Tony Abbott: Why I had to take a stand on the ETS tax

12 December, 2009 by

Writing in The Australian:

As things stand, there will almost certainly be a climate change election. It won’t just be about climate change, but that will be the totemic issue. The government will say that lifting the price of carbon is necessary to help the environment. That might be the case one day, but certainly not now. The challenge is to find ways to improve the environment without a great big new tax.

When Winston Churchill drove to Buckingham Palace in the dark days of 1940 to accept the king’s commission, he felt that his whole life had been but a preparation for this moment, or so he recounts in his memoirs. This is not wartime Britain. And I am certainly not Churchill. Still, I feel well equipped to take on the leadership of the party in what are testing times for the conservative side of politics.

Read it here.

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Government pushes ahead with ETS plans, despite Senate defeat

12 December, 2009 by

Too important?

Too important?

Looks like the government thinks climate change is too important for democracy, as it continues to make arrangements for the ETS despite it being defeated in the Senate, and despite it almost certainly being defeated again in February:

The federal government is pushing ahead with its planned emissions trading scheme by moving to engage experts to run complex auctions of millions of carbon emissions permits each year, despite legislation for the ETS being defeated in the Senate last week for the second time.

The Department of Climate Change called on Friday for tenders from companies wanting to design, operate and manage the auctions, Fairfax newspapers say.

The department also said it will issue a separate tender request early next year for settlement services for the hundreds of financial transactions expected to be generated by the auctions under the scheme.

The auctions cannot start unless the legislation for the scheme passes the Senate, which seems unlikely after the Coalition dumped its support for emissions trading policy under its new leader, Tony Abbott.

Not quite sure the legality of spending taxpayer money without the authority of parliament, and not sure how the successful tenderers will react when in February, the ETS is defeated again, and they’re told that their contracts have just been torn up.

Read it here.

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Copenhagen Day 5 – Rudd's document irks Chinese

12 December, 2009 by

Day 5

Day 5

It’s not going very well, and part of the reason for that is Kevin Rudd’s desire to be seen as an international statesman, at the forefront of negotiations. But unfortunately his meddling is annoying the Chinese, whose participation is essential if any deal is to come out of Copenhagen:

CHINA has accused the developed world of retreating from its undertakings to cut greenhouse gas emissions, rejected a proposal at the Copenhagen conference to reduce financial help to China and described the draft deal Kevin Rudd worked on as creating “a lot of problems”.

The Chinese have accused the developed world of abandoning the Kyoto Protocol and pressuring the developing nations to cut emissions without proper compensation for the “luxury emissions” the West has put out for the past century.

The so-called “commitment circle” draft document worked out between Denmark, Australia and other nations was said to be from a small and isolated group and designed to lift the political standing of individuals. [Who could they possibly mean? – Ed]

…

The Chinese position is providing no room to raise its carbon emissions target and to accept any binding agreement. It is demanding new technology regardless of patents, and rejects the view that it should be labelled a developed nation. The draft proposal, which involved the Danish leader and Mr Rudd as a “friend of the chair of the conference”, “was not the overwhelming view of developed countries and was also a personal view not representing the view of his country“, Mr Zhang said.

“The so-called draft has been widely criticised by the developing camp through the group of 77, which truly demonstrates this draft was made by a very small number of countries in isolation, and there are a lot of problems to be addressed,” he said. (source)

Keep up the good work, Kevin – you’re doing everyone a favour. If you want to read the draft, you can find it here.

And China is digging in, pushing its right to economic development:

China has become the “key” to success at Copenhagen, on the developing side, but the world’s most populous nation is fighting back against proposals, in part developed by the Australian Prime Minister, which would redefine China’s status as a developing nation, oblige it to meet tougher targets and cut its access to the billions in aid from the developed world to fight climate change. The proposals also effectively weaken the binding agreements under the Kyoto Protocol.China, in a co-ordinated effort, has decided to put responsibility for emissions cuts back on Europe and the US and to declare its targets of 40 to 45 per cent reductions as “the upper limit”, or the maximum achievable.

Using the backlash from the developing world at Copenhagen, China is marshalling its argument that the West created the greenhouse gas problem and built its wealth upon coal-fired industry. Now, says China, it has 150 million in poverty, millions in regions who suffer harsh winter conditions and their right to develop and simple comfort and sustenance cannot be denied. (source)

Meanwhile, the EU has begun the global socialism at the core of the Copenhagen summit:

European Union nations have agreed to give 7.2 billion euros to help developing nations tackle climate change, the Swedish EU presidency announced Friday.

“The EU total is equal to 2.4 billion euros per year,” over the next three years, with voluntary pledges coming in from all 27 EU member states, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said after a two-day EU summit in Brussels.

The ‘fast start’ money is Europe’s contribution to helping the developing world to adapt to global warming over the next three years and to encourage the ongoing UN climate change conference in Copenhagen to do more. (source)

Just a drop in the ocean compared to what they’re hoping for…

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Rudd-maths: 114 – 14 = "50 or 60"

11 December, 2009 by

Bottom of the class

Bottom of the class

Kind of like Rudd-speak, Rudd-maths is maths in another universe. Rudd-maths is fine with the mainstream media – they just wave it through. If it had been from a Liberal, however, they would have been all over it like a rash. This all relates to Australia sending a frankly ridiculous delegation of 114 (one hundred and fourteen) to Copenhagen, including 7 media advisers and a “personal photographer,” compared to just 70-odd for the UK. Nice work if you can get it.

But in The Australian, Kevin Rudd tries to blame the huge number on the states:

A provisional list published in The Australian today contains the names and details of 114 Australian representatives, compared with just 71 for the United Kingdom.

Mr Rudd did not dispute the reported number, saying officials from the state and territory governments were part of Australia’s delegation.

He claimed the Australian delegation was larger than the British contingent because the UK did not have state governments.

“We extend an invitation to (officials at the state level) and they come,” Mr Rudd told Fairfax Radio today.

But the provisional list contains details of only 14 representatives of state government, plus one delegate from the Australian Local Government Association.

The Prime Minister said the “core Australian government delegation” was “probably in the order of about 50 or 60”.

So there’s a huge hole in the maths there, Kev, in case you haven’t noticed. Take away the state representatives and you have 100. So where on earth do you get “50 or 60”? But hey, the mainstream media don’t bother about such trivia – except when it’s the Liberals, naturally.

Read it here.

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Climategate in the UK House of Lords

11 December, 2009 by

Palace of Westminster

Palace of Westminster

H/t: Watts Up With That. From a speech in the House of Lords by the rather ironically named Lord Turnbull – notable because it questions the science. Many politicians believe that public opinion dictates that the science be left alone, and arguments made purely on economic grounds. ACM believes this is wrong, and that the whole scientific basis of AGW should be thoroughly reviewed.

There is the issue of the science, which I had previously taken as given; but many people’s faith is being tested. We are often told that the science is settled. I suppose that is what the Inquisition said to Galileo. If so, why are we spending millions of pounds on research? The science is far from settled. There are major controversies not just about the contribution of CO2, on which most of the debate is focused, but about the influence of other factors such as water vapour, or clouds-the most powerful greenhouse gas-ocean currents and the sun, together with feedback effects which can be negative as well as positive.

Worse still, there are even controversies about the basic data on temperature. The series going back one, 10 or 100,000 years are, in the genuine sense of the word, synthetic. They are not direct observations but are melded together from proxies such as ice cores, ocean sediments and tree rings.

Given the extent to which the outcome is affected by the statistical techniques and the weightings applied by individual researchers, it is essential that the work is done as transparently as possible, with the greatest scope for challenge. That is why the disclosure of documents and e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit is so disturbing. Instead of an open debate, a picture is emerging of selective use of data, efforts to silence critics, and particularly a refusal to share data and methodologies.

It is essential that these allegations are independently and rigorously investigated. Naturally, I welcome the appointment of my old colleague, Sir Muir Russell, to lead this investigation; a civil servant with a physics degree is a rare beast indeed. He needs to establish what the documents really mean and recommend changes in governance and transparency which will restore confidence in the integrity of the data. This is not just an academic feud in the English department from a Malcolm Bradbury novel. The CRU is a major contributor to the IPCC process. The Government should not see this as a purely university matter. They are the funders of much of this research and their climate change policies are based on it.

We need to purge the debate of the unpleasant religiosity that surrounds it, of scientists acting like NGO activists, of propaganda based on fear, for example, the quite disgraceful government advertisement which tried to frighten young children – the final image being the family dog being drowned-and of claims about having “10 days to save the world”. Crude insults from the Prime Minister do not help.

Well said indeed.

Read the whole speech here.

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Europe's ETS: fraudsters pocket €5bn

11 December, 2009 by

carboncredit

Fake

ACM has posted before about scammers and the potential for defrauding carbon markets (see here for example), but there is no better argument against an ETS than this article in the UK Telegraph:

Carbon trading fraudsters may have accounted for up to 90% of all market activity in some European countries, with criminals pocketing an estimated €5bn (£4.5bn) mainly in Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland, according to Europol, the European law enforcement agency.

The revelation caused embarrassment for European Union negotiators at the Copenhagen climate change summit yesterday, where they have been pushing for an expansion of their system across the globe to penalise heavy emitters of carbon dioxide.

Rob Wainwright, the director of serious crime squad, said large-scale organised criminal activity had “endangered the credibility” of the current carbon trading system.

…

Suspicions about an unprecedented level of carbon crime over the last 18 months have led investigators to believe criminals are using “missing trader” techniques to buy up carbon credits elsewhere in Europe where there is a cheaper rate of VAT [GST – Ed].

Then they sell on the credits in the UK, charging the domestic rate, and pocket the difference. This has been commonplace among trading of very mobile commodities across European borders, such as phones, computer chips and cigarettes.

Ninety percent?? Unbelievable.

Read it here.

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The Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Round-up

11 December, 2009 by

Skewering the clueless

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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UK Met Office: worthless petition to prop up CRU

11 December, 2009 by

Pointless petition

Pointless petition

The Met Office is clearly rattled by the CRU revelations, and is running around like a headless chicken trying to drum up support for a petition claiming that climate science is as pure as the driven snow. It seems that anyone can sign, and pressure is being applied to those who don’t:

More than 1700 scientists have agreed to sign a statement defending the “integrity and honesty” of global-warming research.

The initiative is a sign of how worried the Met Office is that emails stolen from the University of East Anglia are fuelling scepticism about man-made global warming at a critical moment in talks on carbon emissions. One scientist said that he felt under pressure to sign the circular or risk losing work. The Met Office admitted that many of the signatories did not work on climate change.

Met Office chief executive John Hirst and chief scientist Julia Slingo (pictured) wrote to 70 colleagues last Sunday asking them to sign “to defend our profession against this unprecedented attack to discredit us and the science of climate change”.

…

One scientist said he felt under pressure to sign. “The Met Office is a major employer of scientists and has long had a policy of only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on man-made global warming,” he said.

So if you don’t sign, you’ll be out on your ear. As Anthony Watts says, the next time anyone criticises the 31,000-odd signatures in The Petition Project, you can point them to this pile of nonsense.

Read it here.

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Copenhagen – Day 4: China vs US

11 December, 2009 by

Day 4

Day 4

As was to be expected, the climate talks are boiling down to a China vs US punch-up. Yesterday, the US negotiator was blunt about the need for China to play ball, and today China has hit back, calling for more emissions cuts from the US (and more money, naturally):

China’s top climate envoy called on President Barack Obama to increase a U.S. offer to cut greenhouse gases, and said it would discuss a 2050 emissions goal only if rich nations offered more cash and carbon cuts.

Xie Zhenhua said developed nations must commit to cuts of “at least 40 percent” by 2020 from 1990 levels. He said Beijing was aiming for a legally binding treaty from the December 7-18 talks, although hosts Denmark have said that will be impossible.

A successful outcome from the summit largely depends on agreement between the United States and China, which together generate 40 percent of global carbon emissions.

But negotiations have been bogged down for months by rifts between developed and developing nations over who should cut emissions, by how much, and who should pay.

“I do hope that President Obama can bring a concrete contribution to Copenhagen,” Xie said in a rare interview.

Asked if he meant something more than Obama has proposed so far, a 3 percent cut from 1990 levels by 2020, Xie said: “Yes.”

“The whole world is watching the United States, and as long as they take on a good leadership role, then I think that we can make a large step forward in combating climate change.” (source)

40% by 2020 on 1990 levels equates to economic suicide, just sayin’. Meanwhile, in Faifax fantasy land, the Sydney Morning Herald prints the story of a 17-year-old living in the Solomon Islands, who pleads that her home is being flooded “by climate change”:

I am 17 years old. For my entire life, countries have been negotiating a climate agreement. My future is in front of me. In the year that I was born, amid an atmosphere of hope, the world formed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to solve the climate crisis.

This week I told negotiators at the main plenary session of the UN Climate Change Conference that time is running out and my generation needs them to work together to come up with the agreement that we deserve.

…

Sea-level rise and unprecedented storm surges caused by climate change are already affecting communities across the Pacific and are expected to get significantly worse if climate change is not immediately and adequately tackled.

Consequently, small island governments, like my own, are asking the global community to prevent global warming above 1.5 degrees. This means a global emission stabilisation target of below 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere.

Maybe she hasn’t seen this graph, which shows sea levels rising at a constant rate, which they have done since the end of the last Ice Age, and which are actually slowing down:

Can't hide the decline

Can't hide the decline

Sarah Palin speaks the truth about the whole Copenhagen gab-fest:

SARAH Palin all but declared global warming a hoax yesterday when the former US vice-presidential candidate urged Barack Obama to boycott the Copenhagen climate change conference and stand up to the “radical environment movement”.

The former Alaska governor and possible 2012 presidential contender seized upon leaked emails from climate change scientists at the University of East Anglia. The scientists have been accused by sceptics of falsifying data to make the case that the phenomenon is real and man-made, something they deny.

The scandal has become a cause celebre among climate change deniers and sceptics. A group of Republican politicians has vowed to fly to Copenhagen next week to argue that the threat from global warming is overblown and too costly to act on.

Writing in The Washington Post, which was criticised from the Left for allowing her to argue her case [gee, that sounds like an attempt at censorship. Why would that be? The Left are always in favour of full and open debate, aren’t they? – Ed], Mrs Palin said: “The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.” (source)

Well said.

And in other news, an wholly undeserving person receives a totally discredited prize somewhere and makes long speech. Yawn.

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Must see video: "It's a Climategate Christmas"

10 December, 2009 by

From Minnesotans for Global Warming, the team that brought you “Hide the Decline” (see here), comes a medley of Christmas favourites:

Check out the M4GW site here. (h/t: I love CO2)

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