As always, a great read.

Miranda Devine in the Sydney Morning Herald does a first class demolition job on Krudd & Co’s pointless and wrongly named “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”.

Read it here.

All the headlines are screaming this fact today, published in the World Meteorological Organisation’s annual climate report. But before we all go and sacrifice a methane-belching ruminant at the altar of Al Gore and the Holy Church of AGW, let’s put a bit of sanity round it:

• “On record” means since about 1850, a blink of an eye in geological terms which doesn’t include the higher temperatures experienced on earth during the Medieval Warm Period
• Since temperatures have been climbing steadily since the Little Ice Age, you would expect each year to be the warmest (and this trend started way before evil capitalist CO2 emitting industries and economies were on the scene)
• If 11 out of the last 12 years are supposedly the warmest on record, then the fact that 2008 is the 10th warmest actually demonstrates a significant cooling… and in fact in Australia, 2008 is the coolest year since 2001…

Next story please.

Read it here (and a thousand other places).

Have a read of this article from the Green Left Weekly (its title tells you all you need to know). A few highlights to whet the appetite:

The targets are not simply disappointing. They are disastrous and appalling.

Worst of all, 450ppm is itself an alarmingly dangerous target that would almost certainly lead to runaway climate change.

As little as 2° warming will still push the planet far past crucial climate tipping points where the planet will begin to warm itself — leading to catastrophic and unpredictable consequences.

It is for this reason that climate scientist James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has argued we face a “planetary emergency” and called for reducing atmospheric carbon at 300-325ppm as rapidly as possible.

The climate change movement also has a very special role and responsibility to tell the truth about the threat climate change poses to people and planet — the truth that the mainstream politicians and media consistently work to conceal.

Read it here.

About half a dozen “students, environmental organisations and green groups” caused a minor inconvenience at a few government offices, bleating about the 5 per cent target for 2020. But there is a sinister veiled threat of “direct action”, which will, no doubt, be treated very leniently by the courts:

[Nature Conservation Council of NSW chief executive officer Cate] Faehrmann said the Government would now see a spike in more drastic measures to get the message across.

“When it comes to the planet and a safe climate we need to step it up. They haven’t listened to us when we’ve politely asked, so I think there will be a rise in non-violent, direct action [such as] occupying Parliament and sit-ins in offices,” Faehrmann said.

That means non-violent until it turns violent, which these protests have a funny habit of doing…

Read it here.

Reality bites, as Rudd and Wong announce only a 5% cut in emissions by 2020, which could increase to 15% if there is a global agreement to reduce emissions further. And that’s a big “if”, judging by the results at Poznan. The Greens are livid, of course, which kind of indicates that Rudd is on the right track…

“Australia’s commitment of a 5 -15 per cent reduction by 2020 is a serious and credible commitment to the global action required and is realistically attainable in the current circumstances,” the white paper says.

It’s not a serious and credible commitment at all – it’s a pointless gesture, when what was needed was no gesture at all. In truth, a 5% cut in Australian emissions will do nothing (since a 100% cut in emissions would do nothing as well), and may still cause some unnecessary damage to our already weakened economy, but at least they haven’t swallowed the Green agenda whole.

There’s little chance of a global agreement in Copenhagen, especially with China building two new coal-fired power stations each week, and by that time it is at least possible that the AGW bandwagon will be seriously derailed by continuing global cooling. Here’s hoping.

Read it here.

And this is real madness, not just the “madness-lite” you get from Rudd & Wong. But we expect little else from the Greens of course, who live in an environmentally friendly little bubble, insulated from the genuine realities of the world. Check out these targets that Bob Brown, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, has come up with in his fairytale world:

• 40% reduction by 2020 (below 1990 levels, not 2000 levels);
• (wait for it…) 100% reduction by 2050

So that would mean no fossil fuel use at all – no petrol or diesel cars, trucks or buses, no planes, no coal use, no natural gas, no nothing, and all by 2050 (and of course, no nuclear – perish the thought). And just for luck, he throws in the usual alarmist BS:

A level of 550 parts per million is a recipe for environmental and humanitarian catastrophe on a scale that is scarcely imaginable.

Australia will lose the Great Barrier Reef (and the 63,000 jobs that it sustains), Kakadu and our alpine snowfields. The Murray-Darling food basket will dry up much faster. There is a real prospect of two billion people in Asia going without clean water if, as projected, the Tibetan glaciers, which feed many of Asia’s major rivers, disappear in the next few decades.

The really alarming thing is that (a) Bob Brown is a Senator of the Australian Parliament (we know the Tassies are a breed apart, but why on earth did they vote this guy in?), and (b) the Moonbat Herald gives him a platform.

Read it here.

The Sydney Morning Herald is mourning a predictably disappointing end to Poznan, with only a few technical projects agreed:

A CALL-TO-ARMS by former US vice-president Al Gore and a contentious European deal to cut its greenhouse emissions have overshadowed an anti-climactic finale to UN climate talks in Poland.

Critics said the talks made only tentative steps to a new global treaty.

Promised as a stepping stone towards a post-Kyoto climate deal to be signed in Copenhagen next year, the Poznan talks edged towards conclusion yesterday amid accusations that developed nations, including Australia, had blocked progress on greenhouse targets.

As expected, there was no deal on how to share the responsibility of cutting emissions even though developed countries acknowledged that scientists recommended cuts of between 25 and 40 per cent.

Al Gore’s appearance was described by AFP as “breathing fire into the talks”. The journos clearly haven’t seen this picture doing the rounds on the ‘net:

Read it here.

… when in fact it’s anything but. It’s basically a wish-list of issues to be negotiated during 2009, and an unwritten edict to everyone involved to keep their fingers, legs, toes and anything else handy firmly crossed for Copenhagen next year.

The agreement overnight sets the stage for a year-long process revolving around two big issues: who should make the biggest sacrifices on curbing greenhouse gases, and how to beef up support for poor countries exposed to climate change.

The talks in Poznan, Poland ended with a two-day ministerial-level gathering that failed to make any big advance on these core issues.

And why should those “big advances” suddenly be made next year, when the issues involved are exactly the same as in Poznan? Wishful thinking.

Read it here.

Al Gore has added his ever-increasing weight to the hysteria at Poznan claiming that tinkering with a harmless trace gas is the “greatest challenge humankind has ever faced” (ignoring, of course, poverty, clean drinking water, cures for cancer and other terminal diseases), and The Age goes into full arse-lick mode over this peddler of misinformation:

Mr Gore, a Nobel laureate for his crusading work to combat climate change, highlighted steps already being taken to make a case that a new deal was possible by next year’s deadline meeting in Copenhagen.

And, true to form, Gore throws in yet more alarmism:

But he also warned that the predictions of the UN’s climate scientists had now been surpassed, and that deeper cuts in emissions than were currently being considered would be needed. Stabilising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at 450 parts per million – factoring in a temperature rise of about two degrees – would be an incredibly difficult first step but ultimately not enough, he said.

“We will have to toughen that goal to 350 parts per million – we understand that,” he said. Carbon dioxide concentrations are already more than 380 parts per million.

“Very simply put, it is wrong for this generation to destroy the habitability of our planet and ruin the prospects of every future generation,” Mr Gore said.

The predictions of the IPCC didn’t see the current cooling, did they, so how can they possibly be being surpassed? More lies and deception. And no-one is actually sure what the carbon-fuelled gab-fest in Poznan has actually achieved, if anything. The papers are full of stories about the EU deal on emissions, but are strangely silent on Poznan. However, the WWF was a little less than complementary about the EU deal, which was only reached by including rafts of exemptions rendering the deal almost meaningless:

“This is a flagship EU policy with no captain, a mutinous crew and several gaping holes in it,” said Sanjeev Kumar of environment pressure group WWF.

I never thought I’d find myself agreeing with the WWF!

Read it here.