Global Warming / Climate Change scam

[mr anderson]

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/

The Opposition’s climate change spokesman, warming believer Greg Hunt, proves that his policy makes no sense. He says he’s for an emissions trading scheme, of course:

    (T)he Coalition believes Australia should have an emissions trading scheme and proposed just such a scheme prior to the last election.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24031234-5000117,00.html

It’s just that he’s against what an emissions scheme actually does:

    And we call on Mr Rudd to be honest that this is not just a deferred petrol tax, but is a tax on everything and everyone.

I suggest he apologise to Brendan Nelson for nobbling his much more sensible idea - the Liberals’ only hope and John Howard’s best counsel.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24026088-5000117,00.html

UPDATE

Wise words from the Asia Wall Street Journal:

    Yesterday’s 516-page (Rudd Government report on emissions cuts) calls for a huge bureaucratic expansion and undefined costs to industry… But they did say electricity prices could rise 16%, and fuel, 9%, when emissions trading begins in 2010.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121623522472659303.html

    You’d expect the Liberals to be howling. Instead, they’re as green as Al Gore…

    Current Liberal leader Brendan Nelson hasn’t tried very hard to distance himself from Mr. Howard’s platform. He hasn’t questioned the science underlining global warming… He’s repeatedly said that he supports an emissions trading scheme without seriously exploring other, more transparent, forms of taxation on industry – or opposing the tax altogether…

    Mr. Nelson’s only attempt to rejig the Liberals’ position was a feeble try last week to step back from that 2012 implementation date and to ask that Australia – which emits only 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions – not act until big emitters like China lead the way. But as soon as he floated these common-sense ideas, his deputy Julie Bishop, shadow treasurer Malcolm Turnbull and shadow environment minister Greg Hunt all publicly cried foul. Mr. Nelson fell back into line. So much for leadership…

    Given rising fuel costs, now is the perfect time for the Liberals to point out the economic cost of Labor’s global warming scheme. But they can’t do so effectively if they are carbon-copies of Labor. The public may not understand carbon trading schemes, but they understand hits to their pocketbook. It’s time for the Liberals to start pounding that message home, in unison.

[mr anderson]

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121623522472659303.html

Asia Wall Street Journal

The global warming craze officially landed in Canberra yesterday, as the Labor government released a sketch of what it calls "one of the highest priorities of the Australian government": its carbon trading scheme. That should signal the beginning of an important debate about the costs of this grand plan. But can the opposition Liberal Party muster a coherent argument?

Yesterday's 516-page report calls for a huge bureaucratic expansion and undefined costs to industry. Canberra has pledged to reduce emissions to 60% of 2000 levels by 2050, and it wants to set emissions caps this year. The government hasn't yet said how much companies will have to pay for all this. But they did say electricity prices could rise 16%, and fuel, 9%, when emissions trading begins in 2010.

You'd expect the Liberals to be howling. Instead, they're as green as Al Gore. Part of this is a legacy issue. Former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard embraced the idea of an emissions trading scheme by 2012 when he saw then-opposition leader Kevin Rudd gaining support by fearmongering about global warming. Mr. Howard said he'd implement carbon trading only if costs to the Australian economy were capped. His commitment has, for now, left the Liberals mostly on the same page as Labor.

Current Liberal leader Brendan Nelson hasn't tried very hard to distance himself from Mr. Howard's platform. He hasn't questioned the science underlining global warming. (Yesterday's report takes as truth the United Nations' discredited Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates.) He's repeatedly said that he supports an emissions trading scheme without seriously exploring other, more transparent, forms of taxation on industry – or opposing the tax altogether. He hasn't questioned the wisdom of the schemes Australia already has in place to pick winners among clean energy industries, such as mandatory renewable energy targets.

Mr. Nelson's only attempt to rejig the Liberals' position was a feeble try last week to step back from that 2012 implementation date and to ask that Australia – which emits only 1.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions – not act until big emitters like China lead the way. But as soon as he floated these common-sense ideas, his deputy Julie Bishop, shadow treasurer Malcolm Turnbull and shadow environment minister Greg Hunt all publicly cried foul. Mr. Nelson fell back into line. So much for leadership.

Labor is taking full advantage of the Liberals' disarray. Yesterday's report blithely asserts that an emissions trading scheme will touch "around 1,000 Australian companies in total," or "less than 1%" of Australian businesses. In reality, forcing companies to buy pollution permits would raise the cost of energy production and hit every corner of the world's 15th-largest economy.

Labor's report admits as much, noting there will be "adjustment costs" and pledging to offset energy price hikes by temporarily cutting excise taxes on gasoline. But Climate Change Minister Penny Wong played down any change of making such cuts permanent, suggesting yesterday that the Labor government would instead buffer the immediate impact on low-income families through cash handouts.

As for the economic havoc Labor's global warming plan would wreak, you know it's bad when even the labor unions – the Labor Party's core constituency – cry foul. The 130,000-member Australia's Workers' Union, the country's largest blue-collar union, and a local think tank estimate that the cost to the aluminum industry alone in job losses could range "from A$285 million to A$1.124 billion."

Given rising fuel costs, now is the perfect time for the Liberals to point out the economic cost of Labor's global warming scheme. But they can't do so effectively if they are carbon-copies of Labor. The public may not understand carbon trading schemes, but they understand hits to their pocketbook. It's time for the Liberals to start pounding that message home, in unison.

[mr anderson]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/two-peer-reviewed-scientific-papers-debunk-co2-myth.html



Paul Joseph Watson
Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Three top scientists have once again contradicted the claim that a “consensus” exists about man-made global warming with research that indicates CO2 emissions actually cool the atmosphere, in addition to another peer-reviewed paper that documents how the IPCC overstated CO2’s effect on temperature by as much as 2000 per cent.

Professor George Chilingar and Leonid Khilyuk of the University of Southern California, and Oleg Sorokhtin of the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences have released a study that they claim completely contradicts the link between CO2 and global temperature increases.

“The writers investigated the effect of CO2 emission on the temperature of atmosphere. Computations based on the adiabatic theory of greenhouse effect show that increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere results in cooling rather than warming of the Earth’s atmosphere,” states the preamble to the paper.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a788582859~db=all

The full study, which appears in the Energy Sources journal, is sure to cause ire amongst climate cult adherants.

No global warming has been observed for the past 10 years as temperatures have gradually declined and studies indicate that there will be no further warming for the next 10 years.

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/april2008/040408_cools_off.htm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-563104/Global-warming-stop-NATURALLY-years-say-scientists.html

In a related development, the peer-reviewed Physics and Society journal has published evidence proving that the UN IPCC’s 2007 climate summary “overstated CO2’s impact on temperature by 500-2000%.”

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/proved_no_climate_crisis.html

According to the paper, “Computer models used by the UN’s climate panel (IPCC) were pre-programmed with overstated values for the three variables whose product is “climate sensitivity” (temperature increase in response to greenhouse-gas increase), resulting in a 500-2000% overstatement of CO2’s effect on temperature in the IPCC’s latest climate assessment report, published in 2007.”

The paper also outlines evidence to confirm that Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth warmed, a factor attributed to the Sun having been more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years.

The paper concludes, “CO2 enrichment will add little more than 1 °F (0.6 °C) to global mean surface temperature by 2100.”

[mr anderson]

Written by Robert Ferguson
Tuesday, 15 July 2008

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/proved_no_climate_crisis.html

FULL: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/index.cfm

WASHINGTON (7-15-08) - Mathematical proof that there is no “climate crisis” appears today in a major, peer-reviewed paper in Physics and Society, a learned journal of the 10,000-strong American Physical Society, SPPI reports.

Christopher Monckton, who once advised Margaret Thatcher, demonstrates via 30 equations that computer models used by the UN’s climate panel (IPCC) were pre-programmed with overstated values for the three variables whose product is “climate sensitivity” (temperature increase in response to greenhouse-gas increase), resulting in a 500-2000% overstatement of CO2’s effect on temperature in the IPCC’s latest climate assessment report, published in 2007.

Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered [ http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/index.cfm ] demonstrates that later this century a doubling of the concentration of CO2 compared with pre-industrial levels will increase global mean surface temperature not by the 6 °F predicted by the IPCC but, harmlessly, by little more than 1 °F. Lord Monckton concludes –

“… Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no ‘climate crisis’ at all. … The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.”

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chair (2004) of the New England Section of the American Physical Society (APS), has been studying climate-change science for four years. He said:

“I was impressed by an hour-long academic lecture which criticized claims about ‘global warming’ and explained the implications of the physics of radiative transfer for climate change. I was pleased that the audience responded to the informative presentation with a prolonged, standing ovation. That is what happened when, at the invitation of the President of our University, Christopher Monckton lectured here in Hartford this spring. I am delighted that Physics and Society, an APS journal, has published his detailed paper refining and reporting his important and revealing results.‘

“To me the value of this paper lies in its dispassionate but ruthlessly clear exposition – or, rather, exposé – of the IPCC’s method of evaluating climate sensitivity. The detailed arguments in this paper, and, indeed, in a large number of other scientific papers, point up extensive errors, including numerous projection errors of climate models, as well as misleading statements by the IPCC. Consequently, there are no rational grounds for believing either the IPCC or any other claims of dangerous anthropogenic ‘global warming’.”

Lord Monckton’s paper reveals that –

*The IPCC’s 2007 climate summary overstated CO2’s impact on temperature by 500-2000%;
*CO2 enrichment will add little more than 1 °F (0.6 °C) to global mean surface temperature by 2100;
*Not one of the three key variables whose product is climate sensitivity can be measured directly;
*The IPCC’s values for these key variables are taken from only four published papers, not 2,500;
*The IPCC’s values for each of the three variables, and hence for climate sensitivity, are overstated;
*“Global warming” halted ten years ago, and surface temperature has been falling for seven years;
*Not one of the computer models relied upon by the IPCC predicted so long and rapid a cooling;
*The IPCC inserted a table into the scientists’ draft, overstating the effect of ice-melt by 1000%;
*It was proved 50 years ago that predicting climate more than two weeks ahead is impossible;
*Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth warmed;
*In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years.

[mr anderson]

Part I -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI
Part II - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN06JSi-SW8
Part III - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCXDISLXTaY
Part IV - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQQGFZHSno

[mr anderson]

http://news.theage.com.au/national/emissions-plan-may-hit-senate-brick-wall-20080717-3ghe.html

The federal government's plan for emissions trading could hit a brick wall in the Senate, as opposition politicians attack the scheme from all sides.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong is caught in a tug-of-war between the coalition - which thinks the scheme is too tough - and the Australian Greens, who think it is too soft.

Any legislation will need the support of the opposition or, failing that, the combined backing of five Greens senators, Family First's Steve Fielding and independent Nick Xenophon.

Senator Wong on Thursday scotched talk that a climate impasse could trigger a double dissolution of parliament.

"It's certainly jumping the gun, but can I say we will put forward what we believe is a responsible scheme that's in the national interest," she told reporters in Canberra.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd acknowledged it would not be easy.

"Well, we will be attacked from both the left and the right," he told Sky News.

The government is seeking to put pressure on the opposition to support the emissions trading scheme - due to begin in 2010 - and to capitalise on the coalition's mixed messages on climate change.

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson has criticised the scheme, warning it would unfairly target middle-income earners and push up petrol prices.

But opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt said the government had copied the Liberals' model.

"Basically, what they've done is they've dusted off the document that we had, adhered to what we said on a short-term approach to petrol, but they've sold out on the long term," Mr Hunt told Fairfax Radio Network.

Nick Minchin, leader of the opposition in the Senate, said the coalition would consider the emissions laws in detail and send them to a Senate committee for examination.

"We're not going to be bullied or rushed," he told ABC Radio.

The Greens are more willing to deal with the government - despite their concerns the scheme is too kind to coal.

"We will negotiate in good faith on the measures necessary to avoid dangerous climate change," Greens spokeswoman Christine Milne told AAP.

"I have every hope that the government will also negotiate in good faith."

Senator Fielding said he had doubts about emissions trading, warning families could bear the brunt, interest rates could rise and the scheme could lead to an "emissions trade recession".

Meanwhile, Mr Rudd has hinted the government's controversial move to means-test a rebate for household solar panels will be reviewed.

Earlier this year, the $8,000 rebate was restricted to households earning less than $100,000, angering environmentalists and the opposition.

Mr Rudd said the government would roll out energy efficiency measures for homes as part of emissions trading.

"On the solar panels point ... all these renewable energy arrangements, particularly those affecting households, are very much in the mix as we now approach the assistance that will help households," he told Fairfax Radio.

Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan said the inflationary impact of emissions trading was unlikely to force the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to lift interest rates. The cost of living is tipped to rise by 0.9 per cent in the scheme's first year.

"(Reserve Bank) Governor (Glenn) Stevens has made some commentary in public on this issue and he's made the very simple point that the one-off impact of a carbon pollution reduction scheme would be 'looked through' by the Reserve Bank," Mr Swan told ABC Radio.

Senator Wong said emissions trading would not add to the cost of liquefied petroleum gas for motorists. Diesel will also not rise in price.

© 2008 AAP

[mr anderson]

http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/opinion/13601/climate-change-debate-being-distorted-dogma?page=0%2C1

Thu, 17 Jul 2008
Opinion

Prof Geoffrey Kearsley is a geographer developing a programme in environmental communication.
He is head of the Department of Media, Film and Communication at the University of Otago.

Human activity is indeed changing the climate, at least in part, but there is an increasing body of science that says that the sun may have a greater role than previously thought, argues Geoffrey Kearsley.

It is now pretty much taken for granted that global warming is ongoing, that climate change is being driven by human activity and that it is critically important that extraordinary changes be made in fundamental aspects of our economy and way of life.

On the small scale, people plant trees, examine food miles, purchase carbon offsets and modify their travel behaviour.

Cities and even countries vie with one another to become carbon neutral; as a nation, we are contemplating emission controls, taxes and carbon-trading schemes that will have a profound effect on individual households and the national economy alike.

When linked with the other great crisis of our times - peak oil - it has become not only socially desirable to embrace all of this, but sustainability has achieved the status of a higher morality.

It has become politically unacceptable to doubt any of the current dogma.

Not to subscribe wholeheartedly to the sustainability ethos is to be labelled not just a sceptic but a denier, with overtones of Holocaust denial and a wilful, unreasonable immorality.

It is said that we are now beyond the science and that the science of global warming has been finalised or determined and that all scientists agree.

Sceptics and deniers are simply cynical pawns in the pockets of the big oil companies.

This is unfortunate, to say the least.

Science is rarely determined or finalised; science evolves and the huge complexity of climate science will certainly continue to evolve in the light of new facts, new experiences and new understandings.

Here is an example of how science changes.

Early in the 1900s, Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents were once joined up; their coastlines seemed to match, there appeared to be great rifts and tears in the continental fabric.

This view was ridiculed; how could the continents move? What possible force could transport the unimaginable mass of Africa or Australia hundreds and thousands of kilometres across the earth?

Today, of course, plate tectonics is well understood. We know that continents move and we know how and what the consequences are.

Global warming seemed sewn up as well in the year 2000.

Mann's hockey-stick graph showed centuries of modest change culminating in an explosive temperature growth in recent decades, leading to terrifying projections of a climate out of control with the sea rising to drown us all.

 Al Gore's apocalyptic images of tsunami-like flooding and dying polar bears brought global warming into every home.

To sign up to Kyoto was an act of sanctity and belief; only political dinosaurs in the pay of big business would not flock to this new crusade.

Today, the hockey stick has gone.

Its basic data were flawed and the statistical processes inadequate; it failed to describe known climate changes from the historically recorded past, so how could it be a reliable predictor?

Although Mr Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize, his famous movie has been shown to be riddled with inaccuracies, distortions and misrepresentations; it cannot be shown in British schools without a comprehensive explanation of its mistakes and an acknowledgement that it is advocacy, not science.

There is no doubt that the climate is changing; it always has done.

We have become familiar with the regularly repeating glaciations of the past.

Human history has mainly occupied an exceptionally warm interglacial peak in a world that, for the last half million years at least, has generally been much cooler, although, in deep time, the world has been much warmer than now.

In the 1970s, climate science was concerned about when the next ice age might commence; we may have to return to that position.

There have been considerably warmer eras in the past couple of thousand years.

In both the Roman and medieval warm periods, vineyards flourished as far north as York in England; Greenland was indeed green, at least in parts.

By contrast, just 400 years ago, there was a Little Ice Age in America and Europe, at least, that lasted until well into the 1800s.

The historic record confirms all of this, beyond doubt.

What we also know, by historical record and by proxy calculation, is that these large swings in temperature closely correlate with the frequency of sunspots, which are a visible indicator of activity in the sun.

Sunspots vary in number according to a series of short-term and long-term cycles.

In periods of high temperature, sunspots proliferated, but during the Little Ice Age, there were few or none for many decades, a phenomenon known as the Maunder Minimum; the last quarter of the 20th century saw a flurry of activity.

The last cycle was at its energetic peak in 1998, our warmest year for some time.

The mechanism is unclear, but it seems related to solar magnetic influences and the amount of gamma radiation that reaches the earth.

The last 10 years have seen a static or even cooling trend as the sunspot cycle ran down; 2007 saw bitter weather around the world and the mean global temperature dropped by an unprecedented amount.

It is not picking up.

The Antarctic winter sea ice was at its largest extent since satellite observation began, and it snowed in Baghdad and Buenos Aires for the first time in living memory. China's winter was awful.

And now the scary news.

The latest sunspot cycle should have started up around the middle or end of 2006; it didn't.

According to Nasa's forecasts, there should be a sunspot index of 70 or more, as the new cycle ran up.

I looked at a real-time photo of the sun on a recent morning; there are no sunspots at all.

There have only been a couple of brief, tiny ones since the last cycle ended.

Not only that, but the longer trends tell us that by 2020, we will be experiencing an unusually low-energy sun.

Apparently, these are exactly the conditions that preceded the Maunder Minimum and ushered in the Little Ice Age.

The science goes on.

Water vapour is the biggest greenhouse gas by a huge factor.

The link between CO2 and temperature change is erratic; often, carbon follows heat rather than the uncritical popular perception that heat is induced by carbon.

The oceans are a vast reservoir of dissolved CO2; as they warm, they release it and reabsorb it as they cool.

Which causes what? There is much more yet to learn.

My point is this: It may well be that human activity is indeed changing the climate, at least in part, but there is an increasing body of science that says that the sun may have a greater role.

If it does have, then global warming is likely to stop, as it appears to have done since 1998, and if the current sunspot cycle fails to ignite, then cooling, possibly rapid and severe cooling, may eventuate.

The next five years will tell us a great deal. In these circumstances, we should wait and see.

With China and India churning out new thermal power stations at assembly-line speed, our influence on the global climate is negligible.

Surrounded as we are by great oceans, even the alarmist predictions will have relatively minor consequences for us for some time.

We can afford to wait.

There is no point in decimating our economy in the pursuit of carbon neutrality if carbon is not the main culprit or if the climate is now on a new trend.

Instead, now is the time to moderate the pseudo-religious and uncritical belief that global warming is still as we once thought it might have been.

[mr anderson]

Carbon scheme 'risks business billions'

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,24036248-913,00.html

STEVE LEWIS, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
July 18, 2008 12:30am

ONE of Australia's most senior business leaders has warned the Rudd Government's carbon trading scheme "puts in jeopardy" billions of dollars in potential investment. In a chilling prediction, Woodside Petroleum chief executive Don Voelte claims the Rudd Government's emissions trading scheme could force companies to seek cheaper offshore options.

The robust comments came as Kevin Rudd and his senior Ministers were forced to hose down concerns that its ETS will force up interest rates. The Prime Minister was also forced to defend as "responsible" a controversial plan to protect motorists from petrol price hikes when the scheme is introduced in July 2010.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong also dismissed speculation the Government would be forced to an early election if the Senate parties decided to block legislation. But the Government's hard-sell of its climate change plan was undermined as business becomes increasingly concerned over the scheme's impact on the economy.

Mr Voelte, who the Government uses as a key business adviser, hit out at the emissions trading scheme, which he said could undermine the North West Shelf and other key resources projects.

"It is definitely going to have an impact. It puts in jeopardy the industry's (liquefied natural gas) plans, depending on how the final outcome of the ETS scheme," he told the ABC's Lateline Business.

Industry has been busy digesting the contents of the Government's 500-page discussion paper on emissions trading. But already, senior business figures have voiced concern the scheme - due to commence in July 2010 - could undermine lucrative export industries.

The threat of a business backlash comes as the Coalition and minor parties also take aim at the ETS.

Senator Wong, who will play a key role negotiating passage of the scheme through the Senate, said she was hopeful of a "reasonable dialogue" with the opposition parties.

The Greens and other key Senate players have voiced reservations over the Government's discussion paper. But Senator Wong argued the Government had struck the right balance - and defended the decision to give coal and other industries lucrative tax breaks.

"We do believe that there needs to be a future for coal in this country," she said.

Mr Rudd was forced to defend the Government's decision to release a discussion paper - while Treasury was still struggling to finalise critical modelling on the scheme's impact.

"We're going to have a longer process of initial and subsequent consultation with business," he said.

The government's action on climate change needed to be taken on a "step by step" basis.

"What we've said with the green paper is, and we're asking industry's response to this, is the actual design of the system," the Prime Minister said.

"It's complex, it's hard, it's difficult to explain, I accept that, and that's what we're seeking industry response to."

[mr anderson]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html

David Evans | July 18, 2008

I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.

FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.

If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.

When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.

Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything.

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.

The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.

Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.

So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.

In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.

If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?

The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.

What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.

The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.

Dr David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.

[mr anderson]

Andrew Bolt
Friday, July 18, 2008 at 07:08am

Are you happy to pay more because of the Government's climate change plan?


http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_seven_graphs_to_end_the_warming_hype/



THESE are the seven graphs that should make the Rudd Government feel sick. These are the seven graphs that should make you ask: What? Has global warming now stopped?

Look for yourself. They show that the world hasn’t warmed for a decade, and has even cooled for several years. Sea ice now isn’t melting, but spreading. The seas have not just stopped rising, but started to fall.

Nor is the weather getting wilder. Cyclones, as well as tornadoes and hurricanes, aren’t increasing and the rain in Australia hasn’t stopped falling. What’s more, the slight warming we saw over the century until 1998 still makes the world no hotter today than it was 1000 years ago. In fact, it’s even a bit cooler. So, dude, where’s my global warming?

These graphs should in fact be good news for the Government and all the other warming preachers who warned we were doomed by our gases, which were heating the world to hell. Now Prime Minister Kevin Rudd can at last stop sweating about the warming terrors he told us were coming - the horrific droughts, the dengue fever, the malaria, the devastation to our land and economy.

And he can announce that, hey, emergency over for now. His emissions trading scheme will go into deep freeze while he checks this good news. As for his promise this week to make your power bills go up $200 a year to stop global warming? His promise to make even food more expensive? To put gassy companies out of business, and their workers out of a job?

Cancel all that. As you were, soldier. Good news has come from the front. But now you can see why these graphs terrify Rudd, who has never admitted to a single fact they contain. You think he dares admit he panicked you for no good reason? Wasted countless millions of dollars?

Yet the facts are stark: The world simply isn’t warming as he and his pet scientists said.

That’s why 31,000 other scientists, including world figures such as physicist Prof Freeman Dyson, atmospheric physicist Prof Richard Lindzen and climate scientist Prof Fred Singer, issued a joint letter last month warning governments not to jump on board the global warming bandwagon.

“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate.”

That’s why Ivar Glaever, who won a Nobel Prize for Physics, this month declared “I am a sceptic”, because “we don’t really know what the actual effect on the climate is”.

And it’s why the American Physical Society this month said “there is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”

So let me go through my seven graphs that help to explain why even Nobel Prize winners question what Rudd keeps claiming—that man is warming the world, and dangerously.

The main graph is from the Hadley Centre of Britain’s Meteorological Office and one of the four bodies measuring world temperature.

As you see, since 1998—an unusually warm year thanks to the “El Nino” pool of warmer water in the Pacific—the world’s temperature dropped back to a steady plateau, followed by a few years of cooling.


The second graph confirms both the halt in warming, and then cooling. It’s from another of those four bodies, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, which monitors the troposphere—from the ground to 12km altitude.

Only one of the four, in fact, claims temperatures are still rising. That’s NASA, whose program is run by Dr James Hansen, Al Gore’s global warming adviser and a controversial catastrophist whose team’s reworking of data has been heavily criticised for exaggerating any heating.

But before I go on, a caveat: This recent cooling doesn’t disprove the theory that man is warming the world. Ten years is too short to be sure of a trend. Natural factors may for now be countering the effect of our gases. Then again, the theory that man has warmed the world is based on a rise in temperature over a period that’s not much longer—from just 1975 to 1998.

And the computer climate models that scientists use to predict catastrophic warming a century from now somehow never predicted a cooling that’s happening right now.

And these are the models Rudd is betting on with our jobs and cash.


The third graph shows another surprise those models never predicted: the seas have stopped rising.

The waters have crept up for at least 150 years, since the world started to thaw from the Little Ice Age, and well before any likely man-made warming.

But the climate models predicted that a big rise in emissions from all those cars, power plants and factories since World War II would cause an equally big rise in the seas, swelling them as much as 59cm by 2100.

This wasn’t scary enough for alarmists like Al Gore, though, who claimed whole cities could in fact be drowned under 6m of ocean.

But the satellites that have checked sea levels since 1992 find the seas have instead fallen over the past two years. Again, this could be a blip. But it isn’t what the models predicted.



The fourth graph seems to confirm a cooling. Forget media scares about a melting North Pole; sea ice has grown so fast in the southern hemisphere there is now more ice in the world than is usual, says the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.


Graph five punctures another scare. No, global warming hasn’t given us more cyclones - or more tornadoes or hurricanes anywhere. Nor is their proof that cyclones are getting worse, says the American Meteorological Society.


And warming hasn’t stopped our rain, either, despite media hype about a “one-in-a-100 year drought”. See the Bureau of Meteorology records in graph six. It’s just bad luck that the fickle rain now tends to fall where it’s not needed most.

And, please, can we drop that old fiction that the world was never warmer? It’s a false claim made popular by a 2001 report of the IPCC, the United Nations’ climate group, which ran a graph, shaped like a hockey stick, claiming there was no warming for millennia until humans last century gassed up their world.

In fact, that “hockey stick” is now discredited, and last year Dr Craig Loehle, of the US National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, argued that using tree rings to work out past temperatures was clearly unreliable.

He instead produced a graph - No. 7 - of past temperatures using all other accepted proxies.


You see his results (which for statistical reasons stop at 1935): they show humans lived through a medieval period that was warmer than even today. This was a period that historical accounts confirm was so warm that Greenland farmers grew crops on

land now under snow, and British ones grew grapes.

But I repeat: the world may yet warm again, and soon, although scientists at Leibnitz Institute and Max Planck Institute last month predicted it won’t for at least another decade. If at all, say solar experts worried by a lack of sun spots.

But even if none of my graphs disproves the theory that man is causing dangerous warming, they should at least make you pause.

They should at least make you open to other theories of climate change, like that of Dr Henrik Svensmark, head of Denmark’s Centre for Sun-Climate Research, who thinks changes in cosmic rays, which affect clouds, may explain much of the recent warming. And now the cooling, too.

But, above all, when that man with the sandwich board comes tugging at your sleeve again, shouting, “Quick, help me save the world - or die”, hang on to your wallet, friend.

Give that urger my seven graphs instead, and ask him how many more years of no warming will it take before he admits it really is too soon to panic.

[jimwill]

Link to pdf of graphs - global warming graphs

Link to story - Evidence doesn't bare out alarmist claims of global warming

(please include links to article sources! )

[mr anderson]

That's what the top link is...

I wasn't aware of the article. The OP is the blog post.

[jimwill]

Sorry - long day, late, and too many gov. sponsored chemicals!

[mr anderson]

PM's carbon deadline faces Senate delay

Samantha Maiden, Online political editor | July 18, 2008

KEVIN Rudd faces another Senate hurdle to meet his deadline of a 2010 start date for a carbon pollution trading scheme, with Opposition senators set to send the proposal to a review committee. The Prime Minister said yesterday he would be seeking bipartisan support for the scheme from the Liberal Party in a bid to deal the Greens out of the negotiations.

But the Government remains under fire from business groups over the impact of the scheme, with Treasurer Wayne Swan refusing to offer a guarantee on Sky News this morning that no liquid natural gas projects would be lost to Australia as a result of its introduction. Any legislation will need the support of the Opposition or, failing that, the combined backing of five Greens senators, Family First's Steve Fielding and independent Nick Xenophon.

But the attempt to prevent the Government from being forced to negotiate with the Greens, who argue the current plan is too pro-business and will push for much tougher targets in exchange for their support, could force Labor to accept a delay in the introduction of the scheme. The key difference between the Rudd Government and the Coalition on a trading scheme is that the opposition want the scheme to start two years later in 2012, rather than 2010.

It is certain to extract a delayed start date as the price of Coalition support in the Senate for the Government's proposal to allow business more time to plan for the impact.

“We will make our decisions in the (lower) house and in the Senate based on the long-term interest of Australia,” opposition Treasury spokesman Malcolm Turnbull told ABC Radio.

“What we will be doing is examining Labor's proposal with great care ... to ensure that it does not put Australian jobs, Australian industries at peril.

“Mr Rudd is already showing signs of hastiness and a .. determination ... to put politics ahead of good government.

“In his haste, he is jeopardising the jobs and the livelihoods, the prosperity of millions of Australians.”

The Government is also under fire today over claims $60 billion in planned LNG investments could be shelved because the emissions trading scheme is “backwards” and penalises exports of clean gas.

Woodside Petroleum chief Don Voelte told The Australian the carbon pollution reduction scheme, unveiled by the Government on Wednesday, would make it impossible for two $30 billion West Australian offshore LNG projects to go ahead.

“The emissions trading scheme will knock planned projects with relatively high (carbon) emissions right off the block,” he said.

Mr Swan refused to offer a guarantee on Sky News this morning that no LNG projects would be lost to Australia as a result of the introduction to the scheme.

"We will protect the national interest,” he said.

"This industry is important to Australia.”

But Mr Swan said the Government also had to deliver a carbon pollution trading scheme that had "integrity".

[mr anderson]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=aqWYzSuuj7DE&refer=australia

By Angela Macdonald-Smith

July 18 (Bloomberg) -- Chevron Corp., the largest holder of natural gas resources in Australia, said the country's plan to limit carbon emissions threatens to stall development of LNG projects needed to meet rising world energy demand.

Chevron is "seriously concerned'' that a proposed emissions trading system, due to start in 2010, may derail ``multi-billion dollar'' investments planned at its Gorgon and Wheatstone liquefied natural gas projects off the northwest coast, the U.S. company's Australian unit said today.

The government on July 16 outlined a carbon trading system, without specifying whether LNG producers would be compensated for the extra cost. Inpex Holdings Inc. today cited carbon trading as one of the biggest risks for LNG projects in Australia, while Woodside Petroleum Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Don Voelte told The Australian the plan may shelve A$60 billion ($58 billion) of LNG projects by penalizing clean gas exports.

``If the scheme is confined to local producers, rather than implemented globally, it could limit prospects for meeting Asia's fast-growing LNG demand needs over the next decade,'' U.S. consultant Poten & Partners said in a report. ``Such schemes present unique challenges in producing countries like Australia, where they could undermine the competitiveness of LNG and other important extractive industries.''

Capital-Intensive

Chevron's 15 million metric ton-a-year Gorgon venture, which includes Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp., is already seeking to tackle a surge in construction costs that has delayed the project and prevented the partners approving the investment. The San Ramon, California-based company is planning a standalone project at Wheatstone, also 15 million tons a year, that would start up after Gorgon.

``LNG represents the most capital-intensive industry in Australia,'' Chevron's Australian unit said today in an e-mail. ``Government policy must not impose additional costs which would impact upon the ability of LNG projects to compete fairly in international energy markets.''

Based on the government's Green Paper on emissions trading, released two days ago, the oil and gas industry may not qualify as a trade-exposed energy-intensive industry that would be eligible for compensation for placing a cost on carbon, said Michele Villa, partner, risk advisory services at Ernst & Young LLP.

Emission Permits

According to the Green Paper, companies that emit between 1,500 tons and 2,000 tons of carbon dioxide for each million of Australian dollars of revenue generated will be considered energy-intensive and will get about 60 percent of carbon permits for free, Villa said at a conference in Darwin. That rises to 90 percent of free permits for companies that emit more than 2,000 tons of carbon dioxide for each million of revenue, he said.

That means aluminum, steel and cement companies will ``very likely'' qualify for some free permits, while oil and gas companies may not as they emit between 1,000 tons and 2,000 tons for each million of revenue, Villa said. The companies would then have to buy all the permits they need to match their emissions.

Woodside's initial advice is that its emissions-intensity falls below the 1,500 tons per million dollar threshold, meaning it would have to buy all its permits, said Roger Martin, a Perth-based spokesman. The company, operator of the North West Shelf LNG venture, emitted 1.64 million tons of carbon dioxide last year, while Woodside-operated projects emitted 7.35 million tons, he said.

A typical LNG venture such as Gorgon or Browse may emit 1 million tons to 3 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, Villa said. That would amount to a cost of A$20 million to A$30 million each year, assuming no free permits and a carbon price of A$20-A$30, he said.

Australian Competition

``This is why the LNG industry is so concerned,'' Villa said.

Australian LNG ventures compete against rivals in countries including Indonesia, Russia and Malaysia, where there are no plans to introduce a cost on carbon. Perth-based Woodside is building the A$12 billion Pluto LNG project and is proposing the Browse venture, also in Western Australia.

``It must be remembered that all other countries with which Australia competes to supply LNG have not shown any inclination to embrace reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,'' Chevron said.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said today the government will negotiate with companies on the planned carbon trading system, the details of which have yet to be determined.

'Argy-Bargy'

``We will now be in consultation with industry over the next six-month period, getting all branches of industry about the state of their emissions and therefore, what adjustment, support they could expect from the government under that,'' Rudd told reporters in Brisbane, according to an e-mailed transcript. ``There is going to be a lot of argy-bargy on the way through, as there inevitably is.''

Inpex, which is seeking to develop the A$12 billion Ichthys LNG project in Australia, said it was too early to tell whether the carbon trading plan would derail the venture.

The proposed carbon plan ``places an additional challenge that the industry has to cope with as a whole and projects have to cope with individually,'' Sean Kildare, general manager of external affairs at the Tokyo-based company's Inpex Browse unit, told reporters in Darwin.

To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Macdonald-Smith through the Sydney newsroom at amacdonaldsm@bloomberg.net

[Brocke]

From the Herald Sun no Less!

...now, what's the catch? This must be a Murdock spin piece to discredit Global Warming skeptics or confuse the public. Never the less it's in print and I'm happy about that! Now we wait for the CSIRO to debunk...


Evidence doesn't bare out alarmist claims of global warming
Article from: Herald Sun

Andrew Bolt

July 18, 2008 12:00am

THESE are the seven graphs that should make the Rudd Government feel sick.

These are the seven graphs that should make you ask: What? Has global warming now stopped?

Look for yourself. They show that the world hasn't warmed for a decade, and has even cooled for several years.

Sea ice now isn't melting, but spreading. The seas have not just stopped rising, but started to fall.



Full Size PDF
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/files/080718%20oped%20bolt%20global%20cooling.pdf

Nor is the weather getting wilder. Cyclones, as well as tornadoes and hurricanes, aren't increasing and the rain in Australia hasn't stopped falling.

What's more, the slight warming we saw over the century until 1998 still makes the world no hotter today than it was 1000 years ago.

In fact, it's even a bit cooler. So, dude, where's my global warming?

These graphs should in fact be good news for the Government and all the other warming preachers who warned we were doomed by our gases, which were heating the world to hell.

Now Prime Minister Kevin Rudd can at last stop sweating about the warming terrors he told us were coming - the horrific droughts, the dengue fever, the malaria, the devastation to our land and economy.

And he can announce that, hey, emergency over for now. His emissions trading scheme will go into deep freeze while he checks this good news.

As for his promise this week to make your power bills go up $200 a year to stop global warming? His promise to make even food more expensive? To put gassy companies out of business, and their workers out of a job?

Cancel all that. As you were, soldier. Good news has come from the front.

But now you can see why these graphs terrify Rudd, who has never admitted to a single fact they contain.

You think he dares admit he panicked you for no good reason? Wasted countless millions of dollars?

Yet the facts are stark: The world simply isn't warming as he and his pet scientists said.

That's why 31,000 other scientists, including world figures such as physicist Prof Freeman Dyson, atmospheric physicist Prof Richard Lindzen and climate scientist Prof Fred Singer, issued a joint letter last month warning governments not to jump on board the global warming bandwagon.

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the earth's atmosphere and disruption of the earth's climate."

That's why Ivar Glaever, who won a Nobel Prize for Physics, this month declared "I am a sceptic", because "we don't really know what the actual effect on the climate is".

And it's why the American Physical Society this month said "there is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."

So let me go through my seven graphs that help to explain why even Nobel Prize winners question what Rudd keeps claiming -- that man is warming the world, and dangerously.

The main graph is from the Hadley Centre of Britain's Meteorological Office and one of the four bodies measuring world temperature.

As you see, since 1998 -- an unusually warm year thanks to the "El Nino" pool of warmer water in the Pacific -- the world's temperature dropped back to a steady plateau, followed by a few years of cooling.

The second graph confirms both the halt in warming, and then cooling. It's from another of those four bodies, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, which monitors the troposphere -- from the ground to 12km altitude.

Only one of the four, in fact, claims temperatures are still rising. That's NASA, whose program is run by Dr James Hanson, Al Gore's global warming adviser and a controversial catastrophist whose team's reworking of data has been heavily criticised for exaggerating any heating.

But before I go on, a caveat: This recent cooling doesn't disprove the theory that man is warming the world.

Ten years is too short to be sure of a trend. Natural factors may for now be countering the effect of our gases.

Then again, the theory that man has warmed the world is based on a rise in temperature over a period that's not much longer -- from just 1975 to 1998.

And the computer climate models that scientists use to predict catastrophic warming a century from now somehow never predicted a cooling that's happening right now.

And these are the models Rudd is betting on with our jobs and cash.

The third graph shows another surprise those models never predicted: the seas have stopped rising.

The waters have crept up for at least 150 years, since the world started to thaw from the Little Ice Age, and well before any likely man-made warming.

But the climate models predicted that a big rise in emissions from all those cars, power plants and factories since World War II would cause an equally big rise in the seas, swelling them as much as 59cm by 2100.

This wasn't scary enough for alarmists like Al Gore, though, who claimed whole cities could in fact be drowned under 6m of ocean.

But the satellites that have checked sea levels since 1992 find the seas have instead fallen over the past two years. Again, this could be a blip. But it isn't what the models predicted.

The fourth graph seems to confirm a cooling. Forget media scares about a melting North Pole; sea ice has grown so fast in the southern hemisphere there is now more ice in the world than is usual, says the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Graph five punctures another scare. No, global warming hasn't given us more cyclones - or more tornadoes or hurricanes anywhere. Nor is their proof that cyclones are getting worse, says the American Meteorological Society.

And warming hasn't stopped our rain, either, despite media hype about a "one-in-a-100 year drought". See the Bureau of Meteorology records in graph six. It's just bad luck that the fickle rain now tends to fall where it's not needed most.

And, please, can we drop that old fiction that the world was never warmer? It's a false claim made popular by a 2001 report of the IPCC, the United Nations' climate group, which ran a graph, shaped like a hockey stick, claiming there was no warming for millennia until humans last century gassed up their world.

In fact, that "hockey stick" is now discredited, and last year Dr Craig Loehle, of the US National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, argued that using tree rings to work out past temperatures was clearly unreliable.

He instead produced a graph - No. 7 - of past temperatures using all other accepted proxies.

You see his results (which for statistical reasons stop at 1935): they show humans lived through a medieval period that was warmer than even today. This was a period that historical accounts confirm was so warm that Greenland farmers grew crops on

land now under snow, and British ones grew grapes.

But I repeat: the world may yet warm again, and soon, although scientists at Leibnitz Institute and Max Planck Institute last month predicted it won't for at least another decade. If at all, say solar experts worried by a lack of sun spots.

But even if none of my graphs disproves the theory that man is causing dangerous warming, they should at least make you pause.

They should at least make you open to other theories of climate change, like that of Dr Henrik Svensmark, head of Denmark's Centre for Sun-Climate Research, who thinks changes in cosmic rays, which affect clouds, may explain much of the recent warming. And now the cooling, too.

But, above all, when that man with the sandwich board comes tugging at your sleeve again, shouting, "Quick, help me save the world - or die", hang on to your wallet, friend.

Give that urger my seven graphs instead, and ask him how many more years of no warming will it take before he admits it really is too soon to panic.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24036602-5000117,00.html

[Brocke]

High fliers clipped for climate woes

By Jeremy Lovell in London

July 19, 2008 01:16am
Article from: Reuters

Businessmen who take flights rather than use video conferencing are adding to global warming that is condemning millions of the world's poorest people to death, according to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.
The former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town said developed countries had caused global warming and must therefore take the lead in slashing emissions of climate changing carbon gases.

"It is the countries which are the least responsible for causing climate change that are paying the heaviest price," he said in a video message to a meeting of the World Development Movement lobby group.

"Do not fly in the face of the poor by allowing the emissions produced by endless and unnecessary business flights to keep growing."

Scientists say average global temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to burning fossil fuels for power and transport. They note that emissions at altitude are many times worse than at ground level.

These rising temperatures will cause droughts, floods, crop failures and water shortages, putting millions of lives at risk.

Archbishop Tutu, a Nobel Peace laureate and tireless campaigner for global justice and equality, said scientists predicted that up to 185 million Africans would die this century as a direct result of climate change.

"Climate change is for real. As I speak, famine is increasing, flooding is increasing, as is disease and insecurity globally because of water scarcity," he said.

"As an African I urgently call on ordinary people in rich countries to act as global citizens, not as isolated consumers. We must listen to our consciences, and not to governments who speak only about economic markets.

"These markets will cease to exist if climate change is allowed to develop to climate chaos."

Archbishop Tutu said the developed nations must pass laws forcing them to cut their carbon emissions by at least 80 percent.

"In South Africa we confirmed that if we act on the side of justice we have the power to turn tides," he said.
 
The Group of Eight rich nations agreed last week - against strong resistance from the United States - that global emissions should be cut by 50 per cent by 2050 but they did little else.

British economist Nicholas Stern, whose seminal report in 2006 spelled out the global costs of climate change and galvanised the international agenda, said recently the developed world had to cut emissions by 80 per cent by mid-century.

He said the current world annual average was seven tonnes of carbon per head - ranging from 20 tonnes in the United States to half that in South Africa and almost zero in Chad - and that had to be cut to an average of just two tonnes per head.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24043606-23109,00.html

[mr anderson]

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/arguments_rebutted/



Environmental Health Australia [1]  has carefully considered the scientific data I presented yesterday [2] that suggested global warming had stopped - or at least paused. And its Victorian president, Geoff Fraser, has emailed this closely reasoned critique in response:

    Environmental Health Australia struggles to determine how any reader from age 4 up could support and credit your article. It was lazy and represents the opinions of no-one. It may have had some place in journalism about 20 years ago. 10,000 farmers out there call for your resignation or hope your air conditioner breaks down when it reaches 50 degrees in your modest urban environment.
[1] http://www.eh.org.au/about/index.php
[2] http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_seven_graphs_to_end_the_warming_hype/

That’s the response in full.

Incidentally, could Fraser name those 10,000 farmers he claims have called for my resignation? Or is that just another global warming lie mistake?

UPDATE

Congratulations to Tony Wright, who becomes the first[3] Age journalist to mention that, um, well, in fact the world hasn’t actually heated over the past 10 years, despite everything we’ve written that suggested it had. But this is how he does it:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/how_many_believers_are_left/ [3]

    Among the few writing simple messages for the masses have been those sceptics who have discovered testimony that the world’s temperature over the past 10 years has cooled [4], rather than warmed, and who have delighted in presenting this as evidence that climate change is a fraud. That 10 years offers evidence of anything approaching consequence is itself fraudulent, of course, but it sounds more palatable than the prospect of a world about to turn on its inhabitants because of their carbon-burning behaviour. http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/sale-of-the-century-20080718-3hgw.html?page=-1 [4]

I realise, of course, it is foolish to presume that Wright has simply made an honest error in understanding the arguments I put [5], and that I am wasting my time trying to reason him out of a position that reason never put him in.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_seven_graphs_to_end_the_warming_hype/ [5]

But let me nevertheless point out as simply as I can the fallacies in Wright’s angry aside:

    1. It is not “testimony” that I have discovered - as in some say-so from someone. What I reported was just the hard and indisputable evidence of the leading monitoring organisations in the world that the planet of late has not warmed, and that sea ice is increasing, wild weather not worsening, rain still falling, and sea levels even now dropping. Can Wright dispute any of that? Has he even tried to incorporate that into his narrative of calamity?

    2. I have not said “the world’s temperature over the past 10 years has cooled”, and I wonder why Wright found it necessary to exaggerate what I in fact did say, which was: “the world hasn’t warmed for a decade”.

    3. Nor did I “present… this as evidence that climate change is a fraud”. I in fact have always accepted that climate changes, and the world has warmed until 1998. Nor have I even said (which Wright may actually mean) that the theory of man-made warming is a fraud. I in fact accept that thousands of scientists have been genuine in suggesting this as a theory - note, theory.  Further, I did not present my graphs as proof that the theory was false. Instead, I said only this:

        This recent cooling doesn’t disprove the theory that man is warming the world. Ten years is too short to be sure of a trend. Natural factors may for now be countering the effect of our gases. Then again, the theory that man has warmed the world is based on a rise in temperature over a period that’s not much longer—from just 1975 to 1998. And the computer climate models that scientists use to predict catastrophic warming a century from now somehow never predicted a cooling that’s happening right now.

    Again, why did Wright find in necessary to exaggerate?

    4. Wright then makes in turn an accusation of fraud not just against me, but against 31,000 scientists, including some as eminent and deeply respected as Professor Freeman Dyson, saying: “that (arguing that) 10 years offers evidence of anything approaching consequence is itself fraudulent.”

    Once again, in my article I indeed note that 10 years was too short a period to be considered proof of an end to warming, even though it was contrary to what the global warming models predicted were the consequences of a steep rise in emissions. But I ask why 10 years of no warming is too short for so many scientists to even ask a question, when just 20 years of warming before that was enough to make Wright absolultely, religiously convinced not just that the world was heating fast to disaster, but that man was to blame.

That’s four exaggerations, misstatements, evasions or slanders from Wright in just one brief paragraph of dismissal.

If Wright’s theory of man-made apocalyptic warming was so strongly backed by evidence, Wright would not need to so mistake and distort evidence that questions it. His absurd reaction, his refusal to look frankly at the latest data, is therefore yet one more sign that his theory is not just weak, but crumbly. No wonder he’s so angry.

[Brocke]

No smoking hot spot

The Australian
David Evans | July 18, 2008

I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.

FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.

If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.

When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.

Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything.

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.

The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion.

Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.

So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.

In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.

If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?

The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.

What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.

The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.

Dr David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html

[mr anderson]

By Laurie Oakes
July 19, 2008 04:00am

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24041381-5007146,00.html

DID the Government deliberately time the release of its Green Paper on emissions trading to coincide with the Pope's visit to Australia?

Almost certainly. It would be naive to think otherwise.

At the core of the scheme was a message of pain - higher gas and electricity prices, other prices rising across the economy, and plans to fully compensate only those at the bottom end of the income scale.

Ministers had been worried about how voters would react. They knew it would be a hard political sell.

But the celebrations surrounding World Youth Day and the Pope's activities in Sydney, to a significant extent, distracted attention from the bad news.

The Green Paper did not dominate headlines the way it would have done at any other time.

The details were shoved well down most TV news bulletins as the colour and movement of the Pope and the pilgrims took precedence.

Criticisms were largely drowned out.

The Prime Minister and his advisers must have known this would happen when they chose last Wednesday as the best day to launch what is now called the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

The dates of the Pontiff's visit, after all, have been known for many months. The hype started to build well in advance.

The only question is whether ministers and minders would be cynical enough to exploit a major religious event for political ends.

You bet they would!

All's fair in love and politics.

Just remember the unsavoury incident involving the British Labour Government when Osama bin Laden's terrorists attacked New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.

One of Tony Blair's spin doctors circulated an email to colleagues describing it as "a very good day" to bury bad news. She was sacked, but only because the email was leaked to the media and caused outrage.

But Benedict XVI's visit did more for Rudd than just obscure for the moment some of the less pleasant aspects of the emissions trading scheme and its impact on living costs.

As one of Canberra's most experienced spinners sees it: "This was a hard strategy to launch with smiling faces.

"You had to have the PM and other ministers talking grimly about the need for tough action and sacrifice.

"But, because of the timing, that was able to be juxtaposed with a caring, softer Rudd on television with the Pope in front of warm and happy crowds. I don't know if it was deliberate, but it was certainly beneficial for the Government."

Also beneficial for the Government was the fact that almost nothing in the Green Paper was new.

Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt is pretty right when he says that all Rudd and Co did was dust off the model for an emissions trading system adopted by the Howard Government last year.

That model was designed by a taskforce headed by the then secretary of the prime minister's department Peter Shergold.

The team of public servants that worked on the Shergold report was basically the same as the team which put together the Rudd Government's Green Paper.

No wonder, then, that - apart from some filling out of detail in the Green Paper and Rudd's insistence on an earlier starting date - the documents are almost identical.

Really, we're not far advanced on where we were this time last year. In the meantime, millions of dollars have been spent getting the work done all over again.

Sorry, taxpayer.

But the fact that business and industry organisations had signed on to John Howard's plan means they cannot really shun Rudd's, as some of them might have been tempted to do had it come out of the blue.

Also, because the Green Paper sticks so closely to the Shergold-Howard blueprint, it is not easy for the Coalition to back away from it either.

Rudd is relying on this to help him get his emission trading scheme through the Senate.

The only really significant difference between the Shergold model and that laid out in the Green Paper is the decision to offset increases in petrol prices through matching cuts in excise for the first three years at least.

When Hunt and shadow treasurer Malcolm Turnbull proposed cent-for-cent excise cuts (as part of the Opposition's petrol populism), the Rudd Cabinet decided discretion was the better part of valour and agreed - against the strong advice of Labor's climate change guru Professor Ross Garnaut.

So even that change was authored by the Liberals.

Poor old Garnaut must be wondering why Rudd hired him. He has laboured mightily, produced a thick interim report, and is still carrying out economic modelling that will inform his final recommendations on an emissions trading scheme later in the year.

But the Government has not even waited for his completed work before making its decisions. And it has ignored much of what he has proposed so far.

It seems the professor's role was really to frighten the horses. Now the Government can say to voters, business and the Opposition: "Look. What we're doing is not nearly as nasty as Garnaut wanted."

Just the same, Rudd and his key ministers still face a difficult task in making the scheme electorally palatable.

Rudd left the Green Paper launch entirely in the hands of Climate Change Minister Penny Wong. She is a rising talent, but something this important and complex should have involved the leader.

Howard was there for the launch of the Shergold Report.

And it is Rudd, after all, who has called climate change the great moral issue of our time.

This, perhaps, is the downside of hiding behind the Pope. Rudd may have avoided some initial unpleasantness, but he has to confront the bad news eventually.

As Prime Minister, it is up to him to carry the main burden of selling this scheme and its consequences for Australian households.

It is Rudd - far more than Wong or Treasurer Wayne Swan - who has to explain to voters why it is necessary for their cost of living to rise.

He has to explain this particularly to the aspirational working families who put Labor into office last year and will not get anything like full compensation for the price increases they now face.

People will accept sacrifice, but only if they are convinced it is justified.

Using His Holiness as political cover might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it diverted Rudd from this all-important task of persuasion.

[mr anderson]

UPDATE 2

Geoff Fraser, who wrote the above letter claiming to state the view of Environmental Health Australia, and signing it as its Victorian president, now wishes in comments below to correct the record:

    I write to advise these comments were my own and that it was irresponsible of me to infer in any way they are an Environmental Health Australia position. I see a positive in everything and at least the issues continue to be debated.

Apparently “debate” is a term he extends to embrace mere abuse and false claims to speak on behalf of not just EHA but 10,000 farmers.

[mr anderson]

Iemma's electricity sale devalued by $5 billion

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24038121-5006009,00.html

By Malcolm Farr, National Political Editor
July 18, 2008 12:00am

THE Federal Government has done Premier Morris Iemma a small favour by protecting some of the value of NSW's coal-fuelled electricity generators.

But its measures to put a cost on carbon emissions will mean the price tag on the NSW electricity system must be cut by billions of dollars.

It could mean the $15 billion ambit price is reduced by as much as $5 billion. Back in 1999, when the sell-off was first proposed, the price could have been closer to $20 billion.

The Daily Telegraph understands that the office of State Treasurer and climate change sceptic Michael Costa had made this case to the Federal Government.

A high-profile argument against privatisation in NSW has been that measures to limit climate change gases by penalising coal-fuelled facilities would push prices for the NSW electricity generators into the cellar.

Coal-fired power stations will be protected from the harshest cost impact of the Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme, according to proposals released on Wednesday.

That is despite being among the most prominent contributors to emission of climate change gases.

But most of this protection will go to the dirtier, brown coal generation system of Victoria.

There is suspicion that the help for power stations in yesterday's green paper was "partly motivated by a desire to fatten up coal-fired generators for leasing in NSW", said Guy Pearse, a former staffer in the Howard Government and critic of its climate change policies.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong yesterday acknowledged the Federal Government wanted to address the threat to future investment in coal-powered electricity.

"And that is why we have flagged in the green paper that we would look at some limited direct compensation to secure the investment environment for electricity," Senator Wong said.

"In addition, we flagged our electricity sector adjustment scheme which is essentially aimed at making the sector transition to a cleaner, greener electricity generation future. We recognise that will take some time."

The green paper noted that power stations were long-life assets with limited alternative uses - described as "sunk capital costs". The Government decided investors in power generation would be scared off by the imposition of a full carbon price on operations.

[mr anderson]

Spotted in a San Franciso Bay shop - and for serious:



The answer, of course, is that Gore would build a huge mansion, power it with more electricity in a month than an average family would use in the year. He’d drive everywhere in convoys, fly in private planes, make a fortune flogging “green” investments and give $250,000 speeches suggesting other people live more simply.

Since you ask.

UPDATE

Speaking of hypocrites, what prize would you give to the men who shot the award-winning ads promoting carbon-cutting Earth Hour?

    A: Hairshirts by Chanel.

    B: Glow-in-the-dark vests.

    C: Solar-powered cameras.

    D: Air tickets to Cannes.

I know. Too easy. After all, What Would Al Gore Do? http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/lights_off_flights_on/

UPDATE 2

The Sun-Herald, which helped to organise Earth Hour, avoids mentioning the prize.

The six concerned anti-carbonites all won flights to Cannes.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt

[mr anderson]

http://business.theage.com.au/business/risk-management-applies-to-emissions-too-20080718-3hme.html

Malcolm Maiden
July 19, 2008

THERE'S a graph on page 3 of the summary chapter of the Rudd Government's green paper on emissions trading that traces annual average temperatures in Australia going back to 1910, courtesy of the Bureau of Meteorology.

The bar chart part of it shows an unmistakable shift from about 1980 onwards into a period when temperatures are elevated above the mean.

But more recent years are less elevated, and a line that tracks the 10-year moving average peaks around 1996, and then turns gently down.

A similar effect is observable in global temperature indices too, and as long as that continues, questions about the nature of the link between carbon dioxide production and global warming will persist.

It's logical that they should: this Government's attack on carbon emissions and the push for a planet-wide assault is predicated not just on the notion that global temperatures are elevated - on that point, there can be no doubt - but on there being a significant, direct, cause-and-effect link between carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and global temperatures.

If the link is not as strong as expected, then the entire cost-benefit equation on an attack on carbon dioxide emissions would be either modified or undermined.

The case for emission reduction would be fundamentally unchanged, but the time available for action extended, for example, if the recent loss of temperature momentum was a result of offsetting forces (in the sceptics camp, a sharp downturn in sunspot activity has had currency recently). Carbon dioxide-related temperature increases would be masked for a period of time -but would still be building, ready to reassert themselves aggressively when the offsetting influence faded.

If, on the other hand, it emerged that the link between carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere and temperature was weaker than expected, the case for aggressive action would be undermined, because emissions reduction would generate a lower benefit from an unchanged cost.

At this stage, the recent softening of the temperature data is statistically meaningless, just as the 2005 hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico was (the following years in the Gulf were relatively calm).

There is insufficient data to refute the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's projections that global temperatures, having risen by about three-quarters of a degree Celsius since industrialisation began, will rise by a catastrophic 4.5 degrees by 2100 on a do-nothing scenario, with 0.6 degrees of that already built in by existing industrialisation.

As the climate change website Realclimate noted in a post earlier this year, temperatures remain elevated, and looking at only several years of data "is looking primarily at the 'noise' of inter-annual variability rather than at the forced long-term trend". There are expectations of what the trend will be, in the IPCC's projections, for example, but the trend must be confirmed over time, as the noise of particular weather events is smoothed.

Ross Garnaut considered the issue in his draft final report earlier this month, and asked Australian National University econometricians Trevor Breusch and Farshid Vahid to examine temperature statistics since the late 1990s in the context of longer-term patterns.

They concluded that the upwards movement in global temperature over the past 130 to 160 years qualified as a trend, that the trend became steeper after the mid-1970s, and that there was no significant evidence for a break in trend in the late 1990s: temperatures recorded in most of the past decade were at heights that could not be explained with confidence by models that did not allow for a warming trend, the academics said.

My conclusion is that the recent deviations in temperature from what could be called the global warming status quo certainly bear watching, but that the precautionary principle still applies. Carbon emission reduction strategies are an example of what business and investors do routinely: hope for the best, but plan for something less optimal. The losses now being booked on assets that were priced for perfection during the 2004-07 sharemarket boom are an example of what grief is harvested when risk is not fully taken into account.

The Rudd Government's inclination to capitalise on the relatively early 2010 introduction of carbon trading by "soft-launching" emissions permit trading with extensive compensation gives it room to recalibrate if evidence of a temperature slowdown mounts.

But business leaders and investors must not forget that the precautionary principle applies, and that regardless of the science, the current political reality is the one informed by the IPCC: political momentum for a global response is building, and it is the local scheme that will mainly determine investor outcomes here, anyway.

That means that the calls by Woodside chief executive Don Voelte and Qantas chief risk officer Rob Kella for their companies to be better compensated in the scheme are the first of many. The scheme will ration emission permits and, in the trade-affected sector, compensate the heaviest emitters per dollar of revenue for 90% of their permit cost, and less heavy emitters with 60%. Those who do not make the 90% dress circle are obviously going to make the best case they can for higher offsets.

Broadly speaking, the political investment reality is that the scheme is negative for energy-intensive companies, and positive for emissions reduction technology, which will find its way to market through a wave of public offers, and a smaller number of successes. Specific winners and losers depend on the outcome of the lobbying over offsets, and on news later this year about the start-up carbon price, and how aggressively emissions will be capped.

mmaiden@theage.com.au

[Sub-X]

  Excellent thread 

[GoingEtheric]

oh brother 
some people aren't left, or right. just dumb.

[MooseHunter]

This is in-your-face personality cult, but what is more ridiculous is the fact that it's all based on pure lies, while that same demi-god figure is making millions off of those lies, and his way of living is more like little princes flying on private jets and living in huge mansions.. are they conditioning us to accept that we ought to live by different standards that our demi-gods? You bet.

[GoingEtheric]

This is in-your-face personality cult, but what is more ridiculous is the fact that it's all based on pure lies, while that same demi-god figure is making millions off of those lies, and his way of living is more like little princes flying on private jets and living in huge mansions.. are they conditioning us to accept that we ought to live by different standards that our demi-gods?

nahhh. they just know the enviro-freaks will justify like "But in all that luxury and traveling around, his efforts do more good than harm", and the rest have accepted that as the standard lifestyle of prominant people.

[Brocke]

Australians want emissions scheme

July 21, 2008 02:15am
Article from: AAP

MOST Australians believe we should be pushing ahead with a greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme regardless of whether other countries do the same, according to a poll.

While 77 per cent of Australians are behind Kevin Rudd's drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 60 per cent have little or no understanding of how an emissions trading scheme would work, according to the latest Nielsen poll published in Fairfax newspapers today.

Sixty-eight per cent of people said they were prepared to pay more for goods and services if costs increased as a result of the scheme, Fairfax News reported.

Last week federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson contradicted senior colleagues by saying that Australia should do nothing until other big polluting countries acted, but only 19 per cent of respondents to the poll agreed with this course of action.

The poll of 1,400 voters was taken from Thursday to Saturday.

On Wednesday, the government released its green paper outlining how a domestic emissions trading scheme would work.

Yesterday it launched a multi-million-dollar ``awareness'' campaign to explain how an emissions trading scheme would work.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24049325-23109,00.html

[mr anderson]

Australians want emissions scheme

July 21, 2008 02:15am
Article from: AAP

MOST Australians believe we should be pushing ahead with a greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme regardless of whether other countries do the same, according to a poll.

While 77 per cent of Australians are behind Kevin Rudd's drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 60 per cent have little or no understanding of how an emissions trading scheme would work, according to the latest Nielsen poll published in Fairfax newspapers today.

Sixty-eight per cent of people said they were prepared to pay more for goods and services if costs increased as a result of the scheme, Fairfax News reported.

Last week federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson contradicted senior colleagues by saying that Australia should do nothing until other big polluting countries acted, but only 19 per cent of respondents to the poll agreed with this course of action.

The poll of 1,400 voters was taken from Thursday to Saturday.

On Wednesday, the government released its green paper outlining how a domestic emissions trading scheme would work.

Yesterday it launched a multi-million-dollar ``awareness'' campaign to explain how an emissions trading scheme would work.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24049325-23109,00.html

Let the propaganda begin!

Are you happy to pay more because of the Government's climate change plan?


Mr Rudd's rating as preferred PM has fallen three points since last month but he leads Brendan Nelson by a huge 65-20%.

Some choice huh?

[mr anderson]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/20/2308747.htm?section=business

The Federal Government is beginning an advertising campaign about its carbon trading policies, as it continues to reassure businesses and families about the effect of the changes.

The Government released its discussion paper on an emissions trading scheme last week, and is now consulting with industry and community groups before the draft legislation is released at the end of the year.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told Channel Nine that Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson had agreed that a public information campaign would be needed.

Some newspaper advertisements have already appeared and Senator Wong says the campaign will be governed by new rules on public advertising.

"I'd anticipate you'd see advertising fairly soon, and the purpose of it frankly is to ensure people understand why we're doing this," she said.

"We do actually want the community to engage very closely with this issue."

Ms Wong also says the Government will negotiate with small and medium businesses on the best way to assist them to be more energy efficient.

Only the top 1,000 emitting companies will have to buy and trade permits to pollute under the proposed scheme.

But some small business lobby groups are concerned there has not been enough focus on the way the scheme will effect those companies which are not directly involved.

"What we have proposed is a climate change action fund," Ms Wong said.

"Specifically part of the remit of that fund is to focus assistance and support on small and medium enterprises on issues such as energy efficiency and how to finance the sort of capital investment to reduce energy use that they will need."

The Opposition says it will examine the legislation very carefully, but Opposition treasury spokesman Malcolm Turnbull has told the ABC's Insiders program that he is still concerned that the Government is rushing into the scheme.

"The important thing is not just getting it done, the important thing is getting it right," he said.

He says at the moment the scheme is flawed, and shows a lack of focus and discipline.

But Treasurer Wayne Swan told Channel Ten that the proposed scheme would make a big difference for Australia and the world.

"What we do in terms of public policy through our carbon pollution reduction scheme will make a big difference, what individuals do in their communities and in their homes also make a difference," he said.

"So I think those two things combined mean that as a country, we can move forward and secure economic gains from this important reform."

[mr anderson]

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/sale-of-the-century-20080718-3hgw.html?page=-1



STAND by for one of the most intense government advertising blitzes since the Howard government used Joe Cocker's roaring plea to Unchain My Heart to flog its GST.

The Rudd Government has, of course, changed the rules on government advertising, essentially requiring that future ad campaigns convey only non-political factual information, and that the Auditor-General cast his jaundiced eye over the material before giving it the nod.

Whatever the process, the Government knows it desperately needs to roll out some pretty persuasive propaganda — sorry, factual information — if it is not to lose the Australian public in a fog of carbon emissions.

Almost everyone in Kevin Rudd's team says these days that an emissions trading scheme is "the biggest challenge any government has taken on". They're not being flippant. They know the hard sell has barely begun.

What they don't know is how to go about that hard sell, because trying to explain simply to a nation why it might be a good thing to cause more economic pain in order to reduce something that cannot be seen or felt is literally tougher than wrestling a wraith of smoke.

The truth is, relatively few Australians have any real idea about what an emissions trading scheme is, or how it works, or what it might or might not achieve, despite the millions of words written and spoken in the media. The words have simply increased since Professor Ross Garnaut issued his draft report on climate change and Senator Penny Wong this week released the Government's green paper on the subject.

The problem is that vast numbers of those words appear to have been consumed by and directed at relatively small and elite groups — politicians, lobbyists, bureaucrats, big business, journalists and those already engaged in environmental issues. And almost all of them have been using language that is clearly unfathomable to those Australians who are not part of the loop.

Gough Whitlam, a great communicator, knew that Australians hate being confused by insider language. He wouldn't even use the initials OECD, preferring to refer to "other countries to which we are prepared to compare ourselves". Since then, politico-speak has gone downhill so far that Kevin Rudd at full flight may as well be speaking Mandarin, and many political and environmental commentators follow.

Among the few writing simple messages for the masses have been those sceptics who have discovered testimony that the world's temperature over the past 10 years has cooled, rather than warmed, and who have delighted in presenting this as evidence that climate change is a fraud. That 10 years offers evidence of anything approaching consequence is itself fraudulent, of course, but it sounds more palatable than the prospect of a world about to turn on its inhabitants because of their carbon-burning behaviour.

During a visit to the huge Portland Alcoa aluminium smelter this week, your columnist met a gathering of long-time smelter workers, elected as representatives of the workforce. All were angered by what they felt was Kevin Rudd's failure to explain in plain language what his Government's intentions were. To a man they said they had never met anyone who understood what was meant by an emissions trading scheme. The Government made clear some days ago it was cognisant of the problem when it suddenly dropped reference to an emissions trading scheme and replaced it with the more user-friendly "carbon pollution reduction scheme".

Those wickedly perceptive satirists John Clarke and Bryan Dawe were all over the confusion on the ABC's 7.30 Report this week. Dawe became increasingly bemused as Kevin Rudd (played by Clarke) made it obvious he didn't know how an emissions trading scheme worked, either.

Dawe: Can you tell me how it works?

Rudd (Clarke): It works by reducing emissions, Bryan. The whole point of it is the reduction of those dangerous emissions. It reduces the emissions.

Dawe: I understand that, of course, but how does it work?

Rudd: It works by reducing emissions …

Dawe: But how are the emissions traded?

Rudd: They're traded in different ways, Bryan. There are various different trading methods in this area, just as there are in any other area …

Satire is one thing, of course, but the federal Coalition is making it equally clear it is going to cause as much political mischief on the matter as it can while keeping a straight face.

The Opposition's spokesman on climate change, Greg Hunt, was busily trying yesterday to sow doubt in the public mind about the Labor Government approach.

"Now what do we know about the Government's position?" he asked rhetorically on ABC radio, answering himself by declaring the Government knew nothing of targets, costings and compensation and "they can't even say whether the new system will reduce emissions".

Hunt would have known what a cynical game he was playing — only a day previously he had claimed the Rudd Government had virtually stolen the former Howard government's policy on emissions abatement.

Cynicism, however, is going around.

Rudd and his colleagues have been deep into the murky world of perception management in their approach to climate change.

When Rudd appointed Garnaut to review what ought to be done, Garnaut was presented as the expert who would point the Government in the direction of the good and the pure. Shortly before he brought down what the Government realised would be a draft report that would be a bit too pure and alarming to an electorate suffering seismic economic shocks, Garnaut suddenly became no more than an "input" into future government decision making.

When Garnaut's draft report proved to be just what the Government feared, it seemed perfectly happy to let the public panic about what it would mean for petrol and power prices and industrial jobs. But only for a few days.

This week, Wong's speech to the National Press Club came as a salve to the public perception. The Government wouldn't go down the gnarly Garnaut path, motorists would be granted petrol excise relief, coal would get a reprieve and big trade-exposed polluting industries would receive a get-out-of-jail card, too.

All very well. But if Rudd and Wong are going to remain in control of public perception as the real decisions get closer, they had better be working on a great big plain-speaking advertising campaign. Non-political, of course.

Tony Wright is national affairs editor.

[Brocke]

If only people were more aware and actually cared what was going on, they wouldn't fall for this sloppy propaganda spin.

[mr anderson]

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/im_sorry_but_i_tried/

Andrew Bolt

At the Melbourne Press Club today, I asked Climate Change Minister Penny Wong the following question (from memory):

    The IPCC, the UN’s climate change body, in its February report said it had detected human-induced global warming in just one 25 year period, up to around 1998. Since 1998, the consensus of the four bodies that measure the world’s temperature is that the world has not warmed. It has not warmed for a decade, and over the past couple of years has actually cooled. Minister, how many more years of no-warming will it take before you accept that the global warming theory on which you’ve based your huge carbon cutting scheme is actually wrong? One more year of no-warming? Five years? Or 15 years?

I’m afraid that Ms Wong did not answer my question. Then again, she did not question the premise, either. Instead she said she had to go with the “consensus” science, and talked about record low inflows into the Murray and into city dams, as if a drought in one part of Australia was proof that the whole world was warming, and, furthermore, man was to blame.

There was no chance for a follow-up question, and Wong - personally a very nice person - may have got away with that filibustering and sleight of hand with many of the more gullible in the audience. But I suspect this is the question that will start to haunt her, because the facts - and an honest answer - is so deadly to her cause.

So no cigar today, but not for want of trying. Or do you think I should have asked a better question?

[mr anderson]

I submitted a comment.

Perhaps quote these guys.

In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991) published by the Club of Rome, a globalist think tank, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself."

Or

Richard N. Haass, the current president of the Council on Foreign Relations, stated in his article "State sovereignty must be altered in globalized era," that a system of world government must be created and sovereignty eliminated in order to fight global warming, as well as terrorism. "Moreover, states must be prepared to cede some sovereignty to world bodies if the international system is to function," says Haass. "Globalization thus implies that sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker. States would be wise to weaken sovereignty in order to protect themselves..."

Although it's too hardcore for most zombies to even understand what sovereignty means.

[TruthHunter]

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/im_sorry_but_i_tried/

Andrew Bolt

At the Melbourne Press Club today, I asked Climate Change Minister Penny Wong the following question (from memory):

    The IPCC, the UN’s climate change body, in its February report said it had detected human-induced global warming in just one 25 year period, up to around 1998. Since 1998, the consensus of the four bodies that measure the world’s temperature is that the world has not warmed. It has not warmed for a decade, and over the past couple of years has actually cooled. Minister, how many more years of no-warming will it take before you accept that the global warming theory on which you’ve based your huge carbon cutting scheme is actually wrong? One more year of no-warming? Five years? Or 15 years?

I’m afraid that Ms Wong did not answer my question. Then again, she did not question the premise, either. Instead she said she had to go with the “consensus” science, and talked about record low inflows into the Murray and into city dams, as if a drought in one part of Australia was proof that the whole world was warming, and, furthermore, man was to blame.

There was no chance for a follow-up question, and Wong - personally a very nice person - may have got away with that filibustering and sleight of hand with many of the more gullible in the audience. But I suspect this is the question that will start to haunt her, because the facts - and an honest answer - is so deadly to her cause.

So no cigar today, but not for want of trying. Or do you think I should have asked a better question?

You're lucky you weren't tased. How dare you question a government official?

[mr anderson]

It's not me... 

[mr anderson]

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24060190-29277,00.html

By Carrie Berdon

July 22, 2008 03:37pm
Article from: AAP

THE Federal Government's multimillion-dollar advertising campaign on climate change is "fluffy" and does not look at the bigger global climate change picture, Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson says.

The Government has launched a taxpayer-funded campaign on television, radio and in print to sell its emissions trading scheme to the public.

The ads illustrate the dangers of climate change through images of chimneys and parched earth.

Dr Nelson said he agreed Australians needed educating in the economics of climate change and the emissions trading scheme, but the Rudd Government should make it clear it was a global issue.

"I think it's important ... that he makes it clear to Australians that the environmental damage that will come to Australia, but also to the rest of the world as a result of climate change is only going to be done by the major emitters of the world," he said today.

"And if Australia acts alone without commitments and actions from the other emitters, we will do enormous economic damage to Australia for no environmental gain at all," he said.

"(The ads) seem a bit fluffy at the moment."

Federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has declined to say how much the ad campaign will cost, although media reports estimate the Government will spend $9 million this year.

Commonwealth Auditor-General Ian McPhee approved the ad campaign on Friday, saying it complied with new rules cracking down on government advertising which promote political interests.

According to his review, the ads will stretch into October, with a fresh round of TV advertising planned for September.

[mr anderson]

http://business.theage.com.au/business/climate-science-is-never-settled-20080721-3ivh.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

Geoffrey Kearsley
July 22, 2008   

There's no point ruining the economy pursuing carbon neutrality if carbon is not the main culprit or the climate is on a new trend.

IT IS now pretty much taken for granted that global warming is ongoing, that climate change is being driven by human activity and that it is critically important that fundamental changes be made to our economy and way of life.

On the small scale, people plant trees, examine food miles, purchase carbon offsets and modify travel behaviour.

Cities and even countries vie with one another to become carbon neutral; as a nation, we are contemplating emission controls, taxes and carbon-trading schemes that will have a profound effect on individual households and the national economy.

When linked with the other great crisis of our times — peak oil — it has become not only socially desirable to embrace all of this, but sustainability has achieved the status of a higher morality. It has become politically unacceptable to doubt any of the current dogma.

It is said that we are now beyond the science and that the science of global warming has been finalised or determined and that all scientists agree. Sceptics and deniers are simply cynical pawns in the pockets of the big oil companies. This is unfortunate.

Science is rarely determined or finalised. Science evolves and the huge complexity of climate science will certainly continue to evolve in the light of new facts, new experiences and new understandings.

For example, early in the 1900s, Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents were once joined up; their coastlines seemed to match, there appeared to be great rifts and tears in the continental fabric.

This view was ridiculed; how could the continents move? What possible force could transport the unimaginable mass of Africa or Australia hundreds and thousands of kilometres across the earth? Today, of course, plate tectonics is well understood. We know that continents move and we know the consequences.

Global warming seemed sewn up as well in the year 2000. Michael Mann's hockey-stick graph showed centuries of modest change culminating in an explosive temperature growth in recent decades, leading to terrifying projections of a climate out of control, with the sea rising to drown us all. Al Gore's apocalyptic images of tsunami-like flooding and dying polar bears brought global warming into every home.

Today, the hockey stick has gone. Its basic data was flawed and the statistical processes inadequate; it failed to describe known climate changes from the historically recorded past, so how could it be a reliable predictor? Although Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize, his celebrated documentary has been shown to be riddled with inaccuracies, distortions and misrepresentations; it cannot be shown in British schools without a comprehensive explanation of its mistakes and an acknowledgement that it is advocacy, not science.

There is no doubt that the climate is changing; it always has done. We have become familiar with the regularly repeating glaciations of the past. Human history has mainly occupied an exceptionally warm interglacial peak in a world that, for the last half million years at least, has generally been much cooler, although, in deep time, the world has been much warmer than now.

In the 1970s, climate science was concerned about when the next ice age might commence; we may have to return to that position.

There have been considerably warmer eras in the past couple of thousand years. In both the Roman and medieval warm periods, vineyards flourished as far north as York in England; Greenland was indeed green, at least in parts. By contrast, just 400 years ago, there was a Little Ice Age in America and Europe, at least, that lasted until well into the 1800s. The historic record confirms this.

What we also know, by historical record and by proxy calculation, is that these large swings in temperature closely correlate with the frequency of sunspots, which are a visible indicator of activity in the sun. Sunspots vary in number according to a series of cycles. In periods of high temperature, sunspots proliferated, but during the Little Ice Age, there were few or none for many decades, a phenomenon known as the Maunder Minimum; the last quarter of the 20th century saw a flurry of activity.

The last cycle was at its energetic peak in 1998, our warmest year for some time. The mechanism is unclear, but it seems related to solar magnetic influences and the amount of gamma radiation that reaches the earth. The last 10 years have seen a static or even cooling trend as the sunspot cycle ran down; 2007 saw bitter weather around the world and the mean global temperature dropped by an unprecedented amount. It is not picking up. The Antarctic winter sea ice was at its largest extent since satellite observation began, and it snowed in Baghdad and Buenos Aires for the first time in living memory. China's winter was awful.

And now the scary news. The latest sunspot cycle should have started up around the middle or end of 2006; it didn't. According to NASA's forecasts, there should be a sunspot index of 70 or more, as the new cycle ran up.

I looked at a real-time photo of the sun on a recent morning; there are no sunspots at all. There have only been a couple of brief, tiny ones since the last cycle ended. Not only that, but the longer trends tell us that by 2020, we will be experiencing an unusually low-energy sun. Apparently, these are exactly the conditions that preceded the Maunder Minimum and ushered in the Little Ice Age.

There is much more yet to learn. My point is this: It may well be that human activity is indeed changing the climate, at least in part, but there is an increasing body of science that says that the sun may have a greater role.

If it does have, then global warming is likely to stop, as it appears to have done since 1998, and if the current sunspot cycle fails to ignite, then cooling, possibly rapid and severe cooling, may eventuate. The next five years will tell us a great deal. In these circumstances, we should wait and see.

With China and India churning out new thermal power stations at assembly-line speed, our influence on the global climate is negligible. Surrounded as we are by great oceans, even the alarmist predictions will have relatively minor consequences for us for some time.

We can afford to wait. There is no point in decimating our economy in the pursuit of carbon neutrality if carbon is not the main culprit or if the climate is now on a new trend.

Instead, now is the time to moderate the pseudo-religious and uncritical belief that global warming is still as we once thought it might have been.

Professor Geoffrey Kearsley is a geographer developing a program in environmental communication at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

[Brocke]

Rudd carbon cost 'could be billions'

By Carrie Berdon

July 22, 2008 05:04pm
Article from: AAP

OPPOSITION Leader Brendan Nelson has sided with businesses in demanding Prime Minister Kevin Rudd allow Australia's emission levels to increase to accommodate industry expansion.

Dr Nelson said Australia risks losing billions of dollars in new investment and seeing the flight of some industries offshore under the Labor Government's plan.

Businesses are pushing for a scheme first outlined by former prime minister John Howard that would allow major export industries to emit greenhouse gases in excess of the overall national target, so long as they created new business using the world's best environmental practice.

Conservationists claim the scheme is counterproductive and would push up Australia's total emissions when the aim is to bring them down.

The Government's recent green paper has already proposed that trade-exposed energy-intensive industries be given free permits for a proportion of their emissions, but only to existing companies.

Woodside Petroleum chief Don Voelte has said two major liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, worth more than $60 billion, could be shelved due to the new scheme despite gas being a lower source of emissions than burning coal.

Dr Nelson said looking after core industries was paramount to the health of Australia's economy.

"If you've got people in the LNG, petroleum, cement and aluminium industries that are investing in world's best practice environmental technologies, then I think we need to have the capacity in the short to medium term to allow them to go above targets," he said in Sydney today.

"It makes common sense to see that we're environmentally credible and that we're also economically responsible as far as growth is concerned and making sure that we keep industries and jobs in Australia.

"The last thing that this country can afford is to have $60bn in LNG contracts lost ... or to have major fuel refiners go offshore or indeed to lose our aluminium, cement or other industries."

Dr Nelson said it was crucial for Australia to wait until the world's major emitters met in Copenhagen next year to lay out a response to global emissions before 2012.

"If Mr Rudd is fair dinkum about this ... he should postpone his 2010 implementation date," he added.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24060708-5007133,00.html