If you thought the ETS was bad enough, watch how billions of dollars will flow from wealthy nations to poor ones as “compensation” for climate change. Where does this money come from? You and me, via our taxes. So not only will prices go up, but more of our tax dollars will get sucked away to assuage the developed economies’ collective climate guilt:

AUSTRALIA is under pressure to pledge hundreds of millions of dollars a year to an international fund to help developing countries adapt to climate change, after the European Union revealed it would be willing to chip in up to $25 billion a year by 2020.

An agreement on financing is seen as the only way to break an international deadlock in climate change negotiations before the UN meeting in Copenhagen in December. It is also a key topic for the G20 leaders’ meeting in Pittsburgh later this month and a special New York summit called by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, both to be attended by Kevin Rudd.
…
A spokesman for Climate Change Minister Penny Wong would not be drawn on Australia’s willingness to contribute or views about the structure of a fund, but acknowledged the issue was critical for the Copenhagen talks.

“We are extremely conscious of the close relationship between progress on finance and a global deal on climate change. It’s a key part of our negotiations moving towards Copenhagen,” the spokesman said.

Read it here.

This is a clever trick. By using per capita figures, The Age tries to make us all feel guilty (and therefore ram home the point that we should “tackle climate change” and pass emissions trading legislation), despite the fact that Australia emits less than 1.5% of global emissions.

AUSTRALIA has the world’s highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions from energy use, according to a British analysis.

The CO2 Energy Emissions Index, released by risk assessment company Maplecroft, found Australia’s overwhelmingly coal-based electricity supply meant the average person emitted 20.58 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Australia overtook the US – responsible for 19.78 tonnes per head – as the worst per capita emitter.

Canada was third, followed by the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia.

But what about the following countries, which are never mentioned?

• Qatar
• United Arab Emirates
• Kuwait
• Bahrain
• Aruba
• Luxembourg
• Netherlands Antilles

All have higher per capita emissions (Qatar in 2006 was 56.2 tonnes per capita!), but The Age strangely doesn’t pick a fight with them, but dumps on its own doorstep instead.

Read it here.

Two weeks ago we asked:

How should the Opposition respond to the ETS?

And the votes are pretty clear. Out of 151 votes, the results are:

• Pass un-amended: 0.5% (1 vote)
• Negotiate and then pass: 1% (2 votes)
• Vote against: 98.5% (148 votes)

Let’s just hope a few Opposition staffers read this blog!

Krudd likes to portray himself as a tech-savvy, switched-on kinda guy, uploading nauseating vids to YouTube, posting inane comments on Twitter etc. But in reality, I reckon a team of flunkies does it, and pretty carelessly at that. It looks like he’s been caught out randomly following Twitterers for reasons known only to himself, and in particular, the town of Mablethorpe in the UK:

When this quiet town on the Lincolnshire coast set up its own Twitter page recently one of the first followers to sign up was the Australian Prime Minister.

Kevin Rudd has no known connections with Mablethorpe. As far as The Times can establish, he has never been there and his own tweets are more likely to be about climate change or the Brisbane Lions than the delights of the Golden Sands Holiday Park.

However, when the mymablethorpe.com website set up a Twitter account KevinRuddPM signed up as a follower within two days. He was the third person to follow MyMablethorpe and, to date, remains one of just 27 followers.

Chris Flanagan, who set up the page, said: “At first I thought it had to be some sort of joke – there are a lot of Twitter accounts which purport to be celebrities.” A few days later Mr Flanagan looked into it more closely and discovered that KevinRuddPM was indeed the Twitter account of Kevin Rudd, PM.

So come on then, Kev. Why are you following Mablethorpe in the UK? Planning a holiday? Or was it just one of thousands of followers you’ve randomly added just to boost numbers to make it look like your an “in touch guy”? We’d really like to know (although by the time he gets asked about it, another of his flunkies will have fed him the line to spin…).

Caught out, I think.

Read it here.

If you haven’t voted yet, you only have a few hours left to do so!

What is it with the Left and climate alarmism? What is it with the Left and personal attacks? As soon as Senator Steve Fielding’s slip hit the airwaves, I suppose we should have known that there would be all kinds of smears, and we weren’t wrong. But one of the lowest has to be this letter, published in The Australian. All I can say is that it reflects far worse on the writer than Fielding:

I respect Senator Fielding’s courageous admission that he suffers from a learning disability. Perhaps other climate change sceptics may want to follow suit?

Luke Slawomirski
Highgate, WA

I guess petulant ad hominems such as that are par for the course from alarmists – especially when they have run out of cogent arguments against the sceptics.

At least Miranda Devine stands up for Fielding against the bullies.

Read it here.

More of the same, from our barking mad cousins in the EU. If you want to see what Australia will be like in 5 years under Krudd & Co, just look at the UK under Gordon Brown (and weep):

A group of European foreign ministers will meet on Thursday in Copenhagen in a bid to speed up negotiations ahead of a crucial UN climate change summit in December, the Danish government said on Tuesday.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller invited British counterpart David Miliband, Bernard Kouchner of France, Carl Bildt of Sweden and Alexander Stubb of Finland to send the world a “clear signal” of their commitment against global warming, Moeller’s office said in a statement.
…
“We must deploy all our strength in the battle to obtain a climate agreement,” Moeller said in the statement.

Yawn. Next.

Read it here.

Indoctrination Alert, as the Natural History Museum in London appears to be the latest in the long line of museums to fall into the alarmist camp, like the Australian Museum here, opening a new 8-storey extension, the Darwin Centre:

The £78 million ($148.83 million) building houses 17 million insect specimens and three million plant specimens as well as a Climate Change Wall of screens showing the impact of global warming.

Sharon Ament, director of public engagement at the museum, said the Darwin Centre “will really show our visitors why and how our scientists tackle some of the most pressing issues we face today – from the spread of disease to the impact of climate change on the planet’s wildlife“.

Here are a few choice quotes from the museum’s web site. Firstly, about the new Climate Change Wall:

The 12m-wide interactive wall of screens show 100s of images and films about the beauty and diversity of the natural world.

As you approach or move past the wall, it responds to your presence with a dramatic transformation of colour, light and sound.

Watch the colours and images change to show the consequences of human impact on our climate. See ice melt, vegetation thrive, oceans surge, then land dry out, forests flame red, and animals disappear. (source)

And on their Climate Change pages:

The climate has changed continually throughout Earth’s history because of natural causes. But today’s climate change is different – it is caused by humans.

Find out how scientists first discovered that human activity was causing global warming, what consequences they think this will have over the next century, and what the international community is doing to limit the damage. (source)
…
Today, the levels of carbon dioxide produced by human activities have upset the Earth’s climatic balance.

Many of our activities release carbon dioxide. When we burn fossil fuels, we release this greenhouse gas. When we cut down forests, we remove the trees that once soaked up carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. (source)

There is clearly no doubt in the museum’s curators’ minds: global warming is caused by humans, full stop. I don’t know about you, but this kind of bias makes me furious. Science is supposed to be apolitical, but here is one of the most (formerly) respected museums falling hook, line and sinker for the alarmist AGW agenda, and indoctrinating countless children to close their minds, parrot “the science is settled” and that we need to “tackle climate change”, and never investigate the real, and far more complex, debate. There really is little hope.

Read it here.

Not for those with weak stomachs, Krudd spouts all the usual nonsense about “tackling climate change”, including putting way too much faith in solar, wind and geothermal, and witters on about the two errors in four words “carbon pollution reduction scheme”. Just in case I haven’t made this clear before, IT ISN’T CARBON and IT ISN’T POLLUTION. But hey, just details, right? It’s nauseating.

Watch it here (sick bags at the ready)

P.S. Post lots of negative comments, but don’t expect any of them to be published – they’re all censored… Here’s mine, for what it’s worth (note “Pending Approval” – ha ha):

Climate madness from the Greens in NSW [Sorry, did you expect something different? This is the Greens we’re talking about – Ed], who are always good for a laugh, as they urge the scrapping of new coal fired power stations until carbon capture technology is available:

Greens’ MP John Kaye says plans for future coal-fired plants should be abandoned.

“The Rees Government’s pushing ahead with the myth of carbon capture and storage to try and disguise the fact that their coal-fired power station building program will push up the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by a massive 57 per cent,” he said.

“The only way they can justify that is by saying that some day soon they will be able to bury the carbon from those power stations.”

Scrapping new coal fired power stations, required to service economic growth and maintain standards of living, when there ain’t any alternative is pure barking madness. Furthermore, the Greens would never, ever concede that their hippyish 1970s bumper-sticker opposition to nuclear power might be contributing to rising emissions from coal.

Unfortunately, however, in Greens MPs’ brains, the lights went out long ago, much as they will in NSW…

Read it here.