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.
Australia follows the two house Westminster Parliamentary system. There is a federal government as well as state governments.
The electoral voting system is a not a first past the post system – rather a proportional voting / preference system. The winner of a seat in one of the houses combines primary votes and receives a number of booster votes of preference from other candidates in the seat.
The Senate is a highly suspect system. e.g. There are Green Senators that can receive only 5 – 6 % of primary vote however preferences will get them elected to a seat – (Crazy).
The Lower House (House of Representatives) majority forms the government of the day.
The current governement os the Labor Party (more or less equivalent to the Democrats). They rely on the Green party for preferences – this gets them elected to power. (The Greens are your normal run of the mill watermelons).
The Current opposition is the conservatives – The Liberal party and a coalition of the National party .
The Labor party has a clear majority on the lower house however there is a balance of power in the Senate with a few Independents. The government requires the vote of the Independents and the greens to get a bill passed through the Senate.
Bills of law are not usually voted on if there is an agreement or bi-partisan approach.
The Labor government was not voted in on Green issues. Rather, the last conservative Prime Minister (John Howard) made an electoral blunder on domestic Union affiliated issues. (Work Choices).
The Labor party – and government is not a party of the people. Policy is decided by a Caucus ( an inner party committee – not necessarily elected officials). Elected members must vote on bills along party lines – as decided by Caucus – except in the rare occasions of a free member vote – e.g. abortion issues (Vote of Conscious).
The current Prime Minister (The Parliamentary leader) is Mr Kevin Rudd (KRudd). He was a career diplomat. He is also known as a bit of a megalomaniac and has Visions of Grandeur. His ultimate aim is to have some high ranking position at the U.N.
He has made some diplomatic gaffes in the last couple of months and some of the near neighbours are not overly happy with his performance. Hence he wants to big note himself in CopenHoaxen with a carbon trading scheme in hand.
Mt KRudd’s Labor government has introduced an Emission Trading Scheme bill into Parliament. The conservative opposition rather then rejecting the bill outright suggested a whole raft of amendments. TRhe conservatives thought that KTuddy would reject those amendments and the bill would not pass throgh until after CopenHoaxen.
The KRuddy made an outflanking maneuver and agreed to all of the Conservatives amendments therefore trapping them onto agreeing to pass the bill. – Just in tome for CopenHoaxen.
The amendments were made up by the Conservative leader – Mr. Malcolm Turnbull over the objections of the majority of his colleagues. Mr Turnbull is a Merchant Banker and has allegedly been formerly associated with Goldman Sachs. He is also a bot of a warminista.
So. The ETS bill has reached the Senate for debate and passing. In the last week a revolution occurred within the opposition ranks. It seems the majority of the conservative members are not in favor of ant ETS. They see it for what is reealyy is – a crippling Tax.
The mutineers have twice called for the leader to resign – he has survived once. A leadership spill will take place on Tuesday.
The Bill will be in the house on Monday. It is up to the mutineers to have the vote on passage delayed until after the leadership spill. The government may try and ram the vote through on Monday while Mr Turnbull is still the leader.
FWIW the Greens are against the Bill in its present form. They also can see that the ETS is just another crippling Tax and will have no effect on reducing alleged Green House gas emissions. However, they are likely to vote with the bill on Monday. If the bill makes it through Monday without a vote they will probably side with the new conservative leader and strike it down hoping to opt for stronger legislation later.
Anthony
I emailed Phil Willis MP chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee and asked him to talk to you about your surface stations survey. I also suggested he look into the role of skepticism and science.
Whether he does either is doubtful, but as one of the UK supermarket chain says “every little helps”
>>Doesn’t cost anything to put a flyer in the back window of your car.
Yes, but we have no flier to print.
Anyone good with Photoshop, and can put together a nice A4 and A5 flier for us to print out?
.
PS
for anyone else in the UK who wants to e-mail their MP.
http://www.parliament.uk/mpslordsandoffices/mps_and_lords/alms.cfm
In Australia the prime minister is pushing extremely hard for a carbon pollution reduction scheme. The term carbon pollution is in itself somewhat of a misnomer for a major element, in mammalian species at least, is carbon. However in addition to spruiking carbon pollution this prime minister wants to see the population of Australia grow from 22 million to 35 million. The dichotomy of these views is totally lost on the MSM
“Richard (02:22:34) :
In the interests of balance I think as a fellow Australian I should put another point of view and present some facts as they stand currently, in contrast to Andrew Bolt’s view of Liberal Party MPs being “bombarded by emails”. This weekend the Australian newspaper published their Newspoll results. Newspoll is one of the most accurate polling services in Australia. Newspoll results indicate that 67% of all voters want an ETS – further, 61% of country people want an ETS. Of the Liberal/National Party Coalition supporters, 57% are in favour of an ETS, while only 34% are against. In view of these facts, it puts the current Liberal Party boilover on leadership, at the very least, somewhat interesting considering there is a common belief that Liberal Party MP’s are reluctant to support the ETS for fear of being voted out by their electorate. Adding to the intrigure further, more detailed polling by Newspoll indicates that by voting against the ETS is likely to result in no less than 20 members losing their seat in comparison to a pro ETS stance.”
Want an ETS, but why? Because of climate change popaganda? The Australia public, and the world, has been lied to. The Australian public, the majority of the Australian public, have no idea about anything unless it’s on TV or in the MSM.
There has been coverage of ClimateGate (was I the first to call it thus on WUWT?) in Australia but it has been hard to pick out, and would have been lost on the viewers not familiar with the issue.
The last question from Kerry O’Brien to Penny Wong (Minister for Climate Change) in the 7:30 Report covered the CRU emails -which she completely evaded like the rest of the questions:
“KERRY O’BRIEN: Speaking of the science, very quickly, what’s your reaction to the emails from the East Anglia climate change research unit in Britain obtained by hackers, which sceptics are now using to claim that leading scientists are manipulating climate change data to get the outcomes they want to promote climate change. Did those revelations give you any pause for thought, any concern?
PENNY WONG: I looked to where the weight of the science is, where the consensus science is, and I look to the fact that our own scientific institutions in Australia, the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, the international scientific community. I look to …
KERRY O’BRIEN: But these are part of the international science community.
PENNY WONG: I look to these people. And it’s very clear that the weight of scientific opinion, the consensus science is that climate change is real, that human beings are contributing to it and we have to start to do something about it. The time for action is now.”
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2009/s2752437.htm
Australia’s ACA (A Current Affair) also ran a decent balanced anti-AGW story last week:
http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-au&brand=ninemsn&tab=m164
I haven’t watched much TV lately TBH… The Turnbull story seems to override the ETS interest, even though the two are tied. He disingenuously pushed the party room meeting back to Tuesday 1 December so that there could be another full day of senate wrangling on the ETS bill before he gets turfed out as leader.
as for Howard campaigning before his fall last election including an ETS in the party’s policy, everyone knows this was merely to buy votes. No one seriously thought he would introduce the legislation … and certainly not before the rest of the world opted in at the IPCC junkets.
He was playing it for political gain… obviously.
Konrad (23:41:26) :
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.
Rudd didn’t say that. He said his intention was to serve the full term (till next spring). Even there, he has plenty of wiggle room. But he could do it and still look to a double dissolution at the end of term That’s a very good option for him. He cleans out a hostile senate in one go, and still gets a joint sitting after the election, at which the ETS will probably pass even if Labor doesn’t get control of the Senate. But his prospect of getting control would be much better than at a regular election.
Peredux is right in that many of the general community are better informed than the politicians. For at least 10 years there have been many people and organisations in Australia trying to get correct information to the politicians on both sides – Liberal and Labor. You think they understand, then they start talking about emissions trading. Hey, we do not need emissions trading, CO2 is not the culprit – and they give you a glazed look and wander off.
Richard says (inter alia):
The article in The Australian also includes:
Umm, wasn’t mid-September a little before the e-mails were leaked? I’d wager that a fair poll—one that would allow people to vote against an ETS completely rather than just asking whether people support Rudd’s or Turnbull’s ETS—would, if conducted now, yield far different results. By the time of the next poll, there is a slight possibility that more people might have more doubts over the “settled science” and “consensus”.
Andrew Bolt has done an outstanding job down here in Australia as one of the few prominent journalists to challenge greenhouse alarmism. He has shown an impressive grasp of the scientific issues involved and has communicated them clearly to the voters. Most journalists and politicians have simply parroted the ‘consensus’ that ‘climate change is a reality’ (natural or anthropogenic? – they don’t ask!), and that sceptics are ‘denialists’ – an insult with holocaust-denial overtones. They omit to mention that global temperatures have not risen since 1998. Blind faith in the IPCC and computer models, plus junk science about melting polar icecaps, are their forte.
Politics: The Labor party, a centre-left party representing blue-collar laborers through to intellectual social liberals, is led by Kevin Rudd. He wants to pass an ETS before Copenhagen, supposedly setting an example to the world. Since Australia produces only 1.4% of global CO2 emissions, many doubt that this ‘leadership’ will achieve anything except damaging Australia’s economy. Mr Rudd’s party will sell emission-reducing uranium from our huge supplies to China but not India (she has not signed a non-proliferation treaty, yet only wants our uranium for civilian purposes). The Labor party also will not allow Australia to use nuclear power, instead tirelessly recommending ‘renewable energy sources’ which somehow never actually come to much.
Australia’s Liberals equate to US conservatives – they are Liberals in economic terms but tend to conservatism in social matters. They are in coalition with the Nationals – a rural lobby. Turnbull the coalition’s rather liberal (US sense) leader shares Rudd’s view that Australia should pass an ETS before Copenhagen. This has produced a sharp backlash from grassroots and party, with many totally sceptical. Others simply want to see what happens at Copenhagen with the big emitters – China, the US, the EU – before Australia commits herself. They would also like to see what becomes of Climategate – how much of that endlessly promoted ‘consensus’ would survive a critical scrutiny of these revelations?
Australia also has a small but vocal and media-adored Green movement which can produce endless policy absurdities with impunity. It was Australia’s Green movement who gave you Peter Singer, the animal liberationist who won’t eat meat but will kill babies after birth if they are not ‘normal’ (would my extreme myopia have qualified me for such infanticide, I wonder?)
Richard (02:22:34) :
Thats the trouble Richard, when only one side of an argument is forever put to a gullible population, distracted by mind numbing tv programmes, cheap alcohol to keep them sedated and all the rest.
If youre only ever told theres nothing outside the box then youll likely not be inclined to bother looking.
If you really want the perfect summation of what is happening, read Mark Steyn’s brilliant piece here:
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/peer-221438-reviewed-climate.html
”And that’s what Andrew Revkin did, week in, week out: He took the words out of Michael Mann’s mouth and served them up to impressionable readers of the New York Times and opportunist politicians around the world champing at the bit to inaugurate a vast global regulatory body to confiscate trillions of dollars of your hard-earned wealth in the cause of “saving the planet” from an imaginary crisis concocted by a few dozen thuggish ideologues. If you fall for this after the revelations of the past week, you’re as big a dupe as Begley or Revkin.”
“Keith Minto (23:20:17) :
It is the speed of change that is surprising and it has caught the Politicians by surprise. ”
I think this will become more and more surprising. Up till now most people I think haven’t known really that much about it. They just think that reducing pollution can’t be bad what ever.
However, as this tax heist becomes more and more clear people will start looking at the actual evidence, and realise there isn’t any. There’s an interesting article on Pajamas Media about a “civilian” sticking his nose into the data and finding what everyone else has found, that it doesn’t stack up. http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/climategate-the-travails-of-a-global-warming-hobbyist/ and that when you ask them for explications of what they are doing you don’t get any.
I started becoming suspicious when I noticed that although I had seen plenty of reasoned refutations of AGW, I had actually seen [i]no[/i] reasoned defence of it. I have still seen no reasoned defence of it.
An interesting factoid about the recent ban of light bulbs in the EU. I personally had no idea that it actually meant nothing but fluo or halogen light, two lighting systems I have avoided all my life (halogen because it’s ridiculously non-green because of the wattage it takes!). The shop keepers were telling me that people were stocking up.
I think that when people actually start boning up on this, they will all come to the same conclusion the rest of us have.
Thank god for the internet.The mainstream media just can’t be trusted to report openly on issues like this. In fact they’re part of the problem and have to report or suppress at the dictate of their paymasters. In Britain democracy is all but dead and the power of the internet is our only remaining hope as individuals of having any influence on matters that affect our daily lives.
I liked the add… Touch long perhaps… But certainly much better than Polar bears tumbling from the sky and splattering on pavements….
It also gives facts, which is always missing from the AGW proponents.
As to our about to be spilled, Coalition leader?….
Malcolm Turnbull had his chance to lead the Liberal party on Conservative principles. To stand up and fight this violent ETS tax on the Australian people.
He could have stood as a pillar of support for the sceptical viewpoint also and championed scrutiny and transparency.
As an opposition leader he could have asked for the HadCRUT and GISS data bases and methodology to be released in the most public of forums. The Australian Parliament….
…. But he failed in all respects to be a leader, let alone be a conservative leader of a conservative party.
Thus Turnbull must be spilled from it’s leadership.
Andrew Bolt is indeed a shining light in this ever darkening country. It is good to know that some Journalists do seek the truth, for truth’s sake.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2009/s2755430.htm
SIMON SANTOW: He says the most recent poll on the topic, in September this year, showed that two thirds of those asked were still in favour of the Government’s proposed carbon reduction scheme. That was before the amendments, including excluding agriculture, were agreed on earlier this week.
MARTIN O’SHANNESSY: The idea of going it alone had sort of softened up. We find that at the moment about 45 per cent of voters in total feel we should wait till after Copenhagen, 41 per cent saying we should go it alone, the rest are undecided.
So, there’s a bit of a split in the population there and I think if you look at Coalition supporters about six in 10, 58 per cent say we should wait whereas almost the opposite, 51 per cent of Labor supporters say we should go for it now.
End
Why is this poll dragged out now?My bet is the date of the poll is not mentioned in most news articles.
I was thinking that this is moving beyond a simple scandle, it’s an “inconvenient revolution” that has started.
Anthony, you and your readers may not be aware that Andrew Bolt would generally be ignored by most say left of centre right. He does not agree with climate change, he does not agree that anything bad was done to Aboriginal people of Australia (paraphrase but you get my drift)… etc etc… so he is a bit like an extreme Fox News commentator… appeals to his audience but his audience are already converted. So while Mr Bolt is spreading your news it is a bit like having the boy who cried wolf warning you that a pack is on the way down form the mountains. I’m trying not to give you the warmist lefty perspective here, but bolt coverage does not carry the weight it may have once done, as politically he country is trying to move on from the John Howard era and associated policies, greenhouse scepticism being one of them.
But Bulldust you have to admit howard made the bed the Libs are now lying in… he led his troops and ardent followers to the last election backing an ETS.
P Stanbrook (01:59:57)
Thanks for the link to the Cameron article – I got his email last night and sent a salvo back.
It’s wonderful to see so many other like minds are angry/appalled enough to respond like that – there must be hundresds of responses nevermind those who emailed back.
I really do hope he grows a pair and takes this head on. I know he’s been successfully confusing soft LibDem voters with all his husky-hugging, but things have changed during this last week thanks to our FOI2009 friend and great blogs like WUWT and ClimateAudit.
This makes our MPs expense fiddling and MMR scares seem like a storm in a tea cup.
[MODS – posting just disappeared – assume its gone into spam trap?]
http://i48.tinypic.com/2n65jxt.jpg
You also have to take in to account that Rudd’s ETS/CPRS is just about the most lenient sell-out of a policy you could imagine (if you are a warmist). Massive handouts to intensive emitters, agriculture excluded… it is a Claytons ETS (see end for explanation). The coal lobby over here is so powerful, combined with the fact that unions representing workers from our coal areas that could be decimated essentially own the Labor party (Government), that I guess it could never be any other way. Promised investment in the fool’s gold that is carbon capture and storage etc.
Furthermore I feel (and I’m not a Labor voter) that the rush to get it in place PRE Copenhagen is so that we don’t get pressured in to doing something more meaningful POST Copenhagen…. as “pioneers” it will be accepted that as a reward for setting the scene Australia gets a good deal (just like we wrangled in Kyoto).
So then the real “skeptic” would then wonder if this surge of skepticism in the Liberal Party is not in fact some sort of orchestrated ploy to even water down our ETS further, and have Rudd say to the world in private (I did my best, but look at these lunatics I’ve had to deal with). It is so absurd the politics right now that it makes more sense to see it as one big charade as Australian politics, unions and business collude to make sure that we get to set the agenda on how much we reduce our CO2, not some UN Committee (as we dont trust them to be honest).
Lastly, we could then essentially make the switch to nuclear power and end up having to make no reductions elsewhere in our economy.
Your readers should realise that while Rudd and Wong are playing the heart strings of our children’s children’s children etc etc, their ETS delivers anything other than the CO2 reductions suggested by your nemesis the consensus science.
(Claytons – Australian reference to a non-alcoholic wine advert from the 80s I think…. Claytons, the drink you have when you’re not having a drink, so Claytons ETS is the ETS you have when…. get it?).
http://www.climatescience.org.nz/images/PDFs/global_warming_nz2.pdf
IMO the New Zealand climategate situation is the easiest to tackle.FORGET station adjustment – why is the data CRANKED DOWN at least 0.5C in 6/7 cases from the start of the dataset.It’s the smoking gun.Instead of showing the NIWA and raw data charts,show the 7 New Zealand MS charts on the blog.Which New Zealand television stations/newspapers can I email,please?