Climate staff discovered ETS was dumped via media

29 May, 2010 by

Not good at communicating…

Kind of like ditching your girlfriend via text message. Strange the government was so shy in telling its own staff that the ETS had been scrapped, when it plans to spend millions of your taxpayer dollars (in breach of its own advertising guidelines) about how the nasty, evil mining companies are “misleading” the electorate on the super profits tax:

SENIOR officials in the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency were unaware of the government’s decision to shelve the emissions trading scheme until it was leaked to the media, a Senate estimates committee was told yesterday.

The department’s secretary, Martin Parkinson, said the decision had also left many officials ”terribly, terribly disappointed”.

Dr Parkinson said staff were establishing ”time capsules” of their work to be opened ”whenever this current impasse is broken and we can have an appropriate debate … around climate change”. ”For many people, they could see their hard work, their commitment and their professionalism was not going to have a pay off at the moment,” he said, though he respected the Prime Minister’s decision.

Dr Parkinson added ”there is no point gilding the lily” and there were people within the department who ”were terribly terribly disappointed” about the decision to delay.

”For many people they could see their hard work, their commitment and their professionalism was not going to have a pay off at the moment.” Dr Parkinson said.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Pachauri's flights stretch to the moon (and back)

6 February, 2010 by

Patchy old Pachy

Hypocrisy Alert: Don’t do as I do, do as I say, and that’s especially true of the IPCC which wants us all to dismantle our economies in order to “save the planet”. Except those edicts don’t apply to the IPCC head himself, old Pachy, as he clocks up half a million air miles in 19 months:

On his international missions, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), called for radical action to stave off environmental disaster.

He urged people to eat less meat, pay aviation taxes and even ban giving iced water in restaurants. But in order to get his message across, the former railway engineer, who lives in Delhi, created an enormous carbon footprint of his own.

Dr Pachauri has been the chairman of the panel since 2002. Documents available on its website showed that in one 19-month period, he clocked up more than half a million miles in the air as he travelled the world on official business.

Between January 2007 and July 2008, he took more than 120 long-haul flights and 43 short-haul trips, taking in countries such as New Zealand, America and Fiji.

Dr Pachauri’s trips would have produced 121.1 tons of carbon dioxide, according to calculations by ClimateCare, a carbon offset provider.

It is estimated that the average Briton produces around 8.6 tons of carbon dioxide a year, while the average Indian produces just over one ton.

Nice work if you can get it.

Read it here.

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Hypocrisy alert: polluters "fear tactics" on climate

6 November, 2009 by

Fairfax is on form today, with yet more hypocritical nonsense in the Sydney Morning Herald about “polluters” under the triumphant headline “REVEALED: polluters’ fear tactics on climate”:

BIG greenhouse polluting companies around the world, employing thousands of lobbyists, are exerting heavy pressure on governments to weaken climate change laws at home and slow progress on an international climate agreement in Copenhagen, a global investigation reveals.

In Australia, 20 companies who have already won the most concessions from the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme employ 28 lobbying firms with well over 100 staff, many of them former politicians, political advisers or government officials.

The reality, which appears to escape the journos in question, is that billions and billions of dollars is spent by the real climate fearmongers, i.e. the catastrophists, every year in order to brainwash the public into believing that there is a climate crisis. But that’s all OK of course, because we’re saving the planet, right? But when corporates, who are likely to be hit hard by emissions trading schemes around the world, try to redress the balance a bit, it’s shock horror and outrage!

Then we discover where this investigation comes from, and suddenly it all makes sense:

The report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists examined the climate lobby in eight countries including the US, Canada, Australia, India, Japan, China, Belgium and Brazil. It relied on more than 200 interviews, lobbying registers and political donation records. The Herald collaborated in the investigation for Australia.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,
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