APEC waters down emissions targets

15 November, 2009 by

Rudd looks a tit in Singapore

Rudd looks a tit in Singapore

Just as it looks more likely that the ETS will be passed in Australia, the rest of the world is hedging its bets. Funny how when the crunch comes, other countries are so reluctant to put their economies where their mouth is, and name a figure on their emissions reductions:

ASIA-Pacific leaders will drop a fixed target for halving greenhouse gas emissions in a final summit statement, a Chinese official said, ahead of a breakfast meeting on climate issues organised by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

“On the 50 per cent reduction target (from 1990 levels) by 2050, yes, it did appear in the draft,” said Yi Xianliang, a Chinese foreign ministry official who is part of the country’s negotiating team at world climate talks.

“However, it is a very controversial issue in the world community… if we put it in this (final) statement, I think it would disrupt the negotiation process,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Leaders from 21 APEC members including US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao are in Singapore for an annual summit ending today.

The meeting is one of the last international gatherings ahead of world climate change talks opening in Copenhagen on December 7.

Why is it that only Australia seems to want to bind itself to emissions targets ahead of Copenhagen?

Read it here.

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Agriculture permanently exempt from ETS

15 November, 2009 by

This is a huge backflip for the government. Agricultural emissions were to have been included in the ETS from 2015, but it is now being reported that such emissions will be permanently exempt, with farmers no longer being required to buy permits.

The Coalition has been calling for the exemption – and the Government’s surprise move dramatically raises the stakes for Mr Turnbull to close a deal with Climate Change Minister Penny Wong to pass the ETS in the next two weeks of Parliament.

Yet sections of the Opposition Leader’s Liberal Party and the Nationals are likely to remain opposed to any such deal regardless, leaving Mr Turnbull’s authority in shreds.

The surprise concession by the Government will be announced by Senator Wong today ahead of the resumption of Parliament this week.

The initiative will also isolate the Nationals, who have been using the inclusion of agriculture in the proposed scheme by 2015 to spearhead its opposition to the package.

Senator Wong’s announcement is likely to get backing for the scheme from key Nationals constituencies such as the National Farmers Federation, which has been lobbying heavily for such a decision.

In another concession, Senator Wong will also announce the Government will develop plans to give farmers carbon credits for any efforts to capture and store carbon as part of their farm practices.

If the Opposition reject the ETS now, having obtained significant concessions from the government, it will be even easier for the government to claim the moral high ground, and accuse the opposition of being climate change deniers. Which is, of course, why the opposition should never have been negotiating on this awful legislation in the first place…

Read it here.

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Penny Wong: alarmism and empty threats

14 November, 2009 by

The Wong-bot

The Wong-bot

Curious, isn’t it, that CSIRO choose to release dire warnings about the effects of sea level rises of 1.1m by 2100 just before the Senate is due to debate the ETS, giving the Wong-bot the perfect opportunity to threaten the Coalition with apocalyptic consequences if the ETS isn’t passed. The Wong-bot denies that it’s a scare campaign (well, she would, wouldn’t she) but I think the evidence speaks for itself:

As a result, the report says, more than $60 billion worth of residential property faces flooding.

In addition 120 ports, 1,800 bridges, power stations, water treatment plants and airports close to the coastline are also under threat.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says the findings can’t be ignored.

“The science tells us our climate is changing faster than first projected and the impacts are likely to be more severe,” she told reporters in Sydney.

Australia must immediately reduce its carbon emissions, she said.

“Which is why we are determined to pass the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.”

OK then, Penny. Let’s work this through the twisted logic of this, shall we?

Question 1: Assuming the two-errors-in-four-words Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (ETS) is passed and Australia cripples its economy and reduces its emissions by, say, 20% by 2020, what effect will that have on sea level rises around Australia?

Answer: Nothing, because Australia produces less than 1.5% of global emissions.

Question 2: Assuming that at Copenhagen, the rest of the developed world is so impressed with Australia’s brand new, shiny ETS that they all fall over themselves to cripple their economies too, and sign a treaty reducing emissions significantly by 2020, what effect will that have on sea level rises around Australia?

Answer: Nothing, because increased emissions from China (who are building a new coal fired power station every week) and India (who have more important things to worry about, like tackling poverty and disease – you know, stuff that really does kill people) will more than make up for any cuts by developed countries. Plus, the developed countries will begin to realise that running a developed economy on sunbeams and fart-power ain’t as easy as they thought, so targets will simply not be met.

Question 3: Assuming that China and India miraculously reduce their emissions as well, what effect will that have on sea level rises around Australia?

Answer: Almost certainly nothing, for the same reasons as above, and also since CO2 is unlikely to be revealed as the main driver (or even one of the main drivers) of “global warming”.

Question 4: Assuming that CO2 is the main driver (or one of the main drivers) of “global warming”, what effect will the ETS and/or the Copenhagen treaty have on sea level rises around Australia?

Answer: Nothing, because just like the Kyoto Treaty, which even if fully implemented would have reduced global temperatures by about three and a half gazillionths of a degree, the Copenhagen treaty will have no discernible effect on the climate whatsoever.

Scare campaign? You decide. Why on earth the Coalition are even bothering to negotiate is quite frankly beyond my comprehension.

Read it here.

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Climate sense from Miranda Devine

12 November, 2009 by

Climate sense

Climate sense

As always, virtually the only journalist with the courage to question the AGW dogma. This week she lays into Rudd’s tirade at the Lowy Institute, and the costs of the ETS:

Kevin Rudd went over the top last week in a speech to the Lowy institute, declaring it was “time to remove any polite veneer” from the climate change debate, which he claims is the “moral challenge of our generation”.

Then he launched an extraordinary tirade against “the climate change sceptics, the climate change deniers” who he claims are “powerful”, “too dangerous to be ignored”, “driven by vested interests … quite literally holding the world to ransom … Our children’s fate – and our grandchildren’s fate – will lie entirely with them.”

If he had any shame, the Prime Minister would be mortified to be associated with such a hysterical, undergraduate piece of ad hominem hyperbole. History will record his embarrassment and the debasing of his office. But the speech shows Rudd’s desperation in the week before his Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Emissions Trading Scheme) is debated in Parliament and less than a month before the Copenhagen climate summit at which he wants to parade a signed-off scheme. As the public cools towards this new energy tax, politicians, green groups and other alarmists with the real “vested interest” in this debate are stooping ever lower in their attempts to shun dissenters.

One of the few public figures with the courage not to conform, the Liberal senator Nick Minchin, was smeared by anonymous sources in his own party this week as “crazy” for expressing scepticism about the extent of man-made climate change.

Actually, I think they called him a “fruit loop”, which is almost more offensive.

Read it all.

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Snouts in the carbon trough

9 November, 2009 by

From Viv Forbes at the Carbon Sense Coalition:

Mr Rudd accuses opponents of his Ration-N-Tax Scheme of “bowing to vested interests”.

That is the pot calling the kettle black.

The biggest vested interest is the ALP itself, hoping to harvest Green preference votes from their green posturing.

Supporting the alarmists are the gaggle of green industries already reaping dividends from the Rudd subsidies and market protection rackets.

Mr Rudd also tells us that his big business mates want the “certainty” of Emissions Trading.

A roll call of these people reveals domination by big firms of auditors and accountants, bankers and brokers, speculators and solicitors, touts and traders – all longing to get into the biggest trading lottery the world has ever seen – more snouts in the carbon trough.

Read the rest here.

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Rudd fails to run "clean energy government"

8 November, 2009 by

Not so green

Not so green

One of Kevin Rudd’s ambitious promises was to run his government on “clean energy”, showing his enviro-friendly credentials and at the same time pandering to the Greens, who were essential for Labor’s preferences in the 2007 election. Only trouble is, as he has discovered, it isn’t as easy as all that.

DESPITE repeatedly brandishing its green credentials, the Rudd Government has reneged on its election promise to run Parliament House and MPs’ electoral offices on clean energy.

It has also failed to deliver on a promise to upgrade all government office buildings to minimum five-star greenhouse ratings.

The promise to use renewable energy was made in a speech by Kevin Rudd in the lead-up to the 2007 election, but so far little or no progress has been made.

The Government has also failed to follow through with a requirement that all government agencies with more than 100 staff undertake energy and water audits and introduce energy efficiency improvement plans.

The election commitments were bolstered to mark Earth Hour in March 2008. In a joint press release, Mr Rudd and Environment Minister Peter Garrett promised to set up an ”interdepartmental committee on government leadership in sustainability’‘ to investigate using the government car fleet to ”drive the market for low emissions cars”.

So far the committee – which was scheduled to report to Mr Rudd by June 2008 on progress – has been silent, with no subsequent announcements or recommendations.

The Sunday Age was unable to confirm whether the committee has even been established.

Unfortunately, this is just another in a long line of examples demonstrating that using green power is expensive and impractical. If green power can’t even run Parliament House, how on earth does the Rudd government expect it to run Australia, when the ETS has pushed up the cost of regular power beyond reach?

Yet more spin, and no substance.

Read it here.

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UPDATED: Rudd loses all grip on reality

7 November, 2009 by

Get his pasty slab of a face off my monitor

Get his pasty slab of a face off my monitor

UPDATE: Marc Morano at Climate Depot has compiled a brilliant line-by-line demolition of Rudd’s climate nonsense. Read it all here.

Roger Pielke Jr. comments on Rudd’s chilling speech.

More coverage in The Australian:

In a speech at the Lowy Institute yesterday afternoon, Kevin Rudd appeared to lose it completely on climate change, launching into an astonishing tirade against “sceptics” and “deniers”. The facade has slipped away to reveal the mealy mouthed Rudd at his worst, hurling insults and abandoning any pretence of good faith negotiation on the ETS. The speech was packed to the gills with tired old clichés, as you would expect:

“It is time to be totally blunt about the agenda of the climate change sceptics in all their colours, some more sophisticated than others,” he said.

“It is to destroy the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme at home and it is to destroy agreed global action on climate change abroad. [Yes, and your problem with that is…? – Ed]

Nauseating Mawkishness Alert:

“And our children’s fate – our grandchildren’s fate – will lie entirely with them. It is time to remove any polite veneer from this debate; the stakes are that high. [I actually lost count of how many times he roped in the “children” – Ed]

“The clock is ticking for the planet [boring cliché – Ed], but the climate change sceptics simply do not care.”

“Climate change sceptics, the climate change deniers [Denier Alert – Ed], the opponents of climate change action are active in every country,” he said.

“They are a minority. They are however powerful and invariably they are driven by vested interests [and are] powerful enough to so far block domestic legislation in Australia.”

Actually, the “sceptics” care, but they care for something different – raising people out of poverty, the standard of living of Australians, cheap energy availability for all, not sacrificing all of that on the altar of Gaia. Unfortunately, Rudd’s speech is just a catalogue of typical responses to those who aren’t stupid enough to have swallowed the IPCC line whole, like Rudd and Penny Wong have. I’m amazed he didn’t say they were all paid for by “Big Oil”!

And to conclude, Rudd continues to rely solely on the politicised and biased IPCC as his only source of information, talking up the number in the consensus each time it’s mentioned:

And the most recent IPCC scientific conclusion in 2007 was that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and the “increase in global average temperatures since the mid 20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”

This is the conclusion of 4,000 scientists appointed by governments from virtually every country in the world, and the term “very likely” is defined in the scientific conclusion of this report as being 90 per cent probable.

I guess that’s why the climate has cooled for nearly a decade, despite CO2 emissions rising faster than ever?

Climate madness.

Read it here.

Read the full text of the speech here (if you dare).

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CSIRO embroiled in censorship battle

5 November, 2009 by

We reported here about how CSIRO had attempted to suppress the publication of a paper critical of the government’s ETS. Unfortunately, it seems the story just won’t go away:

The CSIRO is grappling with claims it is trying to censor the work of an economist who has criticised the policy at the centre of the Federal Government’s response to climate change.

The researcher, Dr Clive Spash, has been told not to publish a journal article that questions the economic underpinnings of carbon trading versus other means of cutting greenhouse emissions.

Dr Spash is an ecological economist with the sustainable ecosystems division at the organisation.

He told ABC Radio’s AM that he was headhunted to join the CSIRO but wonders if he has a future there if he cannot talk about the subject of his research.

It’s hardly surprising, when you read the following letter from Garth Paltridge in The Australian in May last year:

I HEAR on the scientific grapevine that CSIRO’s biggest problem when providing formal advice to the federal Government on the matter of climate change is to say nothing that can be interpreted as giving aid and comfort to the army of irresponsible sceptics out there who are doubtful about the dreadful consequences of global warming.

One can only feel sorry for the Government. Where can it go these days to get unbiased advice on the issue of global warming? Its official sources are poisoned by the fear among many scientists that they may be labelled by their colleagues and by their institutions as climate-change sceptics. (source – h/t Andrew Bolt)

Read it here.

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The price of inconvenient reality

5 November, 2009 by

In an editorial today, The Australian asks some very awkward questions about the economic realities of the ETS, and the global socialism that climate change is advancing:

BOTH domestically and internationally, the price that could be demanded from Australians for our part in cutting greenhouse gas emissions is emerging from a sea of red ink. Earlier estimates suggested that an emissions trading scheme would reap a profit of between $11 billion and $20bn by 2020. Now we learn from the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook that the scheme is likely to lose money over the next five years. The second reality check was the European Union’s call for industrialised nations to contribute $160bn per annum by 2020 to help developing nations tackle climate change.

The shortfall in ETS revenue makes the prospect of a deal between the Rudd government and the Coalition less likely. It will be impossible to pay for Malcolm Turnbull’s proposed amendments to Labor’s ETS from funds generated through emission permit sales. A fortnight ago, an analysis by Riskmetrics and Innovest Strategic Value Advisors gave an idea of what the Coalition amendments could cost. It found that the amendments could turn an estimated $777 million net surplus in its first year into a $1.8bn deficit.

…

After years of inflated expectations of what can be achieved in curbing carbon, it is clear that any deal that would make an appreciable difference in emissions levels will be costly. As a responsible global citizen, Australia should play its part. But we have no obligation to join any push to use climate change to redistribute global wealth to assuage the consciences of climate change billionaire Al Gore and social campaigners such as Bono, whose carbon footprints far exceed those of the ordinary Australian taxpayers they expect to foot the bill.

Read it here.

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US puts climate bill on hold until 2010

4 November, 2009 by

Another nail in the coffin of Hopenchangen, I mean, Copenhagen. The US has confirmed that it will not pass any climate bill before the COP15 summit in December, delaying it by at least five weeks to review the potential costs (which will be huge):

The delay, which would push a Senate vote on a climate change bill into next year, frustrates a last-minute push by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to get America to commit itself at home to cut greenhouse gas emissions before the Copenhagen meeting. World leaders – and US officials – have repeatedly said US legislation is crucial to a deal on global warming.

…

However, the appeals for urgent action were overridden by political concerns in the Senate, which formally began debate on a proposed climate change law last week. The House of Representatives narrowly passed a climate change bill in June. But the Senate version has been repeatedly delayed, first by the battle over healthcare reform and now by Republican demands for more time to study the proposals.

In a move to stem the Republican protest, and quieten Democrat critics, the Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, said he would ask the Environmental Protection Agency to spend five weeks reviewing the potential costs of the bill. Opponents of the proposal argue the target of a 20% cut in emissions on 2005 levels by 2020 is overly ambitious, and will be too costly for US businesses and families.

The five-week delay would all but rule out passage of a bill before the Copenhagen meeting begins on 7 December.

So just remind me again: why on earth is the Rudd government so desperate to pass the ETS before Copenhagen? Give me one good reason.

Read it here (h/t Watts Up With That)

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