This time by giving would-be participants only a week to consider nearly 500 pages of complex legislation. And for the first time (and probably the last) I find myself agreeing with a previous winner of the ACM ICOTD gong:

The rushed timetable has united all sides of the divisive emissions trading debate in outrage.

Australian Industry Greenhouse Network chief executive Mike Hitchens said: “It is absolutely unreasonable to expect anyone to respond to 500 pages of complex legislation in this time.

John Connor, chief executive of The Climate Institute, said the timetable made the inquiry a joke. “It leaves no time for any substantive consideration,” he said.

“It can only encourage recycling of the submissions already prepared for the Garnaut inquiry. It will be submission Groundhog Day.”

Looks like the government have seriously got something to hide.

Read it here.

Just when people are becoming thoroughly bored by enviro-loonies banging on about the polar bear, The Age publishes another article wailing about how the polar bear is threatened by “climate change”.

Polar bears are in danger of being wiped out unless urgent measures are taken to combat climate change and rapid warming in the Arctic, says environmental group WWF.

“No sea ice equates no polar bears. It’s really that simple,” WWF polar bear expert Geoff York told reporters.

Given that “global warming” stopped in about 2001, my response is equally simple:

(Image from Theo Spark)

Read it here.

Old Homer Simpson look-a-like James Hansen has been spreading his own particular kind of putrid BS around Copenhagen, ending with the usual “it’s all happening faster than we thought, we must act now or else” spiel, as the Sydney Moonbat Herald reports:

Greenhouse gas emissions must be cut more quickly and deeply than thought only two years ago to avoid dire consequences [gee, there’s a surprise – Ed], and a straight-up carbon tax is the only realistic way to do it, top climate scientist [barking propagandist – Ed] James Hansen says.

New research paints an even gloomier picture of global warming [surely “climate change” – Ed] than the already grim report put out in early 2007 by the UN’s Nobel-winning scientific panel, he told AFP at the margins of a major climate conference.

Hansen’s argument is as simple as it is sobering: continuing to drain earth’s store of fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal – will lead humanity straight toward climate calamity.

Only an abrupt and profound change in the way we consume energy can stop the global warming juggernaut.

You all know the responses by now, so I don’t even have to write them!

Read it here.

The Nationals Senate leader encapsulates all that is wrong with the government’s climate policy:

“If you believe in solo crusades then go and depose the current leader of Sudan, go and get rid of Robert Mugabe, go do a whole range of things that are probably very good but a little bit peculiar for Australia to do by itself,” he said.

“The way we’re going down the climate change issue is just a solo crusade with no effect except on Australian domestic employment.”

Climate sense for once.

Read it here.

He’s clearly been talking to the plants again. On a 10-day trip to Latin America (carbon footprint the size of Peru) Prince Charles will argue that we only have “100 months” to save the planet from irreversible damage:

“I must insist that if we want to leave our children a better world [Emotional Blackmail Alert], we must act together, and we must act now,” he said on Monday at a dinner hosted by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet in his honour at La Moneda Palace.

He is backed by the British government which has described countering climate change as one of its highest priorities this year.

The British government is clearly as barmy as he is…

Read it here.

As climate scientists in Copenhagen whip themselves up into a frenzy of alarmism, here, by way of contrast, is Christopher Monckton’s list of deliberately misleading myths about climate change that are propagated by warming alarmists, delivered at the conclusion of the International Climate Change Conference in New York:

• “Global warming is happening now” – it’s actually cooling.
• “Global warming is getting worse” – it’s actually getting better.
• “Arctic sea ice is disappearing” – in fact, there is no discernable trend in winter sea ice area over the last 30 years.
• “Antarctic sea ice is disappearing” – in fact, the area of sea-ice around Antarctica reached a 30 year record high in 2007.
• “The Great Barrier Reef is being damaged by global warming” – in fact, there is no trend in the sea surface temperature of the reef over the last 40 years.
• “Hurricanes are being made worse by global warming” – rather, the accumulated cyclone energy index recorded its lowest value in the last 30 years in Oct. 2008.

Read Bob Carter’s reports from New York here.

“Sea levels ‘to surge at least a metre'” is the headline in The Australian, as delegates in Copenhagen hear that rises in sea level could be between 75 and 190cm by 2100. And the usual suspects are there to try and scare the world into turning the clock back to the economic dark ages with carbon taxes and emissions trading to “tackle climate change”:

“The world has very little time,” IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri told the meeting after the new findings were presented.

Indeed, there is very little time before this madness is entrenched so deeply it can’t be undone.

Read it here.

A couple of weeks ago, we posed the question: The Coalition’s climate policy should be… and here are the results:

• less than 1% (1 vote): support Rudd’s ETS
• 4% (5 votes): carbon tax
• 95% (120 votes): neither – AGW is a myth

Glad to see that most ACM readers are healthily sceptical!

Thanks for voting!

In a long and rambling article about the Copenhagen meeting taking place to discuss how much worse climate change will be compared to what the IPCC predicted, these gems from Chris Field (well known to this blog…):

One of the lead authors of [the 2007 IPCC] report said last month it had probably seriously underestimated the consequences of climate change. Professor Chris Field, a Stanford University climate scientist, said ”we now have data showing that, from 2000 to 2007, greenhouse gas emissions increased far more rapidly than we expected, primarily because developing countries like China and India saw a huge upsurge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal”.

Yes, emissions have risen faster than expected, and what has happened to global temperature? It’s actually dropped in the same period.

Coal and other fossil fuels are large contributors to releases of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas [Wrong – the main greenhouse gas is naturally occurring water vapour, by a long, long way – Ed]. Professor Field, who co-chairs the IPCC working group charged with assessing the impacts of climate change, said he was particularly concerned about new evidence that tropical forests would dry out and catch fire…

That’ll really happen…

Read it here.

(Image from the Sydney Morning Herald)

Australia Post has become the latest organisation to inappropriately involve itself in the climate change debate by releasing stamps to remind people about Earth Hour, which as you will recall is organised by the radical environmental organisation WWF (and Fairfax media):

“Australia Post is a committed supporter of this important environmental initiative,” said the Group Manager of Philatelic, Noel Leahy. “The health of the environment is an important global issue and through this stamp issue we hope to engage the community in efforts to help combat global warming by reminding and encouraging them to turn off their lights at 8.30 pm on Saturday, 28 March.”

Australia Post provides a service for all Australians (not just card-carrying Kruddites, and AGW proponents), so it should not be taking sides on political matters such as climate change.

Read it here.