It’s inevitable, I suppose, that our predominantly left-wing educationalists will try to sneak “climate change” into the school curriculum, indoctrinating our future generations with a “watermelon” agenda (green on the outside, red on the inside), and telling them what to think, rather than how to think.

SCIENCE classes will be revamped to place more emphasis on contemporary topics such as climate change, stem cell research and hybrid cars under proposed changes to the school curriculum.

Heaven help us. Read it here.

The business community is becoming increasingly concerned that the introduction of an ETS in 2010 will damage the economy, yet Rudd & Co are determined to press on with their misguided plans.

“The current financial crisis does not lessen the need for the nations of the world to deal with climate change,” Senator [Penny] Wong told ABC Radio today.

However, Woodside Chief Executive Don Voelte was slightly more blunt:

“Heck, I think it’s off the table right now,” he told ABC Radio.

“You can’t put something like that in at this time until we get this whole fiscal chaos that is going on in the world straightened out.”

Sadly, the Australian Industry Group are not exactly standing up for business interests with a lukewarm agreement to a start in 2010:

“If we start sensibly, if we start cautiously, maybe we can learn how to operate in this new environment and the risks will be reduced.”

Not exactly what business leaders would want to hear.

Read it here.

Interesting results from two surveys released today. The first, from News.com.au, informs us that:

ONE in five Australians believe it is too late to save polar bears from extinction – and experts are not much more optimistic.
…
A survey of 1122 news.com.au readers found that 20.4 per cent of people believed polar bears were doomed.

And yet on the other hand, also on News.com.au:

ALMOST half of Australians believe the signing of the Kyoto Protocol – a cornerstone of Kevin Rudd’s election campaign – was a waste of time.

But then again, in the same article, News.com.au can barely conceal its glee that:

A whopping [love the adjective – Ed] 73 per cent of respondents to a news.com.au survey, conducted by CoreData, also said the Rudd Government was not doing enough or could be doing more to combat climate change.

So, on the one hand, Kyoto was a waste of time, but on the other, the Government’s not doing enough? We can, however, deduce that there is an element of the cute/cuddle factor at work here. The polar bear has become an icon for eco-warriors everywhere, and whether numbers are in fact going up or down, the public will assuage their collective guilt by crying mea culpa. This response is further reinforced by the fact that Australians apparently are more concerned about saving koalas (cute/cuddly – 37%) than emus (ugly/lanky – 4%).

All this coverage unfortunately gives ample opportunity for Penny Wong to spout more of her standard issue claptrap. “Carbon Pollution” alert:

“Our plan to tackle climate change has three pillars: reducing carbon pollution, helping to shape a global solution, and adapting to the climate change we can’t avoid.”

Lastly, there is an interesting gender gap on the issue of whether there was enough evidence to link human activity to climate change: men – 54%, women – 85%. Any suggestions?

One thing these surveys do demonstrate is that the Australian public are thoroughly confused by the issues – not surprising since they are being fed a diet of alarmist propaganda through the media and government – many people suspect that there’s more going on than meets the eye, but they are not sure what. Let’s hope they try to find out.

Read it here and here.

OK – listen up, all you deniers and sceptics out there. I happen to know the true reason that you can’t accept that climate change is real and caused by us humans. It’s not because the IPCC is a horribly corrupted political body spewing out dodgy evidence to support pre-conceived conclusions, or that temperatures have fallen since 2001 despite a significant rise in CO2, or that there’s no tell-tale signature hot spot above the tropics, or because you might be a little suspicious when anyone tells you the “science is settled” and therefore we don’t need to discuss is anymore so off you go and play in the sand pit. No, it’s none of these things: it’s because your poor little brains cannot deal with the psychological consequences of acceptance.

So, in order to help you all out, some kindly fellow at celsias.com (no, I hadn’t heard of it either), and thanks to Tom Nelson for the link, has prepared a step-by-step guide to coming out of the sceptical closet and embracing AGW. Highlights include:

• Al Gore – the real, caring man behind that pasty slab of a face
• “Dr Pachauri, or How I learned to stop worrying and love the IPCC” (with apologies to Stanley Kubrick)
• Everything you always wanted to know about hockey sticks
• Mantra: Every day and in every way, the Medieval Warm Period is getting smaller and smaller
• Kangaroo ain’t all that bad (optional session for Aussie readers)

Sign up now, before it’s too late!

Here Down Under we can’t compete with the lunacy they churn out in the UK – we’re just amateurs by comparison. Anyway, here’s some more barking mad predictions from some group called the Forum for the Future:

Climate change will force refugees to move to Antarctica by 2030, researchers have predicted. Among future scenarios are the Olympics being held in cyberspace and central Australia being abandoned, according to the think tank report.

As the world fails to act on climate change, researchers predict that global trade will collapse as oil prices break through $400 a barrel and electrical appliances will get automatically turned off when households exceed energy quotas.

Australia and Oklahoma will be abandoned because of water shortages and athletes will stay at home in the world’s first virtual Olympics, competing against each other in virtual space with billions of spectators.

All I can say is, whatever our Forum of the Future guy was on when he came up with all that, I want some too. But here’s the cop-out at the end:

He said the crystal ball survey did not seek to project what was most likely to happen, just some of the possibilities.

So in fact, it’s all just steaming BS portrayed as fact. Read it here.

Prof Garnaut is in the news again, this time reminding everyone that the current financial meltdown is no excuse for delaying Australia’s tinkering with a harmless trace gas in the atmosphere (in order to make a hopeless political gesture towards averting “climate change”):

“The financial crisis does not materially reduce the magnitude, or the urgency of the mitigation task, nor does it create a sound reason for delaying mitigation,” he said.

Thanks Prof – don’t call us…

Read it here.

A typically incisive piece in the Daily Telegraph from that entertaining columnist Piers Ackerman, in which he exposes Rudd and Swan as politicians hopelessly out of their depth in government:

Rudd tries to look grave and prime ministerial, and Swan does his best to look comfortable in meetings with international economic boffins, but both fail. They don’t look natural. They look as if they’re acting and, increasingly rapidly, the wider electorate is starting to see what too few saw before last November’s election.
…
Labor’s problem is it’s not just the economic times denting its popularity, it’s the lack of plausible leadership.

Ackerman queries why the electorate should believe Rudd & Co on the economy when they have set in motion policies that will increase unemployment and damage economic prospects, in particular the ETS:

[Rudd] and Climate Minister Penny Wong persist in their bizarre claim that not doing anything about climate change is going to cost more than doing something, even though Treasury documents quietly released on the Friday before the recent long weekend clearly show that Rudd’s emissions reduction plans will damage the GDP and create further unemployment.

And he sums up the government’s problems succinctly:

But at the heart of the Rudd Government is a great emptiness, a void between the rhetoric and the reality, the empathy and the action.
…
Eleven months on, Australians have confidence in themselves but every reason to have no confidence in the Rudd Government.

Read it here.

Congratulations go to Professor Andrew Griffiths of the University of Queensland Business School who has today been awarded the “ACM Idiotic Comment of the Day” gong for linking “climate change” to increased extreme weather events.

“As we move into a climate changing world, a lot of this is about the impact the environment can have on their company.

In case you hadn’t noticed, it has always been a “climate changing world”, and it always will be…

Professor Griffiths said extreme weather events such as Australia’s 2006 Cyclone Larry or last month’s Hurricane Ike, which narrowly avoided Houston in the US, had the capacity to devastate entire economies.

Read it here. UPDATE – and also here.

An Honest Climate Debate posts a link to an article in the UK Independent, a left-leaning newspaper that has no time for deniers and sceptics, but which has grudgingly published a series of short articles by a number of high profile individuals who question the dogma of “climate change”. Of course, the articles themselves are packaged in the usual condescending wrapping:

Should we give their opinions the time of day? Whether you agree or not (and chances are you won’t), the climate-change sceptics have no intention of shutting up.

Dead right, mate. And of course, if by any chance after reading the articles you are suffering from pangs of guilt because some of the points made are, you know, maybe a little bit valid, and yes, I can sort of agree with that, kind of, the Indy is there at the end to shake you out of it by reminding you of the “science”:

The other side of the story: Global warming in numbers

2-3ºC is the potential rise in the Earth’s temperature by 2100. Such an increase would be the most dramatic for 10,000 years (source: the IPPC)

11 out of the past 13 years rank among the warmest since records began (source: World Meteorological Organization, December 2007)

2035 is the year by which the Himalayan glaciers are likely to disappear (source: http://www.dfid.gov.uk)

Two-thirds of the world’s population could be suffering from global-warming-induced water shortages by 2025 (source: http://www.dfid.gov.uk)

94 million people in Asia will be at risk of flooding by 2100, based on current sea-level rises (source: http://www.dfid.gov.uk)

35 per cent is the proportion by which CO2 levels are greater now than they have been at any other time over the past 65,000 years (source: The Royal Society)

In case you’re worried by this, just look at the sources: IPCC, OK next; DFID is the UK Government’s Department for International Development, whose area of policy is aid to third world countries and has nothing whatsoever to do with climate science; WMO, records began after the Medieval Warm Period and the Holocene Climate Optimum; The Royal Society – widely ridiculed in the scientific community after its president claimed the debate on climate change was over (like a previous president stated heavier than air flight was impossible).

Read it here.

One minute, Malcolm Turnbull seems to be heading in the right direction on climate issues (see here), and the next, he’s done a complete U-turn, launching a “searing” attack on John Howard for his “hardline” stance on climate change and for failing to sign up to Kyoto.

“What the former government failed to recognise was that Kyoto had become a sacramental issue. It had become a very symbolic issue,” he told The Courier-Mail.

Symbolic maybe, but still pointless.

But Mr Turnbull’s attack on John Howard’s climate change legacy could spark anger among Coalition frontbenchers – especially climate change sceptics like Opposition Senate leader Nick Minchin.

The Opposition needs to have the courage of its convictions, stand up in the face of the inevitable shrill cries of “denier” and “sceptic” that will come from the Government, and call for a full and frank debate on the issue of “climate change” and Australia’s response to it. Rudd, Wong and everyone else at Rudd & Co are completely in thrall to the IPCC and whatever they say (hey, Kev, is it 2500 scientists or 4000 this week? Or maybe 10,000?) and want to shut down the debate, so it is up to the Opposition to take a stand.

Read it here.