Gore Effect: The phenomenon that leads to unseasonably cold temperatures, driving rain, hail, or snow whenever Al Gore visits an area to discuss global warming (source)

And now it seems James Hansen is having a similar effect on the weather. The juxtaposition was perfect – Hansen and a bunch of warmists (that numbered in the hundreds rather than thousands) protesting in the worst snow storm of the year in Washington DC. As The Australian reports, under the headline “Big chill buries global warming protest”:

The storm … buried under 15cm of snow any hope of global warming activism.

Reports said the activists had hoped to swarm Washington in an effort to force the Government to close the Capitol Power Plant, which heats and cools government buildings, including the Supreme Court and the Capitol.

Fox News said the scene was reminiscent of a day in January 2004, when Al Gore made an address on global warming in New York — on one of the coldest days in the city’s history.

In a press release supporting the protest against the coal-fired plant, Greenpeace wrote that “coal was the country’s biggest source of global warming pollution” and “burning coal cuts short at least 24,000 lives in the US annually“. But Fox News said it might be worth noting the US Government’s own stark numbers: pneumonia kills twice as many each year.

Enjoy. Read it here.

Ross Garnaut (remember him??) has emerged from the cave he’s been in since his report was issued last year, and put his 2c worth into the debate about the ETS by urging the Government to “act now on climate change”. Never saw that coming. This is despite emissions dropping anyway as a result of the global financial crisis. The article is helpfully illustrated by the following misleading image:

Since when was CO2 black? Looks more like particulate pollution to me, but hey, who cares?
(© ABC)

“It looks as if we’ve transferred back two years the emissions levels that we were expecting – might turn out to be longer than that if this turns out to be an even worse economic crisis,” he said. [Anyone understand that sentence? – Ed]

“We’ve got a little bit of breathing space but we need it because the world’s a long way from where it needs to be.”

Go back to your cave, Prof.

Read it here.

After the (relative) sanity of that last editorial in The Canberra Times, it’s back on form with ACM’s least favourite journo, Rosslyn Beeby, who interviews some barking mad professor about how our daily shower will be the latest victim of “climate change” (no, really, stick with it).

Climate change will change our social habits, and in 50 years time we won’t be showering every day, and maybe not at all, British sociologist Professor Elizabeth Shove says.

”No, we won’t be dirty, smelly and unhygienic. This kind of social change isn’t about people being forced to give up showers it’s about new habits, new ideas about cleanliness that will become more acceptable, and probably even more popular and enjoyable, than standing under a hot shower.”

To paraphrase The Italian Job, it’s a long way back to England, Professor … and it’s that-a-way.

Read it here.

This one issue lays bare the hypocrisy in the “green” movement for all to see. On the one hand, they whine about reducing emissions to “tackle climate change”, yet on the other they refuse to accept the only feasible emission-free source of electricity: nuclear generation.

Still bogged down in the “Nuclear Power? No thanks!” bumper-sticker mentality of the 1970s, they claim that climate change is the greatest threat to humanity, yet spurn the technology that would do more to reduce emissions (assuming, of course, that CO2 drives climate) than countless ugly wind farms or acres of hopelessly inefficient solar panels. Yes, of course there are issues with nuclear power, like the storage of spent fuel. But this is something we have the capability to deal with, as evidenced by the widespread use of nuclear power throughout the developed world.

An editorial in The Canberra Times makes the point well:

For countries planning to rely on ”clean coal” and ”renewables” [such as Australia – Ed] there will come a day of reckoning. Emission trading costs on top of high energy costs will result in decades of global disadvantage and loss of competitiveness.

Not surprisingly for most participants at the KL conference, Australia’s ”clean coal” and ”renewables” energy policy appeared to be an unnecessary and expensive gamble. And many remembered the December 2007 Bali climate conference, where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ratified Kyoto and Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, stated ”I have never seen a credible scenario for reducing emissions which did not include nuclear energy.”

For once I agree with Yvo de Boer.

Read it here.

Not another one, I hear you cry. Yes, and all the usual guff is recycled, that every unusual weather event is linked to “climate change”, that the emissions target is far too low, etc etc, wrapped up in loads of emotive claptrap:

“By locking in a low target now, Australia will effectively undermine the Copenhagen UN climate process in December, betraying not only the Australian people in its duty of care, but also people and nations across the globe,” the letter from Climate Action Groups states.
…
“It is not the Australian way to do as little as we possibly can at the expense of the millions of people, species and habitats that will be affected by climate change.

“This is not the legacy we wish to leave for our children.”

Probably written in green ink. Pop it in the special filing drawer – you know, the round one on the floor over there…

Read it here.

Even those that believe that AGW is real and dangerous think that the ETS is the wrong way to go. Richard Denniss, executive director of The Australia Institute, appears to be such a person, referring to CO2 as “pollution”, and clearly convinced that Australia should “tackle climate change.” But even he picks holes in Penny Wong’s “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” in The Australian today, particularly the fact that efforts by individuals to reduce emissions will have no effect whatsoever under the ETS, as they will merely allow others to emit more:

The question is: Why has the Government obfuscated and misled the Australian people? Rather than explaining the strengths and weaknesses of her scheme to the Australian public, the Minister for Climate Change has instead sought to cover up and conceal the fundamental problem. And when the first glimmerings of realisation began to spread among the Australian people, she worked hard to suggest, without actually stating it, that individual action could indeed reduce emissions. This was in addition to accusing those who were attempting to blow the whistle that they were indulging in a little misleading of their own.

It is interesting to speculate on a deeply disturbing question. Why has the Minister worked so hard to convince the citizenry that their efforts will be counted and that there is nothing amiss with the design of the carbon pollution reduction scheme? If only she and the Government had put as much effort into examining and fixing the flaws as they have put into their disingenuous denials of the problems, both they and Australia would be a lot further ahead by now.

The High Priestess does not suffer heretics gladly.

Read it here.

Apparently that is the nickname for Penny Wong doing the rounds in business circles at the moment. As the Daily Telegraph puts it:

They call her “The High Priestess”, reflecting the view that Wong has been overtaken by religious zeal – rather than rationality – in her campaign to impose the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme on Australia.

How appropriate.

Read it here (and the rest of the article too).

P.S. Still no response from Senator Wong on the “Carbon Pollution” moniker.

No, this isn’t satire, really it isn’t. In the post-global warming world, we’ll all have to remember which hand is for eating and which hand is for, well, something else, if the warming Nazis have their way:

“No forest of any kind should be used to make toilet paper,” Dr. Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist and waste expert with the Natural Resource Defence Council told the New York Times.

“This is a product that we use for less than three seconds and the ecological consequences of manufacturing it from trees is enormous,” Hershkowitz told the Guardian newspaper.

“Future generations are going to look at the way we make toilet paper as one of the greatest excesses of our age,” Hershkowitz said.

“Making toilet paper from virgin wood is a lot worse than driving Hummers in terms of global warming pollution.”

You really, really can’t make this stuff up. So, here’s a step by step guide for using “reusable” toilet wipes (source):

• Step 1. “Shake, scrape, swish, or squirt off anything you don’t want in your laundry, and then toss the wipe into the pail or container.” [Sounds delightful – Ed]
• Step 2: Store the used wipes in a wet bag or a diaper pail. “Some families find it easiest to put a small wet bag in their bathroom – either just laying on the floor near the toilet, or hanging from a nearby doorknob, cabinet knob, or hook.” [Sounds even more delightful – Ed]
• Step 3: Wash with the diapers if you have a baby in the house. Otherwise, for neophytes in laundering poop-stained cloth, an important tip: Wash them separately from other laundry.

Never would’a guessed that one…

• [continued] “Wash in hot, dry in the dryer. You may add whatever laundry additives you desire – chlorine bleach, oxygen bleach, tea tree oil, lavender oil, stain remover, whatever.”

Gee, that’ll really catch on.

Read it here.

Except perhaps the Senate, but certainly not the ever-increasing numbers of business groups who are warning Krudd & Co that the ETS will damage Australia’s already weakened economy. Rudd and Penny Wong are utterly deaf to their complaints, and will carry on regardless with introducing the ETS in 2010, a completely artificial deadline.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong rejected yesterday calls from the Australian Industry Group to delay the beginning of the scheme until 2012, saying the Government still intended for it to begin next year.

“The longer we delay in making this economic transformation, the higher the costs.”

This is a government that doesn’t give two hoots about the economy, and therefore the standard of living of millions of Australians, and slavishly follows the policitised and deeply flawed pronouncements of the IPCC.

Climate madness.

Read it here.

Gee, who’d have thunk it? The Sydney Moonbat Herald is on top alarmist form today, as it reports on the findings of International Polar Year:

Dr Ian Allison, of the Australian Antarctic Division, who co-chaired the project told the Herald the effect of global warming in Greenland was clear. [Despite there being no global warming for nearly a decade – Ed]

“In Greenland the rate of ice loss is getting greater over the last 10 years and the surface [ice] melt is definitely related to the warming,” Dr Allison said.

The project’s scientists summed up their findings, saying: “It now appears certain that both the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass and thus raising sea level, and that the rate of ice loss from Greenland is growing.” [Show me the sea level rises please – Ed]

They also warned “the potential for these ice sheets to undergo further rapid ice discharge remains the largest unknown in projections of the rate of sea-level rise by the [United Nations] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”.

The reality is that there has been no measurable change in the rate of sea level rise, which has remained virtually constant for centuries. The Herald signs off with its usual catch-all clause:

Since the findings by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, it has been widely accepted that the planet’s warming is almost certainly due to greenhouse gases being released from the burning of fossil fuels, land clearing and cement manufacturing.

Not by me, mate.

Read it here.