Italy caught emitting 10 times as much of a potent greenhouse gas

HFC-23 is 15,000 times as potent as CO2 in the greenhouse gas stakes. It’s only made by six factories in the whole of Europe.

Given that, you would think that they’d have this one esoteric compound completely tracked, measured to the nth, audited and cross checked, right? After all, how devastating would it be if governments can’t report something as simple as HFC-23 accurately, how could they possibly expect to run a global trading scheme on a gas like CO2, which is not just made in hundreds of factories, but thousands of cities, millions of cars, and billions of animals. Well, if you thought someone somewhere had a handle on those numbers, get ready to be corrected. Not only did people think it was a good idea if countries self-assessed their emissions, but they trusted those countries to accurately report numbers that millions of dollars of payments rested on, and nobody was looking too hard over their shoulder.

Who has been emitting twice as much HFC-23 as they admitted? That would be the whole of Western Europe. Italy, apparently, has snuck out 10 times as much.

So what does a “binding target” mean exactly? Not much. When we can’t measure […]

The Green Thing: the old and wise fight back

This was forwarded to me via email.

The modern version of “green” is so tame. When it comes to recycling material, living without disposable goods, and leaving a smaller carbon footprint, the real experts are the long lived people who’ve been there, done that, and did it so much better, so long ago.

Jo

Eco-friendly TV anyone? (via Amberley Working Museum, England). Photo: By Les Chatfield

The Green Thing

The original low carbon lawn mower. Photo: Kallerna

In the line at the supermarket, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.” The cashier responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment.” He was right — our generation didn’t have The Green Thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soft drink bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. […]

Gillard has a problem: Growing Convoy on the way — powers through North Queensland!

1,410 miles or 2,270 km to go

Fifty cars, trucks and vans, and there were at least four helicopters watching the action as the North Queensland Convoy headed through Charters Towers. Images like these will make the Labor Party break into a sweat.

These pics from the You tube of the aerial shots as the convoy went through Charters Towers.

The Convoy travels through Charters Towers

Over 100 in the convoy in the NT last night! ANNIE HESSE Katherine Times (via Carbon Sense Coalition Blog) 18 Aug, 2011 09:17 AM A Convoy of more than 100 vehicles – including road trains, campervans and utes – rolled into Katherine last night to show their support for the Convoy of no Confidence, a convoy heading to Canberra to raise a voice against recent government decisions.

Rashida Khan, who led a trail of vehicles from Darwin to Katherine yesterday, said she was on her way to Canberra to speak up for “some of the toughest people” she knows, who “have been pushed to the edge by the decision to ban live export”.

Have a look at the convoy passing through Ingham: (H/t Val Malkus). Send in those links!

7 out of 10 […]

More photos from both sides of a Nation protesting!

UPDATED: Former CSIRO researcher talks about the lack of freedom to speak against the government.

See Angry Anderson’s speech and Art Raiches speech about the decline of CSIRO: Art Raiche on CSIRO Canberra Protest. Dr Raiche talked of the days when the CSIRO was a world class organisation and worked for Australia, Agriculture and Industry.

“Management learned how to bring the most senior climate scientist under their control. It was OK to think independently…as long as Management approved of it.

We were given very strict, VERY strict guidelines on not publishing anything or publicly discussing any research that could be seen as critical to Government policy.If we did not do it, we would be subject to dismissal.

We had now become a Government Enterprise. We were told by the Chairperson that we Scientists no longer worked for Australia, we had to learn that we worked for the CSIRO.”

Destination Canberra – nearly 4000 km away

This is a protest to set records. For these vehicles in Perth, it’s 4 days of driving nearly every waking hour (and another 4 days minimum to return). The cost of petrol, accommodation, wear and tear and camper-hire, not […]

Tuesday’s protest in Canberra

UPDATED with links to the speeches.

New version of Dr Art Raiche, Retired CSIRO Chief Research Scientist – No Carbon Tax Rally, 16 August 2011<

David Archibald – No Carbon Tax Rally, 16 August 2011

Senator Bronwyn Bishop – No Carbon Tax Rally, 16 August 2011

David Archibald – No Carbon Tax Rally, 16 August 2011

All filmed by Phil Cole and edited by Sean Morris.

August 16th, 2011. It’s just another huge rally at Parliament House.

There was a crowd of 3000 according to the ABC report, but Nick Bryant from the BBC estimated 4,000-5,000, and significantly he also admitted that the crowd was not a red-neck, ute crowd, and that for many it was their first protest. For others, like one doctor, it had cost them dearly to get to the rally (see the quotes from his piece below). Such is the passion of the protesters.

And they filled the lawns. Photo: Dr Jim Sternhell

This is mainstream Australia talking

A few things struck me about crowd. Many of the protesters were old and retired, as one would expect from a protest in the middle of […]

Through the looking glass greenly at the ABC

Is the ABC biased? Do we even need to ask?

The local state Liberals (the conservative party, who are in government in this state of Western Australia) voted overwhelmingly in favor of a Royal Commission on climate change science. Now that is a news story all by itself. It could have had headlines like: “Liberals demand climate scientists be put to the test”, “WA Liberals demand answers from Climate Science”.

Instead the ABC makes its headlines from almost the only person in the room who disagreed:

WA Liberal climate change motion ‘stupid’: Washer and Liberal MP ridicules party’s royal commission idea

Actually, he wasn’t even in the room. As it happens, Mal Washer didn’t attend the conference last weekend, and sums up his total insight into why this motion was passed overwhelmingly:

” I don’t know who brought it up and I don’t know who would be silly enough to support it.”

“I don’t know how many were there when this, I was not there when this happened, right, so I don’t know how many people were there”

“… I don’t know how that slipped through. Whether they’re a bit battle fatigued at the […]

Convoy leaving from Perth 7am tomorrow (Thursday)

Janet Thompson, organizer of the Perth Convoy (the Orange convoy) writes to me:

The Perth Convoy departs Thursday 7am sharp at Belmont Racecourse.

Please come and drive with them for a short while just to give them a big send off on their long journey to Canberra.

Janet also says: “Hey, you gotta watch this!” It’s a Convoy wrap up on Youtube. Nicely done too.

Matt and Janet explain below in a youtube spot, why they are joining the convoy, (as usual, they selflessly don’t mention their own shocking story).

5.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]

Is this Australia’s Tea-Party Moment?

Tomorrow, a road convoy will set off from Port Hedland in Western Australia for a journey across the country. Two more convoys will leave Perth and Cairns on Thursday. By the end of this week, 11 convoys will be in motion, all heading to a single convergence point next Monday. This is the ”convoy of no confidence”. [SMH]

Finally, the mainstream media has realized the Convoy of No Confidence is historic, real, and unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Monday, the news was front page of The Australian (Mass convoy to make ‘real’ voices heard), and thanks to Paul Sheehan, was featured by The Sydney Morning Herald too (Cattlemen driven to desperation by Canberra).

FOR some it’s climate change alarmism; for others too much wasted taxpayers’ money on boatpeople, school halls, or pink batts; and for others still it’s the importation of Chinese apples, the temporary ban on the live cattle trade, or same-sex couples rearing children.

But the common thread in what is emerging as a national Tea Party-style revolt in the form of a “Convoy of No Confidence” to Canberra is a burning conviction that politicians of all persuasions have lost […]

Stop the Environment

More evidence of the backlash against the dominant Green-memes. (There’s a rich field of possibilities there for the taking.) Funny or Die do a pretty good job. UPDATE: hilariously I hear, these are “warmer” personalities, thanks Bananabender and Curt, but if they thought they were poking fun at skeptics, it only shows how badly this has backfired. (The warmer-team are the ones who not only suggest we can control the climate, and they’re already asking us to pay up now for the service.)

"Stop the Environment", Funny or Die video snapshot.

“Stop the Environment“

Warning: Coarse language. (They’re saying, “F U,” to Mother Nature) This is a Funny Or Die creation by Thomas Lennon, Ben Garant, Ed Asner and Mindy Sterling.

Copy 1. 🙂

Stop The Environment from Ed Asner 8.5 out of 10 based on 6 ratings […]

We reclaimed the word Skeptic — next we reclaim the word Scientist

It’s hard to believe, but not long ago, people used to write to me to tell me not to use the word “skeptic” telling me it had a bad name. “Use the word realist” they said. But I wasn’t going to let the forces of darkness get away with destroying the English language. I’m proud to be a skeptic. I wasn’t giving that word up. And besides, I had a feeling that if we stuck with the truth, the distortion the-newspeak-team had set up would come back to bite them, and I rather wanted to whip them with that.

After all, what’s not to like about the word skeptic (or sceptic):

1565–75; From the Latin scepticus, meaning thoughtful, inquiring

From the Greek : skeptikós, means to consider or examine (akin to skopeîn, meaning: to look, “scope”)

“Skeptic” is a prize worth having.

In Nov 2009 I pointed out the bleeding obvious truth: What’s the opposite of skeptical — gullible. It caught on (if I do say so myself).

And if we are the skeptics, then it followed that they are the Unskeptics and who wants to be an Unskeptical Scientist?

Bitten by their own propaganda campaign, the […]

David Archibalds Speech — plus protests coming up

Monday 15th at Tanya Plibersek’s office, Sydney 12 noon – 2pm. 150 Broadway. The Minister for Doomsday.

Tuesday August 16th 2011 Parliament House Canberra 12 noon. Details here

August 22nd The Convoy of No Confidence arrives in Canberra. See Just Grounds for details. (Get the petitions in the post now!)

Climate is a non-problem. What is happening is Cooling

Archibald Speech Rally Canberra 16th August 2011

My first duty to you today is tell you what is happening to the climate. What is happening is cooling. The oceans started cooling in 2003, and the atmosphere is following. There has been no warming since 1998.

In fact, the temperature of planet today is almost the same as it was when satellites first started measuring it in 1979. No one under the age of 32 has experienced global warming. Some of us predate that and remember the heavy frosts of the nineteen seventies. Those frosts are returning, and worse. Solar activity is weakening, and will remain weak for another 22 years.

We in this blessed country will be spared the worst of it, but a large portion of the grain belt in the northern hemisphere […]

The money – you earn it, they print it. Welcome to the world of Corruption.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s obvious (to anyone who knows there’s no free lunch) that one way or another this Festival of Funny Money was going to end in tears. And so it flows… but let’s not forget what lead us to this, the problem that lies under all others.

The government can print (base) money from nothing, and they can set interest rates artificially low so as to encourage private banks to create (bank) money from nothing. And governments keep doing it, because it’s so much easier to be elected handing out loaves and fishes, and grants and solar-rooftop-subsidies, in a froth of easy money and rising asset prices. Any fool can spend someone else’s money, especially when the sucker doesn’t even know it was their money.

Thus does inflation steal from all and sundry. Silently.

Watch them print money… say hello to inflation.

In the real world, we have to repay our debts. But the world of the ruling class never has to make ends meet. Alan Greenspan admitted that this weekend — effectively announcing that the US is the United States of Wonderland, where no matter how high the debt is they can never default — because […]

Guerilla marketing – Get your sticky notes!

Nice. The CanDo team have printed thousands of sticky notes with a message for consumers everywhere. Australian’s can order them and pop them on items that will cost more under The Carbon Tax (ie. that’s everything except subsidized Chinese solar panels, and bird-blending windmills.*)

Take a photo of your most inspiring spots and send it in to CanDo. People are using these sticky notes in restaurants, airports, petrol pumps, at home and in the office.

This is a chance to remind Australians that the Carbon Tax will cost them, and we will never know exactly how much.

Order your sticky notes here

Help them print and send more sticky notes with a donation.

*Actually, no I can’t guarantee that these won’t increase in price too. See Environmental tax threatens green energy research in UK.

5.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]

A sign of the times: Advertisers toss global warming

Are you losing sleep because of the Carbon Tax? (Click to see a large version. Thanks to MaxL)

It used to be that being Green was assumed to be the done thing in any advert promoting something, especially something that aimed at the professional set (like a herbal sleeping tablet). So I was surprised to see an advert, on the front page of The Australian a few days ago (August 3rd) which unashamedly played to those-who-don’t-welcome-The-Carbon-Tax.

At least one herbal supplement supplier thinks the tax is the hot topic stressor of the moment, keeping business people awake at night.

I wanted to keep this turning point for posterity, for the poor PhD student in 2035 analyzing how the Great Global Warming meme went from Nobel prize winning grandeur in 2007 to well-known-scam status five years later. This is a point along the way. As far as I know, it’s a first in the Australian print media.

7.8 out of 10 based on 4 ratings […]

The Petition, and flyers and posters for the convoy

In some towns closer to Canberra there will be so many vehicles that the AFP, and local councils have been called in to help. Some convoys are so large that up to five separate ovals and fields are being arranged per town to accommodate all the traffic overnight.

The final petition has been put together. Many thanks to commentors here. I was not involved in writing it, but I did connect together the people who did, and they found the feedback here useful. Thanks 🙂

Download the final petition PDF file. 7.8 out of 10 based on 4 ratings […]

Al Gore admits defeat

The end of the Great Global Warming Scam is just that much closer.

Al Gore admits defeat:

“When you go and talk to any audience about climate, you hear them washing back at you the same crap over and over and over again,” he continued. “There’s no longer a shared reality on an issue like climate even though the very existence of our civilization is threatened. People have no idea! … It’s no longer acceptable in mixed company, meaning bipartisan company, to use the goddamn word climate. It is not acceptable. They have polluted it to the point where we cannot possibly come to an agreement on it.”

He’s uses all his science degrees to come back with an erudite answer to his critics:

It may be volcanoes.’ Bullshit! ‘It may be sun spots.’ Bullshit! ‘It’s not getting warmer.’ Bullshit!” Gore exclaimed.

Hat Tip Marc Morano: Climate Depot

Hockey Schtick has some fun with it.

Yes, and basically this is an unthreaded thread, where commenters can tell the news. 🙂

6.6 out of 10 based on 8 ratings

Blockbuster: Planetary temperature controls CO2 levels — not humans

There goes another “fingerprint”…

It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels.

Judging by the speech Murry Salby gave at the Sydney Institute, there’s a blockbuster paper coming soon.

Listen to the speech: “Global Emission of Carbon Dioxide: The Contribution from Natural Sources”

Professor Murry Salby is Chair of Climate Science at Macquarie University. He’s been a visiting professorships at Paris, Stockholm, Jerusalem, and Kyoto, and he’s spent time at the Bureau of Meterology in Australia.

Over the last two years he has been looking at C12 and C13 ratios and CO2 levels around the world, and has come to the conclusion that man-made emissions have only a small effect on global CO2 levels. It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels.

CO2 variations do not correlate with man-made emissions. Peaks and falls correlate with hot years (e.g. 1998) and cold years (1991-92). No graphs are available from Salby's speech or paper yet. This graph comes from Tom Quirk's related work (see below).

The higher levels of CO2 in recent […]

The DRAFT(?) petition the Convoy will carry to Canberra is available

UPDATE #2

The final petition will be released NEXT WEEK. Thanks to commenters for feedback here, it’s been very useful and passed on to all the people that matter. It’s been decided that the petition will be redone. The preferential voting point has been dropped and I think the rest of the petition will be carefully reconsidered too. Time is short, so that’s a shame, but Mick Pattel wants to do this properly. And oh my goodness, but the plans for this Convoy are becoming bigger than Ben Hur. You should hear behind the scenes! They are looking for 4 or 5 ovals in some towns in order to accommodate the trucks and cars and caravans… HUGE! — Jo

The Convoy to Canberra protest is generating a massive response. Organizers have been astounded at the number of cars and trucks joining in. Gobsmacked! It is shaping up to be a historic event! Remember, even if you can’t drive the whole way, you can show you support and join the convoy just for an hour, especially at the start to send them on their way! 🙂

The cover of the petition is copied below for people to read. Please […]

We can lower Australian CO2 emissions by… (wait for it) building new coal plants!

A joint writing project: Jo Nova & Tony Cox,

based on an idea and research by Anton Lang (who writes as TonyfromOz at PAPundits)

It’s the paradox that will torture the Greens. What if the best way to achieve their environmental aims as well as providing jobs and power was to build more coal fired power stations? Imagine if we could reduce CO2 emissions by more than 5%, supply 24 hour baseload electricity, create jobs, and save thousands of square kilometres of Australian bush from industrial domination. Imagine if “New Coal” turned out to be the lowest cost alternative as well? Anton Lang has researched it, and Tony Cox has confirmed that the big numbers make sense with an Australian electricity company (who shall not be named). Selling the Carbon Tax in Neverland is already a public debate that’s pretzel tied in impossible contradictions, so what’s one more unlikely twist? Possibly, just enough to get us out of a knot, or at least enough to expose the real aims of the carbon reduction plan. Old existing large scale coal fired power plants in Australia are all twenty to forty years old. Major advances […]

The Branch Carbonian Cult: and the difference between “denier” and “cultist”. One may be true.

Queen Meave and the Druid, Eleanor Hull, The Boys’ Cuchulainn, Image: S. Reid.

Some commenters wonder why I allow the word cultist, but sometimes there is no better term. Remember, apocalyptic storms are coming, and we’re all going to die, unless we heed the prophesies of the new Gods of Science.

What’s the difference between a real disaster foretold by scientists, or a cult? Evidence, for starters, and we’re still waiting for observations that support the idea that a catastrophe is coming, but there are more clues.

In normal conversations people can be, you know, wrong, but in a cult, wrongness is not a comment on a scientific point, it’s a statement of identity and a judgment of moral fitness. Those who speak against the (insert doctrine) are not just wrong, they are evil, immoral, and not “worthy” of polite conversation. Believers who become skeptics, are exiled (think “apostate”) and let’s not forget the sacrifices for penance (anyone want to buy a carbon credit for their sins?).

Then there’s the machinations to avoid dealing with reality. No matter what evidence skeptics point to, the answer is effectively always the same: the weather-balloons, satellites, ocean buoys and temperature proxies are […]