POPULAR sceptical blogger, Jo Nova, has responded to Labor’s defeat in yesterday’s Australian federal election with the headline ‘Voters crush the carbon tax and corruption – worst Australian government gone’. 
I’m not so sure. It remains my view that the previous Coalition Government lead by John Howard was a disaster, particularly when it came to mismanagement of both the economy and the natural environment.
Indeed the Howard government, of which our new Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, was a senior Minister, was instrumental in introducing a raft of very damaging legislation.
Top of the list is perhaps the renewable energy certificate, an ongoing economic disaster as detailed in an article by Ray Evans and Tom Quirk entitled the ‘The Ruinous Privileges of Renewable Energy’:
“THE mechanism through which electricity consumers pay greenmail to the owners of windmills and solar panels is the mandatory Renewable Energy Certificate, introduced by John Howard in his 2001 MRET legislation. As James Delingpole explained in the Australian on May 3, writing about the ghost town of Waterloo in South Australia (now depopulated by the impacts of the sub-audio frequency vibrations generated by the nearby wind farm), a 3-megawatt wind turbine, costing $6 million, will be lucky to generate electricity worth $150,000 in a year, but will receive $500,000 in RECs, paid for by the hapless electricity consumer.
“As a consequence of the hostility to rising electricity prices that emerged during the Queensland election campaign, the new Premier, Campbell Newman, like King Canute, declared he would ban any further increases in electricity prices. This problem, however, requires much more purposeful activity by governments than forlorn attempts at price controls. It is now time for the Coalition to prepare itself for an election campaign in which it can put to the electorate a serious program of reform for the electricity supply industry—one which will require the co-operation of the states, but will also require a mea culpa from the Coalition which, under John Howard, introduced this appalling imposition of ‘renewable energy’ on Australian families and businesses, and to which the Coalition still pays lip service”…
“The Howard government relied on the foreign affairs power to take over the [energy] industry. The corporations power cannot be applied to corporations owned by state governments, and although Howard refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, Australia under Keating had ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and it was believed (but never tested) that this was enough to give Howard the constitutional authority to take over the industry.
“The companies comprising the industry, whether government or non-government, did not face significant competition from other energy sources; they knew that the prospect of new entrants into the industry (other than wind-farm speculators with good political connections), under the conditions of the huge sovereign risk which now applied to the industry, was zero; and they were secure in the knowledge that the regulators would always allow them to pass on the inevitable price increases. So, provided their participation was profitable, they were happy to participate in the nonsense being foisted by completely ignorant politicians on a rationally ignorant public…
“In 2000 the Howard government’s MRET legislation, which required the sourcing of an additional 2 per cent of electricity (or 9,500 GWh) annually from renewable energy sources by 2010, was passed. It comprised the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 (REE Act), which obliged Australian electricity retailers to source increasing amounts of their required electricity from approved renewable sources. Other legislation underpinning this scheme was the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Charge Act 2000, and the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Regulations 2001. This unprecedented interference by a federal government in the day-by-day activities of a major industry was administered by the independent Renewable Energy Regulator…
“The Commonwealth’s responsibility has been both direct—as in Howard’s MRET legislation of 2000 and Rudd’s legislation of 2010—and just as significantly indirect, as the continuing attack on coal, both under Howard and more recently under Rudd and Gillard, has made investment in new coal-fired power stations far too hazardous for private investors to contemplate. The MRET scheme, on its own, has led to so-called investments, mostly in South Australia but also in New South Wales, of at least $3 billion in wind farms…
Read more here http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2012/7-8/the-ruinous-privileges-of-renewable-energy
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
I’m pleased to hear that Julia is riding off into the sunset — or whatever is the proper metaphor for moving into her new digs in Adelaide. I’m so looking forward to the day when her soulmate, Barry, does the same!
How much of the “depopulation” is bunk and how much is right/ http://yes2renewables.org/2013/06/07/a-night-under-the-waterloo-wind-farm-turbines/
http://www.epa.sa.gov.au/environmental_info/noise/wind_farms/waterloo_wind_farm_noise_study
Like issues with mobile phone towers, power lines, insecticide spraying of crops, CSG methane are all difficult to resolve. Vested interests on both sides abound. BTW that wasn’t a plug for wind turbines – just saying.
Can I just say that OZ is very lucky to have booted out the worst govt in it’s history and anyone who seriously thinks that there isn’t much difference between the Howard govt and Rudd/Gillard/Rudd should take a bex and a long rest.
Was Howard correct in his response to AGW, of course he wasn’t. Was the Abbott opposition correct in it’s response to AGW, of course not.
But to think that they could go to an election and not have a policy on AGW ( however stupid it may be) is beyond ridiculous. They would have been crucified if they didn’t.
We have the stupid MSM to partly blame for this nonsense and all the idiots on the left endlessly promoting not so much AGW but CAGW at every opportunity.
Jo Nova had a post showing that direct action (however stupid ) costs only a ninth of the cost of Labor’s mess, so we should be thankful for small mercies.
I am hopeful that this election will cause our elective representatives and their minions to seriously pay attention to what caused such a landslide in the lower house.
I think the Rudd/Gillard continued to make the same mistakes (and even more expensive mistakes) that Howard’s government had started to make and which contributed to the coalition defeat in 2007.
As well as the questionable policies re energy that Jen reminds us of here, don’t forget that abysmal Water Act.
These are indeed examples of the Commonwealth Govt attempting to ‘muscle in’ in areas where they have to over ride the constitution via international treaties.
All we ever seem to get from this behaviour is more bureaucracy and more cost and often a legal confusion/conundrum. There is very little evidence that this behaviour achieves the lofty goals that supposedly caused the Govt to go down these paths in the first place.
Jen, ya gotta remember that prior to 2007 it was very easy to stampede govts on the BS of CC and this was an art that reached its peak around that time.
It’s only due to people like yourself that we hoi polloi, AWA pollies, have become more sceptical.
Luke, those are interesting links re the low frequency invasive sounds of wind turbines.
I am somewhat deaf to HF sounds but LF registers very strongly with me. There is probably something in the LF complaint but I suspect, as you infer, it is a bit like GCMs, GM, fracking, neonicotinoids, etc and need more open, accountable and honest science and politics.
Larry Says: Julia is riding off into the sunset — or whatever is the proper metaphor for moving into her new digs in Adelaide.
As she has moved to a sea-side property, I think the proper metaphor is “turning her back on the alarmists proposition that the non-existent warming will cause the seas to rise up and swallow her new house.”
Unfortunately politicians of all persuasions were carried along on a wave of mass delusion, being only human they were easily brainwashed.
Albo is a prime example of the problem.
I could never love a government which does not love coal. Especially Sydney Basin Black. The gloss, the smooth feel, the tarry aroma…ahhh.
And it’s sitting right there, in fabulous quantities.
Will Julia Gillard still wear glasses now that she need not knit kanagroo toys for the royals?
Could this article reflect as badly on the author as badly as Rudds ungraciousness in his pompous fake victory spiel on Saturday night.
In spite of the worst policies, the earth soldiers on.
But maybe this was only a light CO2 footprint:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24132798/ns/world_news-world_environment/t/coral-flourishing-bikini-atoll-atomic-test-site/#.Ui0Y53_KGfU
The big Q is whether the IPCC will now reverse its stupidity of 95% confidence in man-made CC, admit a degree of uncertainty and allow pollies a chance to adopt some fair dinkum policies.
Any chance of that?
Up till now the wronger the models become, and the more the evidence points elsewhere, the more confident the IPCC become in their own stupidity.
Defying logic AWA thermodynamics:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415191/Global-cooling-Arctic-ice-caps-grows-60-global-warming-predictions.html
“very lucky to have booted out the worst govt in it’s history” hmmmm despite an economy in good shape and that you’ve never had it so good.
Interesting the result in Qld – looks like very little change in Labor seats. Thanks Campbell !
We’ll see how the populace feel after a while …. but a change inevitable and Labor internal processes dreadful. Hope Rudd resigns.
It’s quite a globally dangerous time for AGW politically. Just assume the pause is due to ocean processes, aerosols and increasing OHC at depth – well it means warming will return with a vengeance – as it has before.
So pray and hope for the opposite.
95% is not a scientific confidence interval – it’s an expert panel judgement …
Of course for Australia to adapt to climate change, the best way might be to have as good a system for seasonal forecasts as possible. Can you really does this without a modern GCM?
“95% is not a scientific confidence interval – it’s an expert panel judgement …”
Yeah, an “expert” panel of scientists. Who claim that they are 95% confident that ALL increases in warming are from man-made CO2.
Even though these increases also come from known and unknown unknowns.
And the best Plan B for adapting to ACO2e climate change when there is so much uncertainty is not to use a GCM that will just give us false certainty, it is simply to apply the “no regrets” policies [like thorium nuclear energy] that will grab it by the scruff of the neck if it does exist and provide unlimited base load if it doesn’t.
Luke I’ll admit the worst govt ever is a close call between Rudd/G /Rudd and the two Whitlam govts between 1972/75. Incredibly bad the lot of them.
But when Howard started they first had to pay back 98 billion of Labor’s debt and then had surplus budgets and a big deposit held in the future fund as well.
It’s because of Howard and Costello that things are hopefully recoverable even after Labor’s hopeless job of running the economy.
Don’t forget R/G/R had the best terms of trade over the last 6 years since 1900 and they still drove the budget into record deficits. Absolutely hopeless.
But yes OZ must adapt to whatever the weather throws at us and that’s where we should be spending our money, but not on the co2 tax idiocy.
Just think we’ve spent countless billions on renewables and there is zip difference since 1990 in percentage terms.
Currently we generate 0.1% from solar and 0.4% from wind. What a sick, super expensive joke.
What if the tossers we’ve been bagging for years here are right? Won’t we need some tosser solution proposed by the same tossers? Well, duh.
“despite an economy in good shape and that you’ve never had it so good.”
That economy is not because of Labor, it is in spite of Labor.
What did they ever do in that time fer chrisake?
NBN? An over-time, over budget, ill-considered disaster.
Don’t mention the BER or Pink Batts.
Stuffed the livestock exports.
A 400 billion black hole during a mining boom of record proportions.
Local manufacturing closing at record rates.
Record levels of red and green tape to tie us up for years.
If there were any good policies carried out in that time please remind me.
The clowns from the Labor party are at it already.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/rudd_takes_credit_for_saving_the_party_he_helped_destroy/#commentsmore
Jo Nova provides a good and sane summary of the election result.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/voter-crush-the-carbon-tax-and-corruption-worst-australian-government-gone/#comments
“Of course for Australia to adapt to climate change, the best way might be to have as good a system for seasonal forecasts as possible. Can you really does this without a modern GCM?”
Well Luke, you know better than I do….
“A) A cornerstone of the scientific method, probably 500 years old, can be expressed as “data trumps theory.” In the 20th century, Feynman said it elegantly a dozen times.
B) There really are subjects too complicated to describe easily, in which case computer modelling is required. That is perfectly okay, and indeed common in any field involving fluids in motion. However,
C) When the computer models don’t agree with the observations, don’t complain about the data, but instead go back and revise the models.
D) Don’t begin trying to plan national policy until you’ve got the science right, as evidenced by agreement between theory and data. Otherwise it’s just futile and expensive.
What is obviously logically flawed is to assert point B and then ask for blind trust in computer models, ignoring the need to observe point C.”
General circulation models are generally a very expensive way to produce noise.
They are particularly bad when it comes to rainfall. Forecasts of monthly rainfall, one month into the future from POAMA, the local version of noise generation, are worse than the results from climatology.
This means we (taxpayers) spend millions of dollars on medium-term rainfall forecasts that are less accurate than can be produced by a competent schoolgirl with only a pad and paper who has learnt long division.
One of the major problems is that GCMs are benchmarked against other GCMs – not observational data.
Give less funding to those noisy GCM people in CSIRO and the BoM, and lets give more funds instead to the schoolgirls so they can learn how to do long division.
Mr Koala
NBN? An over-time, over budget, ill-considered disaster. NOT REALLY – watch the alternative fail
Don’t mention the BER or Pink Batts. – so it’s now a govt problem for managers to supervise their staff ? COME ON
Stuffed the livestock exports. – NOPE – blame MLA
A 400 billion black hole during a mining boom of record proportions. – debt piddly on global terms. Surplus fetishism
Local manufacturing closing at record rates. – BLAME CHINA
Record levels of red and green tape to tie us up for years. NOT REALLY – MORE memish bunk
Anyway – welcome to a divided Australia !!! You’ll be loving it.
I liked the nutty ldp.org.au stuff about guns – really ! Wack job stuff..
Well K Bearsy – show us ya skill scores, LEPS, ROCS or significance tests – what ya got?
And good luck using a statistical system with a non-stationary baseline.
Anyway show us ya terciles. Tell us something we don’t know.
http://poama.bom.gov.au/poama_workshop/Eunpa_Lim_The_current_capability_of_POAMA_in_predicting_Australian_seasonal_climate.pdf
http://poama.bom.gov.au/poama_workshop.shtml
Re Julia Gillard riding off into the sunset … She and Tim Flannery, that other
future eater of the Green Chameleon Party, moving into waterfront residences.
Hmm … do not listen ter what they say, watch what they do. (
Beth the serf.
As the POAMA crew are doing worthwhile seasonal work and nothing to do with AGW … their jobs should be secure.
Uh-oh ! New versions of the POAMA model are now based on the new national modelling system (ACCESS), which is used for all time scales from weather forecasting to climate change projections.
http://poama.bom.gov.au/about_poama2.shtml
All this will converge – is there a separate set of physics for different apps? Shouldn’t be.
SO you may to sack everyone. Good luck with it all.
Beth – more deniers rot ! “As Flannery pointed out to any journalist who asked, his house in fact sits above the most radical projections of sea level rises.”
http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/11/22/flannery-hadley-concocted-story-on-my-waterside-home/
Former prime minister Julia Gillard has recently purchased a $2m beach bungalow in Adelaide, but it too would be spared from flood inundation or rising sea levels in worst-case scenarios forecast by the federal and local governments.
http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2013/08/15/579758_politics-news.html
JUST PURE ROT BETH ! – recycled denial and no fact checking. Shame on you.
I’ve always said that plunderers and trough swillers of the Posh Left will always buy waterfronts for the views, not the moorings. Kevin, Julia and Timmy will all be fine when everything is worse than we thought (WTWT). Timmy’s putt-putt might get sunk, but Geothermia-sur-Mer will be safe and dry.
Also, as SD has noted, any sea level rise at all is as hard to spot as rocking horse poo. It’s one of those things that gets modelled, projected etc, but doesn’t actually happen. I’m not saying it’s not worse than we thought (WTWT) model-wise…it just doesn’t actually happen.
Luke I have changed my mind about Dr Wenju Cai …. he should be sacked for his blind faith in AGW.
You would like him to entertain a stupid set of non-physics?
Pretty dysfunctional rebuttal of those Labor “mile stones” [millstones?] Luke.
Sounds like denial to me.
How well does Poama agree with the real world?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.9/plot/rss/from:2001/to:2011/trend/plot/rss/last:120/trend/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend
I must send this to Tony so he can get his policies straight:
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/image16.png
Spangled I think Tony would be really interested how significant the trends are http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/central-england-temperature/ and be amazed at the shonkiness of the contrarian position.
Say, Luke, re fact checking, has Flannery anywhere in the media given the actual
measured height above sea level of his waterfront resident? I read what he said
on sea rise an article,”Climate’s Last Chance.” in October, 2006,in The Age News
paper :
‘Jim Hansen, director of NASA and Goddard Institute is arguibly the world
authority on climate change. He predicts that we have just a decade to
avert a 25 metre rise of the sea….Picture an eight story buiilding by a beach,
then imagine waves lapping its roof. That’s what a 25-metre rise in sea level
looks like.’
Beth the serf.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/climates-last-chance/2006/10/27/1161749313108.html
What’s the time frame for the 25m and how old is Flannery? Did you read the Hansen source paper for context. Sigh ! try harder Beth and do your homework.
Sigh. No time frame. Sigh. Just (sigh) this:
“James Hanson, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute, is arguably the world authority on climate change. He predicts that we have just a decade to avert a 25-metre rise of the sea. Picture an eight-storey building by a beach, then imagine waves lapping its roof. That’s what a 25-metre rise in sea level looks like.”
Sigh. If Timmy had wanted to mention a time-frame, he would have (sigh) mentioned it. Source paper? Time frame? Timmy’s age? Sigh. How’s Timmy gonna manipulate if he’s held to such strict account? In fact, if anyone quotes Timmy’s words, his useful mugs can defend him by saying (amid sighs) that there was no time frame given. Get it? Sigh.
Timmy just gave us what Timmy felt we needed, y’know, the good bits, where everything is, y’know, worse than we thought.
Sigh.
Maybe you needed to read it Luke?
Beth quoted the timeframe. . . ‘we have just a decade’.
So seeing as that was said in 2006. . . 7 years ago. . . I guess Fannery is approx 7 years older than then?
Looks like time is running out on that ‘just a decade’ according to Flannery’s interpretation of Hansen’s work who is apparently ‘ arguably the world authority on climate change’.
Robert the old goal post shifter. Clearly Timmy talks his share of crap. But you need to read Hansen (oh that’s right Robert never reads links and prefers wallowing in ignorance – how could I forget). Anecdotes rule OK plus or minus pre-dementia artefacts.
Timmy loves his hand waving alarmist stuff. But do you think anyone serious listens. Timmy gives good “mammal” of course.
the ex-PM and Timmy aren’t getting flooded by sea level soon and are high and dry from any reasonably published rise. Beth will have learned the lesson here to check her sources and not parrot sceptic memes i.e. CRAP
However you should at least be well aware of Hansens’ palaeo data. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” PALAEO – the ultimate VERY old codger anecdote on steroids.
http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/climate/assets/pdfs/Making%20sense%20of%20palaeoclimate%20sensitivity.pdf Making sense of palaeoclimate sensitivity
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1211/1211.4846.pdf Climate Sensitivity, Sea Level, and Atmospheric CO2
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1105/1105.0968.pdf Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change
Don’t read them Robert – you’ll go blind
Debbie joins the goal post shifting.
Well Luke, here’s a forecast of a much warmer world that has now proven to be a complete dud.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/ice_grows_in_arctic_which_the_abc_warned_would_be_ice_free/#commentsmore
They all jumped on that 2013 date like the lemmings and true groupthinkers they are. Luke was quite happy to quote this idiocy at the time, talk about joining the throng of misfits and dummies.
Of course THEIR ABC joined in the promotion of this anti science nonsense as well. Right up their alley encouraging this delusional rubbish.
For those preferring to get some science from the literature instea dof door stop interviews with AGW celebs. http://www.ametsoc.org/2012extremeeventsclimate.pdf
Explaining the extreme events of 2012 – did AGW have a hand? Don’t read it as its science not about cooking lammies. Any decent sceptic would make a decent rebuttal of the Aussie La Nina but not on their terms. Anecdotes on previous flood height, cyclone strength and if you knew anything 1000 year palaeo flood work from the Lockyer Creek.
Antarctica gaining ice – proves AGW IMO – http://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/303/2013/tc-7-303-2013.pdf A synthesis of the Antarctic surface mass balance during the last 800 yr
AGW of course beautifully explains the increase in Antarctic sea ice. Well freshen my glacier yo’all.
But hey Abbott is in. Bags are being packed. Books piled for burning. Hem lines going down to 1950s levels (and about time). Poofters to be licensed not guns. And Labor and the greens can get back to ranting against excess development. Back to the natural order of things. I’m digging up my stash of semi-automatics I buried on the block at Gympie with the survivalist mates. And I have the Rundle oil shale shares here someone. Stuff the Reef – let’s mine it for cement. Happiness is a warm gun and large coal stockpile venting radon gas into a clear Queensland day. And I love the smell of stickraked burning vegetation in the morning. Anyway – have to run – off to shoot some fruit-bats.
Neville – after all these years – surely you’re not going to (a) quote an idiot like Bolt – what a total right wing tool and (b) offer a datum point ! Surely not. Get frigging real man.
It’s probably just weather whiplash.
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2013/06/weather-whiplash-a-story-of-two-years-2012-and-2013/
There’s that stock thing about goal posts again (is that like cherry picks?), but we’ve managed to stem the flow of patronising sighs. Luke then sort of admits that Timmy is sort of a manipulative tosser…but he doesn’t like us saying so in our own words. Or something like that. And Beth is horribly wrong even when she is right because…oh, just because.
Then there’s a blizzard of links, no doubt to the fictions of shameless climate propagandists. (One never knows for sure, since Luke is among those who might not read Luke’s links.) That’s just to keep us occupied and our thoughts pure, I suppose. Otherwise we might read the words quoted by Beth and feel entitled to – whoa! – READ them.
We were, of course, meant to read Timmy’s words…but not actually READ them, okay? Us codgers need to get with nuance and complexity and see the difference between “read” and “read”.
Sceptics could get the senate of their dreams. Yippeeee, no idiot co2 tax and no direction action plan, the outcome of my dreams.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/sceptics_get_the_senate_of_their_dreams/#commentsmore
Yes Neville, the Aust Taxpayers Alliance are saying similar.
Don’t tell me virtue has its own reward or that sanity DOES prevail☺?
Could we be so lucky?
“As the results are being finalised for the 2013 Federal Election one thing is abundantly clear: Australians have rejected the big government tax-and-spend ideology of Labor and the Greens.
Tony Abbott ran on a campaign platform of cutting high taxes and cutting waste – and we will be holding him to this!
But the real good news for taxpayers is what happened in the Federal Senate.
A lot of misinformation has been spread by the ABC and Fairfax. Ignore it.
The reality is – this has the potential to be one of the most pro-liberty Senates we have seen in history.
Despite the multi-million dollar campaigns by far-left groups like GetUp, the Labor-Green majority has been broken.
Better still – many of the minor party candidates who have come in their place are strong defenders of liberty – and just the people to ensure an Abbott government does the right thing.
In particular, both Bob Day from Family First and David Leyonhjelm from the Liberal Democratic Party, who look likely to be elected in NSW and SA respectively, have a long-standing commitment to the ideas of economic liberty.
While they may disagree on social issues, they both are rock-solid in their support for cutting taxes and axing the carbon tax, slashing red tape, and restoring our liberties. Before the election I said that their tax policies were the best of any political parties, and their election to the senate would be a great victory for taxpayers.
Both Bob and David can be counted on to do the right thing and ensure Tony Abbott does the right thing about the economy, and them holding the balance of power is excellent news indeed.
In addition, the Palmer United Party’s stated policy of reducing the income tax burden, and the Motoring Enthusiast Party’s stated policies of reducing tax, restoring individual freedoms, and opposing the nanny state, represent a further win for taxpayers, and we certainly hope their elected candidates honour this pledge.
Most importantly – most of these gains came at the expense of the left. This is the best possible outcome we could have hoped for.
The Australian people have clearly voted in favour of smaller government.
Let’s work together to make this vision a reality.”
Tim Andrews
Executive Director
Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance
http://www.taxpayers.org.au
“and restoring our liberties.” oh do rant on.
I’m sure the roo poo eating hoon will be an asset.
Mandate ! – what rot ! http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/opinion-coalition8217s-election-victory-doesn8217t-mean-a-mandate-to-do-anything-it-pleases/story-fnihsrf2-1226715384036
David Leyonhjelm – more guns – shows Neville’s level doesn’t it. “Economic liberty” what drivel – simply a recipe for entrenching disadvantage and IR union bashing.
Let’s go the double dissy in 12 months.
I suspect Abbott may be as thorough a skeptic as there is but has been pinned down by the “action on climate” people within and around his own party. I never criticise politicians for being political, but for being stupidly so. A certain amount of money will have to be diverted to “action on climate”. Conservatives are, by nature, not full-time spinners. We have to hope they can spin hard enough to frame such necessary conservation measures as modernisation of coal power and shooting feral dogs as “action on climate”. Merkel in Germany has shown the way, dressing up brown coal investment as anti-nuclear, hence green.
The age of stunt and spin may be coming to an end, but let’s hope Abbott has learned enough from the Posh Left to spin those climate billions into real gains for conservation and productivity.
Nope Luke,
No goal posts….what’s the goal anyway?
I just pointed out that the report did indeed give a timeframe and that it was indeed easy to tell how old Flannery is/was.
My hope is that our new government will not pander to the alarmist AGW celebs (as you have dubbed them).
Your argument that Tim Flannery is not listened to on matters climate change is rather odd to say the least.
What’s his current employment description? Isn’t that a Federal Government department and appointment Luke?
What leads you to say this ?????:
Timmy loves his hand waving alarmist stuff. But do you think anyone serious listens. Timmy gives good “mammal” of course.
And I will have to also point out that along with the Government (who appointed him as Commissioner) the MSM certainly listens to Timmy all the time.
Debbie , Luke doesn’t have any common sense, that’s his big problem. Also his logic and reasoning has to be found wanting at nearly every turn.
Just read his latest rants above and you soon understand he’s also a fairly delusiuonal sort of fellow as well.
Burying guns and shooting poofters etc is about as silly as it gets. Just for Luke’s info I’m not a libertarian but I agree with some of their ideas, ditto coalition and some true blue Labor ideas as well.
I’m certainly a practical greeny but I really dislike the Greens. But basically I’m a fair minded ( I hope ) conservative with a very good BS meter on hand at all times.
That’s OK Neville,
he likes to paint me as a CWA lammie maker or alternatively living in a rice swamp. Personal attacks and using hyperbole say more about the person doing it than the person they’re trying to attack/bully.
That new senator in Vic is far less likely to damage our political process than some of the greens.
Flannery will be long departed this mortal coil before his property is inundated. The point is leaving the goal posts intact is that Flannery and Gillard’s property is above IPCC projected levels of change and not subject to imminent threat. Simple point.
In fact, old tide gauges show sea level rise as an old and placid affair. (Hansen’s mad predictions many years back about his office in NY have been amended, disputed etc, but the main point is that the rate of eleven or so inches a century (which has not accelerated) for the NY gauges goes way back beyond the 20th century. It’s even less eventful in these southern parts. There’s just nothin’ doin’ with SLR that wasn’t doin’ one hundred and fifty years ago, except rises may be a bit slower since the 1860s. (As our old salt, SD, had anecdotised many times for the enlightenment of our aging urban coffee clutcher.)
All we have to debate is the niftiness of the escape clauses and back doors left by the likes of Timmy ’25m’ Flannery, Jim ‘Venus Syndrome’ Hansen, Robin ‘High Side’ Williams…and wonder that such blatant frauds can find defenders among the weakest of weak heads.
Maybe one too many bumps on the goal posts?
Timmy ’25m’ Flannery, Jim ‘Venus Syndrome’ Hansen, Robin ‘High Side’ Williams
hahahahahahaha “High side” Williams hahahahaha
Sounding nice and manic there, Luke. Now, one more coffee, then it’s off to the Deltoids with you. You can bite and scratch as many as you like over there. And when you come back, if you behave, you’ll get a pat on the head and some extra Meatie Bites.
But sighing and snarling round here won’t get you any Meatie Bites at all, got it?
But it was funny Robert. . . despite the fact that we can never trust why Luke goes for the ha ha ha!
I just went for a look at deltoid. They finally figured out was September 🙂
That Jeff Harvey and that Loth dude are seriously creepy . . .SERIOUSLY CREEPY!
Jim ‘Venus Syndrome’ Hansen – did he really say the “oceans will boil”. Yes he did!
And it seems Luke believes him? Oh deary me.
Jennifer.
The Howard government did more damage to Australia’s agricultural sector than all the other governments Australia has seen, save that the Rudd/Gillard government came within a whisker of wiping out agriculture altogether with its carbon tax/ETS. As has been called for by some of our university professors.
This started ten years earlier when the coalition was in opposition.
The National Farmers Federation in the mid 1980s hit on the brainwave that if we took the moral high ground in economics all the world would follow our example. We would abolish all government interference in our industry, then, when the rest of the world followed our example, we, being the world’s most efficient producers, would be on top of the pile.
The rest of the world was not the least bit interested, instead increasing support for agriculture. Yet the NFF and all political parties have stuck to that policy in the face of failure for more than 25 years.
This is why Australia’s farmers now need government assistance every time it rains too much or too little.
When in 1989 the Hawke government seized the management of the wool marketing system and bankrupted it the coalition supported the action. This was damage enough, but when the Howard government came to power, they, citing the Law of Supply and Demand, and demonstrating that they had not the slightest comprehension of either supply or demand, bankrupted the entire world trade in wool.
Then there was the expropriation of farmers’ property rights with the bans on clearing of land.
It was the Howard government which abolished the Australian Wheat Board which had, by eliminating a layer of middlemen from the trade in wheat, made it possible for Australia’s wheat industry to compete on the heavily subsidised world market without subsidies.
Then the most despicable act of all.
It was the Howard government who threw AWB Ltd, the grower owned company which had replaced the Wheat Board, to the wolves, when Rudd and the Marxists in our media launched an attack on Australia’s wheat trade with Iraq.
There was no secret about the inland trucking fees which AWB paid for moving the wheat from the ports to the inland cities. This was the $300 million that the ALP and SMH claimed was financing Saddam Hussein’s armoury.
I, with no special source of information, knew at the time that those inland trucking fees were being paid, how much was being paid, and why, and that those payments had been justified and approved both by the Australian government and the UN, who paid for them. Alexander Downer had been closely involved.
Yet the Howard government just sat back and let AWB Ltd get trashed by the Marxists in the ALP and our media, and shysters in the US wheat trade who wanted to cut us out of the market.
Because, having been born out of the old Wheat Board, AWB Ltd was in their view a bastard child, not a product of their Free Market theory.
OK dudes and dudettes – this is a BIGGIE – so wakey wakey – drop the lammies
Despite the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the annual-mean global temperature has not risen in the twenty-first century, challenging the prevailing view that anthropogenic forcing causes climate warming. Various mechanisms have been proposed for this hiatus in global warming, but their relative importance has not been quantified, hampering observational estimates of climate sensitivity. Here we show that accounting for recent cooling in the eastern equatorial Pacific reconciles climate simulations and observations. We present a novel method of uncovering mechanisms for global temperature change by prescribing, in addition to radiative forcing, the observed history of sea surface temperature over the central to eastern tropical Pacific in a climate model. Although the surface temperature prescription is limited to only 8.2% of the global surface, our model reproduces the annual-mean global temperature remarkably well with correlation coefficient r = 0.97 for 1970–2012 (which includes the current hiatus and a period of accelerated global warming). Moreover, our simulation captures major seasonal and regional characteristics of the hiatus, including the intensified Walker circulation, the winter cooling in northwestern North America and the prolonged drought in the southern USA. Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability, tied specifically to a La-Niña-like decadal cooling. Although similar decadal hiatus events may occur in the future, the multi-decadal warming trend is very likely to continue with greenhouse gas increase.
Nature doi: 10.1038/nature12534
Like frigging say what !!!!
Tamino has the ducks guts http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/seasonal-nino/#comment-83156
If so – BE AFRAID – be very AFRAID ! And Abbott et al will go down in history as mega-idiots.
Go on – go your hardest dumb bums.
He’s just trying get you to drop your lammies so he can eat them off the floor. And that makes him even more hyperactive. Then he runs out and buys the latest climate console, starts playing with the shiny new knobs and thinks it’s all real.
one out of ten for intelligence Grandad
Or as Elmer Fudd would say to Daffy Duck:
BE AFWAID – be very AFWAID !
Luke , yer say, sigh ) that Flannery will have long shuffled off this mortal coil
before his property is inundated by sea-rise. I do hope not. Though I have
no luv fer Tim, I do not wish his life cut short. A decade? No, wait, 2006+10
=2016. But 3 brief years left.
Beth the serf.
Luke
‘And Abbott et al will go down in history as mega-idiots.’
What if it goes the other way Luke?
I agree with Jennifer. http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/abbott-open-for-business-and-multinational-lawsuits/700/ Not even Labor or John Howard would sign such agreements which gives more of our sovereignty to foreign corporations. Tony Abbott is seems, is willing to sell off anything to pay for debt.
All Tony has to do is to get the RBA to do its job and start creating some credit for us instead of paying OS Central banks to create it from nothing and we get taxed into poverty.