in order to undermine the welfare and health of the communities in which they lived.
Throughout history people have sought to blame unusual climatic conditions on demonic forces. What the association of witchcraft with weather-making accomplished was to mobilise people’s fears against the evil forces of heretics and non-believers. Scaremongering about witchcraft promoted the idea that its demonic powers could literally dominate nature. Father Friedrich Spee, a Jesuit critic of witch-hunting, noted sarcastically that “God and nature no longer do anything; witches, everything”. But such beliefs were no joke. A late winter in the province of Treves in the 15th century led to more than 100 people being burned at the stake.
Since burning witches leaves a big carbon footprint, we are likely to find more environmentally friendly ways of punishing those who transgress society’s confusing moral boundaries.
Read it here.
Antarctic sea water shows "no sign" of warming
12 January, 2010 by
More "no warming"
From The Science is Settled Department. But, but, but, everyone knows the sea is warming – it must be, our models say so:
SEA water under an East Antarctic ice shelf showed no sign of higher temperatures despite fears of a thaw linked to global warming that could bring higher world ocean levels, first tests showed yesterday.
Sensors lowered through three holes drilled in the Fimbul Ice Shelf showed the sea water is still around freezing and not at higher temperatures widely blamed for the break-up of 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula, the most northerly part of the frozen continent in West Antarctica. [Gee, maybe the break up of the ice shelves was caused by something else, perhaps? Surely the scientists didn’t rush to blame global warming, did they? – Ed]
“The water under the ice shelf is very close to the freezing point,” Ole Anders Noest of the Norwegian Polar Institute wrote after drilling through the Fimbul, which is between 250m and 400m thick.
“This situation seems to be stable, suggesting that the melting under the ice shelf does not increase,” he wrote of the first drilling cores.
The findings, a rare bit of good news after worrying signs in recent years of polar warming, adds a small bit to a puzzle about how Antarctica is responding to climate change, blamed largely on human use of fossil fuels [by the media and alarmist scientists, that is – Ed].
Read it here.
30 years of global cooling?
12 January, 2010 by
Natural cycles
The UK Daily Mail reports that Mojib Latif, an IPCC scientist, has again predicted a long period of cooling, in defiance of the climate models which indicate steady warming with increasing CO2:
According to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, the warming of the Earth since 1900 is due to natural oceanic cycles, and not man-made greenhouse gases.
It occurred because the world was in a ‘warm mode’, and would have happened regardless of mankind’s rising carbon dioxide production.
And now oceanic cycles have switched to a ‘cold mode’, where data shows that the amount of Arctic summer sea ice has increased by more than a quarter since 2007.
The research has been carried out by eminent climate scientists, including Professor Mojib Latif. He is a leading member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
He and his colleagues predicted the cooling trend in a 2008 paper, and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva in September.
Working at the prestigious Leibniz Institute in Kiel University in Germany, he has developed methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft under the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start.
For Europe, the crucial factor is the temperature in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. He said such ocean cycles – known as multi-decadal oscillations or MDOs – could account for up to half of the rise in global warming in recent years.
Professor Latif said: ‘A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th century was due to these cycles – as much as 50 per cent.
‘They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. All this may well last two decades or longer.
‘The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling.’
As WUWT says, “Now watch the warmists throw Latif under the bus.”
Read it here (h/t WUWT)
Peter Spencer: further research on Native Vegetation laws
11 January, 2010 by
Native vegetation rules
One of the key claims made by Peter Spencer is that the NSW native vegetation laws (the Native Vegetation Act 2003 and the Native Vegetation Regulation 2005) were used in order to “lock up” vegetation to use as carbon sinks in order to meet obligations under the Kyoto protocol. Since it is the State legislation under which those determinations were made, I undertook further research into the processes under which development consents and PVPs (property vegetation plans) were considered.
Under Regulation 24 of the Native Vegetation Regulation 2005, the Minister adopted a document entitled the Environmental Outcomes Assessment Methodology. The document sets out in detail the criteria by which applications for PVPs and development consents should be judged, and can be downloaded from the NSW Environment web site here. The following extract is taken from the overview (my emphasis):
The environmental outcomes of clearing are highly variable and depend on a range of issues such as the type of vegetation being cleared, how the clearing will be undertaken and the existing state of the landscape in the area where the clearing is proposed. This document and the data that underlies some of the requirements (see Chapter Section 2.4) reflect this complexity.
To facilitate timely assessment of clearing proposals in accordance with the computer models set out in this document, the scientific information in the models has been codified into a decision support tool called the PVP Developer. This allows local environmental variables and details of the clearing and any offset proposals to be entered into the computer, with the results of ensuing computations being available to assist decision making by the appropriate authorities as to whether the proposed broadscale clearing is to be regarded as improving or maintaining environmental outcomes in accordance with this Environmental Outcomes Assessment Methodology. An officer delegated by the Minister must certify that the PVP Developer complies in all aspects with the Environmental Outcomes Assessment Methodology. Decisions made in accordance with the PVP Developer will be regarded as improving environmental outcomes.
…
Broadscale clearing must be assessed in accordance with Chapters 2 to 6. The overall impacts of proposed broadscale clearing are to be determined by separately assessing the impacts of the proposal on:
- water quality (Chapter 3);
- salinity (Chapter 4);
- biodiversity (Chapter 5); and
- land degradation (soil) (Chapter 6).
These are effectively the only criteria on which the decision can be based, and nowhere in this document does it permit an officer any discretion to base a decision on anything related to climate change, carbon sequestration or carbon sinks. Therefore, if an officer were to refuse an application for land clearing on that basis, such an officer would be acting outside his powers.
I would appreciate comments.
James Delingpole: The Al Gore Poetry Competition
11 January, 2010 by
The Winner:
In the bleak mid-winter
Monbiot made moans,
Everyone was freezing,
Thanks to Philip Jones.
Snow was falling, snow on snow,
Even on Al Gore.
Brown raised carbon taxes,
Making people poor.What can I give Gore,
Poor as I am?
Lots of carbon credits?
Surely that’s a scam!
If I were a wise man
I would do my part.
But what the man deserves is
One great methane fart.
Read the rest here.
Peter Spencer: update
11 January, 2010 by
The Australian reports that an eviction order may be served on Peter Spencer for him to leave his farm:
AUTHORITIES are expected to serve an order taking possession of hunger-striking farmer Peter Spencer’s property, possibly as early as today.
The sheriff’s office is expected to serve a notice this week following legal proceedings by members of Mr Spencer’s family to sell the Shannons Flat farm, near the NSW town of Cooma, and recover a debt owed to them. If served today, the notice would coincide with a rally organised by Mr Spencer’s supporters. (source)
After my review of the judgments, my thoughts on the case are that Mr Spencer has been unable, and will in all likelihood continue to be unable, to convince the courts that there is the necessary link between a decision of planning officers to decline development consent for land-clearing under the NSW Native Vegetation Act, and an intention by the Commonwealth government to deprive farmers nationally of their land to comply with the obligations of the Kyoto Protocol requiring compensation under section 51 (xxxi) of the Constitution. And nobody more than me would like to see this government held to account for that kind of action. In hindsight, Mr Spencer would probably have been well served to follow the Farmer Exit Assistance scheme, allow the sale of his farm to the Nature Conservation Trust, difficult though that surely would have been.
Whilst I, like anyone else following the story, have immense sympathy with Mr Spencer’s position, I cannot help feeling that the claims he makes about the “conspiracy” between the States and the Commonwealth to deprive farmers of their livelihood have little legal merit. I may yet be proved wrong, of course, if the decision in Arnold goes the other way, and Mr Spencer successfully obtains special leave to appeal to the High Court. I will update you about that as soon as it is published.
Peter Spencer: legal commentary
10 January, 2010 by
Legal analysis
Putting my other hat on (my lawyer’s hat), I decided to take a look at the various legal proceedings that Peter Spencer has been through in the last three years. Firstly however, a bit of factual background.
The Native Vegetation Act 2003 (NSW) requires that before any clearing of native vegetation takes place, the landowner must obtain a development consent under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (NSW) (“EPA”), much like you need a development consent to build an extension to your house. Mr Spencer applied for consent to clear 1402 hectares at his property, but was refused. The letter refusing consent said that Mr Spencer may qualify for the Farmer Exit Assistance, which is a scheme to allow farmers to sell their properties to the Nature Conservation Trust, if there was hardship as a result of the decision. Under such scheme, an an independent valuation of the property would be obtained, and the property purchased at that price.
The first foray to the courts was in early 2007, in Spencer v Australian Capital Territory, NSW and the Commonwealth. Mr Spencer claimed damages (for diminution in value of his property and loss of profits) of $1.2 million, and restitution (for the appropriation of carbon credits between 1990 and 2020) of $37.5 million.
In this particular action, Mr Spencer claimed an “interim payment” of $5m “towards the eventual liability of the Commonwealth”. The defendants in that action, the ACT, the state of NSW and the Commonwealth, responded by seeking to have that claim struck out and the proceedings dismissed. Unfortunately, Mr Spencer had no legal representation and represented himself, and there isn’t much a judge likes less than seeing a “litigant in person.” Furthermore, reading the judgment, it is clear that the statement of claim was very poorly drafted, and that is not a criticism of Mr Spencer, merely a comment that in such complex matters, it is essential to have legal representation. The claims against the ACT and NSW were dismissed, but the claim against the ACT, which was in essence for nuisance arising from the incursion of wild animals, was not unarguable. Mr Spencer would have to re-submit his claim, properly formulated. Mr Spencer’s claim for an interim payment was also dismissed. There does not, however, appear to be any further reported judgments in this case, and it is therefore unclear whether Mr Spencer bothered to pursue the claim against the ACT, as it was tangential to the main claim. I would assume, therefore, that he did not.
However, now we move to the Federal Court of Australia, which deals with Commonwealth matters. On 17 July 2007, Mr Spencer filed a Statement of Claim in the Federal Court. By now, Mr Spencer has legal representation in the form of Dr J Walsh. As reported in Spencer v Commonwealth of Australia [2007] FCA 1415, the Commonwealth again sought to have his claim dismissed, as it had no reasonable prospects of success. Mr Spencer claimed that although the Native Vegetation Act was a State act of NSW, it was somehow linked to a Commonwealth act. This was the important point.
It is established that a State act which interferes with property rights does not have to provide just compensation for such interference. Therefore, the Native Vegetation Act by itself is perfectly entitled to restrict the use of a farmer’s land, and there is no obligation for it to make any compensation payment. This is unlike the situation with Commonwealth acts, where any acquisition of property must be made on just terms, under section 51 (xxxi) of the Constitution. Mr Spencer therefore argued that this was all part of a bigger picture. He claimed that the Native Vegetation Act was linked to a number of Inter-Governmental Agreements between the Commonwealth and NSW. Further he claimed that the funding for the States to implement those agreements came from a Commonwealth source, and therefore obliged the Commonwealth to provide compensation under section 51 (xxxi).
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