Climate Commission's propaganda 'a call to arms'

22 August, 2012 by

Regurgitating propaganda

UPDATE: Read Will Steffen’s plugging of this report in the Silly Moaning Herald here (if you can stand it).

Even the Fairfax-owned Financial Review isn’t falling for the ludicrous spin of the Climate Commission any more, with a harshly worded editorial on their latest pronouncement. By the way, does anyone out there still believe that the Climate Commission isn’t just a mouthpiece for trumpeting Labor government policy, staffed as it is by a team of alarmists with not one single person in the clique to challenge the orthodoxy or put a contrary view?

This latest missive is intended to convince people that our carbon tax isn’t the economy-wrecking disaster we all know it is, and which will serve no purpose other than to appease the Greens, but is in fact essential for us to “keep up” with the urgent action being taken by the rest of the world  – hmm, like we were born yesterday.

The AFR, like me, isn’t convinced:

The report states that 90 countries, representing 90 per cent of the global economy, have committed to limit their greenhouse gas emissions, and lists the efforts of major economies, country by country, in an appendix.

However, that list omits a great deal. For example, the report states that renewables accounted for 9 per cent of China’s energy consumption in 2010, but it does not say how much of that was due to the long-standing national focus on hydroelectricity.

A glowing report on Canada’s efforts does not mention that Canada formally withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol late last year, and a reference to South Korea’s emissions trading scheme, due to start in 2015, does not say that 90 per cent of the scheme’s permits will initially be issued for free.

Various emissions trading schemes are mentioned in the report, including seven that the Chinese government plans to develop in key cities from 2013, as well as schemes operating in the US. But for completeness, the report could have at least answered a devastating critique of the US schemes in a report by the Coalition-dominated Senate committee on the scrutiny of new taxes, released late last year.

The Climate Commission’s report is not the dispassionate analysis that we might have expected from a government body. It is more of a call to arms, presenting a selective view of international action on climate, and should be treated as such.

Bravo. Another clever trick with China is to use emissions “intensity”, or emissions per unit GDP, which, given China’s GDP is going through the roof, means emissions will too, despite intensity reducing. A cheap trick that fools no-one.

What a joke the Climate Commission is, with a joker in charge.

Read it here.

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Australia's totalitarian Gillard urged to 'go harder' at media

22 August, 2012 by

(image Pickering Post)

UPDATE: Julie Bishop, former managing partner of the Perth office of national law firm Clayton Utz, believes Gillard’s conduct is a serious breach of professional or ethical conduct:

“If a partner didn’t open a file for work they were doing for a client with whom they had an intimate relationship, and then had no reasonable explanation for it, that would be viewed very seriously within a law firm.

“You have to have a file number, so you have to open a file so that other partners can see what work is being done.

“It would give the impression that there is something to hide and partners would view that very dimly.” (source)

Cue Gillard’s cracked record response, no doubt: I’ve dealt with this all before and I’ve done nothing wrong.

It’s wearing very, very thin, Julia.

Just a reminder that when you read the following, it’s 21st century Australia we’re in, not 1970s Soviet Union. The implications for press freedom (which includes the right for blogs such as this to publish views which challenge the government position) are significant.

Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard is floundering amidst allegations regarding her conduct as a lawyer in the mid-1990s, in particular the setting up of an association which was used – allegedly – to misappropriate union funds.

The Australian and talkback hosts are on the trail, and more of the media is becoming alerted to the story, yet instead of coming clean about it and making a statement, Gillard’s first instinct, and that of her party, is to deny everything, say nothing and instead shut down the legitimate questions by “regulating” the media (i.e. suppressing dissent and only allowing acceptable views to be printed – acceptable to Labor, Gillard and the Left, of course). The mark of a true totalitarian.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. If this was a Labor opposition making the same claims of a Coalition Prime Minister, the ABC and Fairfax would be screaming from the rooftops, but naturally, because it involves their mates, Labor, both of those organisations have been virtually silent on the issue.

JULIA Gillard has lashed out at her online accusers over the circumstances of her departure from law firm Slater & Gordon in the mid-1990s, as her caucus colleagues urged her to “take the gloves off” in a fight with the press.

The Prime Minister took aim at news coverage of her personal life and blasted internet blogs for their “gender-based” attacks on her leadership, amid increasing scrutiny of her link to a disgraced union official and her departure from Slater & Gordon in the mid-1990s.

In a heated discussion within the Labor caucus, MPs urged backbencher John Murphy to “go harder” as he attacked News Limited, publisher of The Australian, over its coverage of the government.

Ms Gillard responded by vowing to proceed with media reforms by the end of the year, keeping the threat of regulation hanging over the sector.

The remarks came as Tony Abbott said the circumstances of Ms Gillard’s departure from Slater & Gordon were the subject of “legitimate media interest” and the Coalition would give her “every opportunity” to make a statement on the matter to parliament.

Ms Gillard has refused to discuss claims by two former Slater & Gordon partners that she left the firm in 1995 after an internal investigation into her dealings with her then boyfriend, Bruce Wilson, a former Australian Workers Union boss who was later accused of corruption. (source)

Janet Albrechtsen asks Gillard some hard questions:

PRIME Minister, you once said News Limited had hard questions to answer. When pressed, you couldn’t elaborate. Allow me to elaborate on some questions for you. Simply repeating that you have answered questions previously is a political tactic that treats voters as stupid. But we are not. You may have answered other questions long ago. But new information has raised new questions.

On ABC1’s Q&A on Monday night, Graham Richardson said you don’t get the best advice from your staffers but the buck stops with you. He said that you have shown a lack of sound political judgment in the way you have dealt with this issue to date. Please reconsider your strategy. Surely you don’t believe that this is simply the work of feral bloggers? To be sure, a scurrilous online campaign is being waged. But completely separately, important issues are being raised by serious people in serious places. You might not like it but democracy depends on an intellectually curious media. (source)

The Australian‘s editorial is also on the same subject:

 On Sunday, Ms Gillard attacked our editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, arguably the nation’s most eminent political journalist, because he dared to follow up allegations made through this newspaper by former Slater & Gordon partner Nick Styant-Browne. “The central point was that the partner alleged you had to resign because of this issue,” said Kelly. “Is that correct or not?” “Look, Paul,” Ms Gillard responded, “I did resign from Slater & Gordon, that’s a matter of public record. I made the decision to do that. I mean, join the dots for me, Paul. What matters about this today for Australia and me being Prime Minister? Just articulate that … I did nothing wrong.”

While Ms Gillard dodges the question, Thomas has now confirmed through a second senior partner at the time, Peter Gordon, that the firm considered “terminating” Ms Gillard’s employment over her handling of the AWU matters before accepting her resignation. Mr Gordon and Mr Styant-Browne are not “birthers” – they are experienced lawyers who have been cautious and deliberate about their statements.

At the heart of this matter is the allegation Ms Gillard, while a salaried partner, carried out undeclared legal work for her then boyfriend and AWU boss Bruce Wilson and his bagman, AWU official Ralph Blewitt. This included establishing an entity named the AWU Workplace Reform Association – later revealed to have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies that were then used by Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt for private purposes, including buying a house in Melbourne’s Fitzroy. Ms Gillard attended the auction with Mr Wilson, who moved into the house. Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt later sold the property, keeping the proceeds.

And there’s plenty more. Rather than accept that a free press is one of the fundamental features of an open democracy, and difficult questions asked of a prime minister must be answered, the Left’s response is always to regulate and control the media, for their own selfish ends.

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Legal opinion: no big bill to repeal carbon [dioxide] tax

20 August, 2012 by

Legal opinion

From The Australian:

A COALITION government elected next year could repeal the carbon tax without risking a multi-billion-dollar compensation bill, a prominent legal identity says.

The opposition has been dogged by claims it will be forced to pay billions for carbon units issued by the commonwealth if it honours its commitment to end the tax under the provisions of Section 51 of the constitution, which stipulates the government can only acquire property “on just terms”.

But Sydney barrister and former law academic Bryan Pape — whose 2009 challenge to the $900 million Rudd government stimulus payments led to the High Court demolishing the long-held assumption that the commonwealth can spend money in whatever area it wishes — says under the operations of the Clean Energy Act no acquisition of property issues would arise until 2015.

The opinion emerged as Julia Gillard confirmed the government was continuing to consult on the shape of the floor price in its carbon pricing legislation.

“We’ve been consulting on floor price arrangements as is well know,” the Prime Minister said.

“We will continue with that and when we’re in a position to say something about that, we will.”

In an opinion provided to the Institute of Public Affairs think-tank and obtained by The Australian, Mr Pape cites Section 100.7 of the act and says: “Up to June 30, 2015, any carbon units which were issued to persons by the regulator are taken to have been surrendered immediately after the issue of the unit.

“In short, there would be no property capable of being acquired.”

Given the situation, Mr Pape writes: “In my opinion there would be no consequences with respect to Section 51.”

Opposition climate spokesman Greg Hunt welcomed Mr Pape’s opinion.

“It fits with exactly what we always knew to be the case,” he said.

“There never has been and never will be a basis for compensation because nobody loses anything.

“The point about carbon units issued to companies now is that they are only ever issued for part payment of a carbon tax bill.

“Every single company that gets some compensation still has a bigger bill to pay.”

Mr Hunt repeated the Coalition’s determination to repeal the tax.

“Unlike the government we’ve said what we’ll do — and we’ll do it,” he said.

“The next election will be a referendum on the carbon tax.

“We can repeal it, we will repeal it and we’ll do it quickly and easily.” (source)

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Apocalypse – not

18 August, 2012 by

Matt Ridley (from rationaloptimist.com)

Matt Ridley, writing in Wired, exposes the end-of-the-world cultism that infects environmental activism, and shows how in almost every case, they got it spectacularly wrong.

From SARS to mad cow disease to acid rain to ozone holes, the environmentalists cannot resist the temptation to invoke apocalyptic prophesies to scare the public witless (and secure more funding perhaps?).

What’s the betting that climate alarmism will eventually be relegated to the dustbin of failed environmental scares? They all have several things in common:

  • an element of reality, which can be large or small;
  • which in each case is elevated to a full-blown scare;
  • by activists, who are usually driven by emotional, political, financial or other non-scientific motives;
  • the scare will command wall-to-wall media coverage, often for many years;
  • eventually, however, possibly decades later, it will be shown to have been exaggerated;
  • followed by a collective wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth from those in power;
  • and the public becomes ever more cynical and untrusting of such prophesies in the future.

In the climate debate, the extraordinary hysteria of the alarmists has polarised the debate to such an extent that outright denial (no matter how irrational) has sprung up almost out of necessity to counter it. Balanced elucidation of a potential crisis usually results in balanced responses – frenzied Chicken Little rants will inevitably result in precisely the same in response.

Ridley correctly concludes that the middle ground is where the debate should be focussed:

So, should we worry or not about the warming climate? It is far too binary a question. The lesson of failed past predictions of ecological apocalypse is not that nothing was happening but that the middle-ground possibilities were too frequently excluded from consideration. In the climate debate, we hear a lot from those who think disaster is inexorable if not inevitable, and a lot from those who think it is all a hoax. We hardly ever allow the moderate “lukewarmers” a voice: those who suspect that the net positive feedbacks from water vapor in the atmosphere are low, so that we face only 1 to 2 degrees Celsius of warming this century; that the Greenland ice sheet may melt but no faster than its current rate of less than 1 percent per century; that net increases in rainfall (and carbon dioxide concentration) may improve agricultural productivity; that ecosystems have survived sudden temperature lurches before; and that adaptation to gradual change may be both cheaper and less ecologically damaging than a rapid and brutal decision to give up fossil fuels cold turkey.

We’ve already seen some evidence that humans can forestall warming-related catastrophes. A good example is malaria, which was once widely predicted to get worse as a result of climate change. Yet in the 20th century, malaria retreated from large parts of the world, including North America and Russia, even as the world warmed. Malaria-specific mortality plummeted in the first decade of the current century by an astonishing 25 percent. The weather may well have grown more hospitable to mosquitoes during that time. But any effects of warming were more than counteracted by pesticides, new antimalarial drugs, better drainage, and economic development. Experts such as Peter Gething at Oxford argue that these trends will continue, whatever the weather.

Just as policy can make the climate crisis worse—mandating biofuels has not only encouraged rain forest destruction, releasing carbon, but driven millions into poverty and hunger—technology can make it better. If plant breeders boost rice yields, then people may get richer and afford better protection against extreme weather. If nuclear engineers make fusion (or thorium fission) cost-effective, then carbon emissions may suddenly fall. If gas replaces coal because of horizontal drilling, then carbon emissions may rise more slowly. Humanity is a fast-moving target. We will combat our ecological threats in the future by innovating to meet them as they arise, not through the mass fear stoked by worst-case scenarios.

Read it all, and enjoy Ridley’s list of apocalyptic predictions that didn’t come to pass.

Matt Ridley blogs at Rational Optimist.

(h/t WUWT)

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ABC Environment on Muller and crumbling scepticism

17 August, 2012 by

Sara Phillips

This article, by ABC’s environment editor, Sara Phillips (pictured), encapsulates all that is wrong with the national broadcaster’s treatment of the climate debate. Written, as always, from a position of belief, and institutionally critical of any dissent, Phillips attempts to show that scepticism is crumbling in the face of ever-mounting evidence to the contrary:

American physicist Richard Muller is one climate sceptic who has recently changed his mind after reviewing the evidence.

Muller crunched a bunch of numbers to do with global temperatures and announced in the New York Times that he is a “converted sceptic”. It was this opinion piece in arguably the world’s most influential paper that set tongues wagging about climate change all over again.

Muller had previously been claimed by those unconvinced by the science as one of their own, because he questioned the validity of Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ graph, used by Al Gore in his film An Inconvenient Truth.

Muller was never a sceptic, and there are plenty of rusted on believers who have problems with both Mann’s hockey stick and AIT, which is nothing more than a propaganda film. Muller’s subsequent evidence-free claim of attribution to human causes has led to widespread ridicule from within the warmist community.

She then attempts to frame Bjorn Lomborg as a convert from scepticism, using some highly selective quotes from past newspaper interviews:

Bjorn Lomborg is another high-profile climate sceptic who changed his mind after reviewing the evidence. He now believes climate change is real, but that it won’t be the calamity predicted by some.

However, Lomborg directly addressed his alleged switch in a Guardian article cited indirectly:

He reiterates that he has never denied anthropogenic global warming, and insists that he long ago accepted the cost of damage would be between 2% and 3% of world wealth by the end of this century. This estimate is the same, he says, as that quoted by Lord Stern, whose report for the British government argued that the world should spend 1-2% of gross domestic product on tackling climate change to avoid future damage. (source)

He has never doubted the role of CO2, but has rightly questioned the cost-benefit analysis of the proposed solutions. Phillips then describes Alan Jones as “frothing” to David Karoly. Whether you agree with Jones or not, Phillips would never describe a consensus climate scientist as “frothing”, a highly inappropriate term to use. But it just helps to paint the picture of “deniers” as being deluded and crazy.

Of course there is a spectrum of views on climate – as she points out – which range from outright disbelief that temperatures are rising at all to acceptance of a measurable human signal in the global temperature record. However, she portrays this range of views in a very simplistic manner in an attempt to ridicule those who dare question the consensus.

Her conclusion appears to be that scepticism is on the wane and that “denial” is harder to sustain. But her view, distorted as it is by the prism of belief in AGW, fails to appreciate that the majority of sceptics accept the role of CO2 and that there is a human contribution to warming.

However, the reality is that there are problems with the surface temperature record, and there are problems with feedbacks in climate models, and there are serious questions to be answered regarding the proposed mitigation policies in response. Nothing in Muller’s alleged conversion changes any of those issues.

More importantly, she completely ignores the fact that, due in part to an endless barrage of scare stories which have failed to eventuate, scepticism of the alarmist claims of The Cause™ has increased substantially over the past decade, to the point where a significant proportion of the public are now highly suspicious of the pronouncements of climate scientists and government advisers such as Tim Flannery.

Unfortunately, the article is just the latest in a very long line of examples of ABC’s climate groupthink, where the utterances of climate scientists are beyond reproach and questioning of the consensus is frowned upon. That is not how science works: the motto, which the ABC, our taxpayer-funded and supposedly impartial national broadcaster, would do well to remember, is “question everything”.

Read it here.

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CSIRO: oceans are changing

17 August, 2012 by

Impartial?

The latest “ocean report card” is published today from Australia’s scientific sausage factory:

Key findings show

  • warming sea temperatures are influencing the distribution of marine plants and animals, with species currently found in tropical and temperate waters likely to move south
  • new research suggests winds over the Southern Ocean and current dynamics are strongly influencing foraging of seabirds that breed in south-east Australia and feed close to the Antarctic each summer
  • some tropical fish species have a greater ability to acclimatise to rising water temperatures than previously thought
  • the Australian science community is widely engaged in research, monitoring and observing programs to increase our understanding of climate change impacts and inform management
  • adaptation planning is happening now, from seasonal forecast for fisheries and aquaculture, to climate-proofing of breeding sites for turtles and seabirds.

Led by CSIRO, more than 80 Australian marine scientists from 34 universities and research organisations contributed to the 2012 report card. The report card draws on peer-reviewed research results from hundreds of scientists, demonstrating a high level of scientific consensus.

As with anything from the CSIRO, we have to be very wary of its alleged impartiality. CSIRO has become a highly politicised, environmental activist organisation rather than a free-thinking scientific body, which is funded by a government that accepts the pronouncements of the IPCC without question and is committed to taking action on climate change. Readers can make up their own minds.

Source.

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CSIRO silliness

16 August, 2012 by

A few idle minutes with a marker pen and Photoshop, inspired by yet another CSIRO scare story today:

I think I’m becoming vegetarian…

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Lomborg on extreme weather myths

16 August, 2012 by

© Scientific American

Climate sense

UPDATE: Australia’s own local alarmism “sausage factory”, CSIRO, comes up trumps right on cue, predicting “more droughts, floods and cyclones” as a result of “global warming”:

“SOUTH Pacific island nations will be hit by almost twice as many droughts, floods and extreme tropical cyclones over the next 80 years due to global warming, according to research led by the CSIRO.

The study, published in Nature today, suggests that the countries will face an even tougher time adapting to climate change than previously thought. Most previous studies have focused on sea level rise.” (source)

Apparently, they selected the best climate models (translation: least worst) and used those. So that’s OK, then.

As has been said many times on this blog, there is no weather condition that would not be “consistent with” some global warming model somewhere or other. More rain: global warming. More drought: global warming. More snow: global warming. Less snow: global warming. Etcetera etcetera.

So whenever there is an episode of extreme weather, the alarmists crawl out of their holes to link it to “global warming” in order to advance The Cause™. As always, we should ask what weather would “not be consistent” with their projections? None. Zip. Nada. It’s our old friend the unfalsifiable hypothesis again. Not so much science as astrology.

Bjørn Lomborg, writing in The Australian, takes apart the latest hysteria in the US over links between extreme weather and climate change:

A hot, dry summer (in some places) has triggered another barrage of such claims. And, while many interests are at work, one of the players that benefits the most from this story is the media: the notion of “extreme” climate simply makes for more compelling news.

Consider Paul Krugman, writing breathlessly in The New York Times about the “rising incidence of extreme events” and how “large-scale damage from climate change is happening now”.

He claims that global warming caused the current drought in the US midwest and that supposedly record-high corn prices could cause a global food crisis.

But the UN climate panel’s latest assessment tells us precisely the opposite: for “North America, there is medium confidence that there has been an overall slight tendency toward less dryness (wetting trend with more soil moisture and runoff)”.

Moreover, there is no way Krugman could have identified this drought as being caused by global warming without a time machine: climate models estimate that such detection will be possible by 2048, at the earliest.

[…]

Bill McKibben similarly frets in The Guardian and The Daily Beast about the midwest drought and corn prices.

Moreover, he confidently tells us that raging wildfires from New Mexico and Colorado to Siberia are “exactly” what the early stages of global warming look like.

In fact, the latest overview of global wildfire incidence suggests that, because humans have suppressed fire and decreased vegetation density, fire intensity has declined during the past 70 years, and is now close to its pre-industrial level.

When well-meaning campaigners want us to pay attention to global warming, they often end up pitching beyond the facts.

And while this may seem justified by a noble goal, such “policy by panic” tactics rarely work and often backfire.

Remember how, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Al Gore (and many others) claimed that we were in store for ever more devastating hurricanes?

Since then, hurricane incidence has dropped off the charts; indeed, by one measure, global accumulated cyclone energy has decreased to its lowest levels since the late 70s. Exaggerated claims merely fuel public distrust and disengagement. (source – paywalled)

In which case, I say to Krugman and McKibben: carry on!

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Sydney's coldest weekend in four years

14 August, 2012 by

Brass monkeys

It certainly felt like it. Another from the Weather Isn’t Climate Department:

The skies are finally clearing in Sydney, allowing it to warm up above average after the coldest weekend in four years.

Today’s sunshine enabled it to reach 19 degrees early in the afternoon, one degree above average, Brett Dutschke, senior meteorologist at Weatherzone, said.

This is noticeably warmer than it got all weekend, which had a 15.6-degree maximum and a wind chill of 10 degrees at times.

Not only was it the coldest weekend since 2008, it was the gloomiest weekend since the start of winter with less than six hours of sunshine. This was quite a contrast to the previous weekend, which had more than three times the amount of sunshine. (source)

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Urban warming 'as important as AGW'

13 August, 2012 by

Tuscon, Arizona (Credit: © John Miller / Fotolia)

Whilst the possible warming from AGW in the last 100 years can be measured in tenths of a degree, a new study suggests that warming from urbanisation may be even more significant:

In the first study to attempt to quantify the impact of rapidly expanding megapolitan areas on regional climate, a team of researchers from Arizona State University (ASU) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research has established that local maximum summertime warming resulting from projected expansion of the urban Sun Corridor [the four metropolitan areas of Phoenix, Tucson, Prescott and Nogales] could approach 4 degrees Celsius. This finding establishes that this factor can be as important as warming due to increased levels of greenhouse gases. Their results are reported in the early online edition (Aug. 12) of the journal Nature Climate Change.

[…]

“The actual contribution of urban warming relative to summertime climate change warming depends critically on the path of urbanization, the conversion of natural to urban landscapes, and the degree to which we continue to emit greenhouse gases,” said Alex Mahalov, a co-author and principal investigator of the National Science Foundation grant, “Multiscale Modeling of Urban Atmospheres in a Changing Climate,” which supported the research.

“As well as providing insights for sustainable growth of the Sun Corridor and other rapidly expanding megapolitan areas, this research offers one way to quantify and understand the relative impacts of urbanization and global warming,”said Mahalov, the Wilhoit Foundation Dean’s Distinguished Professor in ASU’s School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences. (source)

The abstract is here.

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