This will really put the cat among the blinkered alarmist pigeons of the EU. Vaclav Klaus, Czech president and noted AGW sceptic, is due to take over the rotating presidency of the EU, and the New York Times cannot resist taking cheap ad hominem pot shots (thanks to Andrew Bolt):

In the 1980s, a Communist secret police agent infiltrated clandestine economics seminars hosted by Vaclav Klaus, a fiery future leader of the Czech Republic, who had come under suspicion for extolling free market virtues. Rather than reporting on Marxist heresy, the agent was most struck by Mr. Klaus’s now famous arrogance.

“His behavior and attitudes reveal that he feels like a rejected genius,” the agent noted in his report, which has since been made public. “He shows that whoever does not agree with his views is stupid and incompetent.”

Decades later, Mr. Klaus, the 67-year-old president of the Czech Republic — an iconoclast with a perfectly clipped mustache — continues to provoke strong reactions. He has blamed what he calls the misguided fight against global warming for contributing to the international financial crisis, branded Al Gore an “apostle of arrogance” for his role in that fight, and accused the European Union of acting like a Communist state.

At least the last couple of lines are right. And it doesn’t stop there. The NYT digs up anybody they can find to slag off Mr Klaus:

But Mr. Klaus’s sheer will and inflammatory talk — the eminent British historian Timothy Garton Ash once called him “one of the rudest men I have ever met” — are likely to have some impact.

“Klaus is a provocateur who will twist his arguments to get attention,” said Jiri Pehe, a former adviser to Vaclav Havel, Mr. Klaus’s rival and predecessor as president.

To supporters, Mr. Klaus is a brave, lone crusader, a defender of liberty, the only European leader in the mold of the formidable Margaret Thatcher. (Aides say Mr. Klaus has a photo of the former British prime minister in his office near his desk.)

To his many critics, he is a cynical populist, a hardheaded pragmatist long known as a foil to Mr. Havel, the philosopher-dreamer, and a troublemaker.

Successful character assassination complete, I think. And finally, this gem:

Mr. Klaus declined to be interviewed for this article. His office called a list of proposed questions “peculiar.”

Now there’s a surprise.

Read it here.

Of course, weather isn’t climate, as we all know, but anecdotally it is hard to avoid the fact that there is a lot of cold weather about right now. From the Lithgow Mercury:

We know that Summer, at least according to the calendar, is only a week away. But across the Tablelands and much of eastern NSW at the weekend it might as well have been mid Winter.

In fact there were very few occasions during the official Winter when the weather was as severe as during the freakish conditions at the weekend.

The predicted cold front moving in from a deep depression off Victoria reached the Blue Mountains-Lithgow area early on Friday night, sending temperatures plunging and rapidly worsening.

On Saturday the Lithgow area had just about everything from the Winter weather book — gale force winds, sleet, snow showers, rain and single digit temperatures that were aggravated by the wind chill factor.

Read it here.

The Australian reprints an article originally published in the UK Daily Mail. If you missed it the first time (here) it’s well worth a read (link).

Bjørn Lomborg skillfully skewers the dumb argument that a “green economy” is the panacea for the world’s ills:

Many green pundits have, however, started saying that the financial crisis only makes the need for action on climate change greater. They urge US president-elect Barack Obama to pursue a “green revolution” with big investments in renewable energy, arguing that this could create millions of new “green collar” jobs and open huge new markets.

Unsurprisingly, such sentiments are strongly voiced by business leaders who live off such subsidies. But are such pleas smart investments for society?

The problem with the green revolution argument is that it doesn’t trouble itself about efficiency. It is most often lauded for supplying new jobs. But billions of dollars in tax subsidies would create plenty of new jobs in almost any sector: the point is that many less capital-intensive sectors would create many more jobs for a given investment of taxpayers’ money.
…
President-elect Obama is now facing countless people who claim that subsidies for renewable energy and CO2 taxes are great ways to tackle global warming and forge a new green economy. Unfortunately, this is almost entirely incorrect. Taxes and subsidies are always expensive, and will likely impede growth. Moreover, if we really want to tackle global warming, we shouldn’t spend vast sums of money buying inefficient green technology. We should invest directly in R&D to make future green technology competitive.

Read it all here.

But that’s what he did in a speech at the National Press Club, as reported in the Herald Sun.

Mr Turnbull’s speech coincided with the first anniversary of Labor’s election win over the previous coalition government, which held power under John Howard for more than 11 years.

Mr Turnbull praised Mr Rudd for making a national apology to indigenous people and for ratifying the Kyoto protocol on climate change.

Odd that Malcolm Turnbull thinks it right to praise someone for an empty political gesture which achieved nothing.

Read it here.

The ABC exhumes a tedious old cliché from the alarmists’ handbook – the threat of increasing disease.

The head of the Public Health Association, Michael Moore, says emissions must by reduced by at least 20 per cent by 2020 to minimise disease, depression and health costs.

“What we’re really concerned about is if the Government doesn’t go for those bold emissions targets, we will see a significant spread of vector borne diseases like malaria, dengue fever, like ross river fever – we’re already seeing some of it,” Mr Moore said.

Well, the increase you speak of can’t be caused by global warming, because there hasn’t been any for nearly a decade… yawn.

Read it here.

Another scaremongering article in The Age this morning, about how “global warming” could have a “devastating” effect on “hundreds of millions” of people in the Asia-Pacific region. But at least Allan Behm, a political risk and strategy consultant, has a sense of humour:

Despite calls in recent years for Australia to take a lead in working with regional governments, progress had been glacial, he said.

Does that mean “moving slowly”, or “disappearing fast”… ?

Read it here.

From The Daily Telegraph columnist Piers Ackerman, who rains on Rudd’s 1st anniversary parade:

A year in office and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s pre-election agenda is in tatters.

Australian schoolchildren don’t have their promised computers, FuelWatch is dead, GroceryWatch is dying and the states are not enjoying a new spirit of co-operation.

Signing Kyoto has done nothing but underscore the certainty that Labor’s insistence climate change is man-made will increase unemployment beyond the levels expected from the global financial mess.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s modelling, on which the overblown, apocalyptic Garnaut report is based, has been shot to pieces.

And the Treasury modelling on which the Government has based its planned emissions-trading scheme doesn’t take into account the current economic situation.

Read it here.

Glad to see that Rudd’s still obsessed with controlling the climate, despite the world entering a recession the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1920s. He has chosen the APEC conference to pontificate on climate change, as if the last 8 years of global cooling have completely escaped him:

“Some have said that the financial crisis means that governments should postpone acting on climate change, but the Australian government does not share that view,” he said.

“Climate change represents a very real threat to global economic growth, jobs and prosperity…taking strong and urgent action will help safeguard economic and environmental stability.” Mr Rudd said.

No, Mr Rudd, the only threat to economic growth, jobs and prosperity is your crazy and ill-conceived ETS, and all other similar emissions schemes hastily being enacted throughout the world.

Read it here.

As Andrew Bolt puts it:

How to push the warming scare. First, pick a loved icon and hold a gun to its head.

The Sydney Moonbat Herald chooses the koala, and claims that “climate change” will cause the cute cuddly koalas to die in greater numbers.

Dan Lunney told a conference of the NSW Nature Conservation Council that rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere would push up toxins and lower nutrients in eucalyptus leaves.

As leaf quality dropped and bush fires intensified, koalas would be forced to roam further afield as they foraged for food in shrinking bushland surrounded by farms, housing developments and logging operations.

Koalas, like many other animals, have clearly adapted perfectly well to “climate change” in the past (when it couldn’t possibly be due to the evil emissions of unregulated capitalism), including periods of significantly lower temperatures, which would have made life far more difficult than the gentle warming we have experienced since the end of the Little Ice Age.

But this is the Herald we’re talking about, so unless there’s an alarmist angle, it won’t get printed.

Read it here.