Kevin Rudd and his band of cronies are a bunch of small minded politicians with gutter standards and even less dignity, always on the lookout to score cheap points against the opposition. So the ETS, and the undoubted mess the opposition has got itself into, is the perfect stage for Rudd to perform his tawdry brand of politics:

Opposition emissions trading spokesman Andrew Robb said last night that the Prime Minister was insincere after the government launched a series of attacks on the Opposition Leader despite his offer of a compromise.

His comments came as Labor backbencher Jennie George echoed one of Mr Turnbull’s “log of claims” by insisting Australian workers had the same protection as American workers in the scheme before the US congress.

On Friday, Mr Turnbull said the opposition was prepared to consider supporting ETS legislation to go to parliament next month, reversing the shadow cabinet’s position that the Coalition would not vote for the legislation before the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December.

But yesterday Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner scoffed at the offer of talks, telling the Ten Network’s Meet the Press that Mr Turnbull should propose legislative amendments rather than vague talking points. And he questioned whether Mr Turnbull could guarantee he spoke for his colleagues after encountering opposition to the ETS from Coalition conservatives. Last night, Mr Robb said Mr Tanner’s comments, and a similar attack on Mr Turnbull’s “platitudes” by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong on Saturday, showed the government was not interested in genuine progress on its plan to begin emissions trading in 2011.

“This is just a smokescreen,” Mr Robb said. “They have been playing politics all along on this.

“Kevin Rudd should say, for example, whether he agrees that the jobs of Australian workers should get as much protection under our scheme as American workers would get under the proposed American scheme.

“It’s not a difficult question.”

Read it here.

This is Penny Wong’s and her arrogant government’s idea of negotiation. Malcolm Turnbull’s suggested amendments to the ETS have already been rejected by the government. Clearly they considered them in detail before reaching that decision…

The plan was alive for less than half a day before Climate Change Minister Penny Wong dismissed it as a shopping list of “vague and inconsistent demands”.

Senator Wong said the Government would listen to Mr Turnbull only if he had a coherent set of instructions from the joint Coalition party room.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd similarly gave it the thumbs-down, taunting Mr Turnbull to unify the warring Coalition before putting anything before the Government again.‘

Rudd cannot resist cheap political point-scoring, even when we are talking about the most complex piece of legislation since the GST. But at least the Nationals have some principles:

Senator John “Wacca” Williams said he would rather walk away from Canberra with a clear conscience than vote for the legislation in its present form. “Permits could cost the agricultural sector $7 billion. Under that scenario there’d be no farmers and no food.”

Senator Williams said the Government was only interested in getting a double dissolution trigger for an early election.

“Politics is what’s behind it all, and we shouldn’t be playing politics with Australia’s future,” he said. [Absolutely right – Ed]

The Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce reiterated that he would not support the scheme, and other senior Nationals said they would never vote “for anything that looks remotely like the existing bill”.

Read it here.

Finally, at least the Opposition are focusing pressure on the government by proposing a number of significant changes to the ETS. If the government rejects them all out of hand, we will know what we suspected all along, that they are not interested in the effect it will have on the climate, or the economy. Their response will be interesting, as The Australian writes in an opinion piece:

There are members in the opposition partyroom who would be happy fighting an election on the ETS. But in agreeing to talk, Mr Turnbull has placed the pressure where it should be — on the government. At long last we are about to have the conversation that should have been running for months, a discussion on the detail of the ETS.

This will be a difficult discussion indeed for the government because the ETS is immensely complex and the risk is that there are many unidentified devils in the detail.
…
There is no case for rushing the ETS through parliament because Mr Turnbull does not want to be unfairly accused of opposing the cap-and-trade approach to carbon emissions or because the government would prefer to avoid being bogged down in debates over the detail. It is up to Mr Rudd to justify the legislation, not as a symbol to satisfy voters who want action on global warming. Rather, he must convince us it will work, without costing jobs and exports. The political manoeuvring this week will not be remembered for long but we will all endure the consequences of a flawed ETS.

Unfortunately, given the Opposition’s weak position, they have no choice but to try and negotiate the ETS, rather than do the right thing which is to reject it outright. Remember, the ETS will do nothing, repeat nothing, to alter the climate, local or global. Australia contributes just 1.5% to global emissions and even reducing that to zero overnight (i.e. a 100% reduction) would make no perceptible difference to global temperatures, even if CO2 were the main driver of temperature, which is by no means proven.

What we do know, however, is that the ETS will damage the economy, raise energy prices for consumers, lower standards of living, cut thousands of jobs and make Australia less competitive against economies that have chosen not to hamstring themselves with pointless emissions reductions.

Read it here.

Senior Coalition figures are at odds about the proper response to the ETS vote next month. Tony Abbott has urged coalition MPs to pass the ETS to avoid a double dissolution:

The one-time leadership opponent to Mr Turnbull has turned into his staunchest public defender and has appealed to Liberal MPs to “allow” the Opposition Leader to exercise his assessment on emissions trading and to save the Coalition “from a fight it can’t win”.
…
Although Mr Abbott believes an emissions trading scheme won’t cut global carbon emissions and that it will cost jobs, the conservative Liberal frontbencher and Howard government minister has called for Liberals to pass the ETS in the Senate and avoid a double-dissolution election.

But at the same time, Nick Minchin has said that the Coalition will block the ETS:

“We don’t think parliament should be presented with legislation on this subject until after we know the outcome of Copenhagen,” Mr Minchin said.

“We will vote against this legislation in August, as will every other non-government senator.”

Interesting times.

Read it here.

Writing in The Australian, Martin Ferguson lays into the “renewable energy” myth that claims that we can power future generations by wind and solar.

Those who oppose the development of Australia’s uranium and LNG resources, and low-emission coal technologies, need to answer the following two questions.

Do they want the world’s poor to have access to electricity? If so, how do they propose to generate it? The answers would be yes and renewables. Admirable, but impossible today. I have yet to meet anyone who opposes the use of cheap, reliable renewable energy. However, the factors limiting the uptake of renewables remain technical, not political. We must have a rational, science-based pathway to overcome those hurdles. Faith alone will not get us there. (source)

Bob Brown, never at a loss for a hysterical response to anything, is outraged, and clearly inhabits his own little green fantasy land:

“Martin Ferguson is a total, 100 per cent, lackey of the mining industry,” Senator Brown said.

“Renewable energy including baseload solar, but in particular energy efficiency, is not only ready to take down off the shelf but it’s cheaper and will create more jobs than coal or nuclear.”

You’re truly mad, Bob.

Read it here.

UPDATE: The Australian writes in favour of nuclear power in an editorial:

But if environmentalists insist on increasing the cost of coal to compensate for its environmental impact, alternatives are essential. And nuclear energy is the obvious option. Despite the opposition of ageing activists, still arguing as if it was the 1980s when the risk of nuclear war was real, the government is rightly encouraging uranium exports. (Although excluding India because it will not sign the non-proliferation treaty when it has an otherwise solid commitment to peaceful nuclear power makes no sense.) Nor should Canberra rule out ever allowing a nuclear power plant at home. With a permit price for greenhouse emissions the industry, and consumers, can afford, Australia’s enormous coal reserves make it impossible to beat as an energy source. But it is more than passing strange that people who hate coal are equally opposed to the only practical low-emission alternative. While it is essential Australia gets the ETS right, we need a broader debate on energy sources. And all who argue that solar and wind power are the universal answer deny powerless people all over the planet a human right we all take for granted: electricity.

Read it here.

A new research paper has been published by local ACM heroes Bob Carter, John McLean and Chris de Freitas which argues that the majority of the late 20th century warming was caused by factors other than man. I guess the pollies will ignore this like they ignore any other research that doesn’t obediently suck up to the “consensus” of man-made global warming [surely “climate change” – Ed]. And anyway, the science is settled, right? Debate’s over, you denier you.

Nature not man responsible for recent global warming

Three Australasian researchers have shown that natural forces are the dominant influence on climate, in a study just published in the highly-regarded Journal of Geophysical Research. According to this study little or none of the late 20th century global warming and cooling can be attributed to human activity.

The research, by Chris de Freitas, a climate scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, John McLean (Melbourne) and Bob Carter (James Cook University), finds that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a key indicator of global atmospheric temperatures seven months later. As an additional influence, intermittent volcanic activity injects cooling aerosols into the atmosphere and produces significant cooling.

“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Niño conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Niña conditions less likely” says corresponding author de Freitas.

“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”

Climate researchers have long been aware that ENSO events influence global temperature, for example causing a high temperature spike in 1998 and a subsequent fall as conditions moved to La Niña. It is also well known that volcanic activity has a cooling influence, and as is well documented by the effects of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption.

The new paper draws these two strands of climate control together and shows, by demonstrating a strong relationship between the Southern Oscillation and lower-atmospheric temperature, that ENSO has been a major temperature influence since continuous measurement of lower-atmospheric temperature first began in 1958.

According to the three researchers, ENSO-related warming during El Niño conditions is caused by a stronger Hadley Cell circulation moving warm tropical air into the mid-latitudes. During La Niña conditions the Pacific Ocean is cooler and the Walker circulation, west to east in the upper atmosphere along the equator, dominates.

“When climate models failed to retrospectively produce the temperatures since 1950 the modellers added some estimated influences of carbon dioxide to make up the shortfall,” says McLean.

And Bob Carter, a vehement opponent of any ETS in Australia sums up the effect of this on policy:

“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”

But don’t expect Rudd, Wong or Turnbull to take the slightest bit of notice.

Read the full abstract here (h/t Climate Depot)

That’s the amount the US government has spent on “climate change research” since 1989 … and they still can’t prove that CO2 has caused the late 20th century warming:

Despite the billions wasted, audits of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of “global warming” theory and to compete with a lavishly-funded, highly organized climate monopsony. Major errors have been exposed again and again.

Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks, which profit most, are calling for more. Experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 – $10 trillion in the near future. Hot air will soon be the largest single commodity traded on global exchanges. Meanwhile, in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying just $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government spends on alarmists, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in 2008 alone.

The large expenditure designed to prove the non-existent connection between carbon and climate has created a powerful alliance of self-serving vested interests. By pouring so much money into pushing a single, scientifically-baseless agenda, the Government has created not an unbiased investigation but a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Read it and weep.

This is the grim reality of an ETS – electricity generators put under huge financial pressure, and the additional costs will be passed on to … whom? That’s right, you and me, the consumers, with massive increases in our electricity bills. Until the public start to realise that this ludicrous legislation will hit them in the wallet, the government will be able to carry on regardless …

The government is already offering the generators 130 million free permits worth at least $3.5bn over the first five years of the ETS. However, the generators – which provide more than 20 per cent of Australia’s east coast power – claim that will not be enough to stop a looming financial crisis and possible future disruptions to power supplies.

Industry sources told The Australian this week the generators were claiming at least 300 million free permits would be necessary to avoid their asset value falling below debt levels, and some were claiming the industry needed as many as 700 million.

Having heard Penny Wong on ABC News Radio this morning, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Read it here.

What is it with politicians? Why are they unable to distinguish between climate change and the causes of climate change? We all agree that climate changes – it has since day one on earth, 4.5 billion years ago. What we don’t agree on is the cause. But that hardly subtle distinction is completely lost on most politicians, and Joe Hockey gets it wrong this morning:

“There are going to be people who do not believe that climate change is real,” he told ABC Television on Wednesday.

“Well, that is not the majority view of the parliamentary Liberal Party, fullstop.”

Read it here.

UPDATE: At least the Nationals are holding out, hardening their opposition to the ETS. As Barnaby Joyce states:

“I firmly believe that the changes that would be required would be so immense that it would no longer be an emissions trading scheme.” (source)

It’s an amusing dilemma for the warmenistas – amusing if you’re a casual observer, that is, not so funny if you happen to be directly affected by it. On the one hand they want to “save the planet” from the ravages of a harmless trace gas by banning coal and relying on sunbeams and fart power, yet on the other they flatly refuse to consider the only viable alternative to coal fired electricity generation – nuclear power. Even the mining companies are suggesting nuclear, but Penny Wong (surprise, surprise) is not having any of it:

Mining giant Rio Tinto has urged the government to consider nuclear power as a way to meet climate change targets.

Rio Tinto has reportedly told the government there are questions over the viability of renewable energy due to high costs.

That view was given in a response to a government white paper on energy.

“Rio Tinto is entitled to their view,” Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said. [That response is the political equivalent of shrugging one’s shoulders and muttering “Whatever…” – Ed]

But she said Australia had strong conventional and renewable energy sources, including solar power, wind, wave and geothermal.

“Our focus as a government is on developing those resources,” Senator Wong told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

We all know that all of those “alternative” sources do not come even close to the energy demands of a Western economy (solar, hopelessly inefficient and only works in daytime; wind, ugly windmills blotting the landscape and only works when it’s windy; wave, frighteningly expensive; geothermal, ditto) and if climate change was the greatest challenge to humanity since the dawn of time (© Al Gore), then they would be jumping at the nuclear option. But strangely they’re not.

Climate madness.

Read it here.