Gillard calls election – climate in "top three" policy areas

18 July, 2010 by

Dancing to the tune of the faceless factions

Refreshed thanks to a week away from the grinding moonbattery of climate alarmism, the news that Julia Gillard has called an election will focus people’s minds on climate again. The fact that the election is so soon after her “Night of the Long Knives” demonstrates, to this writer at least, that Gillard is running scared, knowing that if she leaves it any longer, her popularity will sink further and there’s less chance of a victory. She must think we’re stupid, frankly.

Anyway, the ABC reports that climate will be a “key election issue”, although having abandoned the ETS and any chance of a carbon tax, what does that mean, exactly?

Labor’s support dropped in the opinion polls earlier this year when it announced it was shelving the emissions trading scheme.

But Ms Gillard says she will unveil new policies during the campaign.

She also delivered a veiled swipe at Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott over the issue. [Because no Labor politician can say anything without having a veiled swipe at the Opposition. A sure sign that their own policies aren’t worth listening to.]

“What I can say very clearly and guarantee for you that as we announce those policies, my policies, they will be policies coming from a person who believes climate change is real, who believes it’s caused by human activity and who has never equivocated in that belief,” she said.

But Mr Abbott says the Government’s climate change policy will hurt Australians’ standard of living.

“The Coalition and only the Coalition has a clear policy to deal with it,” he said.

“Julia Gillard will talk to you about a carbon price, but she won’t actually establish how she’ll get it, what it will be and how much it’s going to raise the cost of everyday living.”

And the Greens think their time has come, holding the balance of power after a hung parliament. Please, please, please, people of Australia, don’t let that happen.

Read it here. Watch the Liberals’ puppet string advert here.

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Rudd: Climate will be "core election issue"

8 June, 2010 by

You can tell when he's spouting horse-shit, his lips move…

Music to my ears. This is great news for the Opposition and Tony Abbott, as Kevin Rudd claims he will be going to the election with two massive new taxes, the 40% super profits tax on resources, and the threat of an ETS to push up the prices of virtually everything. When you add this to the disastrous poll results for Labor this week, it’s a double whammy that will knock Rudd for six (with luck). But of course, you can never trust a single word Rudd says, so it’s probably all horse-shit anyway and he’ll conveniently forget the ETS again, but for today at least, it’s the story:

Climate change will be still be a core issue at the federal election, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says.

The federal government has officially delayed its emissions trading scheme (ETS) until at least 2013 after failing to convince the Liberals to pass it.

But that doesn’t mean the government isn’t fully committed to tackling climate change, Mr Rudd says.

He said that, unlike Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who has a different view on the subject “depending on what day of the week you happen to ask” [I think you’ll find that’s a description of you], the government has always accepted [the dodgy, corrupt, fudged, politically and financially motivated, biased and discredited IPCC version of] the science of climate change.

“It is clear to me and always has been, for years and years and years, that climate change is happening,” Mr Rudd told Fairfax Radio on Tuesday. [Yeah, it’s happening mate, and has since the dawn of time – get the f**k used to it]

“That is why I ratified Kyoto. The Liberals were opposed to ratifying Kyoto.”

Yeah, and what did Kyoto do for the climate, Kev? Speak up, can’t hear you! That’s right: nothing, nada, zip. And yet it has cost global economies billions which could have been spent on, oh, I don’t know, how about better healthcare, or better schools or in fact anything else rather than pointless emissions reductions.

But I’m not complaining. Rudd has already shot himself in one foot with the resources tax, and raising the spectre of an ETS again will be a bullet straight through the other. I don’t know about a lame duck PM, more like a terminally crippled one.

Read it here.

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Abbott: man has role in climate change

27 May, 2010 by

The alarmism is still crap…

Er yes, we’ve always known that, and so has Tony Abbott – it’s the magnitude that’s important. But the Sydney Morning Herald goes into overdrive, believing it to be some kind of Damascene conversion, claiming Abbott now believes “climate change is no longer ‘crap’.” It’s nothing of the sort of course. TA just acknowledges what we have known all along – that man has an effect on the climate:

Tony Abbott, who famously declared the “so-called settled science” of climate change to be “crap” has told environmental business leaders he is now “confident …mankind does make a difference to climate”.

In a speech to the National Business Leaders Forum on Sustainable Development in Canberra, Mr Abbott repeated his view that natural variations in the climate have been happening since the beginning of time, but added that he also believed humans have influenced recent climatic fluctuations.

“I am confident, based on the science we have, that mankind does make a difference to climate, almost certainly the impact of humans on the planet extends to climate.”

Of course – but it’s a question of whether humans will make a tiny, almost imperceptible difference, as most climate realists believe, with negative feedbacks operating in the climate system, or 6 degrees, as the IPCC and alarmists would have us believe, based on huge positive feedbacks.

The IPCC science is still crap, by the way…

Read it here.

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UPDATED: The hypocrisy of Labor and the Labor-loving media

18 May, 2010 by

The media and Labor are all over Tony Abbott this morning after his “gaffe” on ABC’s 7.30 Report in which he rather too candidly admitted that politicians are susceptible to hyperbole in the heat of the moment. Well, knock me down with a feather. Tell me something I don’t know. But Labor are on to it, calling him Phoney Tony, trying to make cheap political capital out of it (always a sure sign of a government in deep trouble), and the media have all got collective “cat got the cream” expressions on their smug journalistic faces.

What short memories they have, and a truly impressive ability to forget instantly the lies, spin and deception of this bankrupt Labor government, which has executed more backflips than a gymnastics convention. Don’t know about Phoney Tony, but I sure know about Rudd the Dud.

Abbott simply told the truth about politics in the 21st century, and was rather too honest about it, but the hypocrisy it has received in response is nothing short of breathtaking.

UPDATE: Some of this simply has to be seen to be believed, as Labor ministers queue up to rubbish Abbott. Nicola Roxon (the worst health minister in living memory?) thinks Abbott is “cracking under pressure” and Penny Wong [who she? – Ed] thinks he “cannot be trusted” (see here). If those same standards were applied to the Government, there wouldn’t be a man or woman left standing. Andrew Robb calls the hypocrisy for what it is:

Those Government ministers who have been out all morning hyperventilating about Tony Abbott are hardly in a position to point a finger considering their appalling track record.

It is the pot calling the kettle black.

Kevin Rudd is the king of broken promises, back-flips and spin and when the going gets tough he goes into hiding, blames others and wheels out junior ministers to take the rap.

In stark contrast, Tony Abbott is a strong leader who is refreshingly authentic and who has the courage to get out there and take it on the chin.

Read it all.

Filed Under: Aussie Politics Tagged With: , , ,

William Kininmonth: open letter to Tony Abbott

16 May, 2010 by

The fate of a sceptic in Kruddistan

You may recall the outrage earlier this week when Tony Abbott dared to suggest that school students should be “sceptical”. That will never do. Indoctrination with alarmist climate dogma is the only thing that will please the headbangers (see earlier story here). William Kininmonth, meteorologist, writes an open letter to Tony Abbott in defence of his comments:

The IPCC alarmist claim that Earth’s temperature has been steady for the last 10,000 years but this view is at odds with historical and archaeological evidence.

  1. Hannibal took his army and elephants across the Alps about 200BC in winter!
  2. Julius Caesar, about 50BC conquered Gaul and, after building a bridge across the Rhine River, waged war on the Germanic tribes; he and his army withdrew across the Rhine and dismantled the bridge. The Rhine River acted as a natural barrier for nearly 500 years but as the Roman Empire in Gaul was disintegrating the Vandals crossed the Rhine in the 5th century AD. The vandals did not build bridges but walked across the frozen Rhine River in winter.
  3. Greenland was settled by Vikings and by the 1100s there were more than 3,000 settlements. As the Little Ice Age advanced so the Greenland settlements were disbanded and the last was known to have perished about 1550AD, a century before the coldest of the Little Ice Age.
  4. For 300 years Earth has been recovering from the Little Ice Age. Mountain glaciers have retreated and high mountain passes of the Alps have opened. Archaeologists have identified artefacts from various eras corresponding with warming and cooling, and retreat and advance of mountain glaciers.

The arguments of the IPCC alarmists rely on an unchanging temperature record prior to industrialisation (that is, no Greco Roman warm period, no cold of the Dark Ages, no Medieval Warm Period and no Little Ice Age) to support their storyline of anthropogenic global warming. They claim that the warming of the past 100 years is unprecedented and therefore must be due to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide.

Read it here.

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Desperation as alarmists sense the battle is lost

10 May, 2010 by

The fate of a sceptic in Kruddistan

The more desperate the quotes, the more tragic the arguments, the more it reveals that the alarmists realise that not only is the planet not complying with their incomplete and worthless climate models, but also that the penny [Wong? – Ed] has dropped in the public mind. The public realises now that the IPCC is a politicised advocacy group, spinning the science to fit an agenda conceived back in the 1980s to regulate CO2. Witness the outpouring of vitriol on Tony Abbott for daring to suggest that school pupils be sceptical (see here for original story). Heaven forbid. In Kruddistan we don’t want any of that, they should just uncritically believe whatever Chairman Rudd and the Wongbot say.

So it is with a wry smile that I read this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald.  It shows utter desperation in the face of a lost cause, even down to the headline, “Climate scientists cross with Abbott for taking Christ’s name in vain“, which once again tries (and fails) to portray Abbott as some religious nutcase:

TONY ABBOTT is under pressure to justify telling students it was considerably warmer when Jesus was alive after leading scientists said his claim was wrong.

He urged year 5 and 6 pupils at an Adelaide school to be sceptical about the human contribution to climate change, saying it was an open question.

In a question-and-answer session on Friday, the Opposition Leader said it was warmer “at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth” than now.

Leading scientists said there was no evidence to suggest it was hotter 2000 years ago.

The president of the Australian Academy of Science, Professor Kurt Lambeck, said true scepticism was fine, but required looking at published data with an open mind. “To make these glib statements to school students, I think, is wrong. It’s not encouraging them to be sceptical, it’s encouraging them to accept unsubstantiated information.” Tas van Ommen, who as principal research scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division collects climate data from ice cores, said any definitive statement about temperatures 2000 years ago was “completely unfounded”.

He cited the 2007 report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which found the available data from climate records was too sparse to make clear statements beyond about 1000 years ago. Dr van Ommen said the confidence that global warming was linked to greenhouse gas emissions was based on multiple lines of evidence.

Yawn. We’ve heard it all before. As soon as you quote the IPCC, it’s time to switch off. And then they wheel out Fairfax’s alarmist in chief:

David Karoly, a Melbourne University federation fellow and climate panel lead author, said Mr Abbott’s statement appeared to be based on Heaven + Earth, a 2009 book by the geologist and climate change contrarian Ian Plimer. It has been embraced by sceptics, but criticised by scientists working in the fields it covers. [Ah yes, of course, Plimer isn’t “working in the fields it covers”, right? – Ed]

Professor Karoly said: “It seems strange to me that the leader of a political party would be seeking to disagree with Australia’s chief scientist, the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists and Australia’s support of the work of the IPCC. He obviously knows better.” (source)

Probably right. The public have an innate common sense which Sackett (raving alarmist), the Bureau, CSIRO (all on the climate gravy train) and the IPCC (ditto) all lack. They can smell a rat – and it’s a dead, rotting, carcass of a rat with a stench that could strip paint. One letter writer in The Australian gets it right:

CLIMATE Change Minister Penny Wong says she was disappointed in Opposition Leader Tony Abbott for encouraging climate change scepticism in the classroom, which she claimed was “irresponsible”, (“Climate change natural”, 8-9/5).

Since when was scepticism in science a bad thing? Mr Abbott was quite right to point out it is an open question as to why the climate changes, and what role man plays in that change.

Surely we want our children to grow up with open and questioning minds and not to accept unthinkingly any proposition put to them in the classroom.

The irony in all this is that Mr Abbott is presented as something of a hardliner, as being inflexible. But it now appears the boot is on the other foot. It is Senator Wong who is the dour, inflexible one as she constantly refuses to accept there is a valid scientific position on climate change apart from her own doomsday alarmist scenario.

It is irresponsible not to present the full range of scientific views on climate change to young, inquiring minds — indeed the general public, and individuals should be allowed to make up their own minds, without fear of being labelled or ostracised.

Alan Barron, Grovedale, Vic (source)

Keep it coming, SMH. Just more evidence that climate hysteria, like Rudd, is on the skids.

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Backflip backfires

4 May, 2010 by

Rudd's gymnastics coach demonstrates the back flip

Kevin Rudd (he who has no political convictions whatsoever) thought that by dumping the ETS he would avoid having to be beaten repeatedly round the ears in the run up to an election by an Opposition wielding a stick bearing the words “Great big new tax”. Unfortunately, his political cowardice in not forcing a double dissolution on climate change, which is what he should have done if he truly believed it to be the greatest moral challenge of our time, is backfiring, as the public realise that he is a spineless and gutless prime minister. As The Australian reports:

THE Labor government has lost its position as the leader on climate change for the first time, following Kevin Rudd’s decision to dump plans for an emissions trading scheme.

Having always led the Coalition, at times by a margin of more than two to one on the question of which party would be best able to handle the issue of climate change, the Labor government is now equal to the Coalition opposition and, essentially, the Greens.

The Prime Minister’s sudden decision to push off any attempt to get the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme through this parliament and possibly not until after the election after next has led to a dramatic slump in support for Labor on climate change.

Under pressure from Tony Abbott’s political campaign against the ETS as a “great big tax” and faced with Coalition and Greens opposition in the Senate, Mr Rudd declared last week that the timetable for implementation of any CPRS would be “extended” until 2013 at least.

Read it here.

UPDATE: Of course, the warmist media is trying to spin this story as demonstrating that the Australian people really, really wanted a huge tax on everything for no environmental benefit whatsoever, and they are deserting Rudd because he isn’t giving them one… Believe that at your peril.

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Vote on "greatest moral challenge of our time" delayed

19 February, 2010 by

"For my next trick, the backflip."

Because now there’s something more important – pushing through a vote on health reform that will give Krudd a double-dissolution trigger that’s not climate change. And he’ll pull it, I think, because his ratings are plummeting and if he leaves it until later in the year, he will be a dead duck. But there’s a risk with that – the people aren’t stupid, they’ll see he’s trying to sneak in under the wire, and hopefully they’ll give him the bloody nose at the polls that he so richly deserves. Could Rudd & Co be the worst government since…? When?

THE Rudd government will delay pushing ahead with its emissions trading scheme, prompting an accusation by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott that it is planning one of the “all-time great political backflips”.

In a surprise move, the long-expected reintroduction of the emissions trading legislation to Parliament next week has now been stalled. Instead, the government is shifting its priorities to force a vote on its proposed changes to the private health insurance means test, potentially creating a trigger for a double-dissolution election, as health looks set to be a key battleground in this year’s election.

It means it is almost certain that the next vote on the controversial emissions trading scheme will be pushed back until at least next month.

Mr Abbott yesterday seized on the release of a draft parliamentary order of business that did not list the emissions trading scheme, saying Prime Minister Kevin Rudd seemed to be “running away from his own legislation”.

“Let’s face it, this was just a few months ago not just an important political issue, it was the greatest moral issue of our time,” he said.

Read it here.

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MUST SEE: BBC Newsnight: Climate change scepticism hotting up in Australia

7 February, 2010 by

BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight, has an extended section on the changing political climate in Australia:

H/t: Tom S

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Comment: Abbott's uncomfortable climate policy

3 February, 2010 by

Abbott v Rudd

Well, the Coalition have finally revealed their climate policy, and it looks as uneasy as one would expect. At least it’s not a massive new tax a la ETS, but the gestures towards cutting carbon dioxide (well done to TA for making this small but important point) are really just that. TA looked uncomfortable on The 7.30 Report last night, defending a policy that you know he doesn’t really believe in, and Kerry O’Brien succeeded in exposing that conflict.

The problem is that, deep down, TA is a true sceptic [Bravo for that – Ed]. He knows that the climate science is corrupted and that the projections for dangerous global warming are mostly hype. However, he doesn’t believe he can say this in the current political climate – which is probably right. Not doing anything would give Labor and the Greens a field day – branding the Opposition “deniers”, “flat earthers” and every other warmist ad hominem known to man. It would also go down very badly with the public at the moment, who have been so utterly brainwashed by the government and a media in its pocket that they still believe global warming needs action. This is despite everything that has happened since Climategate in November, and the disaster of Copenhagen in December.

This, however, is starting to change. The Australian continues to print sceptical articles, and even the Fairfax press have begun doing the same. The barrage of stories exposing incompetence and manipulation or suppression of data in the IPCC reports continues unabated. The IPCC has been exposed, not as a body of scientific impartiality, but of extremist environmental advocacy.

In time, the weight of evidence against the “consensus” will eventually percolate through to the public, despite the media’s increasingly unsuccessful attempts at its suppression. Eventually (and I hope it happens before the election), the collective public penny will drop, and there will be a unanimous cry of “We’ve been conned.”

So TA should bide his time and continue with his “interim” policy, until the political climate and public opinion can accept what should be the proper Coalition position: that climate change is a non-problem.

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