Many here in the USA got their first inkling of the extraordinary events going on in Australia with the vote that was supposed to happen in parliament on Friday over “ETS” or Emissions Trading Scheme, with this WUWT post:
Ripples of Climategate? Liberal MP’s desert Turnbull in Australia over emissions trading scheme
On Friday, 12 Liberal members of parliament resigned their frontbench positions rather than be forced into a party line vote for ETS. That is quite a statement. The MP’s are hearing from their constituents in large numbers. From ABC news in Australia, this snippet:
“The phone lines have been in meltdown with people saying that the Liberal Party would not be doing its job as an Opposition simply to pass this thing without the scrutiny that people calling my office think it demands,” he [MP Tony Abbott] said.
Here’s a YouTube video being circulated in Australia:
When I ran my story Ripples of Climategate? on Thursday, I suggested that Climategate was being heard by the people of Australia, but I got a number of comments from people in Australia who posted on WUWT saying that they aren’t hearing about it in the mainstream media there.
Andrew Bolt, columnist and blogger for the Herald Sun, answered my query today on what is happening with ETS as it relates to “Climategate”:
From: Bolt, Andrew
Sent: Friday, November 27, 2009 5:07 PM
To: Anthony Watts – mobile
Subject: RE: Climategate in Australia
Several MPs have indeed mentioned the emails in their party room speeches, and your correspondents miss the way MPs actually pick up things.
Yes, it’s true that the emails have not yet had quite the coverage they deserve. That said, my column appears in the biggest selling paper. My blog is the biggest political one in the country, and I suspect is read or at least occasionally checked by most Liberal MPs.
I’ve talked about Climategate on radio stations in four states, including the highest-rating AM shows in Sydney and Melbourne. Some talkback shows have flogged the issue, particularly in Brisbane and Sydney. Readers of the blog and other sources, or listeners to Sydney talkback in particular, have bombarded their MPs with emails mentioning it. I’ve debated it on the ABC (your BBC) on its flagship late-night political show, watched by many politicians. And still that doesn’t cover it all.
Many MPs have been scared to challenge a “consensus”, fearing they may not just be outgunned but simply wrong. The emails give some extra confidence. I doubt more than a handful at best would not know of them, and no sceptic would not be emboldened by them.
In all this, however, many other factors are at play, including an assessment of the merits of the emissions trading bill, the wisdom of passing it now, the terrible leadership of Malcolm Turnbull and more.
Andrew Bolt
It would seem, the people and their representatives are bypassing the MSM in favor of the Internet and Talk Radio.
The ETS vote has been delayed until Monday, and there may well be a leadership “spill” before the vote. If ETS fails in Australia, it will the first eco-political casualty affected in part by Climategate.
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That video shows how an effective ad can be created with no fancy effects whatsoever (except a soundtrack). However, the fast-flash text-review towards the end goes by too fast.
The political groundswell in opposition to the political travesty of AGW-related measures is still mostly hidden and silent. Just look at how many days it was before Drudge picked up on it and starting running links to the stories. For many folks that only occasionally catch the news, usually from the main broadcast media, they still don’t know there’s such a thing as climategate and haven’t a clue as to the meaning of, “hide the decline.” The issue still needs to be pressed on all venues till no one dares ignore it.
I believe that Labor only needs 7 votes for this to pass on Monday and be enacted in the middle of 2011 ! so there is need to hurry with this legislation at all, except to enhance the prestige of Kevin Rudd prior to Copenhagen and perhaps capture public opinion before the mood changes. But it is already changing and very rapidly.
This is proving to be a very interesting weekend.
Using that much bandwidth for a bit of text does diminish the credibility somewhat. However, I agree that we are in a serious recession – the escalating recession that’s been going on for the last 200 years. I will never be able to afford even a fraction of what my grandparents took for granted. That probably won’t change as long as we keep talking about the weather.
It’s a little dramatic, but no way as bad at the “black baloons” popping out of electical appliances and floating up in to the sky ads (Which doesn’t seem to be screened anymore).
It is also important to note that the Aussie ETS has origins, which started about 10 years ago, in the Liberal party. So I don’t value any of this.
All the same, Turnbull is an childish idiot in on the carbon scam (It’s actually called a “carbon” problem here in Australia in the MSM) as he and his chums stand to make lots of money out of a CPRS (ETS).
Interesting that the New Zealand gummint rushed their ETS into law, just before NIWAGate.
An ETS has been in place in Europe since 2004. It’s done nothing but raise shedloads of cash and CO2 still rises.
New was the second country to introduce a scheme and Australia will soon follow I am affraid, followed by the US.
In the Australian Senate, 39 votes are needed for the ETS to pass. Labor, which has proposed it, has 32. The Greens have 5, and although they are threatening to oppose because it does not go far enough, they will likely vote for it when the crunch comes. The Liberals have 32, and under Turnbull’s leadership would nominally support it, so even with defections it would have pass easily. To block it, in the present torrid circumstances, they have to act with remarkable unanimity.
But voting to block the ETS for a lot of them is suicidal. For then Rudd could call for a double dissolution election, with all seats in both Houses being vacated. Reuters:
And that’s before the chaos of a leadership change. So it’s hard to hold the line. And if it is blocked, after the election there follows a double dissolution sitting, at which the ETS would pass easily, even if Labor does not gain control of the Senate.
Turnbull claims he’s had 850 emails with 750 supporting the ETS. (Front page SMH today) … and surprise, surprise not even a mention of ClimateGate !
Dr Kevin Trenberth,
1, “The fact is we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
2, “How come you do not agree with a statement that says we are no where close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter. We are not close to balancing the energy budget. The fact that we can not account for what is happening in the climate system makes any consideration of geoengineering quite hopeless as we will never be able to tell if it is successful or not! It is a travesty!
‘Experts’ have enthusiastically promoted a message of impending climate disaster. But when Kevin Trenberth admits that he can’t explain what is going on, we should thank him for his candor, put aside the message, defer planned legislation, cancel international meetings and look more closely at the causes of climate change.
Its full on here this weekend – the media coverage is simply what suits vested interests and not the people – the good thing is people are now talking and asking questions with many saying what is going on! We have the Nationals and a large part of the liberals now standing up. There are many in Labor who support the cause but to speak out could mean they resign from their party. If we could get a bipartisan approach to this and knock it well and truly on the head it would be brilliant.
As well as Andrew some great sites for people to go to;
Joanne Nova – great comment
http://joannenova.com.au/
Barnaby Joyce – petition against ETS
http://www.barnabyjoyce.com.au/
2GB – great radio interviews by Alan Jones
http://www.2gb.com/index.php?option=com_homepage&id=1&Itemid=44
Online petition to Senators against ETS
http://listentous.org.au/
Should be an interesting weekend for you folks down under. Hopefully the time will works in your favor as more pressure can be put on the fence sitters.
This is so extraordinary – this time last week the news about CRU was just breaking on the internet. Today there are over 10 million websites carrying your word (climategate) and the story of malpractice at CRU (an almost unknown institution one week ago) is changing the political landscape across the world and beginning to show signs of overshadowing Copenhagen. This alone is amazing.
What is also amazing is that this has happened against a backdrop of years of shrill opposition to the story being given oxygen by the MSM and the main science publications, who are mostly ignoring the scandal or putting out inaccurate accounts that downplay the significance of the publication of the analysis of the released files published daily of WUWT and CA, in fact here in the UK the no 1 item on the news last night was that Copenhagen is going to be a big success because the politicians are pledging themselves in ever greater numbers to the cause of saving the world from the scourge of rising world temperatures and sea levels. The search engines such as Google are also doing their best to smother the story on their news pages.
They say one person cannot change history, but Steve and you have seemingly done that. I, on the other side of the world, a nobody in science, have watched this change being played out in real time on my computer and I can even add my messages to your personal forums where the threads remain relatively manageable lengths of 1- 300 messages per day. A lot of things that have happened on the internet are bad, but what you have done is good for humanity and you both deserve thanks from millions of people who are benefitting from what you are achieving from your homes. Congratulations.
It is the speed of change that is surprising and it has caught the Politicians by surprise. There has been a really strong grass roots movement since last friday by the public to let their local member know that they are ill-informed about this Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and want it delayed. Turnbull (Liberal) has nailed his colors to the mast in promoting passage of the CPRS, he sees it as modern, progressive and preparing Australia for the future. There is a lot of rapid learning going on out there.
Reminds me of Dylan,
“There’s somethin’ goin’ on but you don’t know what it is, do you, mister Jones”
My reading of it is that passing or defeat of the Australian Emissions Trading Scheme is on a knife edge right now and all will be decided on Monday or Tuesday next week.
They left it very late and it has been much ado about simple politics until the last hours. With political fears about the public swallowing of the usual alarmist views (‘science is settled’ and so on) it was me-tooism rather than suffer some political defeat at the polls until the last minute. Not only has a rural based small party been totally opposed all along (and Greens opposed because it didnt go far enough) the true climate realists have revolted and given up everything rather that go along with it. They have been allied to those who simply cannot face tearing into the largest export industry (and provider of 84% of all Australia’s energy) – coal. It has been aided by an unprecedented uprising of public protest to every single party representative demanding a vote against the measure.
There are true believers and only seven votes from the opposition are needed to have it passed next week. Seven true believers to vote on Monday before the Believer-in-Chief, the opposition leader, faces a pary room move to oust him on Tuesday morning.
Consensus never means anything in Science, people had Consensus when the earth was flat, but the skeptic turned it around.
Ian Plimer is worth having a listen too, he’s the only sane one left in Australia with Andrew Bolt!!
http://files.me.com/donaldc/f6egi9.mp3
I am Australian and yes ClimateGate has not been focused on here. Our ABC is pumping the warmist line. In recent times we have been told sea level will rise 1.1 metres. Antartica is melting and that we must get down to 1 ton of emissions each per year by the experts that know! Totally barking mad we generate about 1.2% of emissions or so we guess. Probably if we closed the country down and all left the rest of the world would not notice a change. A disturbing problem is we have electricity generate with brown coal in Victoria. These four stations are the only ones privately owned and as is typical they run on debt. When the ETS passes there is reason to believe they will go into administration rapidly and then be asset stripped. This is because the value will greatly diminished and so no longer cover the debt. I am in Canberra and expect to affected with increased charges and blackouts. Our eastern seaboard and South Australia are in one grid which has about 30 Gw feeding into it, the stations in question are about 8Gw. Our ruling party knows this but have dismissed as nonsense with the statement well they knew it was coming!!! In case someone asks according to our Labor party Nuclear is sort of like raping your Mother so replacement has to be wind or solar!
Dr A Burns, I think Turbull is Labour (he’s so left at the moment), so of course he’s receiving all the Labour supporting emails, he probably is filtering out the hate mail lol 🙂
One bit of cheering news from Australia is that Kevin Rudd (PM) has said he would not be seeking a double dissolution if the Enormous Tax Scam is not passed by the senate. I suspect our glorious leader has detected the stink coming from the CRU leak. If an early election is not threatening, the Liberals can feel safe in voting the tax down in senate. Kevin Rudd may have wanted to take enacted ETS legislation to Copenhagen but he can recover with the excuse that the US is bringing nothing. With the climategate scandal continuing to unfold I believe that Mr. Rudd knows his dreams of a quango retirement job in a UN global government funded by “climate debt” are fast fading.
Hard working moderators – if this is a double post please delete (not the emails 🙂
“…electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
“History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people.”
~~Benjamin Franklin
Could we Northern Hemisphere fans have a little background on the parties, Rudd, and Turnbull, please?
Conservative, liberal, pro/anti AGW, etc?
Thanks.
OT, but my impression is that most of the MSM coverage of late is part of a well-orchestrated campaign to build momentum for some kind of Copenhagen deal.
I am reminded of novice attorneys who prepare a closing statement in advance of trial and stick to that statement even though the evidence came out different than they had anticipated.
In the same way, most of the MSM is not mentioning Climategate because (I suspect) it’s just not part of their game plan.
A week or two ago, I would have tried to avoid sounding like I think there is a conspiracy going on, but now I really think there is an informal conspiracy in the same way that there was an informal conspiracy to refrain from publicizing JFK’s dalliances.
JMHO
Just thinking about the timing.
Top Gear is on this weekend, and I’m sure Jeremy Clarkson will be bouyed about the news. Wonder if he will mention it, or how he could (he’s not going to go in depth), and when will it air in Australia.
It’s just a car show, but it has more viewers than any other show. That could get some movement in Aus, if it airs in time.
C’mon Jezza, do it.
I’m not an Aussie, but from what i understand the basics are:
Minority Government
Labor Party = Kevin Rudd (PM) = pro AGW
Liberal Party = Turnbull (leader of oposition) = he is pro AGW but most of the party is anti AGW
….i think.
quote Keith Minto (23:20:17) “It is the speed of change that is surprising and it has caught the Politicians by surprise. ”
I believe the Australian government has always been suspect about the science of global warming. Rudd got into government on the GW issue, but has opperated very slowly toward his stated goal and with very small steps.
Secondly, most people I talk to either don’t know/care about the issue, or don’t believe it. Very few believe it. Generaly, I think people have not had confidence or a voice to put forth opinion on the science, but felt railroaded into an inevitable corner.
ET has always been a bad idea from a business and home owner point of view. Now they are emboldened to speek out and voice opposition to it.
….isn’t Top Gear filmed several months in advance? He got a brief dig in with the ‘eco-mentalists are stupid’ comment last Sunday though….good for a laff.