Climategate

"Carbon (Dioxide) trading is now the fastest growing commodities market on earth.....And here’s the great thing about it. Unlike traditional commodities markets, which will eventually involve delivery to someone in physical form, the carbon (dioxide) market is based on lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no-one. Since the market revolves around creating carbon (dioxide) credits, or finding carbon (dioxide) reduction projects whose benefits can then be sold to those with a surplus of emissions, it is entirely intangible." (Telegraph)

This blog has been tracking the 'Global Warming Scam' for over ten years now. There are a very large number of articles being published in blogs and more in the MSM who are waking up to the fact the public refuse to be conned any more and are objecting to the 'green madness' of governments and the artificially high price of energy. This blog will now be concentrating on the major stories as we move to the pragmatic view of 'not if, but when' and how the situation is managed back to reality. To quote Professor Lindzen, "a lot of people are going to look pretty silly"


PS: If you have arrived here on a page link, then click on the HOME link...

Wednesday 31 August 2011

Climate Change Alarmism is Snow Joke

Guido Fawkes
"Last night on Twitter, noting that according to the Met Office this summer is one of the coolest in decades. Guido mocked Global Warming Theory, predictably this resulted in a lot of abuse by people ranting that weather is different from climate, the science was settled etcetera. Guido promised to dig out some of the hysterical predictions from a decade ago from those scientists. Here is one of Guido’s favourites: ....."

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MUST READ: Richard Lindzen: Climate v. Climate Alarm (Climate Realists)

Reality bites

Dr Richard North
"Picked up by Autonomous Minid, the expectation of increasing sea ice in the Baltic this winter has resulted in Sweden withholding an icebreaker from use in Antarctica by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). This comes after the dramas in the Gulf of Finland and the Okhotsk Sea, which have completely confounded the warmists who have been predicting ice-free passages brought about by global warming.

But, as AM reports, the increasingly bitter winters that have resulted in more iced over navigation passages. Having to deal with the real world, rather than the fantasy construct beloved of the warmists, the Swedish government thus wrote to US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, to announce that the icebreaker Oden (pictured) will be kept at home and not be made available to support the work of the in Antarctica, for the first time since 2006. "
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Reality of sea ice is starting to bite (Autonomous Mind)


Tuesday 30 August 2011

Parts of Britain suffer coldest summer for nearly two decades

Telegraph
"As Britons return to work today after a soggy Bank Holiday weekend, official weather data reveals that average temperatures were significantly down on recent years.

The UK’s average temperature from June 1 to August 15 was only 57F (13.9C) – the lowest for 13 years. For central England the average was 59F (15C), making it the coolest summer since 1993. Helen Waite, a Met Office forecaster, said: “The average temperature for central England this summer has been just 15C – this sort of temperature is normally typical of September. “Generally speaking, you would expect to see temperatures of at least 17C for this time of year.”

'Climate scepticism is the new racism' says Gore

Telegraph
"Climate scepticism is the new racism, Al Gore has told an interviewer. And do you know what? He’s absolutely right.

Just as “racist” has been honed over the decades by liberal-lefties for casual use as a deadly weapon against anyone who disagrees them, so “climate denier” has become the new leftist shorthand for “evil, wrong, uncaring, right-wing – and almost certainly funded by Big Oil.”

In both cases, the intent is the same: to close down the argument by implying that your opponent is so morally compromised that his case isn’t even worth consideration. He’s just wrong: “End of,” as they say. Gore is by no means alone in this tactic. Consider Paul Krugman’s recent effort in the New York Times to smear sceptical Republicans such as Rick Perry by writing them off as “anti-science.”

Germany importing electricity from France after decision to shut down all nuclear reactors (but blackouts are on the way)

Daily Mail
"Germany is importing massive amounts of nuclear-generated electricity from France following its decision to abandon atomic power in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster. But it is still bracing for blackouts of the kind not seen since the Second World War as eight of the 17 reactors were switched off overnight in a populist move that is now seen as a rash decision. .....Yes, there is German angst about nuclear power. But if you phrased the question, "Would you want to phase out nuclear energy if it cost massively more and you risk blackouts?', the answer would be very different.'




Monday 29 August 2011

Perfect Storm of Hype: Politicians, the media and the Hurricane Irene apocalypse that never was

Telegraph
"For the television reporter, clad in his red cagoule emblazoned with the CNN logo, it was a dramatic on-air moment, broadcasting live from Long Island, New York during a hurricane that also threatened Manhattan. “We are in, right, now…the right eye wall, no doubt about that…there you see the surf,” he said breathlessly. “That tells a story right there.” Stumbling and apparently buffeted by ferocious gusts, he took shelter next to a building. “This is our protection from the wind,” he explained. “It’s been truly remarkable to watch the power of the ocean here.” The surf may have told a story but so too did the sight behind the reporter of people chatting and ambling along the sea front and just goofing around. There was a man in a t-shirt, a woman waving her arms and then walking backwards. Then someone on a bicycle glided past."

Irene takes a bite out of ocean heat

WUWT
"While nowhere close to Trenberth’s missing heat, it’s a nice bite sized chunk of SST. Hurricanes are heat engines, transporting massive amounts of heat from lower to higher levels of the atmosphere.

La NiƱa is growing too."

Saturday 27 August 2011

Heat goes on climate for disaster costs

Stuff NZ
"But Auckland University school of environment associate professor Dr Chris de Freitas rejected the link between the insurance claims and climate change.

"Put it this way, there's no evidence to link it to human-caused climate change. None at all. It's in the insurance companies' interests to promote information like this because it provides a basis for relying more on insurance, and a basis for keeping premiums up." De Freitas said the increase in insurance claims in Australasia was mainly because more people were living in weather-vulnerable coastal areas than 30 years ago.

"The value of those properties is increasing, so you'd expect higher insurance costs. The thing to keep in mind is climate is never constant. It's always getting colder or warmer, wetter or drier."

Sun Causes Climate Change Shock

Telegraph
"If Michael Crichton had lived to write a follow-up to State of Fear, the plotline might well have gone like this: at a top secret, state of the art laboratory in Switzerland, scientists finally discover the true cause of “global warming”. It’s the sun, stupid. More specifically – as the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark has long postulated – it’s the result of cosmic rays which act as a seed for cloud formation. The scientists working on the project are naturally euphoric: this is a major breakthrough which will not only overturn decades of misguided conjecture on so-called Man Made Global Warming but will spare the global economy trillions of dollars which might otherwise have been squandered on utterly pointless efforts to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions. "

Friday 26 August 2011

Gillard’s $650 billion giveaway

Andrew Bolt Herald Sun (Australia)
"The Gillard Government can’t possibly be serious:

AUSTRALIAN businesses and households will have to send about $650 billion overseas between 2020 and 2050 to buy permission to keep some of our coal-fired power stations and other industries operating.This staggering cost is indicated in the fine print of the Treasury modelling of the Government’s carbon dioxide tax and subsequent emissions trading scheme.

The $650 billion will be to buy “permits” to emit CO2.

The permits will be bought from sellers that don’t yet exist, or in markets that have yet to be formed, although the Government expects - hopes - they will develop over the next few years.But this week it was reported that European police agency Europol had revealed a fraudulent trade in these so-called carbon credits in the only serious market that does operate - for the European Union - was far more widespread than previously thought and could have cost EU taxpayers up to €5 billion ($7 billion) in lost revenue in just 18 months…

Even without any rorting, the impact on the economy of this part of the scheme will be exactly like taking $650 billion and shredding it. That will be throwing away nearly $30,000 for every Australian, about $120,000 for a family of four.These wasted funds could build 15 National Broadband Networks. They could build a fast train network linking every capital city five or six times over. "

Pachauri’s Squishy Timeline

Donna Laframboise (Canada)
"What conclusions may be reasonably drawn from the above? Pachauri isn’t a scientist. He’s a politician. And he’ll say anything if he thinks it’ll advance his cause. When the times change, so does his account of what’s at stake, what needs to happen when – and why. The last thing he’s concerned about is whether there’s any internal consistency to his cumulative public remarks."

Telegraph geography FAIL

WUWT
"Ummmm…no, Mr. Hough, the Telegraph’s headline and story are simply wrong. You are a victim of spin and/or a failed geography lesson. First congratulations, to the RttP team for reaching their destination, which is not a pole of any kind, much less the actual “North Pole”. I didn’t think they make it. As I explained before the trip even started, there’s no “pole” achievement here, not even close. They are 738 KM short of the actual magnetic pole. The 1996 magnetic pole doesn’t exist there anymore and thus can’t be a pole of any kind. ......No mention of the fact that they aren’t even close. The actual North pole is 790 miles away:...."

Thursday 25 August 2011

CERN Finds "Significant" Cosmic Ray Cloud Effect

GWPF
"This research is an important first experimental step in understanding the influence that Cosmic Rays may have on climate. It is important because the experimental results do not rule out the idea. Opponents of the hypothesis are not denying this, but are instead looking to other data and models to explain why the effect could not work in real life."

Wednesday 24 August 2011

CERN Experiment Confirms Cosmic Rays Can Influence Climate Change

GWPF
"Long-anticipated results of the CLOUD experiment at CERN in Geneva appear in tomorrow’s issue of the journal Nature (25 August). The Director General of CERN stirred controversy last month, by saying that the CLOUD team’s report should be politically correct about climate change (see my 17 July post below). The implication was that they should on no account endorse the Danish heresy – Henrik Svensmark’s hypothesis that most of the global warming of the 20th Century can be explained by the reduction in cosmic rays due to livelier solar activity, resulting in less low cloud cover and warmer surface temperatures."

Police claim EU carbon credit fraud has topped €5bn

Business Green
"The European police agency Europol has today revealed that the fraudulent trade in carbon credits that affected a number of countries over the past few months is far more widespread than previously thought and could have cost EU taxpayers up to €5bn in lost revenue over the past 18 months. The agency said in a statement that it believed that in some countries up to 90 per cent of the trading of EU emissions allowances (EUAs) was subject to fraudulent activity.

EUA's which are traded under the EU emission trading scheme have been involved in so-called carousel fraud whereby fraudsters sell carbon credits and collect the accompanying VAT, but then disappear before the money is handed over to the tax man. Europol said that suspicions of carousel fraud, so named because the fraudster can often buy back credits and then repeat the practice several times over, first arose in late 2008."

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Combet smears: it’s racist to oppose his carbon dioxide tax

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"Exactly how desperate is Climate Change Minister Greg Combet to reach for this slur:

Federal Climate Change Minister Greg Combet has accused Opposition Leader Tony Abbott of having a racist climate change policy.

Mr Abbott has warned that Australian businesses buying carbon permits under an emissions trading scheme could be conned by unscrupulous international traders…

Mr Combet described Mr Abbott’s position as “economic xenophobia” in an address to the National Press Club.

“It sends the signal that it’s somehow dubious to trade with foreigners. It’s typical dog-whistle politics, trashing the commitment that’s existed for many years on both sides of politics to economic liberalisation and open trade,” he said.

“It is in effect a white carbon policy designed to harvest more votes no matter what the cost.”

The man is mad. I wonder how many poor Nigerians he’s helped out with his banking details.

Combet’s plan involves sending an insane $57 billion a year to carbon traders overseas by 2050. Does he really not know that such a torrent of cash could be scammed? Has he really not heard of this:

The European police agency Europol has today revealed that the fraudulent trade in carbon credits that affected a number of countries over the past few months is far more widespread than previously thought and could have cost EU taxpayers up to €5bn in lost revenue over the past 18 months."

Monday 22 August 2011

Green tax hike hits businesses

Telegraph
"Green taxes will make up more than a third of the price of electricity by the end of the decade, pushing up prices to new highs by 2020. ...Figures from Utilyx, the energy consultants and traders, forecast a 58pc rise in the cost of power by 2020, largely driven by the impending avalanche of green taxes due to come into force over the next 10 years."

Britain’s Wind Farm Scam Threatens Economic Recovery

WUWT
"The level of subsidy available to landowners to put up these turbines is out of all proportion to the public benefit derived from them and the temptation to ruin what is usually outstanding landscapes is overwhelming. It is a crime against the landscape. –Sir Simon Jenkins, National Trust, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011"

Sunday 21 August 2011

The aristocrats cashing in on Britain's wind farm subsidies

Telegraph
"Growing numbers of the nobility are being tempted to build giant wind farms on their estates by the promise of tens of millions of pounds being offered green energy developers. ......The Duke of Roxburghe has angered locals – including the neighbouring Duke of Northumberland – after winning a lengthy planning and legal battle to build 48 turbines, each about 400ft high, on unspoilt moorland in the Scottish borders.Construction work began about two months ago with the building of a road 10 miles long through previously pristine countryside to reach the wind farm site. The Duke, who is worth about £100 million, will reportedly earn as much as £2.5 million a year from the deal although a spokesman, who declined to discuss the actual amount, said that figure was not accurate. One industry expert said a more realistic figure was in the order of £720,000 a year.In the course of the 25-year lifespan of the wind farm at Fallago Rig that could net the Duke anywhere between £18 million and £62.5 million. ......"

Saturday 20 August 2011

The BBC steadfastly avoids the facts about the wind farm scam

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"David Shukman's reports on energy policy for the BBC failed to explain the true lunacy of the Government's plans. ....Even shorter on hard facts, however, was Shukman’s report on a monster new wind farm off the coast of Cumbria, where a Swedish firm, Vattenfall, has spent £500 million on building 30 five‑megawatt turbines with a total “capacity” of 150MW. What Shukman did not tell us, because the BBC never does, is that, thanks to the vagaries of the wind, these machines will only produce a fraction of their capacity (30 per cent was the offshore average in the past two years). So their actual output is only likely to average 45MW, or £11 million per MW. .....The insanity does not end here. The Government talks of building 10,000 windmills capable of generating up to 25,000MW of the electricity we need. But when it does so, it – like the BBC – invariably uses that same trick of referring to “capacity”, without explaining that their actual output would be well below 30 per cent. (Last year, onshore turbines generated just 21 per cent of their capacity.) In other words, for all that colossal expenditure – and even if there was the remotest chance that two new giant turbines could be built every day between now and 2020 – we could only hope to generate some 6,000MW. This is not only way below our EU target, it is only a tenth of our peak demand during those cold, windless weeks last winter, when wind power was often providing barely 1 per cent of the power we needed. "

Friday 19 August 2011

Murdoch, Hackgate, Climategate, the Guardian and the vile hypocrisy of the Left

Telegraph
"And then there’s the Climategate connection, unearthed by some inspired sleuthing from Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit. In February 2010, a couple of months after Neil Wallis of Outside Organisation had been retained by the University of East Anglia to help them strike back against critics, Leigh authored a smear against Paul Dennis of the University of East Anglia .....Murky enough for you, yet? It gets worse. Note the abovementioned Neil Wallis. Remember who Neil Wallis is? He’s the irascible tabloid hack – deputy editor of the News of the World under Andy Coulson and nicknamed the Wolfman by his terrified staff, who was arrested during the Hackgate scandal. Wallis was the man employed in September 2009 as a £1,000-a-day “adviser” by the Met’s former chief Sir Paul Stephenson, who resigned as a result of the Hackgate scandal. How odd that very shortly afterwards, the University of East Anglia should have chosen to hire Wallis as a flak catcher to defend its reputation after the Climategate scandal."

Thursday 18 August 2011

U.S. States Begin Dismantling Green Energy Sector

GWPF
"State governments are beginning to dismantle green energy sector, cutting green jobs as they focus on shale gas boom"

New paper from Lindzen and Choi implies that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity.

WUWT
"Dr. Richard Lindzen writes to me with news of this significant new paper saying “It has taken almost 2 years to get this out. “. Part of that problem appears to be hostile reviewers in earlier submissions to JGR, something we’ve seen recently with other skeptical papers, such as O’Donnell’s rebuttal to Steig et al (Antarctica is warming) where Steig himself inappropriately served as a reviewer, and a hostile one at that."

Wednesday 17 August 2011

Rick Perry on Global Warming: America shouldn’t spend billions on an unproven theory

TheRightScoop (USA)
"This morning Rick Perry gave his position on Global Warming in answering a question from the audience, saying that he does believe Global Warming has been politicized and that he doesn’t think America should spend billions of dollars on anti-carbon programs based on a theory that hasn’t been proven:" (Video)

No room for dogma in these hard times

Daily Mail Comment
"Which is why the Mail urges ministers to do what they can to ease the corrosive effects of inflation by halting their politically correct obsession with green energy taxes. As we reveal today, EU emissions directives alone are costing households up to £115 a year – money that is desperately needed elsewhere in the economy. Experts say that our targets for reducing greenhouse gases – the toughest in the world – will cost Britain £13billion in economic growth. And all at a time when the science of climate change remains shrouded in doubt. Families are suffering real hardship. Businesses are fighting for their very existence. Ministers must drop their dogma about global warming and give the country a break."


Are you now or have you ever been a sceptic?

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"Senator Barnaby Joyce meets an ABC presenter, Alex Sloan, who can parrot a slogan without having made any apparent effort to check the content: .......

Joyce: Do you believe that this tax will have any effect on the climate?

Sloan: (four seconds of silence). Barnaby Joyce, what I suppose we’re being told . . .

Joyce: Well, why won’t you answer that question?

Sloan: Well, probably yes.

Joyce: You’re the only person in Australia who believes that."

Winds Of Change in the US!

Climate Common Sense
"The times are a'changing in the US with a triple whammy for the Warmists in recent polls . The first was the announcement that Rick Perry , an avowed climate sceptic was running for the GOP presidential nomination and he immediately shot to a healthy 11% lead over Mitt Romney in the latest poll.
Secondly the GOP has a generic 44% to 37 % lead over the Democrats which would easily give them control of both houses in 2012. And thirdly a generic GOP presidential candidate has a 6% lead over Obama in the Presidential race , all very bad news for Obama and the Democrats."

Tuesday 16 August 2011

Consumers' electricity bills

Bishop Hill
"An FOI request later, I discover that the meeting was at the request of ERA itself - it appears that they asked to speak to ministers about a number of issues - Fuel Poverty, the Green Deal, the Community Energy Saving Programme and the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target. Putting this together with DECC's record that "information on consumers' bills" was discussed, I conclude that ERA wanted to make the costs of these government programmes transparent.

Unfortunately, I can only infer this because according to DECC, no record was kept of the meeting."

Is Our Climate Really More Extreme? Lots Of “Weird Weather” – In 1971!

NoTricksZone
"I have therefore put together the following record of extreme weather events from 1971, which I hope will provide a certain amount of perspective when looking at what is happening today. Why 1971? Quite simply it is 40 years ago, a nice round number, and of course, before the gradual rise in global temperatures began a few years later."

Government senator telling porkies and scoring own-goals

Catallaxy Files (Australia)
"Last week Senator Matt Thistlethwaite (ALP, NSW) asked questions about the Australian Trade and Industry Alliances advert on the Carbon (dioxide) tax. .....So Senator Thistlethwaite, the cost of the carbon tax is not $71 billion and the Australian Trade and Industry Alliance makes no such claim – rather it is about $1 trillion and that’s from a Treasury spreadsheet."

Tony Abbott's speech at the "No Carbon (Dioxide) Tax" rally in Canberra 16/Aug/2011 from ABC

Climate Realists
"In full Tony Abbott's speech at the "No Carbon (Dioxide) Tax" rally in Canberra 16/Aug/2011 from ABC News24 organised by the Consumers and Taxpayers Association (CATA ) 16/8/11"

Monday 15 August 2011

Snow causes chaos across New Zealand

Stuff NZ
"Snow fell in Auckland yesterday and Wellington streets were turned white for the first time in nearly half a century. National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research scientist James Renwick said the last reports of snow settling in downtown Wellington were recorded in 1976, when snow also fell in Auckland. Before that, the last reports were in the 1930s. Queenstown has been largely cut off from the rest of the country. No flights have left Queenstown Airport since Sunday and all roads into Queenstown and the Wakatipu Basin are either closed or require tire chains. Queenstown weatherman David Crow, who has been monitoring weather in the resort town since 1962, said he could not recall a more vicious and prolonged snowstorm. "I can't remember anything as heavy as this in 58 years."

The snow will go on - everywhere

NZHerald
"More snow will strike much of New Zealand today - turning the novelty into far more treacherous conditions, police say. The polar blast that brought snow to downtown Auckland for the first time in 72 years - and created the city's coldest day on record - is set to worsen in many parts of the North and South Islands. ....Climate scientist Georgina Griffiths of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research said yesterday was the coldest day ever recorded in Auckland."

Kiwi capital delights in once-in-a-lifetime snow

CBC News
"Services across the country were disrupted Monday by the snowfalls, which were accompanied by heavy rain and high winds. Mail delivery in many centres was cancelled, as were some flights. Some roads were closed and recreational facilities such as libraries and swimming pools were shut in many centres. Wellington rarely gets snow — the accumulation it got Sunday and Monday is the most in at least 30 years — and so people are taking to the streets with cameras and cheers. The cold weather also blew farther north to the country's largest city, Auckland. Local media reported it was the first time snow fell in the city's downtown in 72 years."

Sunday 14 August 2011

We reclaimed the word Skeptic — next we reclaim the word Scientist

JoNova(Australia)
"So how can you tell a scientist from a poseur?

Here are some handy hints:

A true scientist doesn’t whinge when people ask for their data and methods. They don’t hide results, lose data, and whine that they’re being attacked if someone wants to check their answer.
A real scientist knows that climate sensitivity is not determined by 20 year old tobacco funding and doesn’t stoop to a barking-mad baseless slur which implies that historic tobacco funding has something to do with this discussion.
A normal scientist uses logic and reason: when faced with evidence, they can talk politely about it without compulsively issuing a character attack (he’s not a real Lord, you’re not a climate scientist, don’t be racist… and insert other non-sequitur here!)
A real scientist knows that 28 million weather balloons is empirical evidence that trumps the opinion of 28 million climate simulations."

Saturday 13 August 2011

Polar Bears Thriving, Al Gore Melts Down

Irish Central
"I think we all remember the heart breaking ad that depicted the poor Polar Bear paddling in the open ocean. Paddling about aimlessly because (supposedly) there wasn't any ice left for him to roam on? The ice caps were melting due to AGW (Man caused Global Warming) and it was just a matter of time before there was no ice left....anywhere. ....A convenient bit of information was left out of the ad though....Polar bears can swim 60 miles across open ocean to travel from one ice pack to another, they are at home in the ocean. Of course many urban dwellers don't know that"inconvenient truth" about these hardy bears and jump to conclusions. ....The blockbuster revelations known as "Climategate" a couple of years ago, brought to light that the main scientific institute, University of East Anglia, used doctored data to bolster Al Gores man made global warming claims. Since that time, it has been one embarrassment after another, for the religion of AGW. " (H/T Climate Change Dispatch)

A Long, Cold Summer at Mount Rainier

NYT
"MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, Wash. — The calendar says summer, but the conditions are more like winter. ......The amount of snow still on the ground, as measured at Paradise, the park’s main visitor area, is setting records. Last Sunday, it set a record of 44 inches, said Stefan Lofgren, the park’s mountaineering district ranger. The previous record for Aug. 7 was 40 inches, set in 1974. Another record was set Tuesday, when 43 inches remained on the ground. Mr. Lofgren said he expected records for another couple of weeks. At this elevation (5,400 feet), Paradise normally gets about 630 inches of snow a year, but this year it received a whopping 907 inches. "

Friday 12 August 2011

This Time it's Different

Matt Ridley
"The New York Times has a fawning profile of the paymaster of eco-doomsters, Jeremy Grantham. Grantham's problem is that he is saying exactly what doomsters have ben saying all my life about myriad environmental issues and they have been wrong every time. Go back 40 years to 1971 and recall the continual dirge of dire doom that those of us who became teenagers that year were subjected to over the next four decades. The grown-ups told us with terrible certainty that....."

Carbon tax advertising campaign faces audit

The Australian
"THE Auditor-General will investigate Julia Gillard's $12 million carbon tax advertising campaign and its claims the tax will apply to only 500 companies and that nine out of 10 households will be compensated for price rises.

In a letter to Tony Abbott, Auditor-General Ian McPhee has agreed to include the carbon tax ad campaign in a broad Australian National Audit Office probe into campaign advertising that had already begun. The audit follows a request by the Opposition Leader last month for a probe after he alleged the government's claims about the number of companies that would pay the tax and the household compensation had not been adequately verified.

Under the government's advertising rules, an Independent Communications Committee vets taxpayer-funded ads. The guidelines state "where information is presented as a fact, it should be accurate and verifiable". Mr Abbott said there were a range of misleading claims in the material, particularly the claim that it would apply to only 500 companies and that nine out of 10 households would be compensated for the carbon tax."

Thursday 11 August 2011

The polar bear problem

Spectator
"Much has been made of the 2007 summer ice retreat being the ‘greatest on record’, but records began only in 1979. In the 1920s and 1930s, there were probably still more open seasons; likewise in the medieval, Roman and other warm periods all the way back to the Holocene Optimum. Polar bears certainly survived such warmer spells, presumably by ranging somewhat further north. Indeed, fossils suggest that polar bears already existed in their current form during the last interglacial period, 120,000 years ago, when the Arctic was almost certainly wholly free of ice in late summer.

A total disappearance of sea ice at all seasons would undoubtedly doom thepolar bear’s lifestyle. But no scientist in his wildest exaggerations is suggesting the disappearance of Arctic sea ice in winter. As long as there is pack ice for much of the year with an ice edge, plenty of seals and controls on hunting, thepolar bear is going to thrive — and tent-based tourism to the Arctic is going to be dangerous."

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Another round of questions for polar bear researcher

WUWT
"A wildlife biologist is continuing to face questions about an influential paper he wrote on apparently drowned polar bears, with government investigators reportedly asking whether he improperly steered a research contract to another scientist as a reward for reviewing that paper."

Malcolm Roberts: Professor's work confirms Gillard-Brown-Combet-Milne-Plibersek-Wong lies

Climate Realists
"Measurements of global CO2 levels used by the UN reveal that CO2 levels are a result of temperature, not a cause. CO2 does not drive temperature. Temperature determines CO2 levels. Yet the government and Greens tells us the opposite. Saying CO2 drives temperature is the biggest … lie."

Tuesday 9 August 2011

The Y2K Scare, the Media & Climate Change

Donna Laframboise (Canada)
"So what did the media learn from the embarrassing Y2K episode?

Judging by the way it proceeded to cover climate change, zilch. Nada. Nothing at all. Take a peek at this 2006 Time magazine story. On a single page it screeches about Earth at the tipping point, declares that the planet is ill, fragile, fighting a fever and has finally got a bellyful of us. For heaven’s sake.

Oh, and isn’t it sweet that the main image for that Time story was supplied by Greenpeace?"

Taxing our credulity

Quadrant Online (Australia)
"In the last week or so there have been some wondrous developments in climate change policy. Most dramatically, we now know What a carbon price means for you. Or do we?

My copy of this 18 page booklet the Government has sent to households arrived on 3 August with the news that by 2020 it will mean less “pollution” (interpretation: lower C02 emissions). But nothing is said about what is supposedly the main objective of a policy to reduce pollution (sic) – that is, lower temperatures than would otherwise occur. Nor is there any explanation of why, despite the continued increase in emissions, temperatures have not risen in recent years."

Monday 8 August 2011

10 Stupid Ideas that led to the Global Economic Meltdown

Telegraph
"2. The Climate Change Act. This is arguably the most expensive, suicidal and pointless piece of legislation in British parliamentary history. Its attempts to “decarbonise” the UK economy are based on junk science (the connection between anthropogenic CO2 and runaway global warming is nothing more than threadbare conjecture) and, by the government’s own estimates (so double it, at least, for the real costs) will cost the British taxpayer £18 billion every year for the next forty years. It will do nothing to stave off global warming, just further cripple an already ailing economy and impose higher energy costs on people who can ill afford it."

How Do The AGW People Get Away With This?

NoTricksZone
"A few graphics make the position of the AGW people completely absurd. It’s why I am so confident as to my position on this matter, and by the way it does have something to do with the weather because if you know where the weather has been, you have a better chance to know where it’s going."
---------------
Professor inadvertently explains why greenhouse theory is wrong (The Hockey Schtick)

Worldwide CO2 emissions and the futility of any action in the West

WUWT
"Prof Richard Muller in a presentation made last October [1] made the dilemma facing the warmists abundantly clear:

The developing world is ‘not joining-in with CO2 emission reductions nor does it have any intention of doing so. So the whole warmist idea is a creature of a limited number of developed western nations whose governments have been persuaded by the control Global Warming / Climate Change / Climate Disruption agenda."

Warming may be good for us, but this tax is not

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"Peter R. Hartley, the George & Cynthia Mitchell Professor of Economics at Rice University, warns Australia that warming may not hurt us, but trying to stop it certainly will: ....."

Source of “hide the decline”? New paper finds that tree height shrinks with increased temperature

WUWT
"Clearly, there’s more to tree growth than a simple linear relationship with temperature, and this finding shows an inverse relation with temperature to tree height. Maybe this is why Briffa had to truncate uncooperative tree ring data post 1960 and Mike’s Nature trick was used to “hide the decline”.

Press Release: New Zealand Climate Science Coalition

Climate Realists
"“New Zealand’s temperature record is a dog’s breakfast” says the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, commenting on its finding that average temperatures have remained stable for the last 150 years. “And it underscores our vulnerability to NIWA’s monopoly of official advice on climate science.

“In a lengthy and expensive review, NIWA has rearranged the historical data to exactly match the warming trend shown in its previous official record” said Hon Barry Brill, chairman of the Coalition.

“Our paper has exposed the review’s total lack of credibility:"

Sunday 7 August 2011

Wild weather hits New Zealand

Stuff NZ
"Wild weather packing big winds, heavy rain, some snow and plunging temperatures, bounced across parts of New Zealand today. What WeatherWatch called "explosive showers" deluged Auckland this afternoon and a southerly front racing up the South Island's east coast hit Wellington at 3pm, spoiling a sunny, warm calm day in a sudden weather-pattern change as the temperature dived from a high of 14degC to a chilly six. Auckland's bout of stormy weather was accompanied by strong, squally winds and WeatherWatch warned torrential downpours would continue into the evening with the possibility of flash and surface flooding. ...Meanwhile, winds of up to 120kmh howled over parts of Wairarapa and Hawke's Bay this morning before easing, and strong winds continued to affect the south of the South Island. "

Australian government prepares for massive climate disruption

WUWT
"This film, being shown all throughout Australia, and now available here at WUWT shows what the Gillard government is doing to prepare for the worst unstoppable effects of climate change. It’s quite something. RealClimate has declined comment. ...the best laugh I’ve had since Elmer’s M4GW original “hide the decline” video."

Marc Morano: Global Warming Alarm Spread By Al Gore And The United Nations “Is In Utter Collapse”

NoTricksZone
"...So this is as good a time as any to bring you the latest video of Marc Morano and his latest assessment of the global warming movement."
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German Scientists Compute CO2 Climate Sensitivity At Only 1.1°C – “Alarmist Prognoses Fully Inappropriate”

Appalling - More Billions Down the Gillard Gurgler!

Climate Common Sense (Australia)
"For the numerically challenged Labor pollies that is 14 billion dollars over the last 4 Labor years , making it the most wasteful Labor program ever, and there were some hard ones to beat like the multi-billion tax dollar black holes of the Pink Batts fiasco and the school building rort together with the billions being wasted on impractical "green energy" schemes across the country, making this the most wasteful government in living memory!"

Saturday 6 August 2011

Recent Site Visitors....

Unaffordable Green Nightmare

Double dip 'on the cards': UK economy in peril from world crisis, say ministers

U.S. has credit rating downgraded from AAA for the first time in history
£164bn wiped off Britain's top companies in SIX days
Cameron and Osborne break off holidays to deal with impending crisis
Alistair Darling: 'I didn't think we'd get a double dip recession... now it's on the cards' FTSE 100 fell a further 2.7% yesterday


ED: Just when does reality strike the government that Green Stealth Taxes are not a good idea in a financial crisis ?

More on phone hackers

Bishop Hill
"It's always interesting when someone you have met is in the news, particularly if it is in relation to a major scandal. We have discussed the links between UEA's media management team and the phone hackers, but another odd connection between Climategate and illegal accessing of voicemails has recently emerged."

McIntyre: From Climategate To Guardiangate

WUWT
"David Leigh of the Guardian has been added to the list of UK journalists who’ve engaged in phone hacking and other illegal/unethical conduct. Some of the more questionable conduct by UK journalists has involved their acquisition of information from police that police were not legally entitled to disclose either for payment or as a favour. David Leigh also had a role in the Empire Strikes Back phase of Climategate early last year and, in today’s post, I’ll discuss the connection."

Friday 5 August 2011

Green taxes to pay subsidies 'will cost up to 30,000 jobs'

Daily Mail
"Mr Constable’s findings are a blow for Mr Cameron, who has made pushing renewable energy a centrepiece of his campaign to detoxify the Tory Party since he became leader six years ago. The report, entitled The Green Mirage, exposes the colossal scale of public subsidies for renewable energy and warns that by propping up many of these schemes, ministers have simply ‘picked losers’ and prevented the development of more cost-effective ways of generating energy. It says the UK’s £5billion subsidy to renewable electricity generators in the eight years to 2010 was the equivalent of paying every worker in the wind industry £230,000. Each job in the wind industry was subsidised to the tune of £54,000 last year."

Home About Climate Bible More Videos Naming Names: Marine Experts Tainted by Activist Cash

Donna Laframboise (Canada)
"Below is the complete list of marine experts (Pew’s term) who accepted this activist cash. Take a minute to scan it. It contains an awful lot of people whom the public is likely to regard as neutral, objective experts. There’s a PhD attached to their name, after all. But please also note that these people are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with full-blown political activists."

1870 : Brisbane Received 24 Inches Of Rain In Four Days

Real Science
"This seems impossible, because CO2 was too low to have that much moisture in the atmosphere. We all know that CO2 is a critical chemical component of H2O."

Thursday 4 August 2011

The trucks are coming! The trucks are coming!

Quadrant Online
"From the coasts and rivers, through the mountain ranges, deserts, the towns, the cities the convoys will be carrying with them ordinary Australians who want to make known the lack of confidence they feel in an incompetent Gillard-Brown government whose foundations, many say, are based on a lie by the Prime Minister."

Blockbuster: Planetary temperature controls CO2 levels — not humans

JoNova
"Professor Murry Salby is Chair of Climate Science at Macquarie University. He’s been a visiting professorships at Paris, Stockholm, Jerusalem, and Kyoto, and he’s spent time at the Bureau of Meterology in Australia.

Over the last two years he has been looking at C12 and C13 ratios and CO2 levels around the world, and has come to the conclusion that man-made emissions have only a small effect on global CO2 levels. It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels."

Wednesday 3 August 2011

Carbon tax to cost billions - NSW Treasury

Herald Sun (Australia)
"THE federal carbon tax will have a devastating impact on NSW, says a treasury review that found it would cost the state's economy $3.7 billion a year, wipe out 31,000 jobs and inflate household power bills by almost $498."

Green taxes are crippling the recovery

Daily Mail
"Unilateralist was widely used as a term for those who favoured Britain's nuclear disarmament regardless of any agreement from other countries to do the same. Now we have the green unilateralists. It is embodied in Government policy by the Climate Change Act that imposes legal requirements on the UK concerning CO2 emissions that apply regardless of the rest of the world. Forcing energy-using industries to migrate abroad can not make sense however convinced you might be that global warming is a reality. We are already uncompetitive so far as tax and regulation is concerned - something the 'green agenda' contributes to. Artificially forcing up energy prices is indeed a tipping point for many companies. The Government should heed the warning from manufacturing industry."

Manufacturers want £470m relief from green tax pain

Telegraph
"Manufacturers are lobbying for more than £470m in compensation from the taxpayer for having to swallow four green levies by the end of the decade. "

69% reckon climatologists falsify data

Bishop Hill
"The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 69% say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data in order to support their own theories and beliefs, including 40% who say this is Very Likely."

Tuesday 2 August 2011

Hansen Says Development Of Tar Sands Would Mean “Game Over For Climate”

NoTricksZone
"The global warming movement is all about energy starvation – with the aim of denying humanity access to the cheapest and most readily available forms of energy.

The restriction of energy eventually makes whatever energy that is left on the market so expensive that it risks becoming unaffordable to the large majority of the world’s poor people. The result: Many of the poor will simply die because of the consequences of energy deprivation."

New paper: Urban Heat Island effect accounts for 56% of warming over past 55 years

The Hockey Schtick
"A paper published last week in the journal Atmospheric Environment finds that the urban heat island effect accounts for 56% of the total temperature increase in South Korean city stations over the past 55 years. Warmists constantly downplay the urban heat island (UHI) effect as insignificant, but as this paper and several others show, the UHI does cause very significant biases with stations reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are poorly sited."

Does anyone seriously believe warming alarmism?

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"As despair sinks into depression, one cabinet minister recently revealed his desolation in a conversation with an acquaintance when he confessed political life had become near intolerable.

He acknowledged the carbon tax is destroying the government, yet they could not walk away from it. He could not see - or he was not prepared to admit it that openly yet - a way out and this only fed his frustration.

This prominent member of a government, which recites like a Gregorian chant the mantra that climate change is real, then admitted his grave doubts about the science. He didn’t use the word crock, but that was pretty much what this secret deniers’ camp follower was saying. "

The tides, they are a changin!

WUWT
"One of the most interesting findings of the study, Hill said, was that around 9,000 years ago, as the Earth was emerging from its most recent ice age, there was a huge amplification in tides of the western Atlantic Ocean. The tidal ranges were up to three times more extreme than those that exist today, and water would have surged up and down on the East Coast."

Monday 1 August 2011

Big Green: Corrupting Science At NOAA To Achieve A Political Agenda

C3 Headines
"Read here. (h/t Tom Nelson) The leftie/liberal/progressive approach to climate science has been a consistent mixture of radical politics and non-empirical, pseudo-science hysteria."

Britain's Self-Destructive Climate Policy

GWPF
"Analysis published by EEF, the manufacturers' organisation, has revealed that the Carbon Price Floor could cost manufacturing as much as £1.2 billion annually by 2020."

Rise of the 1st Law Deniers

WUWT
"So, we continue to be treated to news articles... quoting esteemed scientists who claim to have found problems with our paper published in Remote Sensing, which shows huge discrepancies between the real, measured climate system and the virtual climate system imagined by U.N.-affilliated climate modelers and George Soros-affiliated pundits (James Hansen, Joe Romm, et al.) Their objections verge on the bizarre, and so I have to wonder whether any of them actually read our paper. I eagerly await their published papers which show any errors in our analysis."

A Big Welcome To EPA Motors

Investors.com
"Industrial Policy: It's bad enough that the Obama administration owns GM. Now it's taking over the entire auto industry by imposing a radical fuel economy mandate. Worst still, carmakers are letting them get away with it. ....But whatever their reason for caving in to White House demands, the fact is that carmakers have just handed over their businesses lock, wheel and engine to the dictates of government bureaucrats and global warming enthusiasts." (H/T Climate Change Dispatch)

Carbon dioxide tax crazy: Della Bosca

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"Of course the tax is mad, but so is the delusion that we’re threatened by dangerous man-made warming:
THE former NSW minister John Della Bosca has called the federal government’s carbon tax a mistake and the ‘’craziest thing’’ the Prime Minister could have done. ....."