Sydney launch of "The Greens"

10 August, 2011 by

Essential reading

I attended the relatively low-key launch of this important book in the basement of Portico bookshop in Sydney last Friday. Janet Albrechtsen, who was to be the main speaker, was unfortunately indisposed, but Greg Melleuish, associate professor at the University of Wollongong, himself a contributor to the book, stepped in to fill the gap.

The book is a collection of essays analysing in detail the policies of the Greens, from constitutional reform and the economy to refugees, science and security. Andrew McIntyre was very keen to emphasise that he believed the Greens were simply misguided and naïve, and that the book was only concerned with the unintended consequences of the Greens’ policies, as the Introduction notes:

“This book is not a jeremiad. It does not wish to trace the historical roots of Green politics or impugn the motivations of individual Greens, or question the motivations of their party. What id does set out to do, however, is to provide an informed, objective examination of the consequences of the policies whilst putting the in the context of present day Australian reality.”

And it does this comprehensively. Each chapter is written by an expert in the particular field, analysing the real-world effects of the Greens’ policies, if they were ever put into effect. And the result is not pleasant:

“Taken as a whole, the impression given in reading these chapters is that the Greens have an uncontrollable urge to spend, almost everywhere and for everything; a mania for control – through legislation and regulation of both institutions and individuals; a disturbing and unwarranted confidence in central planning and belief that government knows best; an antagonism to initiatives by the private sector or individuals; and at best, a systematic and naive misunderstanding, both historical and practical, of how the world works.”

And the reason for this is clear. The Greens’ policies could only survive in a prosperous, free economy driven by market forces – the antithesis of Greens’ centralist political ideology. As a party which, historically at least, has had little influence in government, its policies were constructed in a vacuum, where moralistic ideals could be floated without a thought given to the result. Now that the Greens have power in the lower house and the Senate, suddenly their political ideals appear juvenile and gullible – the equivalent of the crusading teenager who wants to save the planet – and lacking any consideration for the issues that must be addressed in the real world.

I can understand McIntyre’s reluctance to get into the nitty gritty of the Greens and their motivations – but there are plenty of intended consequences of the Greens’ policies which are as dangerous and destructive as any that might be unintended.

Highly recommended – an essential read. Link to publisher’s page is here.

Filed Under: Climate

Labor's death spiral

9 August, 2011 by

No change

There is no respite for Labor. Julia Gillard has talked of everything except the carbon tax, and her popularity, and that of her government are still at record lows. As I have said before, people have simply switched off to Gillard and the government – no-one is taking the slightest bit of notice.

JULIA Gillard’s burst of policy outcomes in health, border protection and climate change has failed to lift her popularity, with the latest Newspoll showing no improvement for Labor in the past fortnight.

Despite a flurry of government policy activity in recent weeks, the Newspoll conducted exclusively for The Australian at the weekend found the Coalition ahead of Labor by 56 per cent to 44 per cent in two-party-preferred terms.

With the Coalition on a 47 per cent primary vote and Labor on 29 per cent, the results were identical to those of the previous Newspoll conducted from July 22-24.

Labor has been in the polling doldrums for months, with its attempts to bond with voters smashed by the Coalition’s campaign of opposition to its proposed carbon tax.

Read it here.

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Tree ring proxies are shithouse

8 August, 2011 by

Wider tree rings this year!

No wonder they had to “hide the decline”. It appears that trees are a proxy for just about everything, except ancient temperatures. Rings from a particular tree are more likely to tell you whether:

  1. it was wetter there;
  2. there was more CO2 in the atmosphere;
  3. the local bear population decided to use it as a shithouse.

And now it appears that trees actually grow less in warmer temperatures:

They found that a 2C (3.6F) increase resulted in the average maximum height of trees shrinking by 11%, while a 2C decrease in the nation’s average temperature saw a 13% increase in the predicted maximum height of trees. (source)

So I think we can consign tree rings and the whole dodgy discipline of dendrochronology to the dustbin of climatological history.

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Attempts to control atmospheric CO2 are futile

8 August, 2011 by

From Jo Nova

Futile for so many reasons, practical and political. Grinding developed economies to a halt is an entirely unrealistic aim. China and India will press on with industrialisation in order to raise their populations out of a miserable life of poverty. Much of the developed world has its eyes firmly fixed on the forthcoming GFC Mark II, and when the going gets tough, touchy-feely environmentalism gives way to hard-nosed reality. Without anything else, this simple list demonstrates why adaptation is infinitely preferable to attempts at mitigation.

And now another nail in the coffin, as respected climatologist Murry Salby claims that natural drivers have a far greater effect on CO2 levels than anthropogenic sources, and if anthropogenic source have little effect, then reducing them by means of carbon taxes will in all probability achieve nothing for CO2 concentration, much less the climate:

Carbon dioxide is emitted by human activities as well as a host of natural processes. The satellite record, in concert with instrumental observations, is now long enough to have collected a population of climate perturbations, wherein the Earth-atmosphere system was disturbed from equilibrium. Introduced naturally, those perturbations reveal that net global emission of CO2 (combined from all sources, human and natural) is controlled by properties of the general circulation – properties internal to the climate system that regulate emission from natural sources. The strong dependence on internal properties indicates that emission of CO2 from natural sources, which accounts for 96 per cent of its overall emission, plays a major role in observed changes of CO2. Independent of human emission, this contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide is only marginally predictable and not controllable.

The podcast of Prof Salby’s talk is here. A paper on this topic is apparently being prepared for publication.

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The Sunday Age launches "The Climate Agenda"

7 August, 2011 by

Set the agenda

This could be interesting. The Sunday Age (part of the Fairfax press, and one of the true believers in man-made global warming) has launched a new initiative entitled “The Climate Agenda”:

What are you confused about in the climate debate? What do you want investigated? Are you furious about the proposed carbon tax, or curious about the role renewable energy will play in Australia?

We are using the website OurSay.org to gather our ideas. Oursay is a Melbourne-based group committed to enabling more people to be involved in public debate. Using it is easy: Go to sundayage.oursay.org to post a question you want answered, or vote on other peoples questions. Voting ends on September 2. (source)

I’m not sure what the SA is hoping to achieve by this, and whether they truly take any notice of the questions people ask, and given the anger surrounding the carbon tax, it might not be pretty. But bearing in mind the urban-green readership of Fairfax, I don’t think they need worry, looking at one of the early questions:

“We need action on climate change. Why can’t the government communicate the issue properly? The government has wasted millions of dollars of advertising on an awful communication strategy but still can’t gain popular support. Why is this?”

Yawn. It will, however, be interesting to check back on 2 September to see what the final ten questions are.

P.S. I couldn’t resist: Read my question and you can register and vote as well.

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Flannery fears "Norway-style attack"

6 August, 2011 by

Offensive

Because as we all know, anybody who dares question the ridiculous predictions of the Official Government Climate Prophet is only a whisker away from buying a machine gun and killing dozens of innocent people.

Desperate to regain what little is left of his credibility after it emerged this week that he owns a waterfront property, having previously warned of drastic sea level rises, Flannery makes deeply offensive remarks tarring all “conservatives” with the brush of Norwegian madman Anders Breivik.

As The Australian reports:

While his place was, he admitted, “very close to the water”, the issue was how far it was above the water — something Professor Flannery would not reveal because, he said, it could help identify the location and subject him to a Norway-style attack by conservatives.

There really is no limit to the depths alarmists will go to protect their own interests and smear those who dare question them.

Read it here.

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Labor climate change glossary

5 August, 2011 by

Cut out 'n' keep!

Fed up with the spin? Confused by the lies? You need ACM’s handy cut-out-n-keep glossary.

Here are a selection of Labor’s climate buzzwords and phrases translated into English for the rest of us:

  • Carbon: carbon dioxide
  • Pollution: environmentally beneficial
  • 500 biggest polluters: 500 most productive industries
  • A carbon tax will help tackle climate change: I failed Kindergarten science
  • Green jobs: unemployment
  • There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead: Bob Brown leads the government
  • Greens: Marxists
  • Hottest decade on record: hottest decade in the last 3 hundred-millionths of the planet’s lifespan
  • Unprecedented: I have the memory of a goldfish
  • Wind power: an oxymoron
  • The science is settled: shut up
  • The debate is over: shut up
  • Bob Brown: a watermelon
  • Consensus: don’t mention the science
  • Climate change is a moral issue: don’t mention the science
  • Green economy: the Stone Age
  • We must invest in clean technologies: I own shares in the companies that manufacture them
  • The Central Coast is most at risk from rising sea levels: Tanya Plibersek has lost her marbles
  • China is taking action on climate: Greece is a paragon of economic integrity
  • We must respect the science (© M Turnbull): we must respect the science that fits our ideology
  • 80% cuts in emissions by 2050: the lunatics have taken over the asylum
  • Deniers: the Government
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Open Thread

29 July, 2011 by

I’m going to take a few days break from blogging to recharge the batteries.

Discuss any current climate issues here. Play nicely!

NOTE: Please can I ask Facebook users to comment on the blog rather than on the Facebook page? Comments on the FB page will be removed to avoid duplication.

Simon

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Draconian powers of new "carbon cop"

29 July, 2011 by

Knocking on your door?

The idea of carbon cops has been around for a while (see here), but now it is set out formally in the draft carbon tax legislation. The powers are draconian and intimidating, with previously sacred rights, such as that of avoiding self-incrimination, being swept away:

A NEW carbon cop will be given sweeping powers to enter company premises, compel individuals to give self-incriminating evidence and copy sensitive records under a carbon tax package that will force about 60,000 businesses to pay 6c a litre extra for fuel.

The tough new powers of the Clean Energy Regulator were included in the fine detail of the carbon tax package released yesterday, which enshrines national emissions cuts of 12 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year after 2016, if the government of the day rejects targets proposed by its Climate Change Authority.

The package, which shows that the government will cement in law the body of its carbon tax structure in a bid to force Tony Abbott to win the approval of both houses of parliament to complete his promise to scrap it, also tasks the Productivity Commission with inquiries into assistance to trade-exposed industries, international climate change action and the future of fuel taxes.

As it released the exposure draft of the 14-bill package — which will set up the $23-a-tonne carbon tax, the mechanisms to pay compensation for households, the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Regulator — the government said it planned to introduce the bills in September and plan to have them passed by November. The schedule raised hackles with some interest groups for allowing only three weeks of consultation.

The exposure draft of the legislation gives sweeping powers to the Clean Energy Regulator, which will police the scheme, and the climate change minister will have the power to demand information from corporations covered by the scheme.

Fraud or attempts to subvert the scheme can be punished by up to 10 years in jail or fines of $1.1 million for corporations.

Inspectors working for the regulator will be able to obtain warrants to search premises of companies covered by the act and search or examine any activity on site as well as copy documents.

The regulator will have the authority to demand information from company officers even if it could incriminate them. (source)

Welcome to the new world of the carbon police state.

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Polar bear alarmist investigated for "scientific misconduct"

28 July, 2011 by

Doing OK

Charles Monnett has been one of the leading voices in the claim that “global warming” is causing increased polar bear drownings, in particular this paper here. But, as CBS News reports:

A federal wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize the global warming movement has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article.

Charles Monnett is an Anchorage-based scientist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

He has not been informed by the inspector general’s office of any charges or questions related to the scientific integrity of his work, according to Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

Monnett was told July 18 that he was being put on leave, pending results of an investigation into “integrity issues.” (source)

H/t to Luboš Motl who has more here. His conclusion:

“It seems increasingly likely that the research backing the global warming doctrine is corrupt at every conceivable level.”

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