What is it with politicians? Why are they unable to distinguish between climate change and the causes of climate change? We all agree that climate changes – it has since day one on earth, 4.5 billion years ago. What we don’t agree on is the cause. But that hardly subtle distinction is completely lost on most politicians, and Joe Hockey gets it wrong this morning:

“There are going to be people who do not believe that climate change is real,” he told ABC Television on Wednesday.

“Well, that is not the majority view of the parliamentary Liberal Party, fullstop.”

Read it here.

UPDATE: At least the Nationals are holding out, hardening their opposition to the ETS. As Barnaby Joyce states:

“I firmly believe that the changes that would be required would be so immense that it would no longer be an emissions trading scheme.” (source)

It’s an amusing dilemma for the warmenistas – amusing if you’re a casual observer, that is, not so funny if you happen to be directly affected by it. On the one hand they want to “save the planet” from the ravages of a harmless trace gas by banning coal and relying on sunbeams and fart power, yet on the other they flatly refuse to consider the only viable alternative to coal fired electricity generation – nuclear power. Even the mining companies are suggesting nuclear, but Penny Wong (surprise, surprise) is not having any of it:

Mining giant Rio Tinto has urged the government to consider nuclear power as a way to meet climate change targets.

Rio Tinto has reportedly told the government there are questions over the viability of renewable energy due to high costs.

That view was given in a response to a government white paper on energy.

“Rio Tinto is entitled to their view,” Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said. [That response is the political equivalent of shrugging one’s shoulders and muttering “Whatever…” – Ed]

But she said Australia had strong conventional and renewable energy sources, including solar power, wind, wave and geothermal.

“Our focus as a government is on developing those resources,” Senator Wong told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

We all know that all of those “alternative” sources do not come even close to the energy demands of a Western economy (solar, hopelessly inefficient and only works in daytime; wind, ugly windmills blotting the landscape and only works when it’s windy; wave, frighteningly expensive; geothermal, ditto) and if climate change was the greatest challenge to humanity since the dawn of time (© Al Gore), then they would be jumping at the nuclear option. But strangely they’re not.

Climate madness.

Read it here.

Malcolm Turnbull is off on a frolic of his own right now, apparently changing policy on the hoof, which has incensed backbencher Wilson Tuckey, who has branded the leader “inexperienced” and “arrogant”.

Mr Tuckey sent an email to all Opposition MPs and Senators criticising Malcolm Turnbull for suggesting the Coalition could back a scheme when the partyroom has declared it will not support any legislation before the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen at the end of the year.
…
The confidential email sent to all Coalition colleagues has leaked. Mr Tuckey says says he has received support from some, and criticism from others.

“The critics, they’ve criticised me, giving me all the old platitudes, ‘oh you’re doing damage to the marginal seat holders’,” he said.

“I’ll tell you what’ll do damage to the marginal seat holders, the Liberal Party prostituting its principles and supporting something they know in its own heart will not either deliver on emission reductions and will do severe damage to the Australian economy.”

The Nationals are the only party to openly oppose the ETS, and Barnaby Joyce, as he is so often, is right on the money in his comments this morning:

“I don’t think there are any amendments to this emissions trading scheme that will make it palatable.

“Emission trading scheme in essence is a brokers’, bureaucrats’, bankers’ bonanza, it will do nothing to change the climate.”

The Liberals are in a right fix. If they vote against the ETS twice, they will trigger a possible double dissolution, and an election they almost certainly will lose. If they support the ETS, they will be voting for the single worst piece of legislation foisted on the Australian public.

Read it here.

Alan Jones isn’t one to mince words, and convincingly lays bare the case against the AGW hysteria.

Enjoy.

Climate change is great news for governments. It gives them yet more ways to spend your tax dollars, and nobody (except ACM) bats an eyelid, because as we all know, “saving the planet” trumps just about everything. This time it’s the establishment of a nebulous Australian Carbon Trust, and even more embarrassing is the fact that a former Howard government minister, Robert Hill, has agreed to chair it:

“This will complement the location of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University, helping make Brisbane a hub of activity to tackle climate change in Australia,” Mr Rudd said. [Never thought of Brissy as much of a “hub” for anything… – Ed]

The government has set aside $76 million to establish the trust, which will promote ways for households and businesses to tackle climate change.

Would have been easier to burn it, really (although that would release even more CO2…).

Read it here.

And by doing so, renders pointless the Rudd government’s desperation to get the ETS into law before Copenhagen in order to give a “lead” to the international community. What is the point of Australia (1.5% of global emissions) crippling its economy when India has no intention of doing the same? Looks like there will be even more Aussie businesses migrating to the sub-continent if this madness continues:

During an awkward press conference with [Hillary] Clinton, India’s Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, stated bluntly that India would not give in to international pressure to cut emissions.

“India’s position is clear and categorical that we are simply not in a position to take any legally binding emissions reductions,” Mr Ramesh said.
…
Mr Ramesh is reported to have driven home his point at a separate closed-door meeting with Mrs Clinton, saying there was “no case for the pressure that we, who have among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions”.

Read it here.

Wow, really? Gosh, never would have worked that out… [er, see here, or here – Ed]

Simon Harrison, a climate change law expert with Australian firm Herbert Geer, says the complex, lucrative scheme is open to rorts.

”The price of carbon fluctuates wildly, which presents a plethora of opportunities to rort the system,” Mr Harrison said.

”Secondly, profits from sales of credits will be reliant upon baselines.

”If a project produces fewer emissions upon completion than its pre-established baseline, the difference can be sold for substantial profit, providing project owners an incentive to exaggerate the baseline to receive more credits than they would otherwise be entitled to.”

He said the Australian Federal Police (AFP) did not have the resources to police the legislation once it starts on July 1, 2011.

Can’t you just wait to see the mess we will be in when all this kicks off?

Read it here.

Kevin Rudd has shown himself not to be the sharpest chisel in the toolbox, and to prove it he seems to be doing most of his communication via Twitter. For those of you who are interested, Kev’s twittering [sorry, “tweets” – Ed] can be found at http://twitter.com/kevinruddPM, but if you can’t wait, here are a few thoughts from the mind of our great leader (these are not made up, in case you wondered):

• Blues played hard. Tough game. Congrats to NSW for last night and to Qld for the series. Fantastic atmosphere at Suncorp. KRudd. [Translation – Sport. Man of the people.]
• Good chat w Obama on climate change. Together w other leaders launched Carbon Capture & Storage Institute. Much to do b4 Copenhagen. KRudd [Translation – I am a very important person.]
• Great to be home. Test draw painful! Got update mid flight. Family well. Dog happy. Cat grumpy. Situation normal. Now back to work. KRudd [Translation – Family man.]
• Starting my blog tomorrow on Climate Change. Like to hear your ideas on practical action. KRudd [Translation – I’m a guy who will take action on climate change, because I don’t understand anything except what the IPCC and Penny Wong tell me]

I mean, really, who would possibly want to read such vacuous and inane comments from their Prime Minister? Then there’s the blog, of course, which parrots, almost verbatim the usual cracked record nonsense and misrepresentations we hear every day from Penny Wong:

Australia is determined to be on the front foot in global efforts to tackle climate change [Why? – Ed]. We know that our nation is more exposed to the impact of climate change than perhaps any other developed economy. Without strong global and national action, climate change will permanently damage our natural environment and hit our jobs and our economy hard. The Great Barrier Reef – one of Australia’s most iconic natural wonders which generates jobs for around 60,000 people and more than $4.9 billion in tourism revenue – is particularly vulnerable to climate change.

The next step for Australia is to take strong action at home through Parliament passing the [two errors in four words] Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in August. This scheme will for the first time put a limit on Australia’s [two errors in two words] carbon pollution. By taking action at home in Australia, we can give businesses certainty and give momentum to the international negotiations that are so crucial for our national interest.

ACM’s advice is to avoid both at all costs.

(I’ll give you a clue, the answer’s “no”.) Why not, we ask? As any fule kno, Al loves a good debate about global warming [surely “climate change” – Ed] so why his reluctance to demonstrate easily to the misguided Steve Fielding that the debate’s over and the science is settled? Should have been easy, right? Apparently not…

Climate change sceptic [why not just “Senator”? – Ed] Steve Fielding says he is still searching for answers after receiving the brush-off from environmental crusader Al Gore.

Senator Fielding, who holds a crucial vote in the emissions trading debate, had been trying to pin down the former US vice-president to explain one of his key climate change concerns.

But Mr Gore only managed to find time for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd during his flying visit to Australia this week.

Having offered to meet him at any time and fly to wherever he was, Senator Fielding said it was ridiculous the 2007 Nobel Prize winner didn’t have five minutes to spare.

“He was aware of how important my vote was … but obviously he felt more comfortable running to someone – our prime minister – who actually supports and believes in what’s he doing,” he told Fairfax Radio Network on Friday.

Don’t waste your breath next time Senator – the High Priest Gore will only preach to the converted.

Read it here.

Don’t forget that these models are the same ones on which governments around the world are basing their misguided policies on “climate change”. And now it appears that there are serious problems with the way in which they model the effect of CO2. A study has found that climate models explain only about half of the heating that occurred during a well-documented period of rapid global warming in Earth’s ancient past, known as the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM:

“In a nutshell, theoretical models cannot explain what we observe in the geological record,” said oceanographer Gerald Dickens, a co-author of the study and professor of Earth science at Rice University. “There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models.”

During the PETM, for reasons that are still unknown, the amount of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere rose rapidly. For this reason, the PETM, which has been identified in hundreds of sediment core samples worldwide, is probably the best ancient climate analogue for present-day Earth.
…
The conclusion, Dickens said, is that something other than carbon dioxide caused much of the heating during the PETM. “Some feedback loop or other processes that aren’t accounted for in these models — the same ones used by the IPCC for current best estimates of 21st Century warming — caused a substantial portion of the warming that occurred during the PETM.”

Hang on – how many of you have spotted the obvious problem with all this? Yes, that’s right. The science is settled – debate’s over. Move along. Nothing to see here…

Read it here (h/t Watts Up With That)