Election 2010: Climate role in choosing new government

23 August, 2010 by

Parliament House, Canberra

It will be down to a bunch of independent MPs to determine whether Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott forms the next Australian government, with both the major parties unable to command an overall majority. Three of them are small-c conservative, and would prima facie favour the Coalition, one is left-wing, and they have vowed to act as a “block” – all plumping for one option or the other to ensure “stable government”. But their views on the climate issue are diverse, as The Sydney Morning Herald reports, and bear in mind of course when reading this that the SMH wants Labor back in office:

Two likelihoods arise from Saturday – that Labor will eventually concede that it has been punished in part for its dismal failure to live up to expectations on climate change, and that four of the five men likely to share the House of Representatives crossbench will want to see the next government do more.

The fifth, renegade former National Bob Katter, doubts that man-made climate change exists. Whoever forms government, finding common ground to get a climate change policy through the lower house is not going to be easy. But neither will it be impossible.

Rob Oakeshott, independent member for Lyne, yesterday said an emissions trading scheme would be a key issue in the next Parliament. He voted in favour of the ALP’s shelved scheme, having earlier proposed amendments to bring it more into line with the cleaner model proposed by former Labor climate adviser Ross Garnaut. Oakeshott also backed the Greens’ push for a feed-in tariff to develop renewable energy. During the campaign he warned the ”do nothing” approach on climate was a lose/lose approach that would lead to rapidly increasing electricity prices and loss of quality of life.

Tony Windsor is harder to read. In 2008, he introduced a private member’s bill that included a target of a 30 per cent cut in emissions below 1990 levels by 2020 – far beyond what the major parties are proposing.

But he voted against Labor’s emissions scheme and has signalled he would prefer measures to directly boost renewable energy to a carbon price. He has not indicated that climate change would be a major issue in deciding which party should form government.

Andrew Wilkie views climate change as a social justice issue [as all far-left wingers do] and has backed a carbon price as the best way to cut emissions.

Oakeshott and Wilkie might struggle to find common ground on climate with a Coalition government, which would make Australia one of only three G20 countries to be led by a vocal climate sceptic.

Read it here.

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Election 2010: hung parliament?

22 August, 2010 by

At the Four Seasons, Sydney

A stunning result for Tony Abbott. Back in November 2009, having won the leadership by just one vote, all the commentators were predicting a total “wipe-out” at the 2010 election, and just look what happens. Tony “wipes out” Labor’s majority, and may be in with a shot at a coalition government with the independents. A disastrous night for Joolya and Labor, and deservedly so.

Whatever happens, the Coalition are back in the game, thanks to Tony Abbott.

And Josh at Cartoons by Josh (see here) has created the following in response:

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Election 2010: Very good, but…

21 August, 2010 by

… Not quite good enough. It looks like Labor will be returned to government with a reduced majority … Or possibly a hung parliament. A Coalition victory looks unlikely… More to follow.

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Election 2010: Gillard's desperate lies to scare voters

21 August, 2010 by

Gillard's glamorous new look

Even the journalists are getting sick of it. I’m talking about the “WorkChoices Refrain”. If this is what Joolya is reduced to, she must be running scared. The Age (amazingly) has all the gory details:

IF PROOF were needed that Julia Gillard is getting rattled about the possibility she could be in opposition tomorrow, her last media conference before polling day provided it.

It was, it turned out, one of the shortest media conferences of the five-week campaign.

The reason? The media turned nasty, accusing the PM of becoming so desperate she had deliberately ”verballed” her opponent, Tony Abbott.

…

”Prime Minister, what does it say about your level of confidence in your positive plan for the future that you’ve just outlined that you’ve spent the day wandering around verbalising Tony Abbott?” she was asked.

The PM returned to the safety of re-outlining her plan for the future and utterly avoiding the question, to protests from the media.

She was then asked whether she was embarking on a fear campaign because she was panicking about the polls.

It got worse. Before long, a reporter demanded to know whether the claim that WorkChoices would be back on Monday was ”an outright lie”.

It was getting harder to avoid answering such questions, but Ms Gillard did her valiant best, which simply drew the accusation that she was doing what she accused Tony Abbott of doing: not giving straight answers. (source)

She can’t give straight answers because she has to defend the indefensible – Labor’s disastrous record in government – so she lies and spins and shamelessly tries to scare voters with the non-existent bogeyman of the campaign, WorkChoices. And as we reported yesterday, she brings up the subject of a price on carbon at the 11th hour so that there can’t be any proper debate.

You all know what to do today – vote out Labor.

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Labor "all over the place" on climate

20 August, 2010 by

Blown about like a fart in a hurricane

Does Labor want an ETS or not? Flip a coin – the answer you get will be about as reliable as asking Joolya, who also doesn’t want to admit to wanting a carbon tax or ETS. Labor are in disarray on climate, on the one hand having to appease the Greens, but on the other not wanting to let Abbott scare everybody with the “great big new tax on everything” line.

Let’s look back at what a certain Gillard, J said after the defeat of the ETS in the Senate back in late 2009:

”Today the climate change extremists and deniers in the Liberal Party have stopped this nation from taking decisive action on climate change,” the Deputy Prime Minister said, deadpan, into a thicket of cameras and recorders.

Extremists and deniers. In case anyone had missed the point, she repeated the phrase five times. ”Now [we] have been stopped by the Liberal Party extremists and the climate change deniers. This nation has been stopped from taking a major step in the nation’s interests by Liberal Party extremists and climate change deniers.”

So in her mind back then, clearly delay is denial. Then, having realised she had been outmanoeuvred by Tony Abbott after the defeat of the ETS, and the effectiveness of the Coalition’s “great big new tax” line, she came up with this pointless “citizen’s assembly” on climate, in other words an excuse for doing nothing whilst appearing to do something, which was hammered mercilessly from all sides.

But then came the shady, murky backroom deal for preferences with the Greens. When it didn’t look like Labor would need them, it was happy to continue along the no-ETS path, but now, with the polls split 50-50 and Labor desperate for Green preferences to stay in power, guess what she does: she raises again the possibility of a price on carbon in the next parliament. So transparent.

And now the messages are all over the place, and Labor is in chaos on climate:

Less than 24 hours before voters head to the polls, there is confusion around whether Labor wants to legislate for a carbon price next term.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard is sending mixed messages around whether she would try to pass an ETS next term, or wait until two elections away, after 2013.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott accused Labor of being “all over the place” on climate change.

Ms Gillard told a News Ltd newspaper she would not rule out legislating a carbon price next term.

But when pressed in other interviews, she declined to repeat the statement or clarify her timeline.

She told ABC Radio that Labor would consider the matter in late 2012 and would move to legislate at some stage if the conditions were right.

“Obviously that takes some time, as does the implementation date,” Ms Gillard said.

An interviewer on ABC Radio’s Triple J asked Ms Gillard if she would legislate next term; her response was “we will work to get a community consensus”.

Mr Abbott said: “Labor’s policy is all over the place … they’ve got to make up their minds what they want”.

He told reporters in Sydney that Labor was torn between subcontracting climate change to “some kind of nebulous citizens’ assembly”, and bringing in a carbon price which would force up electricity prices.

Coalition campaign spokesman Andrew Robb said Ms Gillard would use a Labor election victory as a mandate for a carbon tax. (source)

And I would have to agree with that. The Greens, if they hold the balance of power in the Senate, will blackmail Labor into legislating a price on carbon whether Joolya wants it or not.

Please, people of Australia, vote this incompetent bunch of no-hopers out of government tomorrow.

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Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

20 August, 2010 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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Shock: Gillard "open to carbon tax"

19 August, 2010 by

Carbon tax in action

There’s a surprise – not. Finally climate crawls back onto the electoral agenda again, as Joolya reveals her desire for an ETS or carbon tax:

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has left open the door for a future carbon price or emissions trading scheme.

Emissions would be abated through policies Labor already had announced, for renewable energy, greener buildings and cars, Ms Gillard told the National Press Club on Thursday.

She said Australians frustrated that Labor had not achieved an emissions trading scheme in its first term should give the government another chance.

“People are making a decision whether they will have a prime minister who believes in climate change, who is committed to leading a national debate to get a carbon pollution reduction scheme and the market mechanism we need to price carbon, whilst delivering on the policies I’ve outlined,” she said. (source)

So all this horseshit about a citizens assembly is a smokescreen, as we knew all along. Joolya and Labor want an ETS or a carbon tax, and with the Greens twisting their arms in the Senate, we will surely get one.

Summary: A vote for Labor is a vote for a carbon tax.

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UN/WMO hysteria over "unprecedented weather"

19 August, 2010 by

Blocking high over northern Europe, 1990

Weather isn’t climate – except when the UN or the WMO say it is. Tiny changes in global temperature over decades or centuries hardly get the juices flowing, but a good disaster or three, that’s more like it! If we can tie “global warming” to ominous sounding effects such as “changes in atmospheric currents” we can really scare the daylights out of people.

Mass hysteria surrounds the Pakistani floods, the Russian heatwave, the ice island and the landslides in China, and the fact that these four weather events have happened at roughly the same time has given the UN the perfect opportunity to blame global warming [surely “climate change”]. The UN is therefore desperately asking climate scientists to investigate:

Climate scientists must urgently look into changes in atmospheric currents linked to devastating floods in Pakistan and wildfires in Russia, UN climate and weather bodies said on Wednesday.

Ghassem Asrar, director of the World Climate Research Program, told AFP that changes, known as blocking episodes, can prevent humidity or hot weather dispersing.

That intensified heavy rain or heatwaves and locked them over an area, he explained, potentially with a growing impact on extreme weather events that scientists expect to happen more frequently with global warming.

Asrar said that European researchers had modelled the blocking pattern in atmospheric currents and resulting weather behind the Pakistani rains and Russian heatwave a few weeks in advance.

They “clearly flagged this formation and kept track of it”, said Asrar, whose program is partly linked to the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

“We know for sure that the two events in Pakistan and Russia are linked,” he added.

Asrar and the WMO underlined that the intense monsoon rain in Pakistan and heatwave in Russia, as well as rain-induced landslides in China and the split of a giant iceberg in Greenland in recent weeks were exceptional even by the standards of naturally-occurring climate extremes.

The WMO called the four “an unprecedented sequence of events” that “compare with, or exceed in intensity, duration or geographical extent, the previous largest historical events”. [Note that it says “compare with or exceed”, so I guess, like the ice island that was the “largest since, er, the last one”, and the last one had nothing to do with “global warming”, events like this have happened before for millions of years, mostly unobserved – Ed]

Now we have the great AGW cause, we can pin every disaster on it knowing we can never be proved wrong. By the way, growing up in the UK in the 70s and 80s, blocking patterns were a common event every summer (as they still are) – we actually looked forward to them. A big high pressure area would squat over northern europe forcing the jetstream to deviate north (see image), taking all the low pressure systems with it, and away from the UK. It would often give us several weeks of warm, settled weather. But the media report this stuff as if it’s something new and scary – because they have no understanding of weather, or climate, or more importantly, history.

Read it here.

See here for a description of anticyclones and blocking highs, which includes the following:

“Dry spells over Britain (such as the very pronounced drought of 1975–6 and the series of drought episodes during the period 1988–92) are usually the result of persistent blocking anticyclones close to the British Isles. Hot summers are often the result of slow-moving anticyclones situated either over Scandinavia or to the east or south-east of Britain, with very warm and dry continental air being advected across the country. Cool but relatively dry summers are caused by high pressure persistently reforming to the west of Ireland.”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

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Australian Academy of Science sells out to alarmism

18 August, 2010 by

Sold out to alarmism

Just like so many formerly-learned societies that have gone before it, such as the UK Royal Society (see here for example), the Australian Academy of Science has published a climate change document pushing the usual alarmist line, and advocating the inevitable “deep cuts” in emissions, as The Australian reports:

THE Australian Academy of Science has pitted its expertise against the greenhouse sceptics in a report stating that humans are changing our climate.

The statement expresses for the first time the consensus among Australia’s top climate scientists on the evidence for human-caused global warming.

In it, nine eminent climate scientists declare that global average temperatures has risen during the past century, and that increased greenhouse gas levels due to human activity are mostly to blame. The academy issued the statement, The Science of Climate Change: Questions and Answers, in Canberra on Monday as part of National Science Week.

The document sets out the evidence for human impact on climate and outlines the possible consequences of failure to make deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, the reality is that there is no evidence of this whatsoever. All we know is that the small additional amount of CO2 added since the Industrial Revolution will have warmed the climate by a fraction of a degree. Apart from that, it’s all supposition and models. And look who’s in the list of authors:

Among the authors of the academy’s report are David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne; Matthew England, of the University of NSW; Michael Bird, of James Cook University; and the CSIRO’s Mike Raupach. (source)

Two of the best known climate alarmist scientists – Karoly in particular makes regular appearances at ACM (see here). I wonder if they asked Bob Carter (also of James Cook Uni, probably just along the corridor from Bird) or Ian Plimer to contribute? Don’t make me laugh. They don’t want their precious warming faith attacked by free-thinking scepticism.

The AAS document can be downloaded here (PDF).

(h/t WipeOut)

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Election 2010: Gillard devotes 12 words to climate

17 August, 2010 by

Quote of the Day

Drum roll please for Joolya Gillard’s contribution to the climate change debate in her campaign launch yesterday:

Yes we will work together and tackle the challenge of climate change. (source)

Er, that’s it. That’s how highly Labor, the party that was so desperate to push through the ETS before the Copenhagen climate conference in December 2009, now regards the “greatest moral challenge since the dawn of time (or something)”. And where is the Labor-loving media on this shameless backflip? Nowhere to be seen, of course.

UPDATE: Tom Switzer at ABC Unleashed skewers the hypocrisy here. And one of the comments is priceless – wailing that he thinks he’s been “redirected to Liberal HQ”, when of course he’s accustomed to being “redirected straight to Labor HQ” thanks to the ABC’s blatant pro-Labor bias.

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