Delusional: Swan thinks "tide will turn" for carbon tax

9 May, 2011 by

Get his face off my monitor

In his dreams. The more people find out about the tax, and the fact that it will increase the price of everything for no benefit to the climate whatsoever, whether locally or globally, the more people will harden their opposition to it. But apparently not Wayne Swan, who believes (as usual) that it’s only a matter of time before the unwashed electorate come round to the political elite’s way of thinking:

Yesterday, as the Opposition Leader continued to attack the carbon tax, Mr Swan said he expected Labor’s stock to improve once the details of the tax were finalised in coming months.

“At the end of the day our job – we deal with some very tough economic and political issues,” he said in an interview with The Australian.

“There’s no way but just to keep going and get them done and wear it in the interim.”

He said there was “no other way” to deliver a carbon tax than that being pursued.

“We understand that we’ll cop stuff along the way because of that,” the Treasurer said.

“But there’s no alternative to it. The alternative to it is to do nothing. That’s terribly contrary to the country’s interests in the long term.” (source)

It’s actually quite funny (or it would be if it wasn’t so serious) to watch a politician twisting in the wind, trying to justify the unjustifiable. Maybe the big emitters will get together and agree a global deal in five or ten years time, in which case, Australia can join in then. There is nothing about the carbon tax that is in the country’s interests, whether short term or long term, unless there is global action. However, the longer that global action is delayed, the weaker the case for action will be, as temperatures and sea levels fail to rise as predicted, and people start asking “Is this Y2K all over again?”

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Lefty heads pop as Bolt Report airs on Ten

8 May, 2011 by

Andrew Bolt

Yes, laydeez and gennlemen, that is the sound of heads popping at the ABC and Fairfax as Andrew Bolt’s new show, The Bolt Report, premiered on Channel 10 a few minutes ago. In the first show, Andrew exposed Gillard’s hypocritical boat people policy, interviewed Tony Abbott, discussed Gillard’s future with Mark Latham and gave a Free Speech Award to Paul Keating for his description of Clover Moore’s supporters as “sandal wearing, muesli-chewing, bike riding pedestrians”. LOL! Although a “bike riding pedestrian” is a bit of an oxymoron…

Bolt asked Abbott how much his direct action climate policy would reduce the global temperature. Abbott didn’t answer… (because it’s square root of bugger all).

The show also revealed that the brainless lemmings at GetUp! paid $16,000 to give a refugee (helpfully wearing a GetUp! t-shirt) a surfing lesson with Tony Abbott. They really do have more money than sense.

Obviously, it was refreshing to have a current affairs show which wasn’t leaning so far to the Left that it was falling off the edge. A promising start, and congratulations on the new show.

Filed Under: Climate

Blog Poll results

8 May, 2011 by

Poll results

Thanks to all who voted in the blog poll on ACM’s web performance. Nearly 95% voted that pages loaded “very quickly” or “reasonably” quickly, with nearly two-thirds saying they loaded “very quickly”.

I apologise to the few that found the site loaded slowly, but I think the reason for that may be out of my control. So it appears the server is coping well at the moment, and a migration to another hosting provider is not required at this stage…

Thanks again, Simon

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In desperation, wheel out the celebs

7 May, 2011 by

Wheeling out the celebs

The carbon tax is sinking faster than a Pacific island, so as a last ditched attempt to resurrect it, the Gillard government is wheeling out Cate Blanchett, talented actress and crazy environmental moonbat that she is. Oh, and just remember this is YOUR taxpayer dollars paying for this nonsense:

A WIDE-RANGING coalition of supporters of action on climate change is planning a massive campaign to rescue Julia Gillard’s carbon tax in the face of growing industry opposition.

The Weekend Australian understands Oscar-award winning actress Cate Blanchett has been approached to be part of a national advertising campaign.

But sources said it would be wrong to suggest the world-famous actress would be the spearhead of the campaign, which will also include a raft of “ordinary Australians”.

The Weekend Australian understands the planned print, radio and television campaign is being supported by groups including Get Up!, Greenpeace, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Southern Cross Climate Coalition, a conglomerate including the ACF, the Climate Institute and the Australian Council of Trade Unions. (source)

What a truly hideous motley crew that lot is. The brainless lemmings of GetUp!, the eco-Nazis of Greenpeace and ACF, the pointless Climate Institute and a bunch of union thugs. Charming. Should put even more people off with a bit of luck.

Also, don’t forget to check out Jo Nova’s op-ed piece in The Australian here.

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NT passes 50-year carbon tax exemption

6 May, 2011 by

Carbon tax exclusion

At least the Northern Territory isn’t as dumb as the rest of Australia. They’re bailing out of a carbon tax before it has even been introduced!

An opposition motion in the NT Legislative Assembly, which was passed “on the voices”, calls for a half-century exemption, which would be relaxed in the event of an international deal on cutting carbon emissions.

The motion will be presented to federal parliament for the consideration of MPs ahead of debate on Labor’s final carbon tax proposal.

The Country Liberal Party motion was passed on Wednesday night after crossbench independent Gerry Wood spoke in its support.

Chief Minister Paul Henderson’s minority Labor government would have needed the support of a Labor defector, independent Alison Anderson, to win a vote on the floor.

Rather than seek her support, the government let the motion pass “on the voices”.

The federal opposition seized on the move, with climate action spokesman Greg Hunt saying support for the carbon tax had collapsed among state Labor branches.

And Tony Abbott said the carbon price was a “toxic tax” and the NT resolution followed a global movement against carbon taxes.

“Right around the world, the tide is going against what Julia Gillard is proposing. We’ve just seen an election in Canada which gave an anti-carbon price government a majority, and that’s the first time they’ve had a majority government in Canada for quite a long time,” the Opposition Leader said.

But the best bit is Combet’s desperate attempt to make the Territory feel “guilty” for betraying the planet, and his false logic on the issue:

“The Gillard government is very conscious of the impacts of climate change and a carbon price in the Northern Territory.

“The NT is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Rising temperatures could see the loss of significant freshwater wetlands in Kakadu National Park, which would hurt the Territory’s tourism industry, and there are other risks for the Territory from climate change.

Except a carbon tax in Australia won’t change any of these things! If you believe that CO2 is causing dangerous warming, then you should be speaking to the US, China and India, because they’re the only ones that would make any difference.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

6 May, 2011 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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Newspoll's questions mislead the media

5 May, 2011 by

Dodgy wording

In the same poll that showed support for Julia Gillard’s carbon tax at a laughable 30%, it has been reported that over 70% of voters believe climate change is man-made. This is a gift to Labor, since they can point to that and say “Look, people believe man-made climate change is real, but (unlike us) they don’t want to take the tough decision and do something about it.”

Here is the Newspoll question (PDF here):

DO YOU PERSONALLY BELIEVE THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS…?*

  • entirely caused by human activity: 14%
  • partly caused by human activity: 58%
  • TOTAL CAUSED BY HUMAN ACTIVITY: 72%

Now even I, as a writer of a climate sceptic blog, would have to be included in that 72% (actually the 58%), because I consider that man has a partial effect on the climate, like virtually everything else on the planet: plants and animals and buildings and cities etc etc. We can live with a modest 1 degree of warming – there may even be benefits from that warming, and from the increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

So the question that should have been asked is whether people believe that the effect that man has on climate is dangerous and requires action to reverse that effect. In other words, that the modest warming from increased CO2 is amplified by positive feedbacks (as the models would have you believe) into something that is dangerous.

I would bet the figure would be closer to the 14% that believe natural climate change doesn’t exist (the hardcore “natural climate change deniers” who apparently haven’t heard of Ice Ages) than the 72% figure quoted in the media.

And that must be the more important figure – if people, like me, believe that climate change is partly man-made, but that the magnitude of the change caused by man is small and does not require action to reverse it, then a carbon price is similarly not required.

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Carbon price debate misses the point

5 May, 2011 by

Twisted logic or a circular argument?

There have been barrowloads of stories over the past few weeks about how various businesses are either supporting or opposing the carbon tax, when the “detail” is going to be released so that we can work out how much it’s going to cost, etc etc. But every time, the key point of this is missed. We hear Gillard and Combet committed to “acting on climate” but again, the next obvious question is always avoided.

What will a carbon tax or ETS in Australia actually do for the climate? The answer is, of course, nothing. Nothing at all. This isn’t tackling climate change, it’s spitting in a hurricane. Even if you believe the consensus science that man-made emissions are causing dangerous climate change, you cannot escape the point that anything Australia does alone will make not the slightest difference. Any reductions in emissions we make will be swamped thousands of times over by China and India.

So given that, Gillard and Combet rely on the “business certainty” line. Business needs “certainty” for a “transition to a low carbon economy”. Hmm. Will India and China follow our lead by moving to a “low carbon economy”? I don’t think so. The best business certainty would be achieved by abandoning a pointless price on carbon for the foreseeable future and using all the energy and time wasted on climate for something that will actually benefit Australians.

The media have got themselves bogged down in the detail and have lost sight of the bigger picture. The Sydney Morning Herald continues to print daily scare stories about the climate, no doubt to try to influence its readers to support “action on climate change”. But with a carbon tax or ETS in place in Australia, those scare stories would still be there, unchanged even by a fraction. What do we do then? Maybe the Herald will simply not print them, because, so the logic would go, we can’t be causing it… It’s an utterly ridiculous argument.

I guess we can wistfully look to Canada, where the climate sceptic Conservatives have won a majority government, and hope that the same thing happens here in 2013.

Filed Under: Climate

Voters oppose Labor's climate policy

4 May, 2011 by

Gillard's climate policy

Glad to return to blogging with a good news story. Unfortunately for you, Julia and Greg, the Australian public isn’t as stupid as you think it is, and have seen through your carbon tax for the pointless environmental gesture it is. Legislating about climate is like legislating about the number of electrons in a hydrogen atom. There’s one. There will always be one. Making a law that says there should be two won’t change anything. Ditto the climate.

VOTERS are overwhelmingly against Julia Gillard’s carbon tax after a sharp fall in support in the past two months among the young, families, women and even Labor supporters.

As Tony Abbott continues to campaign against the tax, the latest Newspoll survey reveals 60 per cent of voters are opposed to the government’s plan to put a price on carbon next year and only 30 per cent remain in favour.

Since the election last year, opposition to a carbon price has been rising and jumped after the Prime Minister announced in late February that she planned to introduce a carbon tax from July 1 next year ahead of a full emissions trading scheme in three to five years.

The latest Newspoll survey, taken exclusively for The Australian last weekend, shows that voters are not only against the carbon tax on a ratio of two-to-one, but that opposition to the plan is far more intense than the support for it. Of the 60 per cent opposed to the carbon tax, 39 per cent are “strongly against”, but of the 30 per cent for the plan only 12 per cent are “strongly in favour”.

The opposition to the plan has been intensifying since Ms Gillard’s February announcement she would break an election pledge and introduce a carbon tax, mirroring a fall in personal approval for the Prime Minister and Labor’s primary vote.

But Julia blunders on towards electoral oblivion. Good.

Ms Gillard yesterday vowed to press head with the carbon tax plan despite poor polling and the campaign from the Opposition Leader. “I’m interested in the policy cycle not the political cycle,” Ms Gillard said.

Good luck with that.

Read it here.

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New – Open Thread

19 April, 2011 by

OK, first time for ACM, an Open Thread, while posting is light.

Discuss any current climate issues here.

Play nicely, as the saying goes. Comments will be moderated as usual.

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