Image from WUWT reader “Boudu”
Speaking about Australia and Kevin Rudd’s turnabout in delaying a carbon trading scheme, this quote from WUWT commenter “hareynolds” comes to mind:
In this case, we’ve apparently had a global genocide of common sense, with the last remaining bits taking up residence in Australia. I guess that’s why it’s God’s Country.
True dat.
Actually, NZ is Gods Own – or Godzone, a point illustrated by the late ‘Dick’ Seddon as NZ Prime minister in 1906. On completion of a Colonial Conference in 1906, Seddon addressed the reporters as he was mounting the gangplank of the steamer returning him to NZ, ” I am returning to Gods Own Country”. he died that night of a heart attack.
At least the current NZ Government is blowing cold on AGW but insanity still lurks. I received this message from a local science group advertising a lecture to be given by a NZ Landcare scientist,
“The current global financial crisis comes hard on the heels of several
substantial global studies indicating our impacts on planet earth,
including climate change. Both share a common cause: unbridled growth
and human greed: survival of many species including our own beyond
this present century may be in serious question unless major economic
and social changes are urgently made.”
And here I was, never aware that Human Greed was responsible for AGW.
It looks like the Russians are also exploring new methods.
According to this article in the UK Guardian:
“Russia is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear power stations to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves, causing widespread alarm among environmentalists. ”
See:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/03/russia-arctic-nuclear-power-stations
KimW (22:37:26) : Kiaora! As a loyal Aussie I have to say that NZ is God’s own country at present because you have the Bledisloe Cup. We’ll get it back though.. one day *wink* Go The Wallabies! NZ is a truly beautiful country though. A three week drive through NZ a few years ago made me fall in love with the place. 🙂
These lyrics (by Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty, 1972). . .
Trying to make some sense of it all,
But I can see that it makes no sense at all,
Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor,
‘Cause I don’t think that I can take anymore
Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
. . .come to mind as I read this quote of the week. I don’t know who the two in the middle are but the implication is that they still seem to make sense. So some common sense has settled on Australia – Who else has joined you there in the middle?
I think that this outbreak of ‘common sense’ has more to do with putting the Liberal Party (Conservative) in a difficult position that any major understanding of the Climate Science by Kevin Rudd. I could be wrong as Ian Plimer’s ‘Heaven and Earth’ has just been released and is already into a third print run.This publication together with Industry pressure may have helped with the welcome 12month delay.
Australia is called “the lucky country” blessed with so many minerals and so few people.. Been a couple of times and South of Perth/Bunbury is seriously magic..
And this will be our downfall. No government with the guts to ignore pathetic pleas of exceptionalism by dirty industries and make the hard decisions. The coal industry and friends down here have known with enough certainty for nearly two decades that their time was up and they should invest elsewhere or fade away. Instead, we have lenient concessions granted where there should be none, making any attempts to significantly cut emissions basically useless – a couple of thousand workers in a filthy industry holding to ransom the long term health of the rest of the planet. Interesting times lie ahead.
Apologies if this has already been posted.
I don’t much care for consipracy theories, but the scientific dishonesty of warmists has long puzzled for me – Mann-made global warming, and all that.
Even though the world is now cooling, governments appear fixed on implementing a huge, costly cap and trade program to fight global warming.
Have you seen this video?
O’Reilly says if true, it is bigger than Watergate.
Glenn Beck & Bill O’Reilly: GE, NBC & MSNBC in Corruption Racket with Barack Obama Admin? — 4.23.09
Ironically, several days ago I posted this on WUWT about GE:
AT TIME OF WRITING WIND POWER 2005, E.ON NETZ WAS THE LARGEST WIND POWER GENERATOR IN THE WORLD. THE E.ON REPORT IS HONEST AND RELIABLE – BUT WILL YOUNG BARACK EVER READ IT?
A FURTHER IRONY IS THAT DURING THE RECENT EXTREME COLD WEATHER IN THE UK, THERE WAS NO WIND AND NO WIND POWER – APPARENTLY ALSO COMMON DURING EXTREME SUMMER WARMTH – SO WIND POWER IS NOT THERE WHEN IT IS MOST NEEDED. MORE SUBSIDIES AND HIGHER POWER RATES FOR CONSUMERS ARE NOT THE SOLUTION.
GE SHOULD MAKE A PUBLIC STATEMENT NOW ABOUT THE LIMITATIONS OF WIND POWER, TO PROTECT ITSELF AGAINST BEING SUED INTO OBLIVION IN THE COMING YEARS. AMERICANS ARE VERY LITIGIOUS, AND WIND POWER IS BEING OVERSOLD AS A PANACEA THAT DOES NOT WORK – SOLID GROUNDS FOR A HUGE CLASS-ACTION LAWSUIT.
PERHAPS CLASS-ACTION LAWSUITS WILL ALSO BE BROUGHT AGAINST ALL THE WARMIST SUPPORTERS AND THEIR ORGANIZATIONS, AS THE ENORMOUS WASTE OF MONEY ON A NON-PROBLEM BECOMES APPARENT – IMAGINE ALL THE LITIGATORS IN THE USA LINING UP TO GET IN ON THAT ACTION.
Matt, the planet will survive very well no matter how much coal we burn. I believe you are worried about your own ass rather than the planet’s? Sounds very much like unsubstantiated and as always emotional warming rhetoric to me. Interesting times indeed mainly in how and when the big climbdown will come. I think it’s started.
Matt Bennett (01:59:50) :
And this will be our downfall. No government with the guts to ignore pathetic pleas of exceptionalism by dirty industries and make the hard decisions. The coal industry and friends down here have known with enough certainty for nearly two decades that their time was up and they should invest elsewhere or fade away. Instead, we have lenient concessions granted where there should be none, making any attempts to significantly cut emissions basically useless – a couple of thousand workers in a filthy industry holding to ransom the long term health of the rest of the planet. Interesting times lie ahead.
*********************
Matt, I own no shares in the coal industry but do have some technical background in energy and environment. Not sure that you do – doubt it from your comments.
Coal-fired power plants can be built to high environmental standards at reasonable costs. This means cleaning up almost all real pollution in terms of airborne emissions.
Removing CO2 from coal-fired power plant emissions costs a great deal more, and could be justified ONLY IF there was evidence that CO2 caused a serious problem such as catastrophic global warming. At this point, there is NO such evidence, and significant contrary evidence. Earth is now cooling.
One little detail that you people seem to ignore. Access to cheap, abundant energy is what keeps us and our children alive. While you may be blessed with living in a warm climate, most of us in the developed world live in cold climates – we need energy to heat our homes, and for transportation. Our food travels great distances, especially in winter. We are not prepared to live without fresh fruit and produce, like our great-grandparents did.
Your alternative energy solutions like wind power and fuel ethanol from corn simply do not work effectively or efficiently. They are an economic and environmental disaster. If you want to subsidize these loser technologies, feel free to do so, but leave me free to do more sensible things with my money.
***********************
Although the Australian Government are delaying the ETS they will still introduce bills into parliament to promote wind turbines that will proliferate across the Aussie landscape. Roaring Forties/Hydro Tasmania are waiting for these subsidies, to begin their project in the beautiful Pipers Creek region of the Macedon Ranges in Victoria.
Common sense here ‘down under’? Are you sure?
Bulaman (00:52:47) :
Australia is called “the lucky country” blessed with so many minerals and so few people.. Been a couple of times and South of Perth/Bunbury is seriously magic..
*************************
Cairns area, Great Barrier Reef diving, and Tully River rafting are outstanding.
Great country, great people.
One of my best trips ever. Go Oz!
Decarbonising coal is easy if anybody could actually show a scenario that it would ever be needed. Changing coal to Petroleum liquids is easy too so I’d say the black stuff is definitely Old King Coal at the moment.
Enough of this CO2 climate catastrophe nonsense, the general population have been led blindfolded toward the cliff edge by the AGW industry but I feel the tide is turning.
Matt,
I take it you’re not one of those couple of thousand workers then?
As an Australian, thanks for the compliments re common sense.
Regretfully I have to disagree with the belief in Australia’s supposed common sense in delaying of the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme [ ETS ] implementation.
And here’s why!
Just who does and who does not believe in the global warming / climate change ideology?
The main centres of belief are north America, ie; Canada and the USA, western Europe, UK, Australia and New Zealand
Eastern Europe, Russia and the Central Asian republics simply don’t accept that there is any human influence on the global temperatures at all and are in fact suggesting a long term cooling is now starting to take place in global temperatures.
Japan has just changed direction and officially now does not accept the theory of anthropogenic global warming.
The Koreans couldn’t give a damn as long as they can continue to raise their living standards and keep the North Koreans from wrecking the joint.
China and India with one third of the world’s population between them will pay lip service to AGW if they think there is a buck to be made out of it otherwise forget it.
They have much, much more important and critical things to do and to do them fast on their lists of priorities.
The South East Asians are just trying to raise their living standards by whatever means possible and get a big enough economic and military bite to make their giant neighbors to the north and west pause before trying to vacuum them up into an unwanted copulation.
All of Africa is trying to extricate itself from a deep mire of poverty and an incredibly corrupt and and unending succession of war and incompetent and totally venal dictators.
South America is also trying to raise living standards and with the poverty of the lowest strata of it’s people and immense gaps between the rich and the poor could not give a damn about global warming in any guise.
They have much more important and deeper problems to solve.
The Islamic countries are just too inward looking with their continuous internal psuedo-tribal based political instabilities and low level warfare plus the deepest poverty in many islamic countries to bother about any global warming.
So that leaves the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and Western Europe and the UK as the believers in this western only based belief in the theory than mankind has changed the global temperatures in the last three decades.
Or against a global population of around 6.7 billion people, these countries account for about 800 million or about 12% of the global population.
Even in the above countries we know from recent surveys that less than half of the population believes that mankind is solely responsible for the supposed global temperature rise in the last three decades.
So we are now down to about 300 million people or about 6% of the global population who are possibly the true believers and they are all concentrated in a half dozen political and geographical entities.
That leaves about 6.4 billion people who don’t give a damn about any global warming.
All they want is a better life and some fairness in the way that the wealth of this world is distributed.
In fact in a lot of places they would actually welcome some warming.
But it gets much worse!
There are now a handful of self appointed climate experts from this 6% of the global population who, based entirely on their own hubris and total arrogance in the righteousness of their own personal beliefs, have taken it upon themselves to advocate various and highly dubious at best geo-engineering schemes to try and change the global temperatures to those that they believe are in accordance with their own personal ideology.
The other 6.7 billions of the earth’s people get no say in this nor are they asked or even told.
If the law of unintended consequences holds sway in it’s usual fashion and an unmitigated disaster occurs as the great theories go wrong because of something the experts never thought of, then these incredibly arrogant and perhaps ultimately rather stupid geo-engineering advocates may be responsible for the earth’s peoples and earth’s myriad life forms possibly facing a global extinction not that dissimilar to those extinction catastrophes that very nearly wiped out non bacterial life on Earth in the past eons.
So was the Australian political class very sensible in delaying action on the introduction of an ETS?
No!
The writing was already on the wall.
They are looking over their shoulders at an increasingly cynical electorate as more and more evidence emerges of false claims and the increasing exposure of downright unbelievable claims and lies on the part of more far out climate warming enviro whackos.
Australians are a somewhat cynical mob at the best of times and this cynicism about global warming claims are rapidly increasing within the Australian population.
Unlike the Americans, we do not have a father figure like president who is almost immovable for four years after he / she is elected and therefore we do not look up to our politicians but regard them with somewhat bemused contempt for most of the time.
It is only when things look like they are going very wrong and it becomes obvious that the political class has cocked up again that Australian’s let their politicals know in no uncertain terms just what is thought of them.
That is like the thought of a large dose of arsenic to the average Australian pollie.
With compulsory voting for all citizens we do not have, as seen by Australians, the over the top and somewhat nauseating election conventions and the parties do not need to “get out the vote”.
We have a Prime Minister, the first amongst ministers and he had better watch his back.
If he stuffs up too often and the electorate or party goes cold on him, unlike an incompetent president, he will find himself on the back bench’s rather rapidly.
Prime Minister Rudd read the signals loud and clear and so we get a delay in the ETS, a rather very long delay I feel.
One little detail that you people seem to ignore. Access to cheap, abundant energy is what keeps us and our children alive.
Allan, I can’t speak for Matt, but a substantial number of Leftists who share the alarmist view would delighted if their policies resulted in a massive die-off of human population. If’ you’ve never read The Green Agenda, you need to.
Here’s hoping that real reports about the polar ice conditions will help change the course of this carbon taxation scheme before it is too late.
“Lawrence Solomon:
Thick Arctic ice surprises scientific expedition
Posted: May 04, 2009, 4:09 AM by Lawrence Solomon
Ice in the Arctic is often twice as thick as expected, report surprised scientists who returned last week from a major scientific expedition. The scientists – a 20-member contingent from Canada, the U.S., Germany, and Italy – spent one month exploring the North Pole as well as never-before measured regions of the Arctic. Among their findings: Rather than finding newly formed ice to be two metres thick, “we measured ice thickness up to four metres,” stated a spokesperson for the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research of the Helmholtz Association, Germany’s largest scientific organization.” More at the link.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/05/04/lawrence-solomon-deep-arctic-ice-surprises-scientific-expedition.aspx
“And here I was, never aware that Human Greed was responsible for AGW.”
Why everyone knows that. Just look at the environment in Eastern Europe when it was Communist. Wait… How about China, then? Clean skies, fresh air, peasants happily working away in the fields.
Oh, never mind.
JUST ROSES,ROSES!!
“Those countries were clever: Australia was simply lucky.”
Before using the following words, read the background to the phrase – book title: The Lucky Country
“Thick Arctic ice surprises scientific expedition”
I don’t see this kind of story getting airtime on say the BBC or any other mainsream media outlet, but this on the other hand
“Portuguese Men O’ War invade the Mediterranean”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/5254444/Portuguese-Men-O-War-invade-the-Mediterranean.html
“Climate change is changing the migration patterns of many creatures. If they establish themselves it would be very worrying because they really are very dangerous,” Xavier Pastor, the European director of the Oceana ecological campaigning group”
These creatures do not have any means of propelling themselves, to the best of my knowledge their movement is dictated by ocean currents and wind.
ROM,
YEP !
Prof Philip Stott suggests a new Australian anthem to celebrate. See http://web.me.com/sinfonia1/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Entries/2009/5/4_Mine_On_Australia_Fair.html
Matt Benett:The coal industry and friends down here have known with enough certainty for nearly two decades that their time was up and they should invest elsewhere
Invite them to come to my country to invest. Flee! entrepreneurs, flee!, just leave australia for kangooros and morons to live in.
Hot-air doomsayers
Ian Plimer | May 05, 2009
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25429080-5013479,00.html
Is there any way to get Ian Plimer’s book in the US? I went to Amazon and it says “out of print”
So when Charles announced the introduction into Scotland of the new prayer book he would discover just how little he understood the kingdom of his birth.
The Royal Council had, very obligingly, let it be known that the prayer book had to be introduced at the latest by Easter 1637. Then there was a printing delay. This gave ample time for the Calvinist preachers and Lords to organize exactly what they were going to do. Archbishop Lord, The King, The Council, The Bishops .. everyone fell straight into the trap. Now who ever thought that a little thing like this would start a Revolution. The British Wars began here ……..
Simon Schama – The British Wars
Err…. Copenhagen … 09
Phillip Bratby (09:59:06),that reminds me of another adaptation of ‘Advance Australia Fair’ called ‘Advance Australia’s Fare’.
Written in 1996, it is still apt.
http://www.rogerclarke.com/WM/AAFImproved.html
ROM (04:51:37) :
…
We have a Prime Minister, the first amongst ministers and he had better watch his back.
If he stuffs up too often and the electorate or party goes cold on him, unlike an incompetent president, he will find himself on the back bench’s rather rapidly.
Prime Minister Rudd read the signals loud and clear and so we get a delay in the ETS, a rather very long delay I feel.
ROM – Fabulous post – hear you loud and clear, and couldn’t agree more.
Seems to me that a 1 year delay in the ETS is definently the thin edge of the wedge – the pressure however must be unrelenting on the warming alarmists.
Peter,
You bet I’m not one of those workers. It is an industry not unlike door-to-door encyclopedia sales – doomed and rendered irrelevant in ever-changing times. My point is this could have been forecast over 20 years ago, so don’t expect me to feel much sympathy for the industry. I have about the same amount of respect for those participants as the ones that wander, chain saw in hand, into the pristine Tasmanian old growth forests and fell some of the tallest trees in the world, all for a quick buck. It shows an INCREDIBLE myopia and a complete ignorance of the incalculable services rendered by the world’s forests left standing. But I diverge…..
The point is, the massive amounts of carbon now being thrown into the atmosphere on a time scale of decades, having been locked away for tens of millions of years, IS a source of major concern for the earth’s species no matter how much you might like to bury your head in the sand and ‘think’ otherwise.
Adolfo,
You can gladly have all my “door-to-door encyclopedia-esque” coal investments – that’s like rowing out desperately to scramble aboard the sinking Titanic. Have at it. The rest of us will be busy spending money on “Wikipedia” energies and their derivatives.
ROM (04:51:37) :
Concur completely. Very well expressed.
For those who are interested more about Ian Plimer and what he has to say. Check out the podcast for ABC (Australian) Radio National. On the program “Counterpoint” on 2009-04-27, (ie last week) Plimer gave a 20 minute talk. Quite scathing on Al Gore and Penny Wong. Clearly the talk was dumbed down and not overly scientific in view of the audience. I downloaded it on iTunes.
If you go to:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/
and look for Monday 27th April at time 16:40 you will find a link to Plimer’s talk. You can either download the Transcript or download the MP3 podcast.
Fuelmaker (11:58:02) : My best mate tried to buy Ian Plimer’s book for me last week for my birthday. She went to 7 bookshops here in Sydney and all of them were sold out. She has an order in for me and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. I’m slowing turning her from believer to skeptic and with her appreciation of science I’m sure she’ll love it too. So, far from being out of print, I’d say the printers are having a field day working overtime to get more books on the shelves! Patience, it will appear at some stage in Amazon. You could try http://www.fishpond.com.au/ which states it has 800 copies but I’m not sure if they ship outside of the Antipodes. Hope that helps 🙂
Fuelmaker (11:58:02), if you are looking for Ian Plimer’s book, you may be better off placing an order with the publisher.
http://www.connorcourt.com/catalog1/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=7&products_id=103
Prime Minister Rudd read the signals loud and clear
I find it amazing that Monbiot does not seem to read the clear signal of the changing response to his posts… he is stuck in a groove, but his respondents have become more and more informed and critical…
I agree except for the god part. The idea of god(s) is such a ridiculous concept – somehow accepted as fact by 90% of humanity. I guess I’m the one out of my mind, then?
Lucy Skywalker
With humble respect I would suggest that all the climate blogs I visit fail in two ways.
Both the bloggers and the posters are very limited and quite self centred in the way they dissect the science from a very narrow and wealthy western based viewpoint.
There is rarely if ever, any discussion at all on the attitudes and thinking of the those billions of the world’s citizens outside of the very narrow western science based viewpoint on climate change.
Yet the decisions that are taken by the western politicians based on the beliefs of a tiny coterie of western scientists will have dramatic, far reaching and possibly drastic effects on the rest of the world’s citizens.
And those billions of the world’s citizens will not be consulted or even told when decisions possibly affecting all humans on this planet are taken by that tiny coterie of western scientists.
In my own humble and uneducated fashion I have tried to point this out in the above post.
The second failure is the complete lack of any input by the blogs and their posters on human psychology which is fundamental to so much of the beliefs, non beliefs and dissension over the so called climate change.
You have just raised this by your plaintive asking of why don’t some individuals with very rigid beliefs fail to alter their beliefs in the light of the new evidence that is contrary to their current beliefs.
Even a quick bit of thinking on this will bring the realisation that those bloggers who have the type of psychology that moves them to take an extremist position backed up by very strong and extremist language to support their case and who have gained a great deal of publicity and therefore sit high on the public pedestal will have great difficulty in backing down from this extremist position.
A back down of any type for this type of psychology is almost impossible as to do so is an unambiguous admittance of failure in their own eyes.
So they drive on, all the while steadily heading into that great lost desert of total irrelevance unless they find a great new cause to pursue.
For all successful bloggers with a very large and loyal following it must be one of the great challenges to maintain a sense of your own actual worth and real place in the world and not allow yourself to begin to think that you are superior to others purely because you are being told so by your supplicants on nearly every occasion.
It is a unique and much to be admired successful blogger who can keep their heads in this situation.
Successful politicians are by nature geared to not allowing themselves to be trapped into making extremist statements or using extremist language from which they will have extreme trouble wriggling out of sometime in the future.
So ask yourself this.
How many people would vote for George Monbiot if he stood for a political position?
There I think you have your answer!.
Matt Bennett (16:48:07) :
The point is, the massive amounts of carbon now being thrown into the atmosphere on a time scale of decades, having been locked away for tens of millions of years, IS a source of major concern for the earth’s species no matter how much you might like to bury your head in the sand and ‘think’ otherwise.
So you are saying that the Chinese and Indians are stupid, too, given their obvious lack of concern for your “major concern”? Is their push toward development by means of the construction of hundreds of coal-fired electricity plants stupid? And just why aren’t they concerned about your “major concern” as they act in the best interests of their societies by aggressively constructing their coal-fired electricity plants?
Instead, Matt, perhaps it is you whose “concern” is purely an untethered psychological condition? And you who have no major concern for the Chinese and Indian people?
J.Peden,
“aggressively constructing their coal-fired electricity plants”…
And why wouldn’t they? Get while the gettin’s good, as they say. While this remains the cheapest way to supply growing economies and populations, why wouldn’t these governments, unimpeded by any legislation, build while they can? How does that in ANY way negate the fact that what they are doing spells massive global warming, with all its inherent risks to our populations (along with all the other species) and is reckless and irresponsible in the light of current scientific knowledge? Answer: it doesn’t.
So yes, I am deeply concerned for all peoples. You share the myopic view I talked about earlier if you think this wave of coal-powered construction is the answer. I’d suggest you start reading some of the actual science, in real journals, instead of getting your reassurance from blogs or pseudo-skeptical internet publishings.
Stan Needham (05:26:04) :
“One little detail that you people seem to ignore. Access to cheap, abundant energy is what keeps us and our children alive.”
Allan, I can’t speak for Matt, but a substantial number of Leftists who share the alarmist view would delighted if their policies resulted in a massive die-off of human population. If’ you’ve never read The Green Agenda, you need to.
***************************
Hi Stan,
Yes I’ve read this Green Agenda before, but thank you for the refresher – actually now I need some room freshener after reading quotes from Gore, Hansen and other warmist intellects – I’ve never seen such a concentrated heap of steaming BS in all my life.
Bottom line:
Earth is cooling, not warming. Problem solved! Trillions of dollars and billions of lives saved!
Now young Barack, stop all this CO2 abatement foolishness and save Americans’ money! You’re going to need it for all those bailouts…
Matt Bennett (21:01:01) :
…
I’d suggest you start reading some of the actual science, in real journals, instead of getting your reassurance from blogs or pseudo-skeptical internet publishings.
Matt – you keep making assertions without providing any empirical evidence to back up your assertions.
In the absence of empirical evidence that can be independently validated, why should anyone give your assertions any credibility at all?
Graeme,
May I be so bold as to suggest you actually read the IPCC (2007) report or have you decided that you know better than ‘all them ivory tower scientists’?
You’re going to look pretty stupid if you haven’t even bothered to do that yet and you are knocking the science behind it. If you have – well, what can I say, the citations are all there in peer-reviewed journals of impeccable standard. You’ve got all the empirical evidence you could ever wish to chew on. It’s your choice to ignore it.
Matt Bennett (21:01:01)
Ok, Matt, according to you the Chinese and Indians are indeed stupid and unconcerned about their own societies’ well being. In contrast to yourself.
Matt Bennett (23:49:51):
the citations are all there in peer-reviewed journals of impeccable standard.
Such as those involving the Mann Hockeystick, for example?