We all know the much-hyped “new green economy” is a myth, but rarely will anyone have the guts to say it. So it is very refreshing when the political correctness is stripped away and the bare truth is set out:

ONE of Australia’s most powerful union leaders has lashed out at the push for green jobs, labelling it a “dopey term”, and has dismissed environmental campaigns against some of the nation’s major export industries as “judgmental nonsense”.

The president of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, Tony Maher, said existing industries such as coal and steelmaking would have an important place in the nation’s future economic prospects and in producing a lower carbon future.

He said carbon capture and storage and other hopes for cutting emissions such as solar and thermal, would require massive amounts of steel that should be made by Australian steel workers.

Mr Maher said much of the opposition to major industries – particularly the coal industry – was “well-intentioned naivete”.

“By mid-century we’ll be using twice as much coal and a lot more steel and plastic and concrete that aren’t the flavour of the month with environmentalists and green groups,” he said.

Read it here.

Back to normal for The Age as it blames the police for overreacting to protesters at Hazelwood power station. The noble climate warriors, who had warned in advance that they would break the law and enter the power station, were met with an understandably strong response from police. Instead of supporting the police in their action to prevent criminal offences being committed, The Age blames the police themselves, under the misleading headline “Police tactics under fire at Hazelwood” [under fire from whom? The protesters themselves, of course – Ed]:

Protesters expressed concern at the level of police force, particularly the tactic of charging police horses into crowded groups of protesters who were approaching the fence.

Jay Watkinson was one of several protesters knocked to the ground by police horses after approaching the fence.

”I don’t think there was any need for horses at all,” he said. ”Having horses there really escalated the situation.”

Morwell Police spokesman Neville Taylor said police had tried to keep the area safe for all.

Anyone trying to “save the planet” can get away with virtually anything these days, and when the police just do their job, they are the ones who are criticised by The Age. How about some comment or concern about the female officer injured by these protests? Nowhere to be seen.

Read it here.

Sunday madness, as The Age publishes a non-alarmist climate article, almost acknowledging that low solar activity coincides with cooler climatic conditions. Hope you’re all sitting down for this:

THE number of sunspots has declined dramatically in the past two years – but scientists say it is too early to tell if it is the start of a solar depression that could lead to cooler weather on Earth.

Over the past millennium, whenever the sun has had long periods of low sunspot numbers, Earth has weathered equally long cold snaps. The most famous of these was the Maunder Minimum of 1645 to 1715, when sunspots all but vanished for 70 years. It coincided with the coldest period of the Little Ice Age. [Excuse me while I just pick myself up from the floor. The Age acknowledges that solar activity may be linked to climate, and the existence of the LIA! – Ed]

For the past two years, sunspots – dark and intensely magnetic blotches on the sun’s surface – have been at their fewest since 1913.

”This is the quietest sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” said NASA solar forecaster David Hathaway. ”Since the space age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high … We’re just not used to this type of deep calm.’‘

Sunspots cause other solar activity such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, radiation from which can interfere with Earth’s magnetic field, upper atmosphere and, many scientists believe, climate.

Scientists expect to record 290 spotless days this year. Last year, there were 266, the most spotless days since 1913, when there were 311 recorded.

”People are wondering about whether we’re going into another Maunder Minimum or not,” said Iver Cairns, of the University of Sydney’s School of Physics. ”The balance of opinion is that it’s too early to tell. But it could be very significant.”

However, they still can’t resist the inevitable alarmist remark:

Monash University’s Paul Cally said that if a cooling period were to begin it would be interesting to see how it affected the global warming being caused by high greenhouse gas levels. ”We haven’t been in this situation in historical periods before.”

Note there is no “may be” in that highlighted sentence… of course not, the science is settled, right? Even so, a surprisingly balanced article (for once).

Read it here.

Whenever you buy tickets for flights these days, you can choose to waste another few dollars making your trip “carbon neutral”. Forget it, says Penny Wong:

GUILTY flyers may be encouraged to offset their carbon-intensive plane trips, but our elected representatives in the Government appear to think it’s a waste of time.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has informed Parliament that neither she nor her department are members of any so-called carbon offset schemes. In a written response to a question from Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt, Ms Wong’s office said the Government did not believe such schemes necessary.

The reason? Because the wondrous two-errors-in-four-words Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme would do all that hard work for us. Not only that, but the climate change wonks seem make quite a contribution to global CO2 themselves:

Other documents tabled in Parliament reveal the Government’s top climate change bureaucrat notched up $120,000 of plane travel and hotel bills in 20 months, delivering speeches and attending conferences and meetings.

Dr Martin Parkinson has spent $99,055 on air fares and $20,141 on accommodation and travel allowances since the Department of Climate Change was formed in December 2007.

That’s a lot of Frequent Flyer points as well.

Read it here.

I have no idea whether this will be useful for you or not, but you can follow ACM posts via Twitter @ ClimateMadness (link).

If I have configured it correctly, new posts here should appear automatically on Twitter. See you there!

More alarmist claptrap from the French president, speaking about his universally loathed carbon tax, and note how The Age just laps it up under the headline “Sarkozy to the rescue” – pitiful:

”There are no reserves left. It’s a question of survival of the human race.”

Read it here.

A revealing interview with Garth Paltridge, author of The Climate Caper, in The Australian, in which he describes the techniques used to silence critics of the AGW “consensus”:

Paltridge gives a crisp summary of the physics and economics of climate change, but I want to focus here on his account of the new green religion. “Perhaps the most interesting question in all this business is how it can be that the scientific community has become so over-the-top in support of its own propaganda about the seriousness and certainty of upcoming drastic climate change. Scientists after all are supposed to be unbiased in their assessment of a problem and are expected to tell it as it is. Over the centuries they have built up the capital of their reputation on just that supposition. And for the last couple of decades they have put that capital very publicly on the line in support of a cause which, to say the least, is overhung by an enormous amount of doubt. So how is it that the rest of the scientific community, uncomfortable as it is with both the science of global warming and the way its politics is being played, continues to let the reputation of science in general be put at considerable risk because of the way the dangers of climate change are being vastly oversold?”

Part of the answer lies in the way institutions find ways to silence their employees. Paltridge himself was involved in setting up the Antarctic research centre in the early 90s with the CSIRO. As he recalls: “I made the error at the time of mentioning in a media interview — reported extensively in The Australian on a slow Easter Sunday — that there were still lots of doubts about the disaster potential of global warming. Suffice it to say that within a couple of days it was made clear to me from the highest levels of CSIRO that, should I make such public comments again, then it would pull out of the process of forming the new centre.” The CSIRO, it turned out, was in the process of trying to extract many millions of dollars for further climate research at the time.

Read it here.

You will recall the recent story about Kevin Rudd bizarrely following the Lincolnshire village of Mablethorpe on Twitter (Kevin Rudd: Twittering Idiot). This evening, ACM received a comment from Chris Flanagan, creator of the my-mablethorpe.com website at the centre of the intrigue we have now officially christened “Twitter-gate™”:

Mr Rudd’s spokesman is claiming that he followed Mablethorpe automatically because we were following him. This is untrue. We didn’t even know he Twittered until he became a follower. On the climate change front, Mablethorpe is in the front line of any rise in sea levels due to climate change, having already suffered a disastrous flood in 1953. So, if Mr Rudd is an expert on this, perhaps he can give us some pointers?

The most interesting thing about this is that the Rudd spin machine is alleging they were followed first by Mablethorpe – which Chris states is not the case…

Shh, don’t tell the IPCC, or else they won’t be able to blame CO2 and governments won’t be able to regulate and tax Western economies out of existence, but like it or not, the sun has a huge influence on our climate, far more than the alarmists want you to believe. This article, translated by Google from the original Danish and tidied up by Anthony Watts, is essential reading:

Global warming stopped and a cooling is beginning.

No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth, on the contrary. This means that projections of future climate is unpredictable, writes Henrik Svensmark.

The star which keeps us alive, has over the last few years almost no sunspots, which are the usual signs of the sun’s magnetic activity.

Last week, reported the scientific team behind Sohosatellitten (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) that the number of sunspot-free days suggest that solar activity is heading towards its lowest level in about 100 years. Everything indicates that the Sun is moving into a hibernation-like state, and the obvious question is whether it has any significance for us on Earth.

If you ask the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC, representing the current consensus on climate change, the answer is a reassuring ‘nothing’. But history and recent research suggests that it is probably completely wrong. Let us take a closer look at why.

Read it all. (Thanks to WUWT)

Earlier this week it was the Japanese, now Nicolas Sarkozy (who bizarrely I thought was a right-leaning politician, but in fact turns out to be a moonbattish lefty) has imposed a huge carbon tax in France. Good luck with that, mon ami.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday unveiled a new carbon tax to help combat global warming [surely “climate change” – Ed], calling it a “fiscal revolution” and overriding strong public opposition to the plan.

The new levy on oil, gas and coal consumption by households and businesses will come into effect next year, making France the biggest economy yet to impose a straight-up carbon tax.

“It is time to create green taxation,” Sarkozy said in an address in Culoz, a town near the French border with Switzerland.

“This is a major fiscal shift, an important innovation,” he said. “It is the first step of a fiscal revolution that will be developed.”

Sarkozy set the new carbon tax at 17 euros (25 US dollars) per tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) and said it would be gradually increased to penalise only those who refuse to abandon their wasteful ways.

The president insisted the new tax was not a ploy to fill state coffers hit by a gaping deficit [we believe you – Ed], and the additional revenues will be put back into taxpayers’ pockets through other tax cuts and “green cheques”.

Folie climatique.

Read it here.