By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
The Gore Effect has struck again. Al Baby recently visited Canberra accompanied by his usual blizzard to try to convince the tiny band of eccentrics that held the balance of power in the Senate to vote to keep the “carbon” tax that has been pointlessly crippling the Australian economy.
He failed. The Senate upheld the vote in the House to bring the doomed CO2 tax to a timely end. The Australian Labor Party, which had unwisely introduced the hated tax for the sake of clinging on to office for a few more months with the support of the now-decimated Greens, is belatedly trying to whip up support from a skeptical nation for a repeal of the repeal.
Bob Carter, whose measured, eloquent and authoritative lectures all over Australia putting the minuscule global warming of the 20th century into the calming perspective of geological time helped to see off the tax, sends me the following image that the ALP are desperately circulating to their fanatical but dismayed supporters.
The propaganda graphic was accompanied by the usual mawkishly syrupy message from the Labor loonies to useful idiots everywhere:
“Just hours ago, Tony Abbott made Australia the only country in the world to reverse action on climate change.
“Not satisfied with hurting Australians through his cruel Budget, he’s now hurting future generations.
“Labor fought hard to put a price on carbon, and Labor fought hard to move to an emissions trading scheme. Through our climate action policies, investments in renewable energy topped $18 billion and 24,000 jobs in the sector were created. Houses with rooftop solar increased to 2.1 million, and wind-generated energy tripled.
“The Abbott Government and the crossbench in the Senate have taken a wrecking ball to Labor’s action on climate change.
“Let’s show Tony Abbott that we won’t stand for this. We will not give up the fight to securing a clean energy future for our children.”
The Prime Minister’s supporters have not been slow to respond. In no time, they were circulating the following take on the message.
Meanwhile, the tourist postcard industry has not been slow to sense the opportunity for combining celebration of the demise of the tax with some hearty Australian humor. Enjoy!
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“John Carter says:
July 17, 2014 at 5:06 pm
The other photo, the burping camel, is hilarious. But it sort of reinforces the basic ignorance of the issue, doesn’t it? That is – let’s put even more methane into the air. This is a problem.”
Talk of ignorance. Termites and healthy forrest emit more CH4 than all wild and domestic animals combined. Even so at ~1.8ppm/v, I am not worried at all.
clipe says:
July 17, 2014 at 4:46 pm
John Carter, Citing discredited sources does you no credit.
From the WUWT blogroll…
Unreliable*
Skeptical Science – John Cook
* Due to (1) deletion, extension and amending of user comments, and (2) undated post-publication revisions of article contents after significant user commenting.
Not clear here. If you mean referencing the WUWT, it was a source for the point it was supplied for. (A very good one, in fact. See the original comment you’re referring to and the the link)
As for Skeptical Science, errors can be found with any website, it’s a question of how many, what type and how central. Skeptical science is far past most sites in accuracy and objective assessment (rare on climate change these days.) Calling it unreliable doesn’t make it unreliable. Believing it to be unreliable (because if it was not, it would be hard to continue in good faith to so easily discredit basic climate science and most climate scientists) doesn’t make it unreliable.
But regardless, the general point that Skeptical Science made (see, again, their home page http://www.skepticalscience.com/ ), and that I re-stated above, is still centrally relevant here. And it is that:
\Scientific skepticism is good. Simply deciding that something is hooey, and so immediately seeking to discredit that argument with whatever argument can be grabbed (right or wrong, relevant or irrelevant, misrepresented or incomplete or not, etc) in order to do so, and then with whatever argument can be grabbed (right or wrong, relevant or irrelevant, misrepresented or incomplete or not, etc), seeking to support any argument or idea that discredits climate science, is not good.
———
Gary Hladik says:
July 17, 2014 at 4:23 pm
John Carter says (July 17, 2014 at 3:50 pm): “Here’s a better idea for Australia and the U.S. and most nations to deal with the climate change problem…”
What “problem” would that be?”
Re the same
clipe says:
July 17, 2014 at 4:19 pm
What “climate change” problem would that be specifically?
This Problem: http://theworldofairaboveus.blogspot.com/2014/07/whats-really-problem-and-how-bad-and.html
And the issue shouldn’t be called climate change. It confuses the issue, and conflates current climate conditions (or changes) with the problem.
John Carter,
I went to your link.
Would you be so kind as to tell us what your solution actually is? I’m afraid all I see is a bunch of rambling words that seem to at least be spelled correctly.
I have to come clean. Carbon taxes are dumb as a bag of doorknobs but as a BC resident who uses very very little gas and since the BC Carbon Tax is offset by drops in income tax rates, it means someone else pays taxes I used to pay,
So as stupid as the BC. Carbon Tax is, I like it.
@D.B.Cooper – Exactly! The “revenue neutral” BC carbon tax is merely a redistribution tax. The problem with all redistribution taxes is that you have to rely on the “rich” to keep paying for no benefit to themselves. Once they pull the plug, the ponzi scheme collapses.
As long as you do not make it too painful, they will stick around.
Monckton of Brenchley
In reply to Mr Worrall, I’ll be in the Land of the Eructating Camels from 10 Sep to 3 Oct. And I’ll happily have a tinny of XXXX. On my last but one visit to Australia, one Flannelly had been flannelling about the drought that would never see flowing water in the Murray-Darling basin ever again. Within a day or two of my arrival, the clouds gathered, the heavens opened, and so much rain fell on Australia that the sea-level fiddlers blamed it for having caused an unpredicted fall in global sea level. It’s the Monckton Effect.
Dear Lord Monckton, if you make it to Brisbane (or beautiful Hervey Bay, where I live) it will be my pleasure to buy you a pint or 10. Its the least I can do for someone who has done so much to save my country from carbon madness.
Mr Carter is worried about CO2 levels higher than in 800,000 years. In fact, there is some evidence they may be higher than in 20 million years. But the correct response, on the evidence to date, is “So what?”
To trees and plants, CO2 is plant food. Experiment suggests that they would flourish best at concentrations of 2000 ppmv, or five times today’s concentration. Yet at four times today’s concentration we shall run out of affordably recoverable fossil fuels.
If CO2 were a major driver of global temperature, there would have been some global warming in the past couple of decades. There has not been any to speak of.
And CO2 cannot acidify the oceans because they are powerfully buffered by the basalt basis in which they live and slosh and have their being. Besides, the corals evolved when there was 10-20 times today’s CO2 in the air.
So where’s the harm going to come from? Best to wait and spend our scarce resources on dealing with real and far more urgent environmental problems.
Excellent result but [too] late for manufacturing!
John Carter (of Barsoom?) – you do know that atmospheric CO2 is increasing naturally, and that even if we contributed nothing the atmosphere would still have reached 400ppm in our lifetimes. I’m not convinced our contribution is a radicalization of our atmospheric composition. I think it is quite natural, in fact. Regardless, there is yet to be proven that 400ppm is anything but a blessing to plants, and what little surface temperature that has occurred in the last 100 years has served to expand the range of land that can be used for farming. As the population continues to expand so too must our agriculture. What better way than by adding harmless amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere? And we know it is harmless amounts because all IPCC prognostications have failed to materialize.
Regarding changing the GDP – nearly 48% of Americans are no longer contributing, so the individual productivity is certainly changing for the worse. Another global climate collapse from pointless and punitive economic policies will certainly impact our contribution to the global GDP.
I don’t think either of us can convince the other, but it’s a slow day.
Curious George, progressives uncritically supported the most murderous regimes of the 20th century: Lenin’s and Stalin’s USSR (60 million peacetime murders), Mao’s PRC (100 million peacetime murders), Hitler’s Germany after Ribbentrop and before Barbarossa, Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam (at least 100000 peacetime murders), Pol Pot’s Cambodia (2 million peacetime murders), Castro’s Cuba (at least 14000 peacetime murders), and progressives still unashamedly lionize Che Guevara, a known pathological sadist and murderer.
You folks have a lot to answer for. Nevertheless it’s clear progressives as a group are aggressively unrepentant and have avoided any and all introspection concerning their vile alliances and criminal inclinations.
I’m no lover of the religious right either, but the testimony of history says that during the 20th century progressive polities have been more murderous and more dangerous than any known right-wing authoritarianism.
And let’s remember that it was under Woodrow Wilson’s government — the quintessential progressive administration in the US — that the sedition act was passed, forbidding criticism of the government – right in keeping with the standard behavior of states run according to the progressive ideal.
“As for Skeptical Science, errors can be found with any website, it’s a question of how many, what type and how central”
Its not a question. Their “errors” as you call them were deliberate attempts to censor opposition opinion and revise history with stealth edits. That means Skeptical Science does not act in good faith and cannot be trusted. I mean really, if they are this corrupt re something so trivial as blog posts, why would you have any faith in them re more serious issues?
Patrick says:
July 17, 2014 at 5:36 pm
“John Carter says:
July 17, 2014 at 5:06 pm
The other photo, the burping camel, is hilarious. But it sort of reinforces the basic ignorance of the issue, doesn’t it? That is – let’s put even more methane into the air. This is a problem.”
Talk of ignorance. Termites and healthy forrest emit more CH4 than all wild and domestic animals combined. Even so at ~1.8ppm/v, I am not worried at all.
This is good stuff Patrick, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the issue, which is net emissions. That is, something externally being added to the system (namely, into the air) which re-balances (as we have seen for a few hundred years now, more precisely over a slightly more modern time period), into some being absorbed and re-balanced throughout the system, with much of it leading to much higher (but still low) amounts in the atmosphere.
Those low, but relativelymuch higher, amounts in the atmosphere -, because it now re radiates a lot more earth surface emitted thermal radiation (same process by which the earth is not a ball of ice), is a big deal in geological terms. Not for warmer atmospheres, which it will do as well (and is a little, as over time we can start to kind of chart, and feel) but for it’s increased net earth atmospheric energy affect (this is incontrovertible by the way), and which would then start to slowly (at first, anyway) change the main current climate stabilizers (massive permafrost, massive sea ice, relatively constant ocean temperatures, all of which on net are both changing, and showing slowly accelerating changes, over time. (Not year to year, which is meaningless.)
Ruminants are a pretty comical part of the problem (who knew that burping farting camels were a significant contributor). But worldwide, in part because methane, though it breaks down into CO2, is a pretty powerful “greenhouse” molecule, they’re a pretty relevant contributor to the issue, as they’re numbers have been greatly expanded. (including, though well behind a few of the others, camels, of whom there are a surprisingly large number. All name Joe and smoking cigarettes.Kidding on that last part.) Your point is still well taken that part of this is unavoidable. It’s the additional part, and in combination with other additions as well, that is the issue, as there are several other major methane contributors (ruminants are not the main) that are new. And of course this is a problem not just because of methane, but in conjunction with the other long lived gaseous additions.
“John Carter says:
July 17, 2014 at 5:59 pm”
NASA states CH4 is dropping. So “we’re” adding nothing.
Thank you Australia !
John Carter states about SkS “Calling it unreliable doesn’t make it unreliable”, and he’s right. What makes SkS unreliable is that when you point out that something in one of their articles is provably wrong they edit the article without noting it, then make fun of your post because you “didn’t understand” the article.
John Carter says:
July 17, 2014 at 5:37 pm
Now that we’ve cleared that up, what is the “problem”?
Hello, before too much Rah, rah , the wicked carbon witch is dead stuff, remember this is only stage one. We still have stage two of the carbon tax, the 20% of renewables by the year 2020. Its accepted that both solar and wind are erratic and with a very poor output most of the time. They cause problems with the steady state running of the coal fired stations, causing both more CO2 for those who still think that is a problem, but also inefficiencies, thus a higher price for the consumer of that electricity.
Then we have the Green Bank, one of the Land Mines that sweet Julia left lying around. Now as I understand things, the present government cannot tell this Green Bank what to spend the taxpayers money on, but only to keep giving them money.
Only when the governments, both Federal and State pass legislation so that the Utilities can refuse to accept the high priced electricity from both wind and solar will we be truly free of the curse of the Green Lobby.
Snag is a lot of the rooftop solar would be from Liberal voters, the Labor voters could not usually afford it, so will Tony have the Ticker to go against his own voters in the name of the Greater Good of the Country.
Also Windmills are big business, again Liberal supporters, one has to feel sorry for Tony Abbott, what a mess.
Michael John Elliott.
John Carter:
How many thousand people do you want to kill to justify a 10 ppmv decrease in the world’s CO2 level?
YOUR favored – demanded! – current energy and propagandist bombastic economic policies killed 25,000 people in the UK alone last year, and have pushed the world into a economic spiral that has directly harmed billions economically, physically, and even more billions emotionally through added stress and worry.
Let us begin a conversation:
What is the probability of a 0 to -1 decrease in global temperature by the year 2100?
There will be ONLY HARM from that decrease.
What is the probability of a 0 – 2 degree increase in global average temperature by year 2100?
There is NO HARM in that increase, and ONLY GOOD results, by the way.
What is the probability of a 2-4 degree increase in global world temperature by the year 2100?
There also is no established harm in that increase, and only speculation about possible harm. There is, on the other hand, much GOOD from that increase – primarily in more food production, more forage, more fodder, more fuel (for those still burning wood), more sea growth, etc.
Above 4 degrees, there is speculation about harm – but nothing established in the tends of thousands of papers. Only speculation.
Above 6-10 degree increase, there will be some harm, but all of the GOOD above remains. Thus some few thousands suffer (may have to move), but many more billions of real, living people win.
Above 10 degrees increase, MOST research predicts harm, and thus REQUIRES the condemnation of billions of real people to extreme suffering and actual death … just in case.
Now. Try again to justify killing 25,000 people this year. Again. Just so YOU can “feel good” about a deliberately failing energy and economic policy that promises – AS ITS CENTRAL THEME – 86 more years of killing people.
Good on you!
An beacon of hope to the rest of us. Seattle for nothing less than rollback.
I now realise what the “problem” is. The lack of warming.
John Carter spelled it out.
John Carter,
You are making a problem where there is none. Let me explain it this way.
1. Satellites show that the planet is 11% greener from when we first started taking coloured photos from space. This means that the environment is improving, not getting worse.
2. At 180ppm for CO2 concentrations, it is game over, for everything. At a mere 400ppm we are living dangerously close to the edge. We need to go away from that precipice, not towards it.
3. Cold is an order of magnitude worse than warm. The best periods in human history have been during warm periods and the worst have been during cold periods.
4. There is no observed causality link between CO2 and temperature other than the other way where temperature can affect CO2 levels after a lag of between 500 and 800 years probably due to ocean outgassing of CO2.
5. If the current solar minimum depends and we go into a cold period, then large areas of grain production in Russia and Canada stop producing grain. Take food away from people and see how bad things can get.
6. This alarmist mentaility has taken billions of dollars away from energy and other infrastructure that we will need for the next cold cycle. Current and future generations will suffer more than they needed to due to the waste that this alarmism have caused. Their suffering will be increased by the alarmist dogma that seems unable to see the obvious natural cycles that our climate has.
7. The solution for this any every other issue is cheap energy. Making energy cheap allows adaptive solutions to be put in place quickly. Making energy more expensive makes all problems worse and harder to solve.
Nothing you have said here has any validity or is supported by any observational evidence.
The Carbon (SIN) Tax has nothing to do with Australia’s economic situation. Australia’s loss of competitiveness is directly due to vastly overvalued dollar that has been gamed by various central banks as the ultimate sucker’s bet. The Australia Reserve Bank is staffed by hardline economic ideologues who won’t respond in kind to the excessive foreign purchases of a limited amount of Australian dollars. Rather than do what the Swiss have done to protect their local economy from an overvalued Swiss Franc – Australia has simply bent over and taken one for the “team”. That no other western economy has allowed it’s currency to be gamed like Australia’s has – appears to have escaped the dear Lord’s analysis of the Australian economy.
To all of you who think that this repeal of the ‘carbon tax’ is a great breakthrough, you should be aware that it was done for all the wrong reasons. The current ‘liberal’ Government with a few exceptions are firm believers in CAGW due to CO2 emissions. They want to take the perceived moral high ground away from Labor by introducing their own CO2 emission reduction scheme. Meanwhile, both sides are likening people they don’t like to internet trolls and climate skeptics.
“””””…..TimiBoy says:
July 17, 2014 at 1:25 pm
Proud Aussie right here. <—-……"""""
Well Mate; we're proud to have you as our neighbours, on the Big Island. But you still talk kinda funny.
I'll be asking John Key to tag along with your lead.
George
what exactly are you people celebrating?
Mr Abbott said he did not accept that with the carbon price now abolished, and legislation needed for Direct Action yet to pass the Senate, his government was leaving Australia without a mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“We are a government which absolutely appreciates that we have only got one planet and we should pass it on to our children and grandchildren in at least as good shape as we found it,” he said.
“So we are a conservationist government and we will do what we think is the sensible thing to try to bring emissions down.”
Mr Abbott expressed confidence the government could still find support for its plan to pay polluters to reduce their emissions, despite a hostile reception from Labor, the Greens and crossbenchers to Direct Action.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/carbon-tax-is-gone-repeal-bills-pass-the-senate-20140717-3c2he.html#ixzz37mSlJ0Th
How are you going to “pay”?..that money is going to come from what?
John Carter, your blog post that you link to is titled:
As if that alone wasn’t eye-rolling enough after wading through your post I finally come to your Solution, and it’s this:
And any way I try to read that, it just sounds like a ‘Carbon Tax’