Regurgitating propaganda
UPDATE: Read Will Steffen’s plugging of this report in the Silly Moaning Herald here (if you can stand it).
Even the Fairfax-owned Financial Review isn’t falling for the ludicrous spin of the Climate Commission any more, with a harshly worded editorial on their latest pronouncement. By the way, does anyone out there still believe that the Climate Commission isn’t just a mouthpiece for trumpeting Labor government policy, staffed as it is by a team of alarmists with not one single person in the clique to challenge the orthodoxy or put a contrary view?
This latest missive is intended to convince people that our carbon tax isn’t the economy-wrecking disaster we all know it is, and which will serve no purpose other than to appease the Greens, but is in fact essential for us to “keep up” with the urgent action being taken by the rest of the world – hmm, like we were born yesterday.
The AFR, like me, isn’t convinced:
The report states that 90 countries, representing 90 per cent of the global economy, have committed to limit their greenhouse gas emissions, and lists the efforts of major economies, country by country, in an appendix.
However, that list omits a great deal. For example, the report states that renewables accounted for 9 per cent of China’s energy consumption in 2010, but it does not say how much of that was due to the long-standing national focus on hydroelectricity.
A glowing report on Canada’s efforts does not mention that Canada formally withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol late last year, and a reference to South Korea’s emissions trading scheme, due to start in 2015, does not say that 90 per cent of the scheme’s permits will initially be issued for free.
Various emissions trading schemes are mentioned in the report, including seven that the Chinese government plans to develop in key cities from 2013, as well as schemes operating in the US. But for completeness, the report could have at least answered a devastating critique of the US schemes in a report by the Coalition-dominated Senate committee on the scrutiny of new taxes, released late last year.
The Climate Commission’s report is not the dispassionate analysis that we might have expected from a government body. It is more of a call to arms, presenting a selective view of international action on climate, and should be treated as such.
Bravo. Another clever trick with China is to use emissions “intensity”, or emissions per unit GDP, which, given China’s GDP is going through the roof, means emissions will too, despite intensity reducing. A cheap trick that fools no-one.
What a joke the Climate Commission is, with a joker in charge.
Read it here.
Australian Climate Madness 
Well clearly the AFR is now part of the hate media.
It is abundantly clear that the Climate Commission is a political lobby group. It can be characterised by H. L. Mencken who wrote:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
On the other hand, Simon as Author of this excellent blog can be characterised by another Mencken quote:
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.”
It is encouraging that the AFR is not convinced by this latest piece of Climate Commission propaganda.
Brick by brick the wall of Climate Science misinformation is being dismantled. One day someone somewhere will remove that brick which brings the whole wall down.
I would really like to understand how an inert trace gas with very unimpressive properties is supposed to control climate.
CO2 doesn’t undergo phase change at ambient temperatures so there is no large energy exchange mechanism as there is with water.
If CO2 is supposed to have a “powerful” radiative effect why does it have a thermal conductivity of about half of normal air – and normal air’s conductivity is so low as to be a very effective insulator hence double glazing.
And don’t try to tell me thermal conductivity isn’t a measure of any supposed radiative effect because it is determined experimentally and I can’t for the life of me figure out how they would get the CO2 or air or whatever to stop radiating while they test it.
Even steam is a very effective insulator with conductivity less than normal air.
So there is no “powerful radiative effect” of greenhouse gases – all are very effective insulators that do NOT transmit energy in the manner claimed by climate scientists.
If I am wrong then someone please enlighten me with something other than references to “greenhouse gas” definitions that do not even consider these simple facts – Now copper, with a thermal conductivity some ~70,000 times that of CO2, radiates like hell when heated.
Gases have a very low radiative capacity.
Put an empty pot on the stove and before long it will be glowing red hot.
Fill that same pot with water and it will never exceed 100 degrees C.
And that is all you need to know about climate science !
Way to go Aussies