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A new Facebook page has been set up in protest at the announcement of a carbon tax:
I urge all Australian readers on Facebook to join, and show your support for this protest.
There is also an event page for a march on Parliament House:
Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup
25 February, 2011 by
Skewering the clueless
Apologies for the delay – carbon tax nonsense got in the way – as always a great read!
Penny Wong is the Hippy of the Week – congratulations, Penny.
UPDATED: Carbon tax will cost Australians
25 February, 2011 by
Julia clearly looks up to Bob Brown
What is it about Labor governments and taxes? They just can’t help themselves. Any opportunity they see to wring more dollars out of the average man in the street, they grab it with both hands. Witness the ill-considered flood levy – why bother about keeping the budget in order when we can slug everyone for more money instead? So a carbon tax, which is effectively a tax on energy, which is effectively a tax on everything, is the ultimate prize for Labor. However, no-one (except possibly the ABC and Fairfax) is buying it:
Herald Sun: Prime Minister Julia Gillard has her hand in our pocket
IF a carbon price is so essential to Australia’s economic future, why has Prime Minister Julia Gillard chosen to announce it while the nation is in shock over the New Zealand earthquake?
The answer is Ms Gillard and her Government are playing politics. They know the attention of Australians has been diverted by the earthquake that has taken 98 lives and left 226 people unaccounted for.
That makes the carbon tax the most cynical of policy pronouncements and while the Prime Minister might posture and prevaricate, Australian voters will see it for what it is: an ill-prepared policy that promises to rip money from our pockets without the courtesy of telling us how much they intend to take.
Ms Gillard says Tony Abbott will brand it “a great big new tax on everything” and she is right about that. The Opposition Leader is already pledging himself to devote “every second of every minute of every day of every week of every month” to fighting a carbon tax.
News.com.au: Families will be worse off under Gillard’s carbon price
STRUGGLING families will be compensated with cash for rising energy costs when the Federal Government imposes a carbon tax on Australians from July 1 next year.
But most households won’t be able to escape Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s new emissions trading scheme, with forecasts that it will push power bills higher by between $300 and $500 a year.
Accused yesterday by the Opposition of betraying Australians, Ms Gillard formally broke a key election pledge and announced that the Government would impose a price on pollution from July 1, 2012, with a full emissions trading scheme to be operating as early as 2015.
It will be the most complex and broad-ranging carbon tax of almost any country in the world.
The actual carbon price has yet to be set, but industry experts claim that the flow-on costs of a moderate $26 price per tonne of carbon would result in a $300 rise in electricity bills due to the country’s reliance on coal-fired power generation.
Herald Sun: Deceit will hurt every one of us
JULIA Gillard has now turned her big lie into a big new tax.
The carbon tax – that before the election she promised would not be imposed by “a government I lead” – now starts in 16 months. She hasn’t even got the guts or the honesty to take it to voters at the next election.
It will start as, or very quickly be, the equivalent of a 25 per cent increase in the GST – and then rise from there. Every year. Forever.
You don’t like your already much higher electricity bills? Get used to it, they are headed much higher. And then higher again and again.
And that’s only the start of it. Like the GST, Gillard’s carbon tax will not only push up electricity prices; it will increase the price of everything.
It sets out to hurt every Australian – to absolutely no point. It can make not the slightest difference to the local climate, far less the global climate.
It purports to cut our emissions of carbon dioxide when we are happily pocketing the billions from selling coal and iron ore to China and the rest of Asia.
Talk about hypocrisy, stupidity and deceit rolled into one.
The Australian: Curious strategy is fraught with danger
JULIA Gillard’s formal announcement of the government’s intention to start a carbon tax from July 1 next year is a huge political gamble.
The Prime Minister has decided to build on this week’s parliamentary momentum and Tony Abbott’s internal difficulties by taking on a bold policy challenge against “the politics of the past”. It’s a curious decision fraught with dangers. The release of the so-called framework on climate change yesterday raised more fears and asked more questions than it settled.
Daily Telegraph: Gillard will pay high political price
“THERE will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.” These words uttered on the eve of the last federal election will haunt the Prime Minister every day until the next one.
John Howard may have survived introducing a GST under the same false promise.
But it is unlikely that the Australian people will be as forgiving towards Julia Gillard.
And that is because she was forced to break that promise
for one reason alone — to form government with the Greens and the NSW independents.
Again, it comes down to a question of conviction for the PM.
Forget the merits of climate change policy. The question in people’s minds will be the authenticity of her climate change conversion when only six months ago she declared as much interest in it as the devil does in Christmas.
Ms Gillard’s attempts to reclaim a moral premise as the justification for a carbon tax will only remind people of the last time they were told that.
Labor will pay a high price for the relationship the PM has forged with the Greens.
That price is what households will now be forced to pay as they are financially penalised for making toast or turning on a light. Most people did not vote for the Greens.
The decision’s been made. Perhaps we can now disband the Climate Committee and the Climate Commission and save the money… hmm, fat chance.
UPDATE 1: My favourite comment so far on the “rabble” that runs our country, under a photo of the announcement, by Tim Blair:
Seriously. Just look at them.
UPDATE 2: Business clearly wasn’t consulted about this either – what a surprise – just like the mining tax:
THE nation’s biggest manufacturers have accused Julia Gillard of failing to consult business over her plans to introduce a carbon price next year that could cost the top 200 companies a combined $3.3 billion a year.
In a reaction reminiscent of the mining industry’s attack on Kevin Rudd’s mining tax, steelmakers BlueScope and OneSteel said they were blindsided by yesterday’s announcement that a fixed price would be put on carbon from July next year before transition to a trading scheme.
Paul O’Malley, chief executive of the nation’s biggest manufacturer, BlueScope Steel, said he was worried the government would send emissions offshore by taxing and potentially killing manufacturing in Australia.
“We are very disappointed about the lack of consultation with industry ahead of today’s announcement,” Mr O’Malley said.
“The proper forum for discussion of critical details that affect industry is the Business Roundtable, not the Multi-party Committee on Climate Change, which contains no members from businesses affected by this policy.” (source)
UPDATE 3: The ABC runs a story about how the UK and Denmark are advocating “even deeper cuts” to emissions, just to show subliminally that Gillard is definitely on the right track:
The British and Danish governments want to move to a 30 per cent cut by 2020. Their call comes as EU states are considering whether to move faster than the 20 per cent reduction from the 1990 level.
A draft paper showed earlier this month that the EU is overhauling its strategy in favour of a 25 percent cut.
EU governments have agreed to deepen cuts to 30 percent but only if a strong global climate deal is reached which would also bind developing countries to a similar goal.
“Denmark and the UK are in agreement that our future prosperity depends on stimulating green growth and getting off the oil hook,” British Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne and Danish Minister for Climate and Energy Lykke Friis said in a joint statement.
“Decarbonising further, faster, can keep Europe ahead in the global low carbon race, but the UK and Denmark can’t do that alone,” the ministers said. (source)
Pure insanity. Seriously, how long will it take before they realise that such moves will utterly wreck their economies? They are truly living in fantasy land.
Abbott: "people's revolt" against carbon tax
24 February, 2011 by
"We will fight every second of every minute of every day of every month"
Climate Madness of the Year. Julia Gillard, who lied to the Australian people before the last election that there would be no carbon tax, has today announced just such a tax as part of a price on carbon. As readers of this blog will know, a price on carbon will do nothing whatsoever for the climate, and will simply damage Australia’s standard of living and economy. In other words, it is a pointless environmental gesture designed to appease the extremist Greens, on whom Gillard is so dependent.
But Tony Abbott is in fighting mood:
TONY Abbott has predicted a “people’s revolt” over Julia Gillard’s proposed carbon tax, saying the measure is a breach of faith with the Australian people and an assault on their standard of living.
The Prime Minister today announced Australia would have a carbon tax for three to five years before the introduction of a full emissions trading scheme.
But this afternoon Mr Abbott moved to suspend question time in parliament to censure Ms Gillard, saying she had broken a pre-election promise.
The Opposition leader said that under a $26-a-tonne carbon price, power bills would jump $300 a year and petrol prices would rise 6.5c a litre.
He said voters had believed Ms Gillard when she promised before the election that she would not introduce a carbon tax.
“Today’s announcement is an utter betrayal of the Australia people,” Mr Abbott said.
“We will fight this tax every second of every minute of every day of every month.
“I think there will be a people’s revolt against this carbon tax … because the Australian public will be so revolted by this breach of faith.”
In a 2010 election-eve interview with The Australian, Ms Gillard said she would not introduce a carbon tax.
“I don’t rule out the possibility of legislating a carbon pollution reduction scheme, a market-based mechanism,” she said then. “I rule out a carbon tax.”
Moving the censure motion, Mr Abbott asked whether it was the “real Julia” who made the pledge in the first place.
“Nothing is more fake than making a promise to the Australian people before the election and breaking it after the election,” Mr Abbott said. (source)
A tragic day for Australia, and pure Climate Madness from our idiotic leaders.
UPDATE: And this on the day when a new poll shows that fewer people than ever believe the AGW line. Note that 66% of the population do not believe man is to blame for climate change or are unsure:
Poll results
Link here (PDF), thanks to Jo Nova.
Coral reefs "gone in sixty seconds"
24 February, 2011 by
Time's up
Well, sixty seconds in a geological context – actually by 2050. Coral reefs have been on the planet for aeons, but one extra molecule of CO2 out of every ten thousand in the atmosphere caused by your SUV is enough to finish them off in less than 40 years:
The world’s coral reefs could be wiped out by 2050 unless urgent action is taken to stop threats posed to the “rainforests of the sea” by everything from overfishing to climate change, a report warned Wednesday.
Warmer seas caused by global warming; ocean acidification blamed on carbon dioxide pollution; shipping, overfishing, coastal development and agricultural runoff all pose a threat to coral reefs, which hundreds of millions of people depend on for a living, says the report.
“Threats on land, along the coast and in the water are converging in a perfect storm of threats to reefs,” Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said at a news conference in Washington to launch the “Reefs at Risk Revisited” report.
According to the report, which follows on from an earlier study on the health of the world’s coral reefs, more than 90 percent of reefs will be threatened by 2030 and nearly all reefs will be at risk by 2050 unless action is taken now to reduce the threats.
“Local pressures” on reefs, including overfishing, coastal development and pollution, pose the most immediate and direct threats to the world’s reefs, threatening more than 60 percent of the colorful sea ecosystems.
The impacts of climate change — a “global threat” to reefs — is compounding the local pressures.
“Warming seas have already caused widespread damage to reefs, with high temperatures driving a stress response called coral bleaching, where corals lose their colorful symbiotic algae, exposing their white skeletons,” the report says. (source)
Faith-based scientist criticises religious leader for too much "scepticism"
23 February, 2011 by
Too sceptical
Oh, the delicious irony. You really couldn’t make this stuff up. Here we have the head of the Catholic church in Australia, Cardinal George Pell, whose entire purpose in life is to advance a belief system based entirely on faith, being criticised by a supposedly evidence-based scientist for not having enough “faith” in the global warming consensus, and displaying too much scepticism. Hilarious!
The head of the Bureau of Meteorology has rebuked Cardinal George Pell for his scepticism about climate change, insisting the man has been misled.
Sydney’s Catholic Archbishop is an outspoken disbeliever in man-made global warming, arguing that it was hotter during the Middle Ages and carbon dioxide levels are not historically high. [Both probably correct – Ed]
Bureau chief Greg Ayers used an appearance at a Senate estimates hearing yesterday to rip into the cardinal’s personal views.
He said the core of his arguments were based on a book by Australian scientist Ian Plimer called Heaven and Earth: Global Warming the Missing Science.
But Cardinal Pell’s convictions were misplaced, Dr Ayers said.
“The contents of the book are simply not scientific,” he told the committee.
“The cardinal has been misled.” (source)
Who cares what book he has read? At least he read it, and has an open mind to the possibility that there are other explanation for the current climate changes we are seeing – unlike most at the Bureau of Meteorology, who have their noses in the warmist funding trough.
That it has come to this: a religious leader teaching scientists how to be sceptical. Oh. My. G-d.
Penny Wong: sceptics are flat-earthers
22 February, 2011 by
My ignorance is this big.
This nonsensical comment utterly incensed me. She hasn’t moved on one inch in her understanding of the climate debate. Her robotic response to any challenge to her “faith” in the global warming consensus is the same as it always was.
In an exchange in the Senate estimates hearing, Queensland Senator Ian Macdonald challenged Tim Flannery’s ludicrously expensive appointment as pointless “High Executioner, Archbishop of Titipu and Grand Pooh-bah for climate” (or something):
IAN MACDONALD: Is it true that he’s getting $180,000 salary?
NAOMI WOODLEY: Harinder Sidhu from the Climate Change Department confirmed that’s roughly what professor Flannery will be paid for working three days a week.
HARINDER SIDHU: That’s about equivalent to, for example, what professor Garnaut is being paid for his services. [that makes it OK, I guess? – Ed]
IAN MACDONALD: So it’s much more than anyone sitting at this table is getting paid for a seven day a week job.
Then Macdonald skewered the bias inherent in the climate commission, and Penny just couldn’t handle it:
IAN MACDONALD: But you’re providing money to educate the public on their view of climate science and I assume from that in fairness you’ll be providing professor [Bob] Carter and his literally thousands of professional colleagues with similar funding so that they can educate the public on their view on the science.
PENNY WONG: Well Senator there are also people who believe the world is flat and the Government doesn’t fund that. (source)
And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is the considered response of the former climate change minister. Is there any more to be said? I don’t think so: res ipsa loquitur.
UPDATE: Andrew Bolt posts on this here: Wong slimes experts who’d wipe the floor with her own
UPDATE 2: Cardinal Pell gets an earful from BoM chief in Senate estimates for daring to express sceptical views. Once again, Ian Macdonald goes to his defence.
Food: the next Green bandwagon?
22 February, 2011 by
Time for change
The ecotards are always looking out for the next scare, you know, the one to replace the current one when people wise up to the fact that it was all a crock of s**t. It’s still likely that biodiversity will be the scare du jour in the coming years (see here), with the same universal UN/Green aims of control of the proletariat: regulating people’s lives, taxing them more and generally interfering in their affairs. However, Time magazine has another idea:
These are dark days for the environmental movement. A year after being on the cusp of passing landmark legislation to cap greenhouse gases, greens are coming to accept the fact that the chance of national and international action on climate change has become more remote than ever. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is under attack by newly empowered Republicans in Congress who argue that the very idea of environmental protection is unaffordable for our debt-ridden country. Accustomed to remaining optimistic in the face of long odds, the environmental movement all at once faces a challenge just to stay relevant in a hostile political climate. In 2004, authors Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus faced a harsh backlash from the greens when they released a polemic essay called “The Death of Environmentalism,” but now it appears they might have been ahead of their time.
Even as traditional environmentalism struggles, another movement is rising in its place, aligning consumers, producers, the media and even politicians. It’s the food movement, and if it continues to grow it may be able to create just the sort of political and social transformation that environmentalists have failed to achieve in recent years. That would mean not only changing the way Americans eat and the way they farm — away from industrialized, cheap calories and toward more organic, small-scale production, with plenty of fruits and vegetables — but also altering the way we work and relate to one another. To its most ardent adherents, the food movement isn’t just about reform — it’s about revolution. (source)
Notice how it’s never, ever, about actually making things better, it’s about “political and social transformation” or “altering the way we work and relate to one another” or “revolution” – dismantling capitalism, scaling back Western economies and advancing socialist/Marxist ideals. Yet the warmists yell “conspiracy theory” when sceptics allege ulterior motives for environmental campaigns – when they all but admit it themselves! Why is there a publication called Green Left Weekly? Why not Green Right Weekly? Because the environmental movement is so bound up with socialism and Marxism that the two are virtually identical.
ABC delights in defaming sceptics
21 February, 2011 by
Genetically biased
Bias is in its genes. It’s not like it does it consciously, however, merely that evolution has determined that our national broadcaster hangs far to the Left, plugs climate alarmism, loves Tim Flannery and David Karoly, ensures that all its science presenters are fully paid-up warm-mongers, like Robyn Williams and Bernie Hobbs, and hates sceptics with a passion.
So it is little surprise that defamatory comments in an ABC blog concerning Hockey Stick destroyer Steve McIntyre of the incomparable Climate Audit blog remained unmoderated, requiring not just a formal complaint but an email from McIntyre himself before they were removed. As Marc Hendrickx explains:
In late November last year Sara Phillips, ABC’s environment editor, posted an opinion piece about climate negotiations at Cancun to her taxpayer-funded blog. I left a comment suggesting she might be better off covering a recent paper published in the Journal of Climate co-authored by Steve McIntyre. This work refuted an earlier study published in Nature in the summer of 2009 and widely covered by the ABC which claimed there was unusual warming in west Antarctica due to man-made global warming. McIntyre and co-authors O’Donnell, Lewis and Condon proved the statistical methodology of the Nature study was flawed and the results erroneous. I directed Phillips to a post on the subject by McIntyre, at his Climate Audit website.
The following anonymous comment was posted to Phillips’s blog shortly afterwards:
Annie : 03 Dec 2010 7:07:53pm
The denialist clowns return again . . . climateaudit.org . . . run by Stephen McIntyre a known climate denialist and extremist right-wing provocateur . . . you are a joke as are your answers . . . laughing hysterically.
On seeing the comment I alerted Phillips, suggesting the comment should be removed as it contravened ABC posting rules, namely, 4.4.1 defamatory, or otherwise unlawful or that it violates laws regarding harassment, discrimination, racial vilification, privacy or contempt; 4.4.2 intentionally false or misleading; 4.4.4 abusive, offensive or obscene; 4.4.5 inappropriate, off topic, repetitive or vexatious; 4.4.9 deliberate provocation of other community members.
After a day or so it was clear my request had been ignored, so I submitted a formal complaint to the ABC. This was turned down by the ABC’s audience and consumer affairs. The reply I received on December 16 included the following rationale from Phillips: The moderator has explained this decision as follows: “Mr McIntyre is described by Annie as being an ‘extremist right wing provocateur’. Mr McIntyre’s views are seen by some as extreme. Annie clearly believes they are. He could reasonably be described as ‘right wing’ as a speaking member of the George C Marshall Institute, which is known for its right-leaning politically conservative views. ‘Provocateur’ is a name given to describe those whose thinking goes against that of the status quo, another label that could reasonably be given to Mr McIntyre. As such, the comments from Annie are not unfounded and therefore not defamatory.”
Read the rest of the article to see the lengths required to have that disgraceful comment removed. Yet any comment that dared criticise the consensus that even slightly tiptoed over the posting rules would have been removed in a trice.
Also read Marc’s blog post on the subject: ABC Bias yields no apology for Mr McIntyre
Groupthink at work YET AGAIN at Their ABC, paid for by Your Taxes.
They never give up: "global warming" to increase toxic bacteria
20 February, 2011 by
Bacteria for breakfast
You have to admire their persistence. Fairfax and AFP continually churn out stories like this, regurgitated from press releases without a shred of critical thought. Latest “we’re all gonna die” scare is an increase in toxic bacteria and algae in the sea, and note how when it suits their purpose, they revert to to the discredited term “global warming”, but when it doesn’t, it’s “climate change”…
Global warming could spur the growth of toxic algae and bacteria in the world’s seas and lakes, with an impact that could be felt in 10 years, US scientists said Saturday.
Studies have shown that shifts brought about by climate change make ocean and freshwater environments more susceptible to toxic algae blooms and allow harmful microbes and bacteria to proliferate, according to researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
In one study, NOAA scientists modeled [ah, the wonderful GIGO computer model comes to the rescue – Ed] future ocean and weather patterns to predict the effect on blooms of Alexandrium catenella, or the toxic “red tide,” which can accumulate in shellfish and cause severe symptoms, including paralysis, in humans who eat the contaminated seafood.
“Our projections indicate that by the end of the 21st century, blooms may begin up to two months earlier in the year and persist for one month later compared to the present-day time period of July to October,” said Stephanie Moore, one of the scientists who worked on the study.
But the impact could be felt well before the end of this century — as early as 2040, she said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“Changes in the harmful algal bloom season appear to be imminent. We expect a significant increase in Puget Sound (off the coast of Washington state where the study was conducted) and similar at-risk environments within 30 years, possibly by the next decade,” said Moore. (source)
There never seems to be any regard for the self-regulating processes that happen in nature. Just remember the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which pumped billions of litres of toxic oil into the sea. The eco-tards were predicting an environmental catastrophe (natch), but what happened?
The BP spill offered an “accidental experiment” that showed particular bacteria with an all-methane diet multiplied quickly as the methane spread with the underwater plume from the broken well. Peak consumption of methane probably came in late July and early August, Valentine said.
Other organisms dealt with other hydrocarbons, including ethane and propane emitted in the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The methane-eating bacteria were the last to the hydrocarbon banquet, and based on past observation, the scientists questioned whether they could do the job. (source)
Australian Climate Madness 
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