It only took a few hours for the predictable, Pavlov’s-dog-like response of the slavering environmental journalists at The Age, linking the recent warm weather to “climate change”. But the Bureau of Meteorology seems to think differently (for once). AAP (as published in The Australian) can’t resist a bit of hysteria, though:

After all the empty hype and rhetoric from President Hope ‘n’ Change himself, let’s hope this is a foretaste of what is to come in Australia. From Watts Up With That:

U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment & Public Works Committee, today said that he was not surprised to learn that Senate Democrats were forced once again to delay introduction of their global warming cap-and-trade bill. Throughout hearing after hearing in the EPW Committee this summer, it became apparent that Democrats were a long way off from reaching the votes necessary in the Senate to pass the largest tax increase in American history.

“The news today-that Sen. Boxer and Sen. Kerry will delay introduction of their cap-and-trade bill-came as no surprise. The delay is emblematic of the division and disarray in the Democratic Party over cap-and-trade and health care legislation-both of which are big government schemes for which the public has expressed overwhelming opposition. With the climate change debate on Capitol Hill, it’s safe to report that bipartisanship is nowhere in evidence. Cap-and-trade has pitted Democrat against Democrat, or, put another way, it centers on those in the party supporting the largest tax increase in American history against those in the party who oppose it. As to just who will win this intra-party squabble, I put money down on those representing the vast majority of the American people, who are clear that cap-and-trade should be rationed out of existence.”

Read it here.

Warren Truss and Barnaby Joyce are on a mission to spread the truth about the ETS to regional New South Wales:

Press release from the Carbon Sense Coalition:

The Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition, Mr Viv Forbes, today called for Liberals who oppose the ALP Ration-N-Tax Scheme Bill (the RATS Bill) to leave the Liberals and join the Nationals.

Forbes explains:

“Barnaby Joyce has become the real leader of the Opposition and deserves to be supported. Malcolm Turnbull no longer serves liberal values and actually promotes the interests of big business mates who aim to do very well out of trading carbon credits.

“The Liberal leadership has lost all idea of their philosophical base and are now the paralysed party of the extreme centre. They should have learnt from the history of Don Chipp’s Democrats and The Australia Party that parties of the extreme centre end up standing for nothing and are abandoned by their supporters.

“The Liberal Party is now on that dead-end road.

“Mr Turnbull should also ponder the philosophical goals of the deep green zealots who promote the Green Religion. He will find them consistent with the philosophies of Mao and Stalin, and totally opposed to the beliefs of freedom supporters such as Menzies, Thatcher and Regan.

“Once our Parliaments held people like Bert Kelly and John Hyde of the Liberals and Peter Walsh and Michael Costa of the ALP who supported the freedom philosophy for both business and workers. Today, liberty finds few friends in Parliament.

“Mr Turnbull determines his policies by “Business Feedback”. He should talk to more than organisations such as the Business Council of Australia, where 60% of the membership has no direct carbon tax liability and many of them expect to benefit greatly by participating in the new Bubble Business to be created from trading hot air certificates.

“Big banks, national law firms, transnational accounting firms, Wall Street traders and the merchant bank millionaires are not the real industry of Australia – they are the froth and bubble floating on the real rivers of productive industry.

“Since the days of the Wool Boom and the Gold Rush, Australian prosperity has always rested on the primary wealth created by its outback industries. Mr Turnbull needs to pull on his RM Williams boots, don a hard hat and venture out of the air conditioning to find the opinion of the real businesses of Australia. He should talk to farmers and graziers, fishermen and foresters, miners and explorers, those who process our minerals and food into things of real value, and those who run the trucks, trains and planes that keep the swarming cities functioning.

“Far from the genteel cocktail circuit of the Sydney-Melbourne Clubs, the Nationals have sensed the growing grassroots revolt against the Rudd road to carbon penury. They have done what every good politician does – find out where the people are heading and jump in front calling “Follow Me”. Many others will now join that revolt.

“Barnaby Joyce is right. The RATS Bill cannot be made acceptable – it must be destroyed in the Senate.”

The Royal Society, that formerly learned institution dating back to 1660, has once again shown that it has gone completely off the rails. Having decreed that the debate on global warming was over (just see this page to see how hysterically the Society reacts to any opposing view on AGW), they are now backing research into “simulated volcanic eruptions” to “stave off climate change”:

The Age‘s headline screams:

It’s not drought, it’s climate change, say scientists

The reality:

(source: Bureau of Meteorology)

Read it here, but honestly, I wouldn’t bother.

The Spectator Australia publishes an excellent opinion piece which just about sums up everything ACM stands for, applauding Barnaby Joyce for standing up to the nonsense of an ETS, and urging the Coalition to have the guts to fight an election on climate change and Rudd’s spending spree:

Barnaby Joyce, leader of the National Party in all but name, gave a formative speech on Sunday at the Party Federal Council in Canberra. He underlined his party’s opposition to any emissions trading scheme, and called for a referendum on the use of nuclear power in Australia. His determination to stake out a National Party position independent of his Liberal coalition colleagues is understandable. The ETS is a political boon for the Nationals. Long a party in decline, they are now the only major Australian party that is outright opposed to an ETS. Many Australians support this position, and far more will support it once the full cost and futility of an ETS become widely apparent.

…

Polls show most Australians support an ETS. But that is because it is bound up with the popular yet asinine notion of ‘doing something for the environment’. Only an election campaign provides the resources and political focus to blast away the moral hype. All that would remain is a giant tax to fix a debatable problem of disputed cause, a totally ineffective tax to boot. The world’s climate is never going to change because a country that produces about 1 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions decides to restrict its contribution a bit. And that is assuming all the science about anthropogenic global warming is correct. The ETS could end up being the Labor government’s own WorkChoices.

Sounds promising, you think, but then the moonbats cop out and suggest something almost as bad:

The federal government’s proposed emission trading scheme is like as a “GST from hell”, says an independent think-tank.

The Committee for Economic Development (CEDA) says the planned carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) – which the government is preparing to re-submit to parliament later this year – is an invitation for trouble.

The government should look instead at a carbon tax, which would be more workable in reducing carbon-emitting activities in Australia, it says.

Now there’s a surprise! Never saw that coming, did we? Just check out the figures in this article:

With just 100 days to go before the crucial Copenhagen Climate Conference, world leaders are being warned they have seriously underestimated the cost of adapting to the dangers of global warming.

In December, delegates from up to 192 countries will congregate for two weeks to negotiate a global emissions reduction deal to replace the existing Kyoto Protocol.

The new report by the International Institute for Environmental Development and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change says the figure of $100 billion the UN estimates might be needed for adaptation could actually be as much as three times higher.

Tackling climate change is a bottomless pit into which Western governments seem only too happy to throw your money. Turkeys voting for Christmas, yet again.

Read it here.

Soon there won’t be any gases left which aren’t “pollutants” or in some other way deemed “harmful” for the environment. In a weird throwback to the 1980s, the ABC runs a story on the depletion of the ozone layer. So get out your Aviator sunnies, put on an episode of Miami Vice and enjoy:

New research shows that nitrous oxide, also known as happy gas, is now the most abundant ozone-depleting substance in the atmosphere.

A paper published in the journal Science reveals the increasing levels of the gas will cause more damage to the ozone layer than the more commonly known chloroflourocarbons (CFCs).

The research found emissions of nitrous oxide are now present in such large amounts that it will remain the most damaging ozone-depleting substance throughout the 21st century.

Dr A Ravishankara from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says an international treaty has stemmed the use of CFCs, but nitrous oxide is still not regulated. [Give it time, give it time – Ed]

“Currently ozone depletion in the stratosphere is largely due to the chlorofluorocarbons that have been already put in the atmosphere,” he said.

“But if you continue to put nitrous oxide it will contribute more and more to the ozone layer depletion in the future.”

Maybe they should regulate oxygen next, that evil, harmful gas without which bush fires would be so much less intense. Each person is entitled to their own allowance of oxygen each day, and if they use it up too quickly, they will have to purchase oxygen credits in order to, er, stay alive.

Read it here.