Stating the Obvious Alert: That’s the conclusion of Access Economics, who have said that the cost of taking fast action to “tackle climate change” would be up to 45% higher than taking a slower, more considered approach. This is in stark contrast to the modelling carried out by our own Treasury, which gave Krudd & Co the figures they all wanted to hear and said that it would make virtually no difference. No surprise there, given the Treasury has lost all credibility.

All this of course assumes:

• that reducing emissions in Australia will actually make any difference to atmospheric CO2 levels which, unless the rest of the world (including China, India, the US and the EU) participates as well, it emphatically won’t; and
• that reducing atmospheric CO2 levels will actually have any effect on climate, which is still far from certain despite what Archbishop Gore and the High Church of the IPCC say.

Read it here.

The ABC is on fire today, with two diametrically opposed stories appearing within the space of a few minutes. I wonder if these ABC journos ever actually speak to each other?

Story One:

Canberra scientists say they have proven that the world’s climate is changing faster than ever before.

And Story Two:

Climate change may not be as severe as predicted, suggests an international study that shows current modeling of carbon dioxide emissions from soils are overestimated by as much as 20%.

But hang on, the science is settled, right? The debate’s over, isn’t it?

Read them here, and here.

Some words might help…

Read it here (although they’ll correct it soon no doubt…!)

Despite all the hysteria, an anecdotal report of sea temperatures at Balmoral Beach, Sydney, shows no sign of an increase, says the Sydney Morning Herald:

COME in, swimmer, the water’s wonderful. So says Stephen Wilson, and he should know.

Every day, just after dawn, he wades into the sea off Balmoral beach, takes its temperature and records it in a square of sand, at the foot of the fifth column of the esplanade wall to the left of the Raglan Street steps.

Yesterday’s temperature: 21.2 degrees. “Just right for the early morning regulars,” says Mr Wilson. “They prefer it between, say, 18 and 21. Anything lower is a bit coolish; anything above, the water feels sort of soupy.”
…
A typical summer high would be 24 degrees. The Balmoral figures do not support global warming theories. “In the last few years, the figures seem to be generally lower,” says Mr Wilson.

Ah yes, but James Hansen hasn’t had a chance to massage the figures yet…

Read it here.

The dream of a global agreement in Copenhagen in 2009 is disappearing faster than a cloud of CO2 in a (global-warming-induced) hurricane. China and India unlikely to play ball, the EU is in disarray about its emissions policies, and now Russia is displaying encouraging scepticism of the whole AGW alarmist agenda by putting emissions reductions on the back burner.

“The Russians are now showing a dangerous indifference to the whole issue of climate change because they have this perception they might actually benefit from climate change,” says former British government adviser on environment policy Nick Mabey, who heads E3G, a London-based environmental lobby group and think tank.
…
“Unfortunately, it is a common view within the Russian Government that the whole issue of climate change is important but not urgent,” says Alexey Kokorin, the Moscow-based climate change analyst for international conservation group WWF.

“Instead of seeing threats and dangers, the most important government people here think an open Arctic Ocean will actually be a good thing.“

The Australian then adds its own bit of scaremongering for good measure:

The North Pole may soon be covered in blue waves in summer for the first time in human history. The entire Arctic Ocean has not been free of ice in summer for more than a million years, but analysts believe this could happen again sometime between 2013 and 2040.

Actually, it is likely that the North Pole was ice-free six or seven thousand years ago, without any help from evil capitalist emissions, and sea ice is recovering 30% faster than this time last year. But, as usual, why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

Read it here.

From The Age today:

Headline: Maldives sends mayday signal as seas rise

Climate change will affect the Maldives more than most places. Sea levels in the area have risen by about 20 centimetres in the past century and the UN estimates they will rise 58 centimetres more by 2100.

From The Australian on Wednesday 12 November 2008:

Our research data does not lend support to any such flooding scenario [for the Maldives], however. On the contrary, we find no signs of any ongoing sea-level rise. Our results comes from visits to numerous islands … and includes coring, levelling, sampling and carbon dating.

Present sea level was reached about 4500BC. In the past 4000 years, sea level oscillated around the present. In the past decade, there are no signs of any rise in sea level. Hence, we are able to free the islands from the condemnation to become flooded in the 21st century.

Which do you believe?

The greenie hoards were out in force in Sydney today, with fifteen thousand gathering in Martin Place to protest against global warming. Fifteen thousand sounds quite a lot, but if this really is the most urgent crisis in the history of mankind, out of a city with a population of over 4 million it is an abysmal turnout (less than half of one percent). As usual, The Age delights in the mother-earthiness of the whole event:

Despite grey skies, a colourful crowd showed up in Martin Place Saturday to support the Nature Conservation Council of NSW’s fourth Walk Against Warming march.

Some were dressed as polar bears. Others wore windmills on their backs. Others carried placards of penguins with messages that read: “Don’t build your home on my home”, and “Some like it hot, penguins not“.

Oops! Somebody forgot to tell them that global warming stopped in 2001… oh well, with a bit of luck they will all have copped a good soaking from a passing shower …

Read it here.

Abandoning all sense of impartiality, the idiots at CSIRO are hosting the premiere of a film entitled Telling the Truth, on which I commented when Cate Blanchett attended an earlier premiere (see here).

Just for the record, let’s remind ourselves that this is a film about a number of individuals who have been “personally trained” by Al Gore’s Climate Project. As I said in my earlier post:

The Climate Project is a despicable propaganda machine whose sole purpose is to spread the outright lies Gore tells in AIT. Let’s not forget, Al Gore won’t debate the issues in that film with anyone. Why not? Answers on a postcard.

Today, in the Canberra Times, it appears that CSIRO has taken complete leave of its senses by hosting the “green carpet” premiere of this propaganda film at its Discovery Centre, Black Mountain, a centre supposedly to educate and inform the public, in particular young people, about Australian science and its history.

The majority of An Inconvenient Truth has been shown to be nothing more than scaremongering with no basis in science, and yet CSIRO, our national science research organisation, is happy to show, and associate itself with, a film about the Climate Project, which shamelessly plugs An Inconvenient Truth and the lies and misrepresentations it contains.

Read it here.

Around every corner you’ll find an AGW alarmist. Unfortunately, it is now politically incorrect not to associate oneself with the “greenie” agenda or commit to “saving the planet”, no matter how empty-headed such a commitment is. This PC attitude is now pervading the sports field, as the Manly Sea Eagles NRL team announces how proud it is to be sponsored by a green company, Quantum Energy Technologies:

The Sea Eagles said they were proud to be the first NRL team to be sponsored by a “green” company as Quantum specialises in renewable hot water and pool heating systems.

“At a time of much financial gloom it is refreshing that the code and the Sea Eagles in particular can clinch such a significant financial partner,” said Manly chief executive Grant Mayer.
…
“It is a tremendous fit for the club and also makes a statement that we take the issue of climate change seriously“.

Read it here.

Here’s an article that goes to show the lengths that alarmist UN will go to in order to keep the AGW bandwagon rolling, as reported in The Australian:

A THICK brown cloud of soot, particles and chemicals stretching from the Persian Gulf to Asia threatens the world’s health and food supplies, the UN said yesterday, describing it as the newest threat from global warming.

These “brown clouds,” caused by the burning of fossil fuels, wood and plants, play a significant role in exacerbating the effects of greenhouse gases in warming up the Earth’s atmosphere, the report said.

“Imagine for a moment a 3km-thick band of soot, particles, a cocktail of chemicals that stretches from the Arabic Peninsula to Asia,” said Achim Steiner, UN undersecretary general and executive director of the UN program.

We’ll skate over the fact that “global warming” stopped in 2001… But these brown clouds are very cunning, because not only do they make global warming worse, they also slow it down – miraculously both at the same time. And there was me thinking it was just the natural climate cycles demonstrating once and for all that anthropogenic CO2 has little effect on global temperature. Silly me. Of course, global warming is still rampaging through the planet, it’s just that its effects are being hidden by the brown clouds.

The phenomenon complicates the climate change scenario globally because the brown clouds also help cool the Earth’s surface and “masks” the impact of global warming by an average of 40 per cent, the study said.

The ever impartial and totally un-political UN is now clutching at straws to explain why the planet simply won’t co-operate and warm up like an oven as the projections of the IPCC’s hopelessly incomplete and simplistic climate models say it should.

All of which leads to the inevitable conclusion, namely that we should “do something, quick”:

“All of this points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet because this is where the stories are linked in terms of greenhouse emissions and particle emissions and the impact that they’re having on our global climate.”

If the science of global warming is so settled, as we are continually told, why does this kind of story come as such a surprise to everybody? Put bluntly, it simply rams home the point that the science is far from settled, the debate ain’t over, and in fact the climate is even less understood than we suspected. Even the UN, with its band of alarmist scientists, doesn’t really have a clue what is going on in the atmosphere.

Read it here.