EU proposal to bind itself to 30% cuts by 2020

16 March, 2010 by

What the EU has been doing?

And the precondition for an international agreement is gone. What are the EU smoking? Whatever it is, it has so addled their collective brains that they are prepared to sacrifice the economies of dozens of countries, force energy bills through the roof, and send millions of jobs offshore just to pander to the enviro-extremists. But hang on, it’s all OK, because that kick in the guts to the EU economy will create thousands of “green jobs” – yeah, like I was born yesterday:

The [UK] Government will today support a proposal tabled in Brussels for a new, much more onerous EU target for cutting carbon dioxide even though other nations with higher emissions have failed to commit to reciprocal action.

Ministers have abandoned their previous condition that the world must agree a legally binding treaty on emissions before the EU commits to a tougher target.

The EU has already gone farther than the rest of the world by making a legally binding commitment to cut emissions by 20 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020. It is now preparing to raise the target to 30 per cent despite the failure of December’s climate change summit in Copenhagen.

By contrast, the US is debating whether to cut emissions by 4 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020 but is unlikely to make a decision this year.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has calculated the cost to Britain of its contribution to the 30 per cent target but is refusing to publish the research.

A European Commission policy document, being debated today by EU environment ministers, says the EU should adopt the 30 per cent target “if the conditions are right”.

The EU had previously said it would only adopt the higher target “if an international agreement on emissions reductions is secured”.

I can’t believe what my home country has come to: Fool Britannia.

Read it here. (h/t EU Referendum)

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McGauran: CSIRO is "political puppet"

16 March, 2010 by

Gloves off

Following on from our story yesterday, Liberal Senator Julian McGauran takes CSIRO to task for parrotting the government’s climate change agenda:

Senator McGauran says the organisation has been stripped of its independence and is doing the bidding of the Minister for Science, Kim Carr.

“Minister Carr without doubt has wandered through the CSIRO offices, intimidating the scientists and the executive to do as they’re told,” he said.

“This is now a political organisation. The executive have become compliant to the minister, utterly.” (source)

The rest of the ABC article is just the typical mish-mash of pro-Labor spin, and vacuous ad hominems from Carr. Actually, CSIRO probably don’t need any intimidation from Carr – they’re all fully paid up alarmists anyhoo.

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UK government ads "exaggerated global warming"

15 March, 2010 by

Giving kids nightmares

Really? Why would they do that? Maybe because as the generally intelligent British public becomes more fed up with having the wool pulled over its eyes, that the government has to spin and mislead even more to keep the message going:

Two nursery rhyme adverts commissioned by the Government to raise awareness of climate change have been banned for overstating the risks.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that the adverts – which were based on the children’s poems Jack and Jill and Rub-A-Dub-Dub – made exaggerated claims about the threat to Britain from global warming.

In definitely asserting that climate change would cause flooding and drought the adverts went beyond mainstream scientific consensus, the watchdog said.

It noted that predictions about the potential global impact of global warming made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “involved uncertainties” that the adverts failed to reflect.

The two posters created on behalf of the Department of Energy and Climate Change juxtaposed adapted extracts from the nursery rhymes with prose warnings about the dangers of global warning.

One began: “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought.” Beneath was written: “Extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense.”

The second advert read: “Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub — a necessary course of action due to flash flooding caused by climate change.” It was captioned: “Climate change is happening. Temperature and sea levels are rising. Extreme weather events such as storms, floods and heat waves will become more frequent and intense. If we carry on at this rate, life in 25 years could be very different.”

Upholding complaints from members of the public, the ASA said that in both instances the text accompanying the rhymes should have been couched in softer language.

After the UK government’s despicable “bedtime story” advert, now they are defiling nursery rhymes in order to advance their extreme green agenda. Nothing is sacred to these people.

And this week’s best “yeah, right” moment:

Ed Miliband promised to better reflect scientific uncertainty about global warming in future campaigns.

My aching sides, I think not.

Read it here.

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CSIRO: climate change is "beyond doubt"

15 March, 2010 by

No-one's listening

The alarmists are hitting back, with more scary headlines from our national, taxpayer-funded AGW advocacy group, sorry, independent scientific organisation, which the ABC gleefully trumpets on AM this morning:

The head of Australia’s peak science body has spoken out in defence of climate scientists, saying the link between human activity and climate change is beyond doubt.

The head of the CSIRO, Dr Megan Clark, says the evidence of global warming is unquestionable, and in Australia it is backed by years of robust research.

Dr Clark says climate records are being broken every decade and all parts of the nation are warming.

“We are seeing significant evidence of a changing climate,” she said.

“If we just take our temperature, all of Australia has experienced warming over the last 50 years. We are warming in every part of the country during every season and as each decade goes by, the records are being broken.

Yep, agree with all of that. The world is indeed warming. So what about the cause? Solar fluctuations? Recovery from the Little Ice Age? ENSO? Cosmic ray cloud modulation? No, none of those of course:

Dr Clark says the evidence strongly suggests human activity is responsible for the rise.

“We know two things. We know that our CO2 has never risen so quickly. We are now starting to see CO2 and methane in the atmosphere at levels that we just haven’t seen for the past 800,000 years, possibly even 20 million years,” she said.

“We also know that that rapid increase that we’ve been measuring was at the same time that we saw the industrial revolution so it is very likely that these two are connected.”

So temporal correlation = causation according to Dr Clark? And she calls herself a scientist.

Read it here.

UPDATE: From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The CSIRO’s chief executive, Megan Clark, said yesterday that while society would have a debate about the science underpinning climate change – much like previous debates about the link between smoking and lung cancer – the CSIRO’s role was to release ”unemotional” scientific data. (source)

From News.com.au:

AUSTRALIA’S leading scientists have hit back at climate change sceptics, accusing them of creating a “smokescreen of denial”. (source)

Gee, I’d hate to hear them if the ever did get emotional…

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Australian scientist goes feral on sceptics and fellow scientists

14 March, 2010 by

Wants climate action through "political upheaval"

From The Briefing Room:

One of Australia’s most outspoken scientists has this week rubbished the team behind the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, describing the project as nothing more than a “nuclear billiards machine” and saying the money should be devoted to paying for more climate change research instead. [Who said climate alarmism was about getting more research funding? – Ed]

Ian Lowe, emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University in Brisbane, has been in New Zealand for a low-profile crisis meeting on how to get climate change back on top of the public list of concerns. [To get more research funding perhaps? – Ed]

The meeting brought together not just climate scientists from New Zealand and Australia, but also social scientists who’ve been asked to come up with strategies on how to manipulate public opinion. Additionally, key sympathetic business leaders like Air New Zealand’s Rob Fyfe are understood to have attended.

As part of the conference, the NZ Government funded Science Media Centre, a climate change propaganda unit, organised for select invited media to attend a briefing from Professor Lowe, and NZ government social scientist Karen Cronin.

The briefing is a unique insight not just into the mindset of the climate science propaganda units, but in the sychophantic media willing to push their message unquestioningly.

During the hour long media briefing, Lowe

  • ridiculed the scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider, saying money would be better spent by climate scientists
  • argued that for propaganda purposes the media should hype-up individual weather events – such as floods in Mozambique – as proof of climate change
  • claimed Hurricane Katrina was clearly caused by climate change
  • claimed a conspiracy of white, Anglo Celtic elderly males was behind the skeptic movement
  • with NZ government social scientist Karen Cronin advocated researching how to foment enough anger in the public that governments who refused to take climate action could be “pushed out of the way” in a political upheaval

Just to put this in perspective, Ian Lowe is the president of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), which is an extremist environmental pressure group. It is famous for being the Australian wing of Al Gore’s despicable “Climate Project”, whose sole purpose is to disseminate to the unsuspecting public the lies and propaganda contained in An Inconvenient Truth.

Read the full story here (with audio clips).

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IPCC quotes WWF (again) … gets it wrong (again)

13 March, 2010 by

IPCC's primary source of alarmism

Peer-review, schmeer-review. Half of the IPCC’s last report was based on stuff like this, papers from deep green advocacy groups like WWF which happened to fit nicely with the IPCC’s pre-conceived agenda of climate alarmism. And they’ve been caught with their pants down yet again, this time on the sensitivity of Amazon rainforests to decreased rainfall:

A new NASA-funded study has concluded that Amazon rain forests were remarkably unaffected in the face of once-in-a-century drought in 2005, neither dying nor thriving, contrary to a previously published report and claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“We found no big differences in the greenness level of these forests between drought and non-drought years, which suggests that these forests may be more tolerant of droughts than we previously thought,” said Arindam Samanta, the study’s lead author from Boston University.

…

The IPCC is under scrutiny for various data inaccuracies, including its claim — based on a flawed World Wildlife Fund study — that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically and be replaced by savannas from even a slight reduction in rainfall.

“Our results certainly do not indicate such extreme sensitivity to reductions in rainfall,” said Sangram Ganguly, an author on the new study, from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute affiliated with NASA Ames Research Center in California.

“The way that the WWF report calculated this 40% was totally wrong, while [the new] calculations are by far more reliable and correct,” said Dr. Jose Marengo, a Brazilian National Institute for Space Research climate scientist and member of the IPCC.

Add it to the ever-lengthening list…

Read it here.

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Ministers' collective dummy spit on Senate

12 March, 2010 by

On the count of three, spit those dummies!

What a hilarious sight it was to see five Cabinet ministers (including Penny Wong holding the CPRS flag), solemnly arrayed before the media, bleating about how the nasty Coalition has blocked all their legislation. They claim that the current Senate is the most obstructionist in history, blocking 40-odd pieces of legislation and blaming it all on the Coalition.

As usual, the arrogance of the Rudd government in expecting its legislation to be just rubber stamped is breathtaking. But that’s just par for the course – and we have come to expect it. The real point is that Rudd himself is to blame – he has refused to negotiate with any of the opposition parties, be it Coalition or cross-bench. The Greens and Family first have said the same. And that refusal to negotiate has left them only one option: to block the legislation.

John Howard was in a similar position, lacking a majority in the Senate, but you didn’t see him humiliate himself by whining to the media. He negotiated, and got his policies through.

And if Rudd is really concerned about not being able to get legislation passed, then he has a solution: a double dissolution. But there’s no sign of that happening. For this is nothing more than a cheap attack on Abbott, and unfortunately for him, even the media aren’t stupid enough to fall for it.

As the saying goes, it’s time for Rudd and his cronies to STFU.

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ABC: Let's have a debate

12 March, 2010 by

Group think on climate

Geoff Elliott, writing in The Australian, analyses the effect of ABC chairman Maurice Newman’s speech (see here):

The responses to Newman’s speech have been predictable. Some see it as management interference in the ABC editorial processes, others as a case of Newman expressing some hard truths.

Perhaps not surprisingly, first to express outrage was Jonathan Holmes, the presenter of ABC1’s Media Watch.

After Newman spoke, Scott followed with his own speech but, according to those present, did not directly address the chairman’s comments. He then opened the forum for questions in which Holmes rose to his feet and, according to those present, said: “It was an excellent speech, Mark, but I found it difficult to concentrate because I’m so angry about what the chairman just said”, or words to that effect.

Holmes’s view is that it was an inappropriate forum for the remarks. An ABC spokesman says it was an internal discussion, though a speech to 250 people at the ABC was unlikely to remain internal for long and Newman reiterated his remarks in a lengthy interview on ABC radio’s PM that night.

The Friends of the ABC says Newman’s criticism of the coverage of global warming was “extraordinary and inappropriate”.

Spokesperson Glenys Stradijot says Newman “is entitled to his personal views on controversial matters. But his expression of them while he remains head of the ABC damages public confidence in the national broadcaster’s independence”. She goes on: “Just as worrying, Mr Newman’s comments look to be an attempt to influence ABC programming to be more favourable to global warming scepticism.”

But others wonder if this argument holds, as the ABC board, as a taxpayer-funded entity, is responsible under the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act to “ensure that the gathering and presentation by the corporation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism”.

The ABC has been under heavy fire in the past few months for its reporting on climate change, partly with reference to the climategate emails, and as public opinion shifts on the issue, particularly after the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit. (source)

But just when you think it can’t get worse, we find the ABC spinning the recent story from China (also discussed here) regarding a senior official branding climate “denialism” an extreme viewpoint, as ABC News Watch points out:

In the AM report Xie Zhenhua is reported as saying the following in answer to McDonell (translated – by the ABC or Chinese officials?):“Climate change is a fact based on long-time observations by countries around the world. The mainstream view is that climate change is caused by burning of fossil fuel in the course of industrialisation. And there’s a more extreme view which holds that human activity has only an imperceptible impact on the natural system.”

The Reuters report however attributes the following statement to Xie Zhenhua (translated – by Reuters or other Chinese officials?): “There are still two different viewpoints in the scientific field about the cause of warming,” Xie told a news conference on the sidelines of the annual session of China’s largely rubber-stamp parliament. “At present, many people, or the most mainstream view, is that the combustion of large amounts of fossil fuel over the process of industrialisation caused an increase in greenhouse gases, which caused climate warming.” “Another point of view holds that the main reason is changes in sunspots, or natural changes in the environment. There is an even more extreme point of view, that human influence on changes in nature can only be miniscule,” he added.””

And as Marc concludes:

If this complaint is upheld we believe a deeper investigation, perhaps a Parliamentary Inquiry, into ABC news coverage on climate change is more than warranted. If readers can get more accurate coverage of news for free on the internet why do we need the ABC’s news service?

So true, so true.

Read Marc’s entire report here.

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Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

12 March, 2010 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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Roger Pielke Jr on ABC's The Drum

11 March, 2010 by

Climate sense

Roger Pielke Jr writes at The Drum on why the ETS as a means to reduce emissions will achieve nothing (this is one of the few “token sceptic” articles, fairly balanced against about a thousand alarmist ones):

Policy makers truly want to reduce emissions, but they have no idea how they are going to achieve those reductions in practice.

Emissions reductions targets are offered up with little understanding of the implications for energy supply or the economy. Complex legislation is proposed that obscures the simple math of decarbonisation.

When push comes to shove no politician wants to impose economic discomfort on his or her constituents, so they look desperately for magical solutions. Emissions trading has provided that illusion up to now.

Australia, the United States and Japan, in particular are at a crossroads in climate policy. The decisions that they make at this juncture will shape climate policy around the world, leading up to the summit in Mexico at the end of the year and beyond.

Will they continue in pursuit of magical solutions? Or will they start fresh, with an approach grounded in the realities of the simple math of decarbonisation?

The success or failure of emissions reductions efforts depends on their answers.

Read it here.

What do you think of this comment, however?

Bob :

11 Mar 2010 12:08:31pm

Nothing will be done to combat Climate Change until the people are prepared to take up arms and compel their governments to act.

Or how about this one:

Harpo:

11 Mar 2010 12:36:44pm

And to take serious steps to silence and re-educate the charlatans useful idiots [sic] who spew their denialist venom against the unyielding wall of indisputable scientific consensus.

So when democracy doesn’t give them what they want, they “take up arms”. Some ABC readers really are sore losers.

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