He’s just following the lead of GG Quentin Bryce, of course, who has already discredited her appointment by becoming heavily involved in political matters (see here, here, here, here and here):

In a speech to an environmental sustainability conference at Monash University, Professor [David] de Kretser suggested a carbon tax might be a more effective weapon in the fight against global warming [surely “climate change” – Ed] because it would drive high-polluting developing countries towards renewable energy.

Because clearly we have runaway global warming:

And inevitably, the bottom line is more regulation to stifle our economy to fight this non-existent threat:

He called on individual Australians to reduce their “environmental footprint”, and on governments to legislate “to change people’s lifestyle”.

i.e. to return Western civilisation to the Dark Ages.

Read it here.

As always, a great read!

Another day, another example of children being indoctrinated about environmental issues. The fact that there exists an “Australian Youth Climate Coalition” says it all:

Anna Rose, from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, which encourages young people to take action on climate change, says these concerns often lead young people to want to do more.

“We definitely have had a lot of parents talk to us about how they’ve changed their habits because their kids have been pushing them,” she says.

That’s it – get the kids to badger the parents…

She says the green message is understood and accepted by children because, unlike their parents, who see the environment as a political football, their “future is inextricably bound up in it“.

Maybe it’s because children are naïve about the harsh realities of life… I am all for teaching children that we should reduce waste, save energy and care for the environment, but when children are brainwashed into believing a political ideology, that’s indoctrination.

Read it here.

Remember Poznan? That fizzled. Now yet another round of climate negotiations has ended in a “familiar stalemate”. But hang on, “climate change” is the greatest threat to humanity since the dawn of time, isn’t it? We should be doing something, now!

Despite high expectations, the first United Nations climate meeting attended by the Obama Administration fizzled out without a clear plan for reaching a post-Kyoto climate deal, due to be signed in December in Copenhagen.

Climate Institute policy director Erwin Jackson, a 20-year observer of climate talks, said most countries were “sleep-walking” towards the year-end deadline. “There is no sense of momentum, no sense of building trust and no sense within the negotiations about how we are going to resolve the outstanding issues,” he said after the end of the 10-day talks in Germany.

Maybe, despite all the hype and spin, governments really have bigger worries to deal with…

Read it here.

The models are hopeless, the climate is cooling, but still Fairytale-facts (formerly Fairfax) news continues to print alarmist stories by the sackload. The University of NSW has looked at the IPCC climate models (on which most western governments are basing their misguided climate policies), discovered that most of them were total crocks, then used those that were left to grudgingly concede that the temperature rise by the next century might by only 2 – 3 degrees. But guess what? No let up in the alarmism:

One of the authors, Andy Pitman, said the research should not be interpreted as diminishing the climate change problem for Australia. [Course not, gotta keep that funding bandwagon rollin’ – Ed] He said the study found the 2- to 3-degree temperature rise would generate even fiercer heatwaves than Victoria and South Australia had this year and would have a big impact on human health and the ability of societies to cope. “The lower figures are not as bad as 3 to 5 degrees but they’re still very bad and emphasise the need to aggressively cut greenhouse gases on a global scale,” Professor Pitman said.

The report then blamed the higher deaths in heatwaves on “global warming” (which stopped in 2001, and since when the earth has cooled…):

“What we are saying is that with global warming, those temperatures that are rare, like those in Melbourne, will be 3 degrees warmer,” Dr Pitman said. “That has really major impacts on infrastructure, power grids and human health.”

I there was me thinking it was because the moonbat premiers told people to keep their air-conditioners turned off to cut emissions…

Read it here.

UPDATE: Cory Bernardi, Liberal Senator in South Australia, correctly identifies this cheap stunt as “brainwashing”:

“Encouraging children to look after the environment is laudable aim but this seems to have more in common with the ministry of propaganda than the balanced education of our children,” he told AdelaideNow.

“One can only guess that the only children eligible to win this competition will be those who conform to the Rudd Government and Minister Wong’s extreme political propaganda about climate change.

“I doubt the competition materials will include any discussion of how the Rudd Government ETS (emissions trading scheme) will export Australian industry overseas and result in hundreds of thousands of job losses for Australian workers.“

Well said indeed. Read it here.

Original Story:

Year 6 students at Cammeray Public School have written to Penny Wong to ask about how the government is “tackling climate change” [I wonder if the students came up with that idea themselves, or whether they were “encouraged” to do so by their bearded lefty public school teachers? – Ed]. Anyway, Saint Penny graced them with her presence today:

Senator Wong explained how the government’s planned carbon trading scheme would work and fielded many questions about hybrid cars. [I wonder if she answered the one about how many years you need to drive a Prius before it saves one day’s worth of emissions from a coal fired power station? Answer: 70,000 – Ed]

“One of the really great things about being climate change minister is how interested in the issue so many young Australians are,” Senator Wong said afterwards. [You mean, how interested in the issue so many public school teachers are – Ed]

She also launched a competition for students in grades three to nine across Australia.

In the Think Climate Think Change competition, children are encouraged to express what climate change means to them through art, poems or short stories.

All of which is just pure political indoctrination dressed up as a bit of harmless fun. Disgraceful. Be grateful your kids don’t go to Cammeray Public School, or probably any other public school in NSW…

Read it here.

P.S. Winners will be flown to Canberra in August to discuss their ideas with Krudd, Gillard and Wong. Losers get to do exactly the same, twice.

From a conference in Washington:

With the collapse of an ice bridge that holds in place the Wilkins Ice Shelf, we are reminded that global warming has already had enormous affects [effects? – Ed] on our planet and we have no time to lose in tackling this crisis.

And Steve Campbell from Greenpeace also cannot wait to ring the climate change bell:

Well, if the collapse of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in the last few days is not a huge wake-up call for our political leaders at a global level, I really don’t know what is.

Time for the international community to bite the bullet and come to the table in international climate negotiations, and make sure that particularly developed countries agree to deep emissions reductions [read “huge redistribution of wealth and the destruction of western economies” – Ed], so we can start to really help to solve the climate crisis at the global level.

In reality, however, even Crikey thinks the whole Wilkins ice shelf business is nothing but hot air:

Only a small part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf is affected by this event. It is also located in the Antarctic Peninsula, which is milder and subject to higher snowfall than the main mass of the continent.

The mass of ice involved is dwarfed by many larger ice shelf breakouts studied in great detail over the last 60 years in Antarctica.

It is embarrassing to see scientists and newspapers prostitute themselves in this manner. Are they that desperate to seek inclusion in the politically correct but unscientifically sound association of anything and everything with the truly serious matter of climate change?

Ice shelves are dynamic. Just as dynamic as they have been for millions of years, during glacials and interglacials. (source)

And these guys believe in AGW!!

Read it here.

All the media of course focuses on the Antarctic when it suits them, despite the fact that there has been no appreciable rise in temperature there over the past 30 years, which seems to indicate all of these ice shelf losses have arisen from other factors (but let’s not permit the facts to get in the way of a good scare story):

• Antarctic ice shelf “disappears” (ABC Online)
• Antarctic ice shelf breaks up (News.com.au)
• Antarctic ice melting faster than expected (real originality there from The Age)
• Breakaway ice shelf will reshape map of Antarctic (The Australian)
• Antarctic ice shelf in peril as bridge snaps (ABC Online)
• Massive Antarctic ice shelf poised to fall (SBS)

Whereas the Catlin Arctic Survey team (see here) are wishing that they hadn’t packed their bermuda shorts and sun screen and are discovering that it is “stupidly cold” in the Arctic. Also, that the RSS temperature data show the March Arctic temperature below the 30 year average. So for comparison, here is the list of news articles reporting those stories:

• [silence]
• Er, …
• That’s it.

And who said the media was biased?

And shame on The Australian for repeating it without a sanity check. It’s another in the long line of “it’s-all-happening-faster-that-we-thought-quick-do-something” articles that the media are so keen on. And of course, like Pavlov’s dog when the bell rang, the climate scientists slaver and cry “global warming”…

ONE Antarctic ice shelf has quickly vanished, another is disappearing and glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought due to climate change, US and British government researchers said. [That’s despite “global warming” having stopped in 2001 – Ed]

The Wordie Ice Shelf, which had been disintegrating since the 1960s, is gone and the northern part of the Larsen Ice Shelf no longer exists.

But hang on, “since the 1960s”? So during a period of significant global cooling when all the climate scientists (and the media) were predicting the next Ice Age, this ice shelf was disappearing, right? What do you think that might say about the possible cause? Maybe, like, something else? Winds, ocean currents, volcanoes perhaps. It’s like teaching a junior science class…

More than 8300 sq km have broken off from the Larsen shelf since 1986. [In perspective, that’s about 6 one hundredths of one percent of 14 million sq km globally, and the global sea ice extent is still higher than 2004, 5, 6 and 7 – Ed]

Climate change is to blame, according to the report from the US Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey, available here. [Of course it is, you denier you, and, by blaming “climate change”, we can disengage our brains, score some cheap alarmist headlines from moonbat press agencies like Reuters, collect our next funding cheque, and disappear off to the boozer – Ed]

“The rapid retreat of glaciers there demonstrates once again the profound effects our planet is already experiencing – more rapidly than previously known – as a consequence of climate change,” US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said.

What else would you expect from an Obama appointed politician? 0/10 for The Australian – must try harder.

Read it here.