More from the UN chief who thinks we should all return to the Dark Ages in order to “tackle climate change”, in this article gleefully printed in the Herald, and co-authored by the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark.

Tusk’s inclusion is the most bizarre, as he is vehemently against the whole emissions trading nonsense being proposed in the EU (see here) – maybe he just checked the spelling.

We do not need to await the arrival of new technologies, nor need we worry excessively about the costs of taking action. Studies show that the United States could cut carbon emissions significantly at low or near-zero cost, using existing know-how. For evidence, consider how Denmark has invested heavily in green growth. Since 1980, GDP increased 78 per cent with only minimal increases in energy consumption. For businesses, such savings translate into profits. Today, for example, European companies in the green tech sector enjoy substantial “first mover” advantages, accounting for one-third of the world’s burgeoning market in environmental technologies.

With the right policies and financial incentives – within a global framework – we can steer economic growth in a low-carbon direction. With the right policies and the right incentives, we can be sure that developed and developing countries alike contribute to the cause of fighting global warming, each in their own way and without compromising every nation’s right to development and the economic well-being of its citizens.

“Low or near zero cost” to cut emissions in the US? “Fighting global warming” (which stopped in 2001)? Who are they kidding?

Read it and weep.

This is news? Apparently, if you’re the environment editor of The Age. The article features yet another “climate change” doco, spruiked by Oxfam, Sisters of the Planet, which features Helen Henry:

Her story started after the 32-year-old Hamilton mother wrote of her fear that her children may never enjoy the natural beauty of their region due to climate change. Her letter made the front page of the Hamilton Spectator, imploring anyone who was interested to come to a meeting. “I didn’t expect any more than one or two people, so when 30 to 40 turned up, from all walks of life, it restored my faith in humanity,” Ms Henry said.
…
After seeing Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, Ms Henry became a follower of the former US vice-president, hosting seminars to audiences that included children, councillors and farmers.

There’s one born every minute.

Read it here.

The Australian reports that the chorus of dissenting voices is growing stronger, and now includes two State premiers:

The premiers of South Australia and Tasmania have written to the Prime Minister raising specific concerns about the design of the scheme, its impact on major industries and expressing fears that the ETS will spark major losses of jobs and revenue.

Queensland, Victoria and the West Australian Liberal Government have raised concerns about the effects on emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries.

The concerns come as one of the world’s largest petroleum companies warned that a $7billion gas project could literally be floated out of Australian waters to avoid the impact of the Government’s ETS.

But Penny Wong is undeterred.

Senator Wong attempted to hose down concerns about Nyrstar and other trade-exposed companies, saying consultation on the scheme was still continuing.

“The Government has considered and will continue to consider the views put to us by industry and by state governments,” Senator Wong said. She has also been pressured from those within her party to change the ETS compensation formula.

She’ll listen patiently, and then carry on exactly as before.

Read it here.

As always, a great read.

The only people that don’t seem to recognise this are Krudd & Co, the Treasury, Ross Garnaut, and all their various associated hangers-on. Everyone else realises that it’s economic suicide wrapped up in nice green eco-friendly bio-degradable paper. It hasn’t even come into force yet, but its effects are already becoming apparent:

The chief executive officer of Nyrstar smelter operations, Greg McMillan, says more than 3,000 jobs are at stake if the Federal Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme goes ahead.

He says the scheme will force the closure of smelters in Port Pirie and Hobart by wiping out their profits.

Mr McMillan says the scheme is futile if other countries such as China and India pick up Nyrstar’s business.

“There’s a cloud hanging over the future of those businesses and that’s very difficult because combine those businesses [and] they export $2 billion a year in exports,” he said.

“They’re the best part of 3,250 jobs and the best part of $200 million worth of wages.”

And this is just one company. Message to Kevin Rudd: Hello? Testing, testing?

Read it here.

UPDATE: The Tasmanian premier David Bartlett is the first Labor politician to come out openly against Krudd & Co’s ETS. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Mr Bartlett said he would fight to keep the Hobart smelter open.

“I think at the moment, in the Green Paper, (Climate Change Minister) Penny Wong and (Prime Minister) Kevin Rudd have got it wrong,” Mr Bartlett told the Tasmanian parliament.

“They have it wrong because they are penalising companies such as Nyrstar.”

And Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt also said the ETS needed overhauling:

“The government’s plan will drive up unemployment and it will also drive up global emissions by sending Australian jobs overseas,” he said.

Hopefully Mr Bartlett won’t be the first Labor politician to stand up against the nonsense that is the erroneously named “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”.

Read it here.

Random scientist, desperate for publicity, releases ridiculous story about how man-made CO2 emissions will prevent the next Ice Age, and AFP is dumb enough to publish it (The Australian was also dumb enough to publish it, however, which is not a good sign for the only vaguely non-alarmist rag in Australia). Guess what, it’s based on a computer model – you know, just like the IPCC models that accurately failed to predict the last 10 years of cooling:

According to the model, published in the British journal Nature by Crowley and physicist William Hyde of Toronto University, Canada, the next “bifurcation” would normally be due between 10,000 and 100,000 years from now.

The chill would induce a long, stable period of glaciation in the mid-latitudes, smothering Europe, Asia and North America to about 45-50 degrees latitude with a thick sheet of ice.

However, there is now so much CO2 in the air, as a result of fossil-fuel burning and deforestation, that this adds a heat-trapping greenhouse effect that will offset the cooling impacts of orbital shift, said Crowley.

And the moonbats at AFP conclude:

Last year, the UN’s Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said greenhouse-gas emissions were already inflicting visible changes to the climate system, especially on ice and snow.

Left unchecked, climate change could inflict widespread drought and flooding by the end of the century, translating into hunger, homelessness and other stresses for millions of people.

I guess “other stresses” means having to read top-quality BS like this all day.

And you too can read it here.

… is to get warming loony Ross Garnaut, Professor David “only way to cool the earth is to be hit by a freaking great asteroid which destroys all of civilisation” Karoly, and oh-so-impartial Tony Jones in the Lateline studio. Laughable, if it weren’t so tragic.

Read Andrew Bolt’s take on it here, and the transcript here.

Being a “sceptic” can be hard work sometimes – reporting scaremongering article after scaremongering article, discussing bad science after more bad science, suffering the rantings of hysterical greens after the rantings of more hysterical greens, considering the acts of incompetent governments after the acts of more incompetent governments.

So it’s a bit of a relief to be able to point you to an article by Bob Carter in Quadrant Magazine that restores one’s sanity a bit.

Enjoy.

It seems that many sensible organisations have been infected with the scaremonger virus. The latest is the IEA, which is forecasting 6 degree temperature rises by 2100, reports The Australian, doubtless without a shred of credible evidence to support it (other than some “garbage in, garbage out” model, of course).

In its 2008 World Energy Outlook, the IEA said that if present trends continued, greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas “would be driven up inexorably”, putting the world on track for a doubling in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by the end of the century.

And any story like this gives the enviro-hippies the opportunity to bang on about the new utopian economy:

Environmental campaigners, such as Robin Webster, of Friends of the Earth, welcomed the IEA’s call for an “energy revolution” to address climate change, claiming that it could provide economic benefits through the creation of new “green-collar” jobs.

Read it here.

… who starts the interview by calling Plimer a “heretic” – an open goal on her part, as it allows Plimer to brand climate change a religion in the first sentence! One-nil.

Read the transcript here (where you can also watch the video).

(via Jennifer Marohasy)