We suspected this, but an (admittedly) small poll has revealed that the Australian public are mind-numbingly ignorant about the ETS (even what is stands for), and its effect on prices:

Only about 15 people out of 100 surveyed for The Punch could correctly say what ETS stood for, while only one person in the survey correctly named the expected increases on household power bills – and he guessed.

The ETS, currently expected to come into operation in 2011, will transform the Australian economy by forcing businesses to buy licences to emit carbon.

The scheme has been at the core of political debate in Canberra for the past two weeks and is threatening to split the Coalition, with the Nationals entirely opposed to the introduction of the scheme.

It will lead to increases in the prices of a range of goods and services. If the price of emitting a tonne of carbon is $25, the federal government estimates average monthly electricity and gas bills will go up by $6 and $2 respectively.

And Krudd & Co will be very happy to keep it this way, because if the public really understood what the ETS would do to the Australian economy, to jobs, to everyday life, they would never get it through the door.

Read it here.

This is looking like it will turn into a big issue for the Coalition. The Nationals are hoping to take the lead away from the Liberals on the ETS – and given Turnbull’s flirtation with Labor, his greener-than-thou position on the ETS sadly makes a lot more sense. From The Australian:

THE Nationals have directly challenged Malcolm Turnbull’s authority on climate change, boasting that Liberal MPs are beginning to back their blanket rejection of a carbon emissions trading system.

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce said yesterday that despite the Opposition Leader’s efforts to negotiate with Kevin Rudd on emissions trading, Liberal MPs were telling him that they, like the Nationals, did not believe in an ETS.

Asked if the Nationals’ advocacy was “bringing Liberals along”, Senator Joyce said: “I think on this one we are. I think on this one the National Party are leading.“
…
Senator Joyce said he was aware of many Liberals who were fervent opponents of the ETS, despite the Liberal leader’s search for common ground with the government. “People have woken up to what the ETS is,” he said. “It’s not going to change the climate. It’s just a massive new tax.” Senator Joyce said he hoped the Liberals would vote against the ETS when it returned to the parliament for a second vote.

If the Liberals backed the legislation, the Nationals would not budge, he said, arguing that voters would accept that his party had the right to disagree with its Coalition partner.

Read it here.

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The National party has unanimously rejected the federal government’s emissions trading scheme legislation at the party’s annual council in Canberra today.

The motion was first on the agenda and has opened the way for a potential split between the coalition parties in the Senate when the vote on the ETS comes up again in November.

Prior to the council vote, outspoken Senator Barnaby Joyce said it was a most “dangerous scheme for regional Australia.”

“The emissions trading scheme will do nothing to affect the climate of the globe,” he told delegates at the council.

Senator Joyce said it would be an “insidious tax” which would “completely undermine the structure for which this country is built on”.

Liberal MP Darren Chester, who seconded the motion, said if the unions were too gutless to stand up for regional Australia and country jobs, then it was up to the Nationals to do so.

The motion was passed unanimously by the more than 50 members present at the council.

Read it here.

Following on from the previous story on “record SSTs”, Marc Morano at Climate Depot lists the alarmism and hysteria of AP reporter Seth Borenstein (first link is currently down):

• AP’s Borenstein in a PANIC: ‘Obama left with little time to curb global warming’…’cooling trend illustrates how fast the world is warming’ – December 14, 2008
  
• Scientists Denounce AP’s Borenstein For Hysterical Global Warming Article – December 15, 2008
• Say it ain’t so! AP’s Borenstein Reports: ‘The Wind seems to be dying down…the cause may be global warming’ – June 10, 2009 – Excerpt: Scientist mocks wind claims: ‘How can they have more intense storms from the same effect that is lessening winds?’
• Two dozen prominent scientists denounce AP’s Borenstein’s article promoting sea level fears in the year 2100 – September 24, 2007
• AP’s Borenstein excludes scientists and peer-reviewed studies countering claims of allegedly ‘melting’ Antarctic – March 27, 2008
• AP’s BORENSTEIN INCORRECTLY CLAIMS SCIENTISTS PRAISE GORE’S MOVIE – June 27, 2006
• AP’s Borenstein inaccurately described scientist as “one of the few remaining scientists skeptical of the global warming harm caused by industries that burn fossil fuels’ – July 27, 2006
• Kudos to AP’s Seth Borenstein for writing the most balanced of all the media’s articles about this new Antarctic study – January 21, 2009
• Arctic Scare! AP’s Borenstein out of control (again) – Warns of ‘Tipping Point’ – Quotes James Hansen, Bob Corell & a Greenpeace ‘scientist’ – August 28, 2008 – Excerpt: More ominous signs Wednesday have scientists saying that a global warming “tipping point” in the Arctic seems to be happening before their eyes: Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is at its second lowest level in about 30 years. […] Five climate scientists, four of them specialists on the Arctic, told The Associated Press that it is fair to call what is happening in the Arctic a “tipping point.” NASA scientist James Hansen, who sounded the alarm about global warming 20 years ago before Congress, said the sea ice melt “is the best current example” of that. […] On top of that, researchers were investigating “alarming” reports in the last few days of the release of methane from long frozen Arctic waters, possibly from the warming of the sea, said Greenpeace climate scientist Bill Hare, who was attending a climate conference in Ghana.

And that’s just the start – read the rest here.

Any records for temperature in the upwards direction are inevitably caused by “global warming”, whereas any records in the opposite direction are “just weather”. So it’s no surprise that The Age gleefully trumpets the high SSTs in July:

JULY was the hottest [not “warmest” of course, but “hottest”, even though we are talking about fractions of a degree here – Ed] month for the world’s oceans in almost 130 years of record keeping.

The average water temperature worldwide was 17 degrees Celsius, according to the National Climatic Data Centre, the branch of the US Government that keeps world weather records.

June was only slightly cooler, while August could set another record, scientists say.

The previous record was set in July 1998 during a powerful El Nino in the Pacific. The coolest recorded ocean temperature was 15 degrees in December 1909.

Meteorologists say there is a combination of forces at work: a natural El Nino weather pattern just getting started on top of worsening man-made global warming [which is a given at The Age, of course – Ed], and a dash of random weather variations.

I love that: “a dash of random weather variations” – I wonder if the records broken for cold in the US this summer are just a “dash” of random weather variations too? No, they’re 100% random weather variations, obscuring the underlying warming, you denier you. Borenstein, the author of the piece, is a well known alarmist. Whilst July 2009 was warmer than usual, it was certainly not the warmest, and Anthony Watts picks the whole thing apart nicely:

The Borenstein article also claims that Arctic SST anomalies are as high as 10 deg F (5.5 deg C) above average. Wow!! Really?? I used the SST map-making feature of the NOAA NOMADS system to create the map of high latitude Northern Hemisphere SST anomalies for July 2009. The Contour Interval was set at 1 deg C to help find the claimed excessively high SST anomalies. Alas, Borenstein was right, BUT, as you will note, the ONLY area that reaches the 5 to 6 deg C range is the White Sea off the Barents Sea.

And to put that in perspective, Figure 6 is the global map. Based on the Kartesh White Sea Biological Station website the surface area of the White Sea is approximately 90,000 sq km. If the surface area of the Arctic Ocean is 14 million sq km, the White Sea represents less than 0.6% of it. And for those who want to compare it to the surface area of the global oceans, its surface area is 361 million sq km. Too many zeroes after the decimal point to worry about.

And the SST anomalies of one miniscule area do not represent the SST anomalies for the Arctic Ocean, as is obvious in Figure 7. Arctic SST anomalies have declined over the past few years.

To sum up the Borenstein article, it’s factually incorrect in places, and in others, it raises alarmism to ridiculous levels by dwelling on a meaningless statistic, the July SST anomaly of the White Sea.

Read Anthony’s article here.

As always, a great read!

So you can expect to see a whole lot more of these pointless monuments to 21st century enviro-lunacy:

Bird shredders at work (photo © ABC)

Read it here.

Many people have said that the ETS will create a bureaucracy ripe for criminals, scammers and fraudsters, and if this story from the UK is anything to go by, they are dead right:

The British tax office has arrested seven people in London in a suspected $76 million value-added tax fraud in the European market in carbon allowances.

Officers from HM Revenues and Customs (HMRC) searched 27 properties around London and arrested six men and one woman in early morning raids.

“Those arrested are believed to be part of an organised crime group operating a network of companies trading large volumes of high-value carbon credits,” HMRC said in a statement.

“It is thought that the proceeds of this crime have then been used to finance lavish lifestyles and the purchase of prestige vehicles.”

The HMRC said further arrests were likely but it could not give the names of those arrested or the companies involved, nor could it estimate the total scale of the suspected fraud or say if it was isolated to Britain.

My advice is get used to it – the carbon trading arena will be a haven for criminal gangs in the future.

Read it here.

It wouldn’t be surprising if this happened to be honest. On climate change, the Nationals are extremely unlikely to accept Malcolm Turnbull’s position on negotiating the ETS. From The Australian:

THE Nationals have discussed quitting the Coalition amid growing frustration with the Liberal Party and the opposition’s poor performance in opinion polls.

Senior Liberals have told The Australian they fear that the numbers in the Nationals’ partyroom are tight on the issue and that lower house members are set to openly defy the Liberals on policies and political tactics.

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce, whose Senate team is unafraid to buck the Liberals, last night confirmed a recent Nationals meeting discussed ending the Coalition agreement.

But Senator Joyce played down the possibility of a split, saying some Nationals were “kite-flying” and that no vote had been taken. “I don’t think it will happen,” he said. “Some of the most peculiar things get floated at party meetings. But it doesn’t mean they will happen.”

The discord follows months of poor polling results and tension between the Coalition partners on key policy issues, including climate change and carbon emissions trading.

Read it here.

The BBC has always been a fully paid up member of the Holy Church of Global Warming [surely “climate change” – Ed] and has always swallowed all the usual fear-mongering claptrap whole, publishing anything and everything that any enviro-moonbat chooses to say. So it is refreshing (and to be honest, little short of astonishing) to see one BBC journalist, Stephen Sackur, give Greenpeace a rough ride, and get them to admit to exaggeration and alarmism:

The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has admitted his organization’s recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was “a mistake.”

Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled “Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts,” which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.

Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the “Hardtalk” program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.

“I don’t think it will be melting by 2030. … That may have been a mistake,” he said.

Sackur said the claim was inaccurate on two fronts, pointing out that the Arctic ice is a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle, and that it had survived much warmer periods in history than the present.

The BBC reporter accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing “misleading information” and using “exaggeration and alarmism.”

Leipold’s admission that Greenpeace issued misleading information is a major embarrassment to the organization, which often has been accused of alarmism but has always insisted that it applies full scientific rigor in its global-warming pronouncements.

Although he admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization’s practice of “emotionalizing issues” in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.

See the whole interview here. (via Climate Depot)