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!
“John Carter says
There is no such word as ‘specie’
“””””…….CodeTech says:
July 17, 2014 at 1:41 pm
HEY you looney twits!
CANADA BAILED ON KYOTO. So WE get bragging rights, NOT YOU……”””””
Hold on there. It was us Pacific Islanders wot done it. We of the Shaky Isles, and our Asian pals of the even Shakier Isles; well they’re sort of Tsunami Experts; well that’s a Japanese word anyhow, ain’t it ?? Well ok; Canuckistan did step up also !
Do not post while distracted 😉
John Carter;
but for it’s increased net earth atmospheric energy affect (this is incontrovertible by the way),
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Well John, let me begin by saying welcome to the forum. We get our share of warmists dropping in from time to time, but few as articulate and knowledgeable as you appear to be. Stick around, I urge you, you might learn something and we might too.
But you’re off to a bad start with your explanation above. The net atmospheric energy increase as a consequence of increased CO2 is limited by the heat capacity of the additional CO2. At just 400 parts per million of a substance with a low heat capacity in the first place, this is just a rounding error in terms of “atmospheric energy affect”. Rounding off to a few decimal places….zero.
Energy flux is the issue you are no doubt trying to get at, and the manner in which the energy flux changes across the atmospheric air column. This is what results in a cooler upper atmosphere and a warmer surface temperature. If you are going to lecture others about the physics, I urge you to get it right yourself first.
As for it being incontrovertible by the way, I don’t think you understand what the full scope of the debate is about. For those of us who have studied the matter, an increase of one degree for each doubling of CO2 is a reasonable approximation. This however is rather unremarkable. At current rates of consumption which raise CO2 levels by about 2 ppm per year, it will take, starting from today, 200 years to get a single additional degree out of CO2. In fact, that sensitivity number is calculated against the effective black body temperature of earth, which is -18 C. Based on Stefan Boltzmann Law, and calculated against the average surface temperature of earth, that doubling only results in just over 0.6 degrees, hardly the stuff of nightmares.
Here is where the debate not only becomes “controvertible”, but exceedingly so. The question is not, and never was, what the direct effects of doubling of CO2 were. They are too small to get excited about. The debate is, and always was, about the feedbacks from additional CO2. This is a matter that is hotly contested, and even the United Nations IPCC, the supposed repository of the world’s best and most up to date climate science knowledge, admits that they cannot nail this down with any degree of accuracy, and also admit that the climate models are clearly far too sensitive in terms of feedbacks. That admission being made, your claim not only turns out to be an improper explanation of the physics, but the very models which rely on the physics you were no doubt trying to explain, have proven to be a bust by their biggest promoters, the UN IPCC themselves.
philjourdan says:
July 17, 2014 at 1:31 pm
There are a lot of folks celebrating over at Joanne Nova’s. But of course a couple of wet blankets, unaffected by the tax, are whining about its demise. Notably the butcher of Wiki.
========================================================================
Shouldn’t that be the ‘Butcher of Wiki’? He at least deserves to have his nom de guerre properly capitalized.
@goldminor – You are correct. I will remember in the future.
A happy day here in Oz, but it should be seen in perspective. We’ve still got a superstitious Prime Minister who believes in scarey imponderables like anthropogenic global warming, greenhouse gases and carbon pollution – even when some of his backbenchers could put him right. Even worse, we’ve got many ‘green’ businesses that will lobby to keep their incentives in one form or another.
Margaret Smith says:
July 17, 2014 at 6:53 pm
“John Carter says
There is no such word as ‘specie’
==========================
…. and I think maybe you meant “effect” not “affect” in your link John. I almost tuned out right there, but any time someone appeals to authority and that authority turns out to be himself, it’s worth the amusement value.
People have asked you “what is the problem?” To which you have responded with the conjecture about something bad that’s going to happen in the future.
Are you going to continue evading the question John by linking to the “authority” that happens to be yourself? WHAT IS THE PROBLEM ? Please state it clearly with data. People have asked nicely.
I live in the present, which happens to be going on 30 years and half a doubling’s worth of CO2 “problems”, into this disproved-by-nature conjecture. Your blathering about the conjecture is kind of a joke on here, as is your evasion of the question asked.
If you can’t answer the question asked, then your posts have no standing in the real world. If you can’t say what is the problem, then why would anyone waste time listening to your blathering about the solutions? Solutions to what?
The conjecture(s) turned out to be wrong after 30 years, so stop whipping the dead horse.
The scoreboard here is still 96 to 0 on Kyoto.
John Carter says:
July 17, 2014 at 5:37 pm
Greetings John. I don’t mean to distract you from Davidmhoffer’s excellent post above, so please do not be distracted by my post if you time or interest in responding is limited. Still, I was curious. On what evidence do you base your claim that Skeptical Science provides an objective assessment of … much of anything?
The Australian climate and weather is known to be highly variable: ‘land of droughts and flooding rains’.
The Australian left bureaucracy is known to be rigid, unimaginative, unchanging and slow moving.
Whenever these two interact it becomes a shambles.
By the time they ever get any policies in place to react to bushfires, or drought, or floods, or climate, it’s more than likely the weather or climate has already changed again. That’s why we have things like desalination plants left idle by too much water, and academics and politicians claiming accelerating temperatures well after they have flatlined. It’s also partly why we have a mining tax implemented after most of the boom has passed.
There is an approximate 5-15+ year time lag in Australia between climate and weather and when politicians and legislators try and make a useless attempt to change it. But on the bright side, seeing as the temperatures have now flatlined, it is likely there wont be any further carbon tax for at least 15 years.
Not in the sense Carter was using it. But the word exists for other uses. Googling define specie brings up ^money in the form of coins^ (I think gold or silver coins was meant) and ^in similar kind.^
[Is there no room for puns in a climate catastrophistic’s mind? .mod]
Aussie Jack says
” The carbon tax has nothing to do with Australia’s economic situation.”
One would assume then that taxing heavy industry with the intention of making it locally and globally expensive and thus uncompetitive with subsidised green alternatives has nothing to do with Australia’s economic situation.
Wind Subsidy Industry’s Reputation Up in Smoke which references the original reporting at Yachting Monthly
89% of the annual fires were not reported (105 of the 117).
(subscription required)
18 July: WSJ: Australia’s Carbon Tax Message
Tony Abbott shows that climate absolutists have a problem: democracy
Tony Abbott scored a big win Thursday when the Senate repealed Australia’s carbon tax, fulfilling the Prime Minister’s most prominent promise from last year’s election. The global intelligentsia is now making Mr. Abbott public climate enemy number one, but he deserves applause for honoring his campaign pledge and removing a burden on the Australian economy. As the first developed nation to rebel against the cost of climate scare-mongering, Australia could start a trend that has greens worried….
Oops, instantly in moderation for referencing a verboten site, I guess.
Try this: http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/wind-subsidy-harvesting-industrys-reputation-up-in-smoke-10-times-more-fires-than-reported-tallblokes-talkshop/
Last try: http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/news/536981/wind-turbine-blaze-scandal
omitted WSJ url in previous comment:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/australias-carbon-tax-message-1405616207
NYT & the inevitable focus on the Koch Brothers!
17 July: NYT: Australia Tax Repeal Is Big Blow to Fight Against Emissions
By MICHELLE INNIS, STANLEY REED and CORAL DAVENPORT
Australia’s system was of particular interest to other countries because it was to have been linked with a similar trading program in Europe.Beginning next year, Australian businesses were to be able to buy European emissions allowances to use under the Australian program. A full two-way link between the two systems was to be in force by July 2018.
This arrangement would have connected Europe’s program, the world’s largest, to what looked likely to be the third-largest.
***The deal might have served as a pilot for linking other systems emerging around the world, including those in China and California.
“It is quite a setback to the global discussion of linking schemes and moving toward a global carbon market,” said Marcus Ferdinand, an analyst at Point Carbon, a research firm based in Oslo.
***The Australian vote also further complicates long-running efforts by the United Nations to forge a global climate change treaty in 2015, aimed at committing the world’s largest economies to making deep cuts in their carbon pollution…
In Europe, officials expressed disappointment at Australia’s action.
“The European Union regrets the repeal of Australia’s carbon-pricing mechanism just as new carbon-pricing initiatives are emerging all around the world,” said the European climate action commissioner, Connie Hedegaard. “The E.U. is convinced that pricing carbon is not only the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions but also the tool to make the economic paradigm shift the world needs.”…
The Australian vote resonated in the United States, where environmental advocates have tried and failed for years to enact legislation that would put a price tag on carbon pollution. Opponents of carbon pricing, led by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, have sought to make the issue politically toxic, and groups financed by the brothers’ company, Koch Industries, have run aggressive campaigns against lawmakers who support climate change policy.
“We are drinking Foster’s and putting shrimp on the barbie,” said a celebratory Thomas J. Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, an advocacy group that receives financing from Koch Industries. It is running television ads ahead of the November midterm elections to try to unseat lawmakers who have supported carbon pricing…
Mr. Pyle predicted that other nations with carbon-pricing policies would follow Australia. “Europe is going to be the next one to do wholesale reversals of these policies,” he said. “It’s like salmon heading upstream.”…
Mr. Vitter (Republican Senator David Vitter) said Australia’s vote would give strength to Republicans’ efforts to repeal those (Obama’s) regulations…
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/business/international/australia-tax-repeal-is-big-blow-to-fight-against-emissions.html
Good job Australia, God bless. In the US we are doing our best to keep are heads above water on this and hoping the tied turns against the progressive left. People are starting to understand that this all about control and not the children. We will keep up the fight with the help of blogs like WUWT.
A sincere vote of thanks to courageous people like Anthony Watts, Bob Carter, Jo Nova, Lord Christopher Monckton, Andrew Bolt, Michael Smith, Jennifer Marohasy and all the other dedicated voices and their supporters who have fought for reason against the powerful odds and incessant preaching of the ABC, the Guardian, the Sydney Herald, the Age and the Left climate academia’s disgraceful fear campaign whatever the cost, whatever the truth.
Unfortunately this well earned victory is only one small step in the global scene and will now be lost by the media in the terrible Malaysian Airline shoot down story over Ukraine. As will the fact that the Australian snowfields are recording bumper snow falls and the SE is freezing contrary to the predictions of the Greens that from 10 years ago, unless we followed their dogma we were all going to fry.
And while this magnificent victory should be savoured, this is not the end of the war; it is not even the beginning of the end and it is probably not even the end of the beginning. But I am sure that right, justice and Mother Nature will finally prevail over propaganda. Onwards!
It is excellent news that the Australian Carbon Dioxide Tax has been canned.
If only there was a chance ours, here in the UK, would also be scrapped.
Living in hope…
John Carter says (July 17, 2014 at 5:37 pm): “This Problem: http://theworldofairaboveus.blogspot.com/2014/07/whats-really-problem-and-how-bad-and.html”
Thanks for the link, but it would have been a lot easier just to state the one-sentence “problem” instead of linking to an entire page of (mostly) irrelevant stuff. For the benefit of those still reading this thread, here’s the “problem” in full:
“That is, atmospheric concentrations of the long lived greenhouse gases that ultimately determine how much of the heat reaching the earth and re emitted gets re radiated back to the rest of the atmosphere and back downward, rather than out into space, have now reached levels not collectively seen on earth in several millions years.”
Which is pretty much what I expected. Other commenters have shown why you’re unduly pessimistic (and rather gullible if you think SkS is a reliable site), so instead I’ll offer you some cheer:
So-called “carbon taxes” will not actually curtail emissions of so-called “greenhouse gasses” (that’s not their real purpose) and some nations (China, India, Russia) won’t even try to curtail their emissions. That means emissions will continue unabated, so if you live long enough, you’ll see for yourself if your fears are justified. Congratulations! 🙂
Folks are missing J. Carter’s message: “It’s time to move the Goalposts, come up with another name for “the Problem”, introduce new language, etc.” Different “problem”, same solution(s).
The Beat must go on.
Ed, Mr. Jones says:
July 17, 2014 at 11:02 pm
Folks are missing J. Carter’s message: “It’s time to move the Goalposts, come up with another name for “the Problem”, introduce new language, etc.” Different “problem”, same solution(s).
The Beat must go on.
*
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. 🙂
fascinating, and accurate:
17 July: Market Oracle: Andrew McKillop: Carbon No Longer Captures Australia
(Andrew McKillop, Former chief policy analyst, Division A Policy, DG XVII Energy, European Commission.)
The previous Labour government moved in 2007 to set a “price on carbon” – that is a carbon tax – claiming the new tax would slash emissions by 160 million tons over 13 years, by 2020. It offered voters billions of dollars in compensation for higher energy prices. The “carbon tax offsets” ranged through every nook and cranny set by Keynesian-thinking, from tax breaks and aids to companies and corporations, to welfare payments even including aid for womens’ associations, gay couples, illegal immigrants and to be sure, Australia’s massive environment protection and green business sector. This spending program, as well as the internationally-trifling and tiny amount of CO2 emissions that would be saved (world emissions are around 30 billion tons per year) were openly derided all through his 2013 election campaign by today’s prime minister, the pugnacious “unreconstructed male” who likes sport, beer and nice looking females, Tony Abbott…
The World Bank in May 2014, in its “State and Trends of Carbon Pricing” report on carbon pricing in 40 countries, with an estimated US$30 billion annual value, singled out the Abbott government’s solid opposition to carbon pricing as one of the biggest international threats to “rolling out similar programs” in other developed countries, and much further down the line, in the emerging economies.
Tony Abbott made a campaign “pledge in blood” to voters and business to prioritize growth above climate laws, taxes and supposed “energy transition”, and has delivered on his promise – but the Senate vote also showed that independent senators, with deciding votes in the upper house, also sided with his Liberals. For Labour and the Greens, this was a massive and outright defeat…
While carbon finance and taxation have merely added one small additional brake on the European economy and a further small decline in living standards, the rejection of the Australian proposals by Labour and the Greens may have quite rapid economic effects. Australia’s troubled but massive potential LNG development program and its high-cost infrastructures was directly threatened by the proposed new carbon pricing mechanism. Unlike all other major LNG producers and exporters, the proposed additional energy taxation would have made Australian LNG exporters compete in global markets against suppliers who pay no such tax at all. Many huge spending plans in LNG were on hold, awaiting the result of the vote.
Australia’s coal sector, heavily affected by international trends for coal demand and imports, had also delayed or canceled investments and the mining sector in general – fingered as a “carbon pariah” by Labour and the Greens – was heavil apprehensive about the proposed measures…
Some other major energy users outside the power sector, like national airlines were seriously affected by existing and proposed carbon taxes – Virgin Airlines said in a statement that existing taxes had cost it $27 million in the first 6 months of 2014, pushing it into lossmaking. To be sure, losers will include several Australian power producers who were receiving tax aid and payments to offset increased electricity prices to final consumers, and aid to financing the previous “20% by 2020” Labor government plan – copied on the European model – for massively raising the role of renewable electricity in national power supply by 2020…
The major impact of the Australian decision will however be political. The US Brookings Institution, along with the IPCC, IEA, IBRD and other “climate friendlies” previously described Australia as an “important laboratory and learning opportunity” for “thinking about climate change and energy”. With Japan and Canada, it had been one of the first major countries outside Europe to adopt a carbon price, and Australia was also comparable – in some ways – with the US concerning its energy-intensive lifestyles, industries and commerce, and its CO2 emissions. Australia’s Labour and Greens had however taken “Mother Country” England as a role model, especially when in 2008 the UK Labour party made its rash commitment to “slashing” UK emissions by at least 80% (from a 2005 base) in the 42 years to 2050.
Tony Abbott, who shares the present Canadian government’s antipathy to carbon finance, and always identifies himself as a “climate sceptic” said during a recent visit to Ottawa and Washington that climate change was “not the only or most important problem that the world faces”. This is sure and certain.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article46484.html
I am very pleased to see this silly tax, which does not in itself reduce CO2 emissions globally, and at best merely redistributes where those emiisions come from has been scrapped.
No doubt there will be repeated attempts to re-introduce this tax over the next few years. I suspect that if there is no global temperature rise between now and 2020, there will not be another IPCC report since it will be impossible for the IPCC to keep a staright face and not to accept that (i) that observational evidence suggests that eclimate sensitivity is less than 2 degC per doubling, and (2) that the models upon which all past projections were made significantly over project the warming. In these circumstances, the upshpot will be that the claimed certainty will be diminished and fear of excessive warming will be scaled back.
If Australia can keep its nerve for the next 5 years (and I presume that there will not be a change in government before late 2018/early2019) , and if there is no further warming, then things will look good. Particularly, if the Ozzie economy strengthens in relation to Europe which is shackled to uncompetitive practices and high energy costs.
What should be circulated in Australia, and I would suggest that Lord Monckton (as well as other leading Aussie Sceptics) should try and get this airtime, is the annalysis that Willis did on the the findings of the Japanese IBUKI satellite CO2 data. See his article on the Revenge of the Climate reparations: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/05/the-revenge-of-the-climate-reparations/#more-112572
The data from that satellite showed that Australia was not a net emitter of CO2, but was in fact a carbon sink. In fact, on a per country basis, it ranked the third largest!
The upshot is that as far as the world is concenred, Australia can stand proud. It is not a net emitter of CO2 but rather a net sink. It is extremely ‘clean’. This message has not yet got through to the public, and I suspect that the ‘greens’ and labour would have problems dealing with it.