This is sort of good news, in the sense that at least the ETS will be subject to some parliamentary scrutiny. It’s also sort of bad news, because the Opposition and the Greens have joined forces and will probably try to replace it with something worse, to “out-green the Government”. As The Age reports:

Opposition emissions trading design spokesman Andrew Robb and Australian Greens climate change spokeswoman Christine Milne struck the deal on Monday.

The terms of reference will need to be ratified by the coalition’s Senate partyroom.

A new Senate select committee on climate policy would conduct the inquiry, to be chaired by the opposition and deputy chaired by the Greens.

“The terms of reference will be broad enough to allow a proper investigation into the scientific adequacy of the scheme and its targets,” Senator Milne said.

That last sentence is particularly worrying, because the inquiry will probably say that Rudd’s 5% by 2020 isn’t enough if you swallow all the IPCC propaganda and that we need something even tougher, heaven help us…

Read it here.

Bit thin on detail this one, but you can guarantee that “Tas Women Cooling It” (no, honestly, that’s what it’s called) will be money badly spent in a pointless feel-good gesture.

Sharon Dennis, from the Women’s Council, says the project aims to reduce feelings of isolation in the fight against global warming, and create an example by making a real and measurable contribution towards sustainable living. [Feelings of isolation? They should try being a sceptic for a few days… – Ed]

“What our objective is is to contact as many women in Tasmania as we can, who can make a small contribution, which leads onto a larger contribution towards their ideas of reducing their own carbon footprint.”

Read it here.

You won’t see this reported anywhere, of course. The Heartland conference is the largest gathering of sceptical scientists in the world and if you’re in New York, try to get along. Information can be found here.

UPDATE: You can follow the progress of the conference on Quadrant. Check out the regular posts by Professor Bob Carter in the Doomed Planet section.

Of course it is, you denier you. And the Sydney Moonbat Herald is there to make the link.

THOUSANDS of holidaymakers were evacuated from resorts and campsites yesterday as tropical cyclone Hamish moved south along the Queensland coast, amid concerns climate change is generating such severe storms.
…
Emergency Management Queensland’s deputy executive director, Bruce Grady, said climate change analysis that predicted tropical cyclones of greater intensity was driving the disaster response strategy for tropical cyclone Hamish.

Again, pure nonsense. This hoary old chestnut is still doing the rounds, despite it being debunked long ago. It’s plausible that any warming would lower the temperature differential between polar and equatorial regions which would actually reduce storm intensity. But hey, who cares about the facts? We have to push our scaremongering agenda…

Read it here.

UPDATE: As if by magic, this appears: Tropical cyclone activity [still] lowest in 30 years

Having been branded mentally deranged yesterday for daring to question the consensus on global warming, I read no less than six pages of barking climate alarmism in The Age this morning, all of which bears only tenuous links to reality. It’s like a summary of all the worst warmist propaganda condensed into a single article, full of scaremongering and misrepresentations. And yet I’m the one that’s deranged.

Entitled “Climate’s 11th hour”, I cannot be bothered to refute it all (life is too short), but I can focus on two factors, global temperature and global sea levels. Here’s the quote from the article:

Climate experts are increasingly worried, though. More than 2000 will meet in Copenhagen this week for an emergency summit to emphasise that the shift is happening much faster than expected.
…
UNSW Climate Change Research Centre co-director Matthew England, one of the summit’s key backers, says it is likely to find that the raw measures of climate change — global average air temperature, global sea-level rise and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations — are all happening at or above the worst-case IPCC scenario.

This is so wrong it is painful. Global temperature, however you measure it, has been falling or steady since 2001. How can that possibly be “at or above the worst-case IPCC scenario”? Sea levels have continued to rise at the same rate as they have for centuries – again, how can that possibly be “at or above the worst-case IPCC scenario”? Did this person actually look at the data? If so, how can he possibly make such a claim? I’m sorry, but if we’re now into the realm of discussing mental health, this is utterly delusional.

And yet The Age mindlessly continues to print it all.

Read it here (if you can stand it).

UPDATE: Of course, what these scientists gathering in Copenhagen should really be discussing is why the earth isn’t warming according to the IPCC models, so that we can better understand the climate system, instead of blundering ahead with their blinkered alarmist propaganda machine.

Back to posting, and in my brief absence, I discover that I, along with thousands and thousands of others, have been branded as deranged. That’s right – querying AGW is now regarded as a mental illness. Just another step in the battle to stamp out any form of dissent in environmental matters. From Spiked:

The idea that ‘climate change denial’ is a psychological disorder – the product of a spiteful, wilful or simply in-built neural inability to face up to the catastrophe of global warming – is becoming more and more popular amongst green-leaning activists and academics. And nothing better sums up the elitism and authoritarianism of the environmentalist lobby than its psychologisation of dissent. The labelling of any criticism of the politics of global warming, first as ‘denial’, and now as evidence of mass psychological instability, is an attempt to write off all critics and sceptics as deranged, and to lay the ground for inevitable authoritarian solutions to the problem of climate change. Historically, only the most illiberal and misanthropic regimes have treated disagreement and debate as signs of mental ill-health.
…
The psychologisation of climate change denial – even the very use of that term: denial – reveals how utterly aloof and cut off are the environmental elitists from mass society. They cannot comprehend, indeed are ‘baffled’ by, our everyday behaviour, our desire to have families, our resistance to hectoring, our dream of being wealthier, better travelled, our hopes of living life to the full. For them, such behaviour is irresponsible and it runs counter to the ‘extraordinary information’ provided by scientists. They seriously expect people to make life decisions on the basis of pie charts and graphs drawn up in laboratories in Switzerland, rather than on the basis of what they and their families need and, yes, what they want. That the green lobby is so perturbed by our failure to act in accordance with scientific findings shows the extent to which, for them, The Science is a new gospel truth and religious-style guide to life, and anyone who disobeys it is a sinner, heretic or deranged individual, a moral leper of the twenty-first century.

This is true climate madness!

Read it all here.

Posts may be a little irregular for the next couple of days as I will be travelling. However, armed with a laptop and wireless broadband I hope to get a few posts in.

In the mean time, don’t forget to vote in the ACM poll which has just 3 days left!

Check out the blog roll on the right —> to catch up on other great anti-warming blogs.

I have lost count of the number of times Rudd & Wong have spouted the same response to the genuine concerns of business and industry about the introduction of the ETS (i.e. a tax) during the worst economic times since the 1920s. They are like the kid in the playground who covers his ears and shouts “la-la-la-la” so he can’t hear what the other kid is saying… it’s little short of pathetic.

“When we framed the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme [two errors in four words again. Where’s my answer from Penny Wong? – Ed] we did so to get the balance right between protecting jobs on the one hand and dealing with the long term challenge of greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.

“We believe we have got the balance right [modest as always – Ed] and our intention is to legislate the scheme.

“We think it’s the right long-term strategy for Australia and the planet.”

It will do nothing, repeat nothing for the climate of the planet, or Australia, and the only thing it will do is damage our already weakened economy.

Climate madness.

Read it here.

Strange goings on at the Herald which is wildly issuing feeds for news stories about Earth Hour which were published, er, last year… like this one, which is dated 29 March 2008… Check the URLs – they’ve all got today’s date embedded in them.

I know you’re greener than a crate of cabbages, guys, but control yourselves, there’s plenty of time yet to bore us all rigid with endless stories about the pointless feel-good gesture that is Earth Hour – it’s on 28 March. And get your RSS feed-bot working again.

Read it here, and here, and here, and here (and about a dozen others as well)

In an article in The Australian, former Liberal adviser Tom Switzer points out that the climate policy of former leader Brendan Nelson was the right one all along. The policy, which raised serious doubts about the economic viability of an emissions trading scheme, and which was received with near-universal hostility, is now the preferred course of action for much of Australia’s industry.

The issue that cost Nelson his leadership could yet be a political godsend for Malcolm Turnbull. The financial crisis has given industry more political ammunition to criticise the scheme. The many commentators who berated Nelson for his wait-for-the-world policy are now writing obituaries for the Government’s emissions trading model. A Lowy Institute poll revealed that most Australians are far more concerned about their jobs and hip pockets than any campaign to save the planet.

Labor, meanwhile, is spooked. The Prime Minister himself has walked away from Garnaut’s proposals and significantly downgraded the Government’s target range to as low as 5 per cent by 2020. So much for Rudd’s claim that “climate change is the great economic, environmental and moral challenge of our time”.

In this environment, the Liberal and Nationals parties should oppose the Government’s legislation outright and spell out a different way of meeting the climate challenge in the most forceful and coherent language they can find.

Unfortunately, Switzer then goes on to list a number of alternative ways of reducing carbon dioxide emissions (all of them pointless in terms of influencing global climate), and warns that the Opposition should not question the science:

Forget about questioning the science underlining global warming and leave that debate to the climate scientists, policy wonks and media columnists on the sidelines. To reopen this debate in parliament now would merely allow the Government to portray the Opposition as climate change deniers: a foolish and offensive charge, but nonetheless a politically damaging one to a party still struggling to recover from John Howard’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto protocol.

Whilst it may be politically damaging, it is the right and proper thing to do. I say bring it on. The Opposition should vigorously question the science, especially that from the IPCC on which the Government’s climate policy is based, which is misleading and politicised. Until or unless there is proper debate on the science, the whole issue of “climate change” is fatally flawed.

Doing the right thing is not necessarily the easiest thing.

Read it here.