ETS bill "delayed until May"

23 February, 2010 by

So “the greatest moral challenge since the start of the universe” (© KRudd) suddenly isn’t so urgent after all. But hang on… just a couple of months ago, it was essential we passed the ETS before Copenhagen, wasn’t it? Or is it because Rudd has no principles whatsoever and his only political compass is popularity, which he slavishly follows, so that now the ETS is proving an electoral liability, he’s looking for ways to quietly abandon both it and his robotic minister, Penny Wong? Hmm.

THE future of the government’s emissions trading scheme was in disarray last night with claims that the Senate vote on the bill could be delayed until May.

The possible delay, the result of the opposition blocking a procedural vote in the Senate, has cast fresh doubt on the government’s ability to create an election trigger on its amended climate legislation.

Last night the government was seeking legal advice about whether it could force an earlier vote than the May sitting. Each side blamed the other for the delay, which resulted from the Senate’s blocking a motion yesterday to speed up the debate.

The government has already dropped the emissions trading scheme from the parliamentary schedule this week to give priority to establishing a double dissolution election trigger on its changes to the private health insurance means test.

Read it here.

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Wong: fully duped

20 February, 2010 by

The Wong-bot gets the Jo Nova treatment

Reaction to Penny Wong’s recent speech (see here) has been astonishing:

Jo Nova brilliantly takes it apart piece by piece (and gives us a great graphic – see right):

Get ready for the startling Proof by Motherhood Statements & WhiteWash. I’m loosely Paraphrasing Penny, taking the liberty of including the fuller more accurate message (that I’m sure she would want to share)… [then adding a few thoughts].

A strong global agreement is apparently “manifestly in Australia’s own national interest” (and worth paying billions upon billions for). Why?

Roger Pielke Jr gives her the full treatment:

The bottom line is that there is no scientific evidence linking rising global temperatures to the increasing catastrophe losses around the world. Ironically enough, the scientific evidence includes the paper cited by Wong to suggest the opposite.

Climategate.com is also less than complimentary:

Our Australian skeptic friend, Val Majkus, has sent me a link to a speech made yesterday by Australian nutjob, Penny Wong, who is the Aussie Federal Minister for Climate Change and Water.

Wong somehow kept a straight face when she told the crowd: “Climate change [is] happening more quickly than we previously thought.”

Another great performance from Penny Wrong.

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Penny Wong: defender of Copenhagen, climate science and the IPCC

18 February, 2010 by

Time for ALT-CTRL-DELETE

Penny who? Sorry, it’s been so long since we heard anything from the Wong-bot, that I’d forgotten about her, which was actually quite nice. But now she’s back, the latest version of Windows 7 installed, spouting the same old fearmongering tactics and tired old clichés in a last, desperate effort to get the ETS passed (stifles yawn):

CLIMATE change threatens to reshape the face of Bondi Beach, Bells Beach and the Sunshine Coast unless “large and expensive nourishment programs” are implemented, Penny Wong warned today.

Shortly before the government’s ETS bills are to be considered by the upper house, Ms Wong mounted a vigorous defence of the Copenhagen Summit, the science behind climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [now THAT I would love to have heard – Ed] and suggested the future of some of the nation’s most popular beaches was under threat.

The Climate Change Minister also said the government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was the most effective way to take meaningful action, dismissing the Opposition leader’s rival plan.

In the address to the National Coastal Climate Change Forum in Adelaide this morning, Ms Wong said it was “possible that with climate change, and without large and expensive nourishment programs Bondi Beach, Sunshine Coast and Bells Beach may no longer be the beaches we know today.”

Zzzz… Oh, sorry – nodded off there. No one’s listening any more Penny. Save your batteries, spin down the hard drive, throttle back the CPU, clear the cache, and shut down – for good this time.

Read it here.

UPDATE: The whole speech is here in all its robotic tedium, and as predicted recycles all the alarmist BS that we’ve heard before, including the old canard of comparing climate realists with those who question the link between smoking and cancer, which personally I find deeply offensive.

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Australia "out of step" with the rest of the world on emissions trading

6 February, 2010 by

Spinning like a launderette

Just four days ago, Penny Wong said this, in The Australian:

It is clear the global trend is towards greater action to combat climate change, not less.

And on emissions trading, more than 30 countries already have an emissions trading scheme in operation and others, including the US, Japan and South Korea, are working towards implementing their own schemes. (see here)

At the time I questioned the figure she quoted, suggesting that most of those countries were in the EU scheme, but Christian Kerr does the digging and discovers that apart from the EU, there is just one, one, emissions trading scheme in operation, and that’s in New Zealand, and it’s only half working. So to say that the global trend is towards greater action was an outright L-word:

AUSTRALIA is looking increasingly isolated in the global community as Kevin Rudd presses on with his government’s emissions trading scheme.

US President Barack Obama admitted just two days ago he might have to abandon his proposal for emissions trading in favour of direct action in order to steer his carbon-cutting plans through the US Senate.

None of the world’s top five polluters — the US, China, Russia, India and Japan — has an ETS.

New Zealand is the only nation in the world with an operating emissions trading scheme, excluding those affiliated with or planning to link to the European Union’s ETS.

Most of New Zealand’s provisions have not yet come into effect, and the Labour-legislated scheme was significantly amended by the National Party-led government last September after fears about its impact on low-income households and primary industry.

And the article blows the lid off Penny’s misrepresentation of the numbers:

The Australian Department of Climate Change’s website tells the story on emissions trading. Of the 37 countries on its list of nations that have established or are proposing an ETS, 30 are linked to the EU scheme.

Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said the Prime Minister was “intentionally, deliberately and consistently” misrepresenting the European emissions trading scheme.

“In Europe, they’ve had a mock trading scheme which largely only provides incentives for people to reduce their emissions, with almost no penalty for firms which continue on their economic activity,” Mr Hunt said.

The Rudd government’s position on climate is looking increasingly lame and out of touch with reality, and secretly I would bet Kev would love to see the whole thing ditched – it will be a political disaster. But he cannot be seen to do that, having branded climate change “the greatest moral challenge of our generation”, so I think they will just let the Coalition defeat it in the Senate and hopefully move on to other things.

Read it here.

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How not to answer questions Part 94 – Penny Wong

5 February, 2010 by

Tony Jones puts Wong through the mincer, and Wong is all at sea, dodging, weaving, avoiding, fudging, obfuscating, spinning, and above all, never, repeat never, answering the question asked – everything the Ruddites do so well to hoodwink the poor unsuspecting public. One of those occasions where it is both horrific and compulsive viewing. As that famous quote from the brilliant UK political satire The Thick of It puts it, when Jeremy Paxman mauls the junior minister for social affairs, Ben Swain:

“It’s like watching a lion rape a sheep … but in a bad way.”

Not pleasant viewing…

Good on ya, Tony. We’ll make a sceptic of you yet!

Catch it here if you can stand it (h/t Andrew Bolt)

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Climate Nonsense from Penny Wong

2 February, 2010 by

My denial is this big

I think The Australian is publishing this for a laugh, to syphon off what little credibility the Rudd government’s climate plan still has left before the latest ETS vote. And really, who gives a monkey’s what the Wong-bot thinks? Her memory card is stuck in pre-Copenhagen, pre-Climategate, pre-Amazongate, pre-Glaciergate, pre-Tony Abbott mode, and predictably enough she regurgitates all the old, tired arguments, all of them now hollow. But she starts with what must be the most hilarious understatement of the decade:

COPENHAGEN did not deliver the perfect agreement.

Not perfect? It was a fiasco, a disaster, a laughing stock. Such is the denial (sorry to use that word, but hey, if the cap fits…) in Wong’s CPU that she cannot even admit to the most obvious facts! Then its time to wheel out the climate “records”:

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Meteorology released its 2009 annual climate statement. It found 2009 was the second hottest year in Australia on record and ended our hottest decade. In Australia, each decade since the 1940s has been warmer than the last.

This is not a flash in the pan. It continues the trend.

Globally, 14 of the 15 warmest years on record occurred between 1995 and 2009. As a continent that is already hot and dry, the implications for Australia are profound.

What can you expect from someone with only a primary school understanding of science, as Lord Monckton puts it? Do we really need to go through this again? Oh, OK then. “Record” means in the last 150 years. Big freaking deal. It doesn’t include any of the previous warm periods (of which there were many). And so what if each decade is warmer than the last? What would you expect? We’re coming out of a Little Ice Age. Duh. And even given that, the satellite record shows temperature stasis since 2001. What’s that, Penny? You’ve never heard of the satellite record? You prefer to rely on fudged data from surface stations such as GISS and GHCN? And then, even more denial:

It is clear the global trend is towards greater action to combat climate change, not less.

And on emissions trading, more than 30 countries already have an emissions trading scheme in operation and others, including the US, Japan and South Korea, are working towards implementing their own schemes.

No it isn’t. The trend is precisely the opposite. The majority of those 30 countries cited are in the EU scheme, by the way. China and India may talk the talk, but they (bizarrely) put alleviating poverty and raising standards of living above pointless emissions trading schemes. And the chances of the US passing climate legislation are disappearing faster than the Amazon rainforest. And we know where the Australian ETS is heading…

We know we must put a limit on our emissions. Nothing at Copenhagen changes that fundamental fact. And the cheapest and most effective way to do that remains the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. John Howard knew it, Peter Costello knew it, Malcolm Turnbull knew it and the Rudd government knows it.

Yes, and times change Penny. Tony Abbott has realised this. You and Kevin Rudd (and Malcolm Turnbull) haven’t. With luck, your obsession with passing this pointless ETS will consign you and your dismal government, at the next election, to the rubbish bin of history, where it truly belongs.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Greens: "Ten out of ten for honesty!"

22 January, 2010 by

Green taxes

Barnaby Joyce gives the Greens full marks for calling their proposed price on carbon a “tax”:

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said the government was prepared to discuss the proposal with the Greens further, but the introduction of a $10bn-plus annual tax in an election year would appear to be a political impossibility.

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce foreshadowed the opposition attack, greeting the proposal with a backhanded compliment. “The ETS is a massive new tax,” he said. “The Greens coming out and calling this a carbon tax, well I’ll give them 10 out of 10 for honesty.”

The government insists it will put the legislation for its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme before the parliament for a third time when politicians return to Canberra at the start of next month, but the opposition and the Senate crossbenchers, including the Greens, remain opposed to it.

Actually, political suicide is just what we want from Krudd & Co, so maybe they should go ahead!

Read it here.

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Wong the apologist defends IPCC

18 January, 2010 by

Will still be there for a very long time

An update on this story. Despite the fact that the IPCC has been caught out again, Penny Wong’s knee-jerk reaction is to defend them, because she knows, as well as anyone, that if the IPCC is peddling a crock of s#!t, then the government’s climate policy (on which it is 100% based) is not worth the paper it’s written on. So Penny’s doing her best (which isn’t saying much, let’s face it) to shore it up:

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says a mistake made by a United Nations body on the predicted rate of glacial melting does not mean all its findings are wrong.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claimed in a report that the glaciers in the Himalayas could vanish in 30 years.

However that claim was based on a conversation between a journalist and a single Indian scientist a decade ago, according to British newspaper the Sunday Times.

The Federal Opposition says this shows the organisation’s scientific findings lack credibility.

Opposition energy spokesman Nick Minchin says the mistake made by the IPCC calls into question the Government’s proposed emissions trading scheme.

“For Australia to act ahead of the rest of the world based on [Prime Minister Kevin] Rudd’s reliance on this UN committee, which we now find is presenting reports based on mere speculation, [would be a mistake],” he said.

But Ms Wong says the main claims of climate change science remain unchallenged.

“This is a report that has been peer reviewed extensively [Ah yes, peer-review, the be all and end all of climate science, so corrupt itself that few papers challenging the consensus ever get published, because the alarmists threaten and intimidate publications which consider doing so. See Climategate – Ed]; very few errors have been found in it and none that challenge the central findings,” she said.

“Climate change is real and human beings are contributing to it, and people like Senator Minchin, who have never believed in climate change, will jump on anything in order to justify their position.”

Yawn, yawn, yawn. Sorry Penny, but we’re all bored senseless by your repetitive, robotic pronouncements.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

Countdown with Penny Wong, the clock starts now

13 January, 2010 by

Tick tock

From The Australian. Penny Wong, the robotic climate change minister keeps resetting her internal clock:

The Climate Change Minister tells journalists on July 22 last year:

IN 22 days Malcolm Turnbull will have to show some leadership and be clear about what his party’s position is.

Wong on ABC Sydney 702 the next morning:

THE Liberal Party is in disarray on this issue and Mr Turnbull really needs to do something about it and he has got 21 days to do that.

Wong on August 3:

MR TURNBULL has 10 days to decide whether he is going to continue to be led by the climate change sceptics or whether he is going to show some leadership on this important issue.

The clock starts ticking again on October 15 as the minister issues a press release:

WITH less than 55 days to go before the climate change conference in Copenhagen, it is vital that all countries do as much as possible.

Wong in Copenhagen on December 17:

IN these next three days, we must seal the deal.

Yesterday, Wong hits the reset button and restarts the countdown:

MR Abbott has indicated he will provide a detailed and fully costed climate change policy by the time parliament resumes in February. That is just 21 days away.

Yawn. Time for a firmware update, Penny.

Read it here.

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Terry McCrann – Let's face it: the ETS is dead

26 December, 2009 by

Dead as a…

The only people who don’t know this already appear to be Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong, getting ready to re-introduce it to Parliament in February, despite the world having moved on. Copenhagen has shown that the desire to cripple economies with “carbon reduction” plans is virtually non-existent, and with Tony Abbott at the helm of the Coalition, there isn’t the slightest possibility of it getting through:

While an argument could have been mounted before Copenhagen for moving towards an ETS, that is not possible after the chaos in doleful Hamlet’s hometown that produced the “China solution”.

There will be no global agreement to cut emissions of carbon dioxide.

Formally, it was “Chindia” — China and India. But China is the elephant in that pairing. And in any event, nothing that President Barack Obama might have promised in Copenhagen was ever going to be endorsed by the US Senate, as it has to be.

While we wouldn’t have quite seen a replay of the 95-0 vote that rejected the Kyoto Treaty in 1997, there is zero prospect of the US adopting either binding CO2 emission targets or a cap-and-trade policy, their name for an ETS.

So we have a situation post-Copenhagen, where the two countries that between them are responsible for nearly half of all global emissions of CO2 are not committed to cutting emissions, far less binding targets. And more pointedly, they won’t have an ETS.

Read it here.

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