You will recall on 26 May, I compared the ETS to the dead parrot in the Monty Python skit (“ETS not dead, just pining for the fjords“). Seems the Canberra Times have “coincidentally” come up with the same idea three days later, complete with cartoon…

The political debate on emissions trading is a bit like Monty Python’s ”Dead Parrot” sketch. The hapless customer (John Cleese) complains that his recently purchased Norwegian blue has joined the choir invisible, shuffled off its mortal coil, its metabolic processes are history. The pet shopkeeper (Michael Palin) disagrees. The bird is merely resting, stunned, tired after a prolonged squawk or perhaps pining for the fjords.

Coincidence? You decide. Ironic, really, considering the Canberra Times is one of the most alarmist media organisations in Australia (part of Fairfax) – surely they don’t read a “denier” blog like ACM? An email to the Canberra Times seeking clarification has been sent.

Read it here.

From The Australian, referring to Greg Combet’s thinly veiled threat to business to pressure the opposition into supporting the ETS (see here):

For all the Government’s hot air about saving the planet, Mr Combet is playing coldly calculated politics.

So very true.

Read it all here.

There really is no end to the madness. Yet more “modelling” has shown that a gentle warming of the planet will apparently cost 600,000 lives a year by 2030. And of course, one of the greatest moonbats of all, Kofi Annan, cannot resist climbing on the bandwagon:

A study commissioned by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, estimates that climate change seriously affects 325 million people every year, a number that will more than double in 20 years to 10 per cent of the world’s population (now about 6.7 billion).
…
“Climate change is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time, causing suffering to hundreds of millions of people worldwide,” Kofi Annan, former UN secretary-general and [Global Humanitarian Fund] president, said. [Where? How? Show me the evidence, please. No, hang on – it’s probably a computer model – Ed]

Hey, testing testing? What about war, famine and disease, mate? Ludicrous. And then the inevitable banging on about Copenhagen:

Mr Annan urged governments due to meet at UN talks in Copenhagen in December to agree on an effective, fair and binding global pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol [which even if it had been fully implemented would have made zero difference to the climate – Ed] the world’s main mechanism for tackling global warming.

“Copenhagen needs to be the most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated,” he wrote in an introduction to the report. [Fat chance – Ed]

“The alternative is mass starvation, mass migration and mass sickness.”

How about the start of a new cooling phase, do you think Kofi Annan would be happier with that? With temperatures dropping at the same time as taxes on fossil fuels are going up? Do you think might be a bit more likely to lead to mass starvation, mass migration and mass sickness? There are simply no words to describe the lunacy …

Read it here (if you can [Polar] bear it).

As always, a great read!

Thanks to Al Gore Lied.

Watch it here.

A fine analysis of the Government’s ETS shambles:

Strip away business arguments and the proposed ETS legislation is exposed as futile.

It won’t affect the Great Barrier Reef, as Kevin Rudd claimed. Or put more water in the Murray-Darling or change the weather.

The Government’s claim that the Great Barrier Reef would be saved if Australians sacrificed the equivalent of $1-a-day is an absolute nonsense. Every MP who spouts this bilge should have their mouths rinsed out with untreated effluent and be charged with false advertising. It is just not true.

What it will do is take jobs away from the mining sector at the very time Australians are looking to the miners to rebuild the economy. It will drive energy-intensive industries offshore to developing nations.

Read it here.

This is the “Nobel Prize winning” physicist, who is now the US Energy Secretary in the Obama administration (don’t forget that Al Gore won a Noble Prize, as did the IPCC, which dumbs the whole thing down somewhat). Chu’s climate brainwave is to paint everything white, to reflect more sunlight back to space (no joke):

By lightening paved surfaces and roofs to the colour of cement, it would be possible to cut carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world’s cars off the roads for 11 years, he said. [What they mean, of course, is that the greater reflection of incoming solar radiation would have the same effect as reducing emissions by taking all the world’s cars off the roads for 11 years, but you can’t expect mere journalists to understand this… – Ed]

Building regulations should insist that all flat roofs were painted white, and visible tilted roofs could be painted with “cool-coloured” paints that looked normal but absorbed much less heat than conventional dark surfaces.

With guys like this in charge, we’re all in safe hands…

Read it here.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, especially if you’re part of Spin & Co, I mean Krudd & Co, and are trying to force through pointless, expensive legislation at any price. Now, Greg Combet, without any hint of irony, is trying to blackmail the Australian business community by scurrilously claiming that delaying the ETS “will cost billions”.

Addressing the Minerals Council of Australia this morning, Mr Combet said putting off a vote on the scheme until next year may force the Government “back to the drawing board” on its assistance package for emissions intensive, trade exposed (EITE) industries.
…
“Voting for the scheme in Parliament means Australia is locking in certainty and guaranteed assistance for Australian industry,” he said.

“Delaying a vote would jeopardise that guarantee and remove certainty for industry that currently exists under the proposed scheme.” Mr Combet has warned industry to carefully consider their response to any pressure to delay the scheme. “Billions of dollars worth of assistance are involved,” he said.

Is Combet really suggesting that delaying by a few months to see what happens in Copenhagen is really worse than signing up now to the hopelessly flawed ETS? Is there no end to this government’s spin and deception? Apparently not. There should be a law against it.

Read it here.

Despite talking absolute BS for 99.9% of the time, the Greens do occasionally say something which is right on the money, and this is one of those times.

Australian Greens climate change spokeswoman Christine Milne said the scheme was in trouble.

“(It) is dead in the water and it will not pass this year,” she said, adding the Government needed to change tack.
…
Independent senator Nick Xenophon said the scheme could not pass in its present form, and urged the Government to allow more time for debate.

“If it’s not dead, it’s looking pretty sick,” he said.

It’s not dead, it’s just pining for the fjords.

Read it here.

Rank idiocy. Malcolm Turnbull has announced that the Coalition has offered the Government “unconditional bipartisan” support for the carbon emissions target it plans to take to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change in December.

“In the light of the fact that the Copenhagen conference is only six months away and the Obama administration and US Congress are well advanced in finalising US legislation for an ETS, the Coalition believes that it would be premature to lock Australia into an emissions trading scheme that is out of step with the rest of the world,” Mr Turnbull said.

The Government is proposing a minimum reduction target of five per cent below 2000 levels by 2020, up to a conditional target of 25 per cent dependent largely on a global agreement.

“We are offering unconditional five per cent,” Mr Turnbull said, adding it was a measure of the Coalition’s sincerity.

WTF? The cowardly opposition do not have the guts to stand up to this “Emperor’s New Clothes” ETS, and are backing it for fear of being branded “deniers” or “Flat Earthers” if they oppose it. But that is precisely what they should be doing. The ETS will wreck the Australian economy, and do nothing, repeat nothing to alter the climate of Australia, save the Barrier Reef etc etc, and it will do nothing, repeat nothing to alter global climate. They may as well take the money it will cost the economy, and burn it.

The only hope is the Nationals, who stand alone as the only party with the good sense to see this ETS for what it is – a pointless and dangerous political gesture.

Read it here.