Little by little, drop by drop, the public seem to be ever so slowly waking up to the reality of the ETS. It’s far too late of course – this should have been happening years ago – but the efficient spin machine of the Krudd government has made sure that the reality has not escaped into the public domain. Farmers are going to be one of the hardest hit industries under the new tax and they are not happy about it:

FARMERS are about to be “ambushed” by the Government’s emissions trading scheme and it’s time they marched on Canberra in protest, according to Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan.

Senator Heffernan believes farmers need to send a loud message to politicians and Australia’s urban consumers that food security is under attack and the future of farming will not survive a tax on carbon.

Senator Heffernan, who is also a farmer from Junee in Southern NSW, told Rural Press this week that urgent action was needed to force the Government to make an immediate decision to exclude agriculture from an emissions trading scheme, but allow farmers to generate credits voluntarily.

He says various studies have proven that farmers will be forced to bear massive cost increases from the start of the scheme and from 2013 when a decision is made on the treatment of agriculture – regardless of whether the sector is included or not.
…
“The farm sector is beginning to understand just how serious an emissions trading scheme is going to be.

“They need to be drumming this into the Government and urban consumers who take the availability of clean green food for granted and believe it will always be there in the supermarket.

“I know many farmers are mentally, physically and financially exhausted but this new tax will be the end of family farming, so I think it’s time we march.

“This is something which will affect all farmers – not just wheat growers, not just dairy farmers, but everyone. No matter what you grow, you’re going to face significantly higher costs.”

Read it here. Note that this doesn’t get any press in the other Fairfax media, such as The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald – it is relegated to the North Queensland Register…

More interference and micro-regulation in everyone’s lives from the EU in the name of “tackling climate change”. Europeans will no longer be able to buy 100W incandescent bulbs from next week:

From September 1, 100-watt versions of the old incandescent bulbs will be banned from Europe’s shops and other bulbs with lower wattage will follow in the ensuing years, under a system agreed by EU experts last December.

New technology light bulbs, such as compact florescent lights (CFL) can save up to 80 per cent of the energy used by the worst old-style lights in homes.

The move will also cut carbon dioxide emissions as part of the European Union’s wider climate change package.

Admittedly, CFLs are more efficient and last longer, but on the downside, they produce a horrible light, are hideously expensive, take ages to warm up to full brightness, look ugly in light fittings, and are actually more damaging for the environment than traditional incandescents:

However the [European consumer group BEUC] added, in a statement, that removing the old-style light bulbs from the market also holds drawbacks for some consumers.

There are concerns “about the risks to health from the high mercury content of the new bulbs,” the group warned.

The EU plan also “falls short of the needs of some consumers who need to use the old-style light bulbs for health-related reasons such as light sensitivity,” BEUC added.

But none of that matters when we’re talking about “saving the planet”.

Read it here.

A new poll is starting today (see right –>). What do you think the Opposition’s response to the ETS should be? There are three options:

1. Pass the ETS unamended in November;
2. Negotiate amendments with the Government prior to voting for it in November; or
3. Vote against the ETS, whether amended or not.

Poll will be open for two weeks.

From the “I’m more moonbattish than you” department. Huge swathes of coastal Queensland are being declared off-limits for developers as the government bases its planning decisions on the IPCC’s sea level predictions:

Queensland is a coastal development “hotspot”, and in the past few years several local councils have been forced to make their own estimates of future rises in sea levels due to global warming [er, surely “climate change” – Ed], and have applied them to development applications. However, Queensland is believed to be the first state to put a figure on how much the sea will rise.

The Bligh government policy is based on the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and predicts sea levels will rise 30cm by 2050 and 80cm by 2100. Government and industry figures yesterday predicted that if these guidelines were adopted by local councils, it would have an effect on coastal development in all major coastal towns.

That, you would have thought, was moonbattish enough, given that sea levels have risen at the same rate of 2 or 3 mm a year for the past few thousand years, and if anything are slowing down. The likely maximum sea level rise would be about 30cm by 2100.

But no! The Queensland Conservation Council picks a ridiculous figure out of the air, and runs with that instead:

QCC spokesman Simon Baltais says recent data shows sea levels will rise by up to 1.5 metres.

“When you look at the latest science coming out of all of the countries – Australia, Europe – they’re all talking sea level rises greater than one metre,” he said.

“So they’re using the easy way out by saying they’re using IPCC data. The truth of the matter is, contemporary science is saying it’s a lot higher.”

What contemporary science is saying 1.5 metres? Answers on a postcard… no, forget it. Climate madness.

Read it here and here.

Malcolm Turnbull appears to be getting tough on those in his own party who oppose an emissions trading scheme:

Emboldened by a lift in his Newspoll ratings, Mr Turnbull challenged colleagues today, telling a business breakfast in Melbourne: “Those people who say an emissions trading scheme is an anathema must have been asleep during the last term of the Howard government.

“Not only did we establish an emissions trading scheme, which is a market-based way of putting a price on carbon, we commenced legislating for it. It remains our policy.”

Just because it was Howard policy doesn’t necessarily make it right. It must always be remembered that Liberal policy on climate change is the vacuous statement that “we give the planet the benefit of the doubt”… hmm.

And in other news, Brendan Nelson will announce his retirement from parliament, sparking a by-election in the seat of Bradfield:

He will quit politics at the end of September, more than 12 months before the next scheduled election, for a defence industry job. He was a Defence Minister in the Howard Government.

Nelson had previously said he would end his 13 years in Parliament, in the super-safe Liberal seat of Bradfield, at the next scheduled election.

However, he now wants to leave earlier and called a press conference for Tuesday afternoon to explain why.

Could turn into a mini-referendum on climate change? More to follow on the Nelson story as it happens.

Read it here and here.

A breath of fresh air in the stench-laden atmosphere of alarmism that pervades all our olfactory organs at the moment. Ian Plimer dissects the current climate madness in Quadrant:

The government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme has the potential to ruin Australia’s productive economies and to build an even greater bureaucracy. Even the name of this bill should ring warning bells as carbon is the foundation of life and is not a pollutant.

It is claimed that there is a scientific consensus about human-induced climate change. Consensus is a process of politics not science. There is certainly no scientific consensus about human-induced climate change and the loudest voice does not win scientific discussions. Science is married to evidence, no matter how uncomfortable.

Read it all.

Of course they are, you denier you. It only took a matter of hours before the alarmist Fairfax press made the inevitable link between the record temperatures in NSW and Queensland and “long term warming” – hang on, wasn’t that “climate change” last week? Hey, just use whichever term fits the agenda best!

THE north is sweltering and, in historical terms, the south is rarely cold. The result, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, has been a winter of record-breaking warmth across the continent.

Temperatures in Queensland, northern NSW and the Northern Territory pushed up to 15 degrees above average over the past week. Brisbane yesterday reached 35.4 degrees, nearly 3 degrees warmer than the previous August high.
…
No weather event can be attributed to climate change alone [there’s a “but” coming here – Ed] but [and there is is] Dr Jones said he believed it was impossible to divorce the current variability from a long-term warming.

”We’ve always had heatwaves, we’ve always had warm spells in winter, but what we’re seeing now is this combination of the warming trend and the extremes coming together to see very large and very long-lived records broken and often by substantial margins.”

I will wait with bated breath for The Age article that links record cold to “global cooling”. In any event, we all know the planet is on a gradual warming trend, as it recovers from the Little Ice Age, so in many ways it’s not surprising that records will get broken. However, whether humanity is to blame is an entirely different question.

Read it here.

Queensland Nationals Senator Ron Boswell sets out his views on the ETS:

HOW many Greens does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is none because the Greens want to put all the lights out. During Senate debate last week on the renewable energy legislation, Australian Greens senator Christine Milne mentioned the objective of a zero-carbon economy. The extreme nature of this vision is the ultimate driver in the emissions trading scheme debate. The most significant political achievement this century is the ability of extremist Green policies to dictate the agenda of otherwise mainstream governments.

The coalition between Labor and the Greens is the throne on which the philosopher king, Kevin Rudd, sits. Everything, especially the ETS, must be seen through this red and green prism.
…
There is one thing that will ensure that the canary-fatal ETS can fail a second time. Business must muscle up and tell its so-called spokespeople to defy the red-green alliance and put industry and the economy first. Reasonable thinkers know emissions reductions come at a price, so only successful business can invest in reduction technology and adaptation measures. Business must stand firm and that will keep the Liberal-Nationals Coalition strong in opposing the ETS. Groups such as the Business Council of Australia cannot serve two masters, the rent-seekers and the producers of real goods. It is strange how much of the public comment seems to have got these two mixed up.

Read it here.

We suspected this, but an (admittedly) small poll has revealed that the Australian public are mind-numbingly ignorant about the ETS (even what is stands for), and its effect on prices:

Only about 15 people out of 100 surveyed for The Punch could correctly say what ETS stood for, while only one person in the survey correctly named the expected increases on household power bills – and he guessed.

The ETS, currently expected to come into operation in 2011, will transform the Australian economy by forcing businesses to buy licences to emit carbon.

The scheme has been at the core of political debate in Canberra for the past two weeks and is threatening to split the Coalition, with the Nationals entirely opposed to the introduction of the scheme.

It will lead to increases in the prices of a range of goods and services. If the price of emitting a tonne of carbon is $25, the federal government estimates average monthly electricity and gas bills will go up by $6 and $2 respectively.

And Krudd & Co will be very happy to keep it this way, because if the public really understood what the ETS would do to the Australian economy, to jobs, to everyday life, they would never get it through the door.

Read it here.

This is looking like it will turn into a big issue for the Coalition. The Nationals are hoping to take the lead away from the Liberals on the ETS – and given Turnbull’s flirtation with Labor, his greener-than-thou position on the ETS sadly makes a lot more sense. From The Australian:

THE Nationals have directly challenged Malcolm Turnbull’s authority on climate change, boasting that Liberal MPs are beginning to back their blanket rejection of a carbon emissions trading system.

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce said yesterday that despite the Opposition Leader’s efforts to negotiate with Kevin Rudd on emissions trading, Liberal MPs were telling him that they, like the Nationals, did not believe in an ETS.

Asked if the Nationals’ advocacy was “bringing Liberals along”, Senator Joyce said: “I think on this one we are. I think on this one the National Party are leading.“
…
Senator Joyce said he was aware of many Liberals who were fervent opponents of the ETS, despite the Liberal leader’s search for common ground with the government. “People have woken up to what the ETS is,” he said. “It’s not going to change the climate. It’s just a massive new tax.” Senator Joyce said he hoped the Liberals would vote against the ETS when it returned to the parliament for a second vote.

If the Liberals backed the legislation, the Nationals would not budge, he said, arguing that voters would accept that his party had the right to disagree with its Coalition partner.

Read it here.