Gardeners beware, climate change will mean your backyards overrun with creepers, runners, triffid-like vegetation… well, maybe not, but a conference in Launceston has heard that the Tasmanian State Government needs to spend more on preventing the spread of weeds “as temperature increases.”

“If you think of national parks, the edges are often really disturbed now if you have climate change disturbing vegetation over a broad scale a lot of plants like gorse they’re just going to move straight in to national parks and your weed problems are going to explode.“

Don’t forget, you heard it here first. Source.

From Jennifer’s blog:

Stewart Franks, Bob Carter and I gave a presentation at Parliament House on Monday evening on Climate Change. Professor Carter focused on global temperatures, I followed with some rainfall graphs for different parts of Australia, and then Associate Professor Franks explained why rainfall along the east coast of Australia is so variable and dominated by either El Nina or La Nina cycles back at least as far as 1660.

Let’s hope the pollies had their ears open and their brains engaged. Read the rest here.

Not great timing for our local scientific and industrial research organisation, CSIRO, to support Ross Garnaut’s barking mad plan to abandon sheep and cattle and farm kangaroo instead, given that “climate change” will wipe out most of our roos anyway (see here). Still, they start the piece with some quality BS:

As Australians become more concerned about climate change, sustainability and loss of social cohesion, many are seeking more environmentally friendly, community-based alternative lifestyles such as those offered by rural and urban ecovillages.

Are you kidding? We’re all worrying whether our savings, or houses, or super funds will be there in the morning. We couldn’t give a kangaroo’s for climate change right now. Read the press release here.

Desperation Alert: I’m really tired of writing posts about Climate Penny, but when she continues to spout such claptrap, I really have no option. The Age (who else) quotes our Pen as saying that Australia has a “moral duty” to tackle climate change. Again, speaking at the LSE:

“There is a moral and personal dimension to this debate,” she said.

“Ultimately, we are not doing this only for ourselves.

“We have a responsibility to future generations to tackle climate change while we can.”

It was now more urgent than ever to act on climate change.

I suppose if the earth is cooling and more and more scientists (and the general public) are questioning whether anthropogenic CO2 has any effect on climate, Wong’s justifications for pushing ahead regardless will have to get more desperate with time. Watch this space for more desperate reasons why we must “tackle climate change”.

Read it here.

Following on from Andrew Bolt’s post yesterday, Watts Up With That? has the full story, and comments:

There is no mention of this on the [US] National Snow and Ice Data Center sea ice news webpage, which has been trumpeting every loss and low for the past two years…not a peep. You’d think this would be big news.

Doesn’t surprise me, sadly. Read it here.

Slightly off topic, but it’s so refreshing when a Labor Prime Minister slips back into the old politics of envy, and reveals his true colours (bright red).

“What we have seen is the comprehensive failure of extreme capitalism – extreme capitalism which now turns to government to prevent systemic failure. The [same] institutions of government that extreme capitalism spent decades deriding,” he said.

Let’s remind ourselves – Rudd, like all in his government, are not just watered down Liberals, they are old-fashioned copper-bottomed socialists at heart and cannot resist the temptation to have a go at the market economy when they have a chance. Let’s hope Rudd is a one-term government.

Read it here.

Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun (thanks to Tom Nelson) discusses the recent Canadian election in which Conservative Stephen Harper won on an anti-carbon tax agenda. The Canadian Press:

The Conservatives attacked Liberal Leader Stephane Dion during the election campaign over his proposed carbon tax on fossil fuels, offset by income-tax reductions and special energy tax credits for the poor. So it’s hard to imagine Stephen Harper’s Tories ever adopting a policy he claimed would destroy Canada’s economy.

As Andrew says: Malcolm Turnbull, are you watching?

The Daily Bayonet also has a great post on this topic: “Carbon Taxes Lose Elections” – read it here.

Read Andrew Bolt’s post here.

AGL is merely stating the obvious, but the sooner the public becomes fully aware of this the better.

The emissions trading plan – the central plank of the Rudd Government’s environmental agenda – will have a “material impact” on AGL’s cost structure and those of other energy suppliers, the company’s chairman, Mark Johnson, warned shareholders yesterday.

All of which costs will be passed on to us, the long-suffering Aussie public.

Read it here.

Just when we were all getting used to the idea of “Skippy and Chips” in Garnaut’s post-climate change world, it transpires that the kangaroo population could be devastated by… wait for it… climate change. You really can’t make this stuff up.

A temperature rise of 2 degrees, which is likely by the second half of this century, would reduce the range of most kangaroo and wallaby species by half, the James Cook University study found.

However, the author of the study, Dr Euan Ritchie, was careful not to tread on Garnaut’s delicate toes:

Dr Ritchie said the study findings did not rule out the expansion of kangaroo farming.

I would like to see how farmers, resourceful as they are, would successfully profit from an extinct animal…

Read it here.

It’s so overwhelming – hundreds of articles about Penny Wong, and in each of them she’s spouting rubbish. It’s so difficult to choose… Anyway, Climate Penny, who has been on a carbon-fuelled jolly around Europe, has been speaking to students at the London School of Economics:

Australia will make money from its firm commitment to cut greenhouse gases and also by being quick to establish a carbon trading scheme, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has predicted.

There’s that same, utterly spurious, argument again about making money from climate change (whilst at the same time throwing billions of dollars down the drain). And perish the thought that we should wait and see what other countries decide to do…

Acknowledging Australia had an ”obvious need to make up lost ground”, she said, ”there is a deeper logic driving our ambition to have the carbon pollution reduction scheme up and running in 2010.

”It is a logic built on the Australian Government’s recognition that … it will be the countries that have moved to implement climate change reforms that will be best placed to deal with the global carbon constraint.”

“Make up lost ground”? In comparison to whom – New Zealand? Please explain. Read it here.