Christopher Booker explains in The Spectator that it’s not global warming that caused such ghastly floods in the UK, but incompetence and a Green EU wetland plan. He lives near Somerset, (SW England) so he started investigating the rising water six weeks ago — which has now become widespread inundation there, with damages estimated at over £100 million.
(Click to enlarge) Map of Somerset floods | From this BBC page.
As usual, this was a process of small government becoming collectivized big-government.
In the Spectator he writes that before 1996, local groups of farmers and engineers managed the drains, but in 1996 the EA (Environmental Agency) took over. Regular dredging stopped happening, the pumping stations were neglected (or stopped, see the link to the note from the Ghost below), and the local drainage boards found it hard to get anything done with the EA red tape. Then things got worse. In 2002, “the Baroness Young of Old Scone, a Labour peeress, became the agency’s new chief executive”. As Booker goes on to note, she used to run the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Natural England, not that that’s a bad thing per se, just that she had different aims to the people who lived there. The locals saw what was coming, they feared that the river had become choked and silted, they wanted control back. Instead, what they got was some parts of Somerset suddenly “returned to wetland” — but that, it seems, was kinda the goal.
Booker and Richard North pored through documents and found remarkable quotes. According to the Baroness, the cheapest way to get a wetland was to “stop drainage” and let “nature take its course”.
From Christopher Booker in “Revealed: How green ideology turned a deluge into a flood“
“A key part in this had been played by those EU directives which govern almost everything the Environment Agency gets up to — including two with which Baroness Young was already familiar when she presided over the RSPB — setting out the EU’s policy on ‘habitats’ and ‘birds’. But just as important was a 2007 directive on the ‘management of flood risks’, which required ‘flood plains’, in the name of ‘biodiversity’, to be made subject to increased flooding.
“This was just what Lady Young was looking for. She had already been giving lectures and evidence to a House of Lords committee on the EU’s earlier Water Framework directive, proclaiming that one of her agency’s top priorities should be to create more ‘habitats’ for wildlife by allowing wetlands to revert to nature. As she explained in an interview in 2008, creating new nature reserves can be very expensive. By far the cheapest way was simply to allow nature to take its course, by halting the drainage of wetlands such as the Somerset Levels. The recipe she proudly gave in her lectures, repeated to that Lords committee, was: for ‘instant wildlife, just add water’.
“In 2008 her agency therefore produced a 275-page document categorising areas at risk of flooding under six policy options. These ranged from Policy 1, covering areas where flood defences should be improved, down to category 6, where, in the name of ‘biodiversity’, the policy should be to ‘take action to increase the frequency of flooding’. The paper placed the Somerset Levels firmly under Policy 6, where the intention was quite deliberately to allow more flooding. The direct consequences of that we are now seeing round the clock on our television screens.
To get a catastrophe this big takes really Big-Government
It’s not just the EA – it was the EU too
EU policies on waste management made disposal of silt from dredged rivers too expensive and painful. So right across the UK (in the Thames Valley where floods run amok as well) subsidized “conservation schemes” became common and old fashioned dredging went out of style.
Christopher Booker: “The Environment Agency’s response to an enquiry as to why the Thames has also not been properly dredged since 1996 reveals that this was because the new EU waste regulations of that year made regular dredging ‘uneconomical’.
Ultimately this was about wilderness over people:
…. in no nation has this ‘green’ ideology found such a sympathetic response as in Britain, where the senior officials of the EA — 14 of them earning more than £100,000 a year — have long been more swayed by those Agenda 21 doctrines of ‘sustainability’ and ‘biodiversity’ than by any practical concern for the needs of people, homes, businesses and farmland.
Read the whole feature: Revealed: how green ideology turned a deluge into a flood
Don’t miss the the ghost commenter at Tallblokes and Bishop Hill who writes that a key pumphouse was closed in 2008 and the floods were entirely predictable, the EA were warned but what the people of Somerset got was incompetent policy and inaction from start to end. WattsUp has added maps, video and pictures. Anthony Watts also notes that even one Met Office Expert agrees that this was not due to “global warming”. Golly… a pocket of sane.
Meanwhile things are so bad in Somerset, pumps from the Netherlands have been brought in and some say it will take weeks for the water to drain. My sympathies to the affected people all over the UK.
This is not the only consequence of the EU exacerbating the flood problem. George Monbiot (yes that one) took a pot-shot at European Union policy last month in the Daily Mail. Under “Drowned by EU millions: Thought ‘extreme weather’ was to blame for the floods? Wrong. The real culprit is the European subsidies that pay UK farmers to destroy the very trees that soak up the storm.” Monbiot says that to qualify for EU
Yet the roots of trees break up the soil, providing 67 times more drainage than grass.
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Someone please have a look at UN Biospheres in the UK. I dotn ghave time but my guess is the areas ( under agenda 21 ) are destined to have people driven out ( by flooding ) and returned “to nature”.
Those who run this little scheme need to be sacked.
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They certainly need to be sacked. But the end result would be the same if it was simply the incompetence if ideologues. And I’m beginning to realize that it’s harder to tell the difference than I first thought.
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Sorry…..”rewilding” is the phrase I was looking for. The general concept of rewilding is to turn cities into ghettos for the “parasite of humanity” to be squeezed into and all the diseases that come with massive overcrowding, and let nature re-claim the countryside.
In many ways its no different to what the nazis did – “cleanse” a geogrpahical the area of humans and let them be systematically interned & controlled in massive concentration camps ( towns ).
Mind you, one does get concerned when people like philip & charles have pro-population control ideas:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/422879/Did-Prince-Philip-s-population-fears-make-the-royal-family-see-double+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
“For more than 40 years the conservationist Duke of Edinburgh has been warning that overpopulation is storing up disaster for mankind and that without stringent measures to control it, the planet is doomed.
In an interview with the BBC’s Fiona Bruce to mark his 90th birthday in 2011 he said the growing human population was the “biggest problem” adding: “Where we are, there’s nothing else.”
Asked if he would favour a mass sterilisation programme he replied: “Of course not,” but he favoured “voluntary family limitation”.
His views have sparked controversy in the past and in 1986 he wrote in the forword to the book If I Were An Animal: “I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers that it was in danger of extinction. What would be its feelings toward the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist… I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus.”
Now if we have many Peers favouring Agenda 21 ( and effectively implemnting it in 2014 ) , it doesnt take much to wonder what is in store….
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“philip & charles have pro-population control ideas’
Philip should have taken population control much earlier. !
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Wanted to anchor this near the top:
“Climate sceptic to head Abbott review into renewable energy target” (SMH)
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/climate-sceptic-to-head-abbott-review-into-renewable-energy-target-20140217-32vve.html#ixzz2tYnoIVuY
Seems Dick Warburton is to head a review into the RET. This quote is priceless:
It was always, and is always, about the mooney … from the horse’s mouth.
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And just how much of that $1b would be skived out of the taxpayer’s pocket.
If people want to invest in these things themselves, let them go ahead (with proper environmental controls and clean-up responsibilities)
But how about we use our taxpayer money for worthwhile purposes.
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I posted this a little time ago, it’s from Solar Quotes dot com dot au.
It’s all the B.S. you would expect from the solar industry.
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From the horse’s what? I didn’t know you could get manure from that end.
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Hi Kevin,
SFP requires that the land is kept in good agricultural condition. Individual field trees are paid for and woodland is on a separate scheme. Many farmers are on environmental stewardship schemes, which promotes hedges and trees amongst other things; and the payments are increasingly weighted towards these environmental schemes. I really don’t think you can blame a lack of trees: as is often the case, solutions are never derived from just one source.
As usual, the powers that be try to fix a big, long- term problem with short term, vote catching patches that illustrate that they have no appreciation of the big picture.
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The Windsor Floods of 1947 were one of the worst on record there, explains Paul Homewood (15Feb) http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/low-co2-floods-in-windsor/ Then and today the situation is very different.
In March 1947 global air temperature anomalies showed extreme deviation along the line Biscay –Kara Sea http://www.ocean-climate-law.com/Material/nasa_imag/7m3.gif. Northern North Atlantic was very cold with record sea ice in North- and Baltic Sea; while Central/Eastern European temperatures well above average.
This year is very different. Winter has not shown up in Europe yet, with high SST from Biscay to Barents Sea, and across Central and East Europe air temperatures are well above average; see analysis per yesterday (15Feb): http://www.2007seatraining.de/Archiv/_11b.html#Sec
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Well there are a few people I know in Arnhem in Holland that would disagree with you. They said it was unusually cold and packed their bags for a Spanish golfing holiday. Incidentally it was only 14 deg C down there and below freezing in Arnhem and well below freezing in Eastern Europe just a couple of weeks ago.
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“The winter of 1946–1947 was a harsh European winter noted for its effects in the United Kingdom. The UK experienced several cold spells, beginning on 21 January 1947, bringing large drifts of snow to the country, which caused roads and railways to be blocked. …
Mid-March brought milder air to the country which thawed the snow lying on the ground. This snowmelt ran off the frozen ground straight into rivers and caused widespread flooding….” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_1946%E2%80%9347_in_the_United_Kingdom
„The Winter of 1946-47 was the snowiest winter of the 20th Century and is widely believed to be the snowiest winter since 1813-14 even surpassing the winter of 1878-79. The winter struck at a time when the country was recovering from the aftermath of World War II and many essential items were rationed. The CET for the winter was 1.1C….
Many areas were completely snow covered throughout the whole of February and depths of snow were phenomenal, up to 1 to 2 feet of level snow with drifts well in excess of this. It wasn’t until the end of the month, when there were clearer skies that very low minima were recorded over the deep snow cover like -21C at Woburn, -19C at Luton, -16C at Rye and -11C at Dungeness. The CET for February was -1.9C, the coldest February in the CET records.
The severe weather continued into March with even greater ferocity. There were record low March minima with temperatures down to < -20C in a number of places. ….”
http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/index.php?/topic/49288-the-winter-of-1946-47-a-special-report-with-times-articles/
„…..then suddenly in November throughout Europe the temperature sank to under freezing and began the worst winter in living memory. Reaching temperatures of minus 30 degrees Celsius, minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit, this lasted until March 1947….. “ http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art178861.asp
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There is nothing exceptional about the current floods.
According to Anthony Reuben, Statistics analyst, BBC News
The areas affected are different from in 2000 and 2007.
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The number of homes flooded this time is only 10% of the number flooded last time, so that is alright then.
The English have a word that they apply to people who come out with this sort of drivel. The word is “pillock”. A good Old English word, that. Pillocks have been around for a long time in England, since the eleventh century in fact, at the time when England first imported a ruling class from Normandy.
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Rereke:
“The English have a word that they apply to people who come out with this sort of drivel. The word is “pillock”. A good Old English word, that. Pillocks have been around for a long time in England, since the eleventh century in fact, at the time when England first imported a ruling class from Normandy”
–
How you refrained from mentioning Prince Charles shows creditable self-discipline.
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Pillocks have a strong tendency to gravitate towards QUANGOS, where they morph into super-bureaucrats.
Super-bureaucrats are as aware of their own self-importance, as they are not of their own incompetence. Empire building – in this instance it means surrounding themselves with huge tiers of underling bureaucrats.
The system quickly atrophies and decision making grinds to a halt, while studies and reports multiply. The system also has a strong tendency to filter out those who have competence, as they leave out of a mixture of frustration and despair.
QUANGOS are a dream creation for dodgy politicians, as they can pay back favours by filling all the top positions with their cronies. Look at any QUANGO in the UK, finding any competent individuals at high levels is on par with trying to find rocking horse poo in a zoo – it is just not possible.
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Whoops, I forgot to mention the UK’s environment Agency is a a QUANGO, it is not a real government agency.
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bullocky,
Direct descendent, I believe.
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I would not accept that anybody being flooded is “alright”. But if the floods are a signal of catastrophic global warming then there should be a worsening trend. Less homes have been flooded than in 2000, and just 10% of the 2007 level is hardly a worsening trend.
The Guardian is another source of lack of trend. On Sunday it had a piece “On the Thames, centuries of history tell a less apocalyptic flood story“. Basically extreme flooding in the past was often due to rapid snow melt, the last example being in 1947. It was worse in the “Little Ice Age”. It shows that a little warming could be beneficial – at least in temperate Britain where snowfall is infrequent.
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Further to the problem of the seriousness of the 2014. At the Conversation, Neil Macdonald (Senior Lecturer in Risk at University of Liverpool) posted on Monday “Historical record shows these floods are no high-water mark“.
He reveals that the worst flooding in the last 100 years (both in extent and cost) was in 1947. He should have added the cause as well – it was the rapid melting of snow, following by far the worst winter of the century.
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For your entertainment, here’s a link to how Nicholas Stern in the UK’s ‘Guardian’ sees it. It’s their front page article on Friday 14th February:
The title: “Climate change is here now – it could lead to global conflict, yet the politicians squabble”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/13/flooding-storms-uk-climate-change-lord-stern
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Nicholas Stern, amongst others, including HM leader of the opposition, Ed Milliband, believe our current flooding is due to atmospheric CO2 being 398ppm and we can therefore expect “extreme weather” until it is reduced to ???, well who knows? So the question to be asked of him is “how long before the UK’s emission reduction policies, determined by the climate change act 2008 ( author that same Ed Milliband),restore our climatic equanimity?”. We need to adapt to being more dry and more wet by building more reservoirs, to save water, and more drains, to get rid of it again, the exact opposite of current policy. To move from being Hot and Cold to Warm and Cool we need ample amounts of cheap energy, again contrary to the CCA inspired policy!
Lord Stern also praises China for “showing leadership….in how to invest in low carbon growth”. When I last looked their renewables industry was collapsing and they were building coal fired generators as if there was no tomorrow, which, according to Lord Stern, there isn’t.
Observing our new population of boat people, fleeing Thameside Berkshire back to Chelsea & Kensington, I realise that old Nick, disappointed at the absence of the millions of “climate refugees” he predicted in his 2006 report, is now on the road to vindication .
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I do not normally call people names, but Ed Miliband is a hypocrite. He was Minister for Environment and Climate Change when the Climate Change Act 2008 was passed. This commits Britain to reducing its carbon emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050.
Last September Ed Miliband, as Labour leader, launched a major policy initiative to freeze energy prices if Labour get elected in 2015, implying the cause was increasing profits by the energy companies. I analysed the profits of the big six energy companies over from 2009 to 2012.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2013/12/18/labours-hypocrisy-on-rising-energy-bills/
The the major cause of rising energy bills is neither profits, nor the rising cost of fossil fuels. It is the costs of climate change policies, passed onto end users. It is worse than hypocrisy. It is creating a real problem, then making it far worse by destroying businesses, and an effective industry.
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Diogenes2, you ask of Lord Stern
I might be able to help him out with some figures.
The Climate Change Act 2008 aims to reduce UK total carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 from the 1990 baseline. According to World Bank data, this is equivalent to reducing total carbon emissions by 0.573 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent per annum. Global emissions on the same basis were 31.6 in 1990, 34.4 in 2000 and 45.0 in 2010. I conservatively estimate emissions will be 85.0 billion tonnes by 2050 without UK policy, or 84.427 with successful policy. In 2050 baseline the world, without UK policy, will have greenhouse gas emissions 2.69 times those in 1990. With a successful policy by the UK emissions will by 2.67 times higher. Globally there will be a negligible difference in the harm of climate change. The big difference will be here in the UK where people will be significantly worse off through emission reduction policies.
So, even if Lord Stern was right in his 2006 review, the UK’s unilateralist policy will do nothing to stop harmful climate change. If all the major rich countries pursued the same policies successfully (ACEJU = Australia, Canada, EU, Japan and USA) global emissions in 2050 would be still more than twice as high as in 1990. The BICS (Brazil, India, China and South Africa) would have emissions higher than global 1990 emissions, yet average emissions per capita will still be below the 1990 average of the ACEJU countries. Further many other emerging nations would have increased their emissions three-fold or more.
I hope the enlarge on this topic at manicbeancounter.com later in the week. Mitigation policy is worse than I have made out here, when properly understood.
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“the guardian”…….a Communist Rag….
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“Climate change is here now – it could lead to global conflict”
And they are working hard to make sure that happens.
Thing is. People do not generally like totalitarianism, unless they are of the one doing the telling.
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Unfortunately people will have to learn the hard way just how unimportant their lives are to those that worship Agenda 21, and also unfortunate is there will always be those that wish above all to impose such evil on other humans.
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Instead of the democratic normal that the public majority is playing God with the political- and regulating-class in democratic elections. The political- and regulating-class are now in the Western World, with environment and climate, trying to play God on the public?
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The really sad part is the number of people that will be convinced it’s man-made climate change.
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If Australian or American readers are inclined to laugh after looking at the scale at the bottom-left corner of the first graphic, then they are right to laugh. The current floods affect a very small part of a small country, even by British standards.
But it is not nearly as small as the minds of a few people who think that this flooding is somehow proving human emissions of carbon dioxide are the cause.
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If Australian or American readers are inclined to laugh after looking at the scale at the bottom-left corner of the first graphic, then they are right to laugh. The current floods affect a very small part of a small country, even by British standards.
But it is not nearly as small as the minds of a few people who think that this flooding is somehow indicative of human emissions of carbon dioxide being the cause. (Yes, I really do think that.)
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We had 200-300 mm of rain in a day in Australia a few years ago, that covered the land area of a few UKs in size. There was less blaming it on climate change then because some pompous paleontologist was on the tele for many years before telling us that floods were a thing of the past.
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You already said that…..
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I just wander how they can pump the water away from buildings without conflicting with the EA. This water must be much more polluted than the dredging of the rivers.
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Yes, fair question, Svend. What are the UK arrangements for sewage disposal for locations below sea level?
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The idiocy and incompetence of the UK’s Environment Agency is now legendary.
My favourite piece of their ecolunacy is refusing to dredge part of the River Thames because of not wanting to disturb some apparently endangered mollusc that likes to live in the mud on the river bottom.
The inevitable result was hundreds, perhaps thousands, of flooded homes.
Ecoloons who want to preserve supposedly endangered mud molluscs are the same people who are card carrying members of Global Warming Cult.
It is time to purge the ecoloons from all positions of authority in anything to do with the environment. Instead, put in competent managers and engineers who actually know what they are doing.
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Those molluscs were there, before the dredging started. And they are there now that dredging has been stopped. Therefore, they somehow managed to survive decades of dredging, while it occurred.
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The molluscs seed are in the water. They will continue to thrive and prosper as dredging resumes.
I assume that after this farce they will go back to sensible working practices.. maybe.
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I think that would depend on how the people affected react. Which at this point hasn’t been stated.
It’s still a possibility that nothing will change.
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The Thames around London was a flooded plain with many shallow channels flowing into the estuary, 2000 years ago. Every surviving species were hardy enough to cope with dredging.
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London will probably end up as a swamp if some have their way.
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Yep, the green agenda is undoing 2000+ years of real progress.
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Fleet Street used to be the Fleet River.
Just Saying …
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Every time I watch Time Team working in the UK it amazes me how many thousands of acres of land was under water back in the day. Reclaimed marshes and swamps seem to make up a staggering amount of what is now mainly arable farmland and small towns. It was quite common for a “Lord” or local land Barron/chieftain to build his compound in the middle of a swamp and make a road in and out to take advantage of the defensive benefits of the surrounding water.
I almost cant watch Time Team UK these days without thinking “how the hell are we worrying about rising sea levels when there are constructions from the 13th-16th century with their “dock side” amenities at the exact same water level they must have been back in the day. You can see things like shore-side cannon emplacements are STILL shore-side cannon emplacements. There are bollards set where boats would have pulled up and the bollards are still 3ft from the waters edge and above the water line despite being built 300-700 years ago. You could tie a boat to them right now and it would look like they were placed last week.
Same thing watching “The World From Above” on Sunday. They were flying over the Civil War forts in the South of USA. The docksides are still exactly how you would expect them to look if boats were still arriving there today, proximity, water level, the lot.
Finally near my house on the West Bank (lol love that I live on the West Bank) of the Tamar. There is an old ferry from the late 1800s. It now sits on the beach next to where it must have pulled up back in the day. The bollards and the sea wall are right there next to it. Bollards that would have formed one of the docks of the port back then for ships carting the farming and mining produce of the Beaconsfield area. Except now, you couldn’t get up there in a hovercraft. Rising sea levels have all but put the navigable water 200-300m from the shore…… ooops that doesnt make sense does it? Ok maybe it makes sense to a warmist.
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I’ve always thought that the correct response to these people who try to stop progress for some tiny creature is to say..
“Ok you have 8 weeks to re-locate them.”
Get these people off their butts and doing something, if they really care….
but they don’t.
How they ever co-opted the term “progressive party” is beyond me.
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When Hong Kong wanted to build its new airport ecologists protested saying there were rare frogs in the area. The government ordered them to relocate the frogs and all ended happily.
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Yeah but you have to understand that the whole upper class seems to be riddled with occultists.
The upper class has had a histiory involved in the occult dating back many 100s of years – gaia is just the latest ( and probably most lethal ) version of it. The hellfire club comes to mind.
It all comes back to anti-christian occultist / satanic worship of one form or another. What else could provide so much evil?
Problem is this time is there is world wide web of this stuff , set up and run through the UN.
“The hidden hand” as some call it…..
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Because everything they say is a lie.
Progressive as rust.
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To the red thumb guy.. let’s hear your thoughts.
Do you have the intelligence to type ¿
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John Kerry has outlined the USA’s latest trigger for imperialist invasions and international stand-over tactics. Can you guess what it is?
Terrorism? WMDs? Genocide? Nope far more dangerous and pervasive than any of that nonsense. Just when America thought it might have run out of excuses to be a global bully, fate hands them the moral high ground issue of a lifetime.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-17/an-climate-change-threatens-indonesians27-way-of-life3a-us-se/5263344
Michael Crichton nailed it and the average person has no idea they are being led by the nose to their serfdom.
http://youtu.be/MDCCvOv3qZY
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I was absolutely stunned when I saw/heard him on ABC. Reminded me of Rudd in 2007.
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It is annoying when old words can come back to haunt you:
Great question, Senator Kerry. Now what sacrifices must China, USA, and India make in order to “fight” climate change? Who will make the last sacrifice before the mistake of CAGW is abandoned?
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John Kerry/GWB/HGB – 5 words
“Skull and Bones Secret Society”
Skull and Bones is a modern version of the British occult/satanic Hellfire Club.
People think occultism ( satanism/witchcraft ) is a pagan oddity from medaevil times, but its alive and well and running the planet.
This is the reason Kerry sides with killing the economy through supporting “remediation” of CAGW.
Occult evil set up concentration camps in WWII. Look how that wound up.
Hitler was a member of the occult Thule Society.
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Manunmade drainage?
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For some reason , I keep reading that as
“Marmalade drainage”
sorry.. ignore me. 🙂
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Don’t we always?
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What? think of marmalade?
You obviously didn’t ignore me, otherwise you wouldn’t have answered.. (pokes tongue out) 🙂
I wish Jo had some emoticons.
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I am glad she does not.
The consensus side is awash in emoticons.
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I like your avatar, John.
Is that poking out the tongue, straining to think, or straining for some other reason 🙂
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Thanks for the laugh john, I needed that after a day of
dredgerydrudgery. 😉00
Sounds familiar. Man made environmental disasters. In Australia the Greens took over the Environmental agencies and significantly curtailed backburning that helped to prevent bushfires running out of control, because the natural environment is more important than people and their assets. The locals in the CFA who knew how to look after their local area could do nothing without approval from enviro-bureaucrats. They stopped cattle grazing in the high country and let fire destroy it. They increased the area of national parks but did no clearing because that would be “unnatural”, so we have bigger fires in places like the Grampians and Wilsons Prom.
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Although…..around canberra there has been much backburning recently.
So we live in hope.
The canberra fires in 2002 seeemd to make the locals turn on the local eco-loons and tell them to sit down & shut up.
The hope is the loony left and their tree-fairy greeny mates might be thumped back into line with common sense on matters such as this.
Another win has been the restrictive housing laws in the ACT which greatly limited house size in order to stop new houses casting much of a shadow and thus reducing how much area could be used with solar panels ( mind you, not many have solar panels…).
This meant hosues had to be made very small to comply. The devlopers wer elast seen with burning torches and pitchforks looking to open up “discussions”. Last heard the law looks to be reversed.
This is just another way of legislating small crowded housing and reducing human footprint on the wilderness. Agenda 21 in action.
We need to really blow Agenda 21 wide open so people can see it.
I think “Lan*care” is Agenda 21 stuff too.
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The only reason there is back-burning is because it actually affected Canberra and the Public servants, the Greens would tell any other city to go hang.
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http://www.environment.gov.au/archive/commitments/uncsd/publications/csd1995/case7.html
Implementation of Agenda 21
Department of the Environment, Sport and Territories, 1995
ISBN 0 6444 3152 0
Australia’s vision is to raise the long term productivity and ecological sustainability of Australia’s land, water, vegetation and other natural resources to meet the needs of current and future generations.
Australia has in place a number of strategies, plans and programs to achieve ecologically sustainable resource management and meet economic and social welfare objectives. These are explained in the Chapters on Land Resources , Desertification and Drought , and Agriculture . One of these is the Landcare approach, which has attracted international interest as a practical example of how to implement sustainable resource use practices on a community wide basis.
The term ‘Landcare’ is used to describe a philosophy or approach to ecologically sustainable resource management to protect long-term productive and environmental values. It is most evident at the local level through community or Landcare group activities, but has also come to pervade the thinking of people at all levels in the community. ‘Landcare’ also refers to a national program which involves governments, landholders and managers, and business and community groups in resourcing and undertaking a range of sustainable resource management activities.
The National Landcare Program (NLP) represents an important step in natural resources management policy in Australia, as it seeks to move towards a ‘whole-systems’ integrated approach, rather than addressing individual resources as separate issues.
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Again an environmental group gets way out of order.
The original Landcare (as far as I recall) was a group which tried to fix up areas that had either been damaged by human activity or by noxious weeds etc.
This is good.. I have no problems with it and have in the past helped out with a couple of local projects.
But again the green totalitarians have got their sticky little fingers into it and want to control the world. !
Another worthwhile group ruined.
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Monckton gave a great insight into the socialist/green takeover of Greenpeace in his address I attended, for a few years I’ve been saying Landcare has been hijacked the same way and being used to implement Agenda 21, one greenie compared me attacking Landcare was like attacking the Scout movement, Hmmm I’ll have to look into that one…..
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No this isn’t good.
The problem is who gets to define “damaged by humans”. In this case, watch for the ecotard agenda 21 do good-ers want to buy out the property owners after declaring that they may not rebuild in this now defined “flood plain” that humans are damaging. This is precisely what Agenda 21 is about; forcing people to live in more and more dense cities. This in the name of biodiversity and sustainability. Don’t maintain river channels and viola, you get flood plain.
And for just a bit more leverage, just try to get flood insurance to keep the bank and mortgage holders happy after something like this.
00
If I hear that BS COMMUNIST weasel word “sustainable” one more time I’m going to EXPLODE !!
30
sustainable
08
hmm i guess we’ll never know if that worked or if Angry just gave up the internet. Pls all keep an eye out in the local press for lonely pensioners who exploded at their computer desk.
110
“at their computer desk’
Ah the haven of the green councillor.
Which variety of patience were you playing today between posts ?
90
There’s your communist weasel right on cue.
50
Sorry JO,but your headline should read Green Stupidity because very little of what they come up with is sustainable,unless you are a worm or a cockroach.
90
It is my understanding that Agenda 21 hasn’t even been approved yet, and look at the havoc, destruction and displacement of human life. What happens when approved and we start paying (through taxes) to help implement this farce?
80
The agenda of the anti-humanists is at least being laid bare for people to see – eventually the message will get through, when the pain becomes unendurable, and people start to question the lies they have been told.
80
“The immediate fate of the nation which shall first see the triumph of socialism may be traced in a few lines. The people will of course begin by despoiling and then shooting a few thousands of employers, capitalists and members of the wealthy class…. Intelligence and ability will be replaced by mediocrity. The equality of servitude will be established everywhere. The socialists’ dream being accomplished, eternal felicity should reign on earth and paradise descend.
Alas, no! It will be a hell, a terrible hell….
A man is not a socialist without hating some person or thing…. Servitude, misery, and Caesarism are the fatal precipices to which all the roads of the socialists lead. Nevertheless, the frightful system would appear to be inevitable.”
Psychology of Socialism………..Gustave Le Bon
110
“It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now–independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one’s neighbors–are essentially those on which the basis of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed, then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual by the State, to what is collectively decided to be good.”
― Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
80
Then there is this…..
University is the last refuge of the Marxist:-
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_univerisity_is_the_last_refuge_of_the_marxist/
and this……
A school for five-year-old Marxists:-
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/a_school_for_five_year_marxists/
30
Good to see you did’nt explode Angry,must have been just a lot of wind.
10
First published in 1899 during a period of crisis for French democracy, The Psychology of Socialism details Le Bon’s view of socialism and radicalism primarily as religious movements. The emotionalism and hysteria of the period—especially as manifested during the Dreyfuss Affair—convinced Le Bon that most political controversy is based neither on reasoned deliberation nor rational interest, but on a psychology that partakes of contagion and hysteria. Le Bon points to the irrationality of religion and uses the religiosity of socialism to debunk socialism as an irrational movement based on hatred and jealousy.
80
Once again the science ????? guy Nye displays his pig ignorance and an inability to understand SKMs and the requirement to do a CBA.
Just about everything this fraudster said is a ridiculous con.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baTwy_Yj2OQ The republican congresswoman is very smart and better understands the topic than Nye and the interviewer.
40
He will end up walking up and down Oxford Street with the sandwich boards on, the chalked message scrawled in a shaky hand;
THE END IS NYE
Book of AGW
Psalm 1 ‘we are doomed’
I saw this lunatic once being interviewed after the Russian comet and the dippy interviewer asked him if it was due to climate change and could we expect more. Even he looked incredulous at that but got a shot in by way of physcobabble.
English Aborigine
20
The hypothetical meeting behind the decision to allow the plains to flood:
http://itsnotclimatescience.com/0029.html
20
Uncovered:
16th Century Hallucinatory Images Suggest That Today’s Climate Science Is Nothing But A Persistent Human Mental Disorder
“The images were created as Europe was in the grips of the Little ice Age, a time of bad weather, bitter cold, storms and crop failures, starvation and human misery. The 16th century depictions reveal images of a civilization obsessed with the end-of-the-world.
Priests and elitists of the time conducted terrifying witch hunts to find those allegedly responsible for the black magic that cooked up the extreme weather.
Sound familiar?
The online Spiegel today has a report on a new book titled The Book of Miracles which presents and examines a collection of 16th century depictions of celestial phenomena and portentous signs.
They were recently discovered as part of a collection of 169 illustrations created in Augsburg, Germany around 1552.
End-of-world visions, it turns out, are a human mental disorder that has been around for as long as civilization itself.”
(via notrickszone)
120
Apparently, this expert is going to be “clarifying his position” shortly “together with the Met Office” (his employer).
No room for unscripted actions in today’s Left/Green Movement….
50
When those who hold power, deliberately cause harm and loss of wealth to those they “govern”, natural processes eventually strip them of power.
Buried to ones shoulders facing an incoming tide, seems a reasonable response to these EU experts.
Malice or incompetence who cares, your home is still flooded.
These persons still need the boot.
70
They should be given some LEAD…….
00
Here in Australia we have a similarly structured problem; Out of control bush fires.
Immense heart ache; nearly 200 dead and that’s only the human damage.
Politically Correct obedience to the Warmer Mythology over the last 40 years has created firestorms
which should never have occurred and the perpetrators are allowed a get out of jail free card because
they can say: CO2 did it!
KK
110
The real Agenda 21:
The United Nations estimates it would cost $30 billion a year to end world hunger.
That sounds like a lot, but the world spent more than ten times that amount in 2012 on global warming mitigation, according to a recent Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) study.
And the UN says the world needs to spend even more on global warming mitigation. Much more.
According to the Reuters analysis of the Summary for Policymakers of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, due to be released this April, the UN is calling on the world to invest an extra $147 billion a year in wind, solar, and nuclear power from 2010 to 2029.
If we add that figure to CPI’s measure, the UN wants us to spend approximately $506 billion a year to mitigate global warming,
According to the UN, this amount would end world hunger for nearly 20 years.
90
De-funding the anti-human, anti-Israel, Communist UN and funneling that money to the starving would be a good use of effort…..
100
Agree 1000% !
Get rid of the Anti Human “united nations” !!
50
Exactly! Where do we start?
20
Actually…if the West stopped propping up awful Dictators so they can strip whole countries of cheap resources, the hunger thing will go away all by itself. People generally are good farmers if they arent being shot at.
100
KK
Thumbs up. Exactly right.
30
Dave
Have noticed that Robber, above beat me to the punch on this topic.
KK
10
Victorian Police estimate up to 3/4 of this years fires in VIC were deliberately lit.
I actually wonder how long is going to be before one of the arsonists is caught and admits to doing it to increase the stats/arguments in the side of AGW. The “look more bushfires we told you so” argument.
I would bet London to a brick its happened, just no one has been caught yet.
Lets face it. Southpark nailed this logic (otherwise known as the Gillard method) around doing something bad or telling a lie, provided your cause is “just” and provided people are so ignorant its for their own good to be lied to and manipulated, as long as you know whats best for them.
Rob Reiner: [walks up to an employee and hands him the camera. The worker hooks it up to his computer] Here you go Bob. [Explains to the boys] This is Mr. Baffrey. He does all our Photoshop work. [the screen is shown with a picture loading behind a download progress bar] Now, all we have to do is Photoshop cigarettes into your hands! [Baffrey places cigarettes into the boys’ hands] And bingo! When this hits the papers the tobacco company is screwed! Hahahaha! [Baffrey joins in the laughter]
Kyle: But dude, you’re making stuff up.
Rob Reiner: [munching on another burger] You kids need to understand something, okay? Sometimes lying is okay. Like, when you know what’s good for people more than they do.
80
Same thing crossed my mind Safety after all Pyro’s come in all colors of crazy and some AGW believers are right up there.
There’s been a few fires deliberately lit in paddocks near me and I think it’s just a matter of time a Pyro gets caught and lynched by the public.
40
The bush fires were probably lit by human hating “greens”….
30
Eco nincompoopery scores another own goal and wonders why the crowd just groans.
How on earth that part of England could be considered as partial wilderness is utterly beyond me. Even the Austrlian Aborigines were able to maintain the land in a sustainable but human friendly manner for tens of millenia ( Ref Gammage). These arrogant, dunderklumpen, eco loons have falled flat on their faces in a couple of decades.
60
What do you mean “even the Austrlian(sic) Aborigines”?
011
My assumption would be “even” meaning, they had no access to GIS data or modern planning techniques and the like and still managed to thrive.
Today we have all the information, all the technology and we still screw it up routinely.
80
neither did anyone on the planet pre 20th century. Funny to focus on just australia.
08
aborigines n. the original, native fauna or flora of a region. First inhabitants.
Originally derived from the latin ab origine, a name given to the tribe of pre-Roman inhabitants of Latinum (modern day Italy).
60
not a response to the question asked.
08
But mildly interesting and moderately apropos, I thought.
20
Would you settle for vary early Climate refugees?
I am prepared to enter into a contract ($180,000 a year, part time with all expenses) to research the possibility that this occurred. Already I have unearthed a cafe in Burnside called Utzi.
00
Ab origine: ‘From the beginning’ or origin. Latin.
10
I meant compared to modern Great Britain, isolated, low tech with not much more than their human intelligence and personal industry they were able to produce a stable, sustainable, elegant (the British thought the whole place looked like an aristocrats park it was so well kept) and bountiful landscape.
What did you think I meant? Something disrespectful?
31
Its called “clutching at straws” I believe.
20
yeah sure that’s what you meant…
011
Whats so unbelievable about a person referencing the earlier peoples of their own country ?
In fact it would be stranger if they referenced people from another country wouldn’t it ?
40
in the internet I have no idea how you know where Ursus Augustus is from?
07
I post here from time to time and have made comments that would have confirmed I live in Australia.
In any case how is it relevent where I am from when I simply referred to the Australian Aborigines to illustrate a point. I imagine I could have made similar comments referencing Inuit, North and South American aboriginal nations and ancient aboriginal inhabitants of most places on the planet. It just happens I am reading Bill Gammage’s book at the moment.
Just for the record, what planet, moon or asteroid do you live on Matty?
50
“I could have made similar comments referencing Inuit, North and South American aboriginal nations and ancient aboriginal inhabitants of most places on the planet”
… except you didn’t. why don’t you think you cound have mentioned European folks who seem to have done ok in that regard too? Pre industrialistion pretty much everyone existed in such conditions (and I’m using your celebration of that not my own).
011
I write two and a bit lines to the general point at issue after my opening comment. The Australian Aborigines are an exemplar of pre industrial, pre settlent, semi-nomadic peoples, characterise them as you will ( I am not an athropilogist so these are lay terms) and (as an Australian) I cited them to illustrate the point.
What is it with you? Are you running low on your meds?
20
forgive my spelling mistake, its late. It should be “I am not an anthropologist…”.
10
00
Dear Moderators,
why did you change my little identifying face from 24.1.3.2.1 to 3.2.3 and 3.2.4?
I like the first one which you have been assigning for months.
Please explain.
PS It will only really confuse Mattb. He might think there are two or more of us. He is having enough trouble keeping up as it is.
[Dear Ursus, your e-mail address in those posts had a slight typo which has now been fixed.] ED
00
damn – you’ve reverse flipped me!
00
I believe the “face” is triggered by the email address.
Maybe you entered it slightly differently or something ?
00
My sincere apology – typos are one of my weaknesses. Ask Mattb.
00
He doesn’t mean what you do you flamin’ bigot.
00
“… but incompetence and a Green EU wetland plan.”
ha! it worked though, they’d be calling that a major success.
Eventually people are going to wake-up and realize these people are fifth-columnists who slithered in behind city walls via a new form of Trojan-political-Horse. A major backlash is building and any politician or party in the way of the enraged public will be retired, in one way or another.
Strap in and prime the popcorn bowl. 😀
[Lewis H, if you’re reading this, I have that Velikovsky volume you sent to me a couple of decades back sitting under my subwoofer. It just happens to work great to damp out the resonance modes and stops stuff migrating across my desk… maybe this is what happened to planetary resonance and damped their migrations? lol 😀 ]
10
is this the same ABC that has been at the forefront of the fight for govt subsidies for various industries?
still, getting a Uni of Melbourne guy to admit the drought isn’t unprecedented – and not even mention CAGW – is a bonus, whether his opinion is politically-motivated or not!
17 Feb: ABC The World Today: Professor warns Govt should limit aid to farmers
JOHN FREEBAIRN (economics Professor, University of Melbourne): You know, we don’t force people to be farmers or plumbers or schoolteachers – we make those voluntary choices because we think, on average, the good times will balance out the bad times…
ELEANOR HALL: The National Farmers’ Federation points out that the industry does have a strong record of productivity growth, and that it’s exposed to international market forces, but it says this drought is simply a situation that the best farmers couldn’t plan or prepare for. Is this drought unusual?
JOHN FREEBAIRN: Well, it’s not really as severe as the one we had – the so-called Millennium Drought. The challenge is, of course, they only had a couple of good years and they’re back into drought. What this sort of opens up the story is, what’s exceptional? And lobbyists – and I don’t blame the National Farmers’ Federation, they’re like any other lobbyists – they’re going to pitch the best case they can for support for their members.
And so we had the ludicrous story back in the 1990s where some areas of Queensland were drought-declared almost every second year, and that’s the kind of risk we run in having this exceptional circumstances handout mentality.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2013/s3946195.htm
00
Queensland is going to get some welcome widespread rainfall for all of next week. We got a nice amount over past 24 hrs in a few places and I just got poured on when walking back from town an hour ago. (buggah!)
It most probably wont amount to drought-breaking totals nor be that well distributed but the synoptic looks pretty good right to the end of next week at least before the next big Tasman high coming across the Bight dries out the coral sea again.
It should help many graziers and communities and soften the blow some, in time. I think this may be the last good chance to get some heavy falls because the summer is fading far earlier than I have ever seen it do this. Once max temps fall to ~29 C along the FNQ coast it’s all over, and it has been much cooler than normal for weeks.
Farmers will will need support if the rain is too little and too late because whole communities will wither if there’s none. With a mine you can just mothball it and walk away from low prices, but it’s not possible with grazing, you have to stay and ride it out to be ready to go again when it improves.
10
Kerry’s real agenda:
17 Feb: Bloomberg Sangwon Yoon: Kerry Burnishes Green Badge in Asia as Volcano Disrupts Trip
Climate change can also be an economic opportunity, Kerry said, adding that investment in “the global energy market of the future” is expected to reach nearly $17 trillion between now and 2035.
In order to boost investments in the sector, governments must encourage greater innovation in renewable energy technology and check the use of coal and oil as power sources for their immediate energy needs.
Kerry said the world “must look further down the line,” even as he acknowledged the challenges for developing countries such as Indonesia in developing alternate energy sources.
“They have to factor in the cost of survival,” he said. “And if they do, they will find that the cost of pursuing clean energy now is far cheaper than paying for the consequences of climate change later.” …
Kerry, who spent much of his Senate career fighting an unsuccessful battle for climate legislation, may be pressured to approve TransCanada’s Keystone proposal in a turn away from urging governments to do more to address climate change risks…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-16/kerry-burnishes-his-green-badge-in-asia-ahead-of-keystone-call.html
10
Climate change the biggest moral challenge of our time, used to hide all other political sins both domestic and foreign.
What you talk about when you actually have nothing to say, but want to sound important.
How pathetic, the USA is burred in snow and kerry is talking global warming, or is he now talking about all weather cold, hot, snow, rain, wind, drought , is it all out of control now ?
Thank god we have john kerry, he will fix it.
30
“he will fix it”
for a 50% cut of the take.
30
Yes i think their is huge political graft in this game, however with kerry i think he is lining up to have a tilt at the presidency again and he thinks he can piggy back on obama driving it to deflect from his own failing presidency on every other issue. The beauty fo the climate change play is that its a changing narrative without any baseline, a scientific political fraud that is being used world wide to drive 100 different political agendas can be perpetuated as long as they throwing money at, and these statements by obama and kerry mean they will be throwing big money at for the next 3 years.
31
Kerry referring to 1 metre sea level rise may be the result of all the U.S.current snow cover melting.He just wants to warn them,cause he is such a nice guy.The headline in local papers after his speech may have been’John Kerry think Indo People gullible’.He may have to try harder,even peasants living in the same area for 200/300 years can work out there is nothing going on.
00
Is this moron Kerry for real !!???
00
contradictory?
13 Feb:San Jose Mercury News: Huge Ivanpah solar power plant, owned by Google and Oakland company, opens as industry booms
AP: Michael R. Blood/Brian Skoloff:
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, sprawling across roughly 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border, formally opened Thursday after years of regulatory and legal tangles ranging from relocating protected tortoises to assessing the impact on Mojave milkweed and other plants.
“The Ivanpah project is a shining example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy,” U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said in a statement after attending a dedication ceremony at the site. “This project shows that building a clean-energy economy creates jobs, curbs greenhouse gas emissions and fosters American innovation.”
The $2.2 billion complex of three generating units, owned by NRG Energy, Google and Oakland-based BrightSource Energy, can produce nearly 400 megawatts — enough power for 140,000 homes…
In 2012, the federal government established 17 “solar energy zones” in an attempt to direct development to land it has identified as having fewer wildlife and natural-resource obstacles. The zones comprise about 450 square miles in six states — California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.
Government documents show dozens of dead birds from sparrows to hawks have been found on the site, some with melted feathers. The suspected causes of death include collisions with mirrors and scorching. In November alone, 11 dead birds were found, including two, a blackbird and a warbler, with singed feathers.
The Western Watersheds Project is continuing to push a lawsuit against federal agencies that reviewed the Ivanpah project. Its California director, Michael Connor, said alternatives to the site were not considered and serious environmental impacts, including fragmenting the tortoise population, were ignored…
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_25134528/huge-ivanpah-solar-power-plant-opens-industry-booms
13 Feb: Reuters: California solar plant greeted with fanfare, doubts about future
by Rory Carroll/Nichola Groom
One of the world’s largest solar projects, which uses heat from the sun to generate power in California, opened on Thursday but may be the last of its kind in The Golden State…
Though Ivanpah is an engineering marvel, experts doubt more plants like it will be built in California. Other solar technologies are now far cheaper than solar thermal, federal guarantees for renewable energy projects have dried up, and natural gas-fired plants are much cheaper to build…
The Ivanpah plant was partially backed by a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, the same controversial program that supported failed solar panel maker Solyndra…
That means the private sector must fill the gap at a time when building a natural-gas fired power plant costs about $1,000 per megawatt, a fraction of the $5,500 per megawatt that Ivanpah cost…
Ivanpah developer BrightSource Energy Inc has failed to secure a permit for any other solar thermal projects in California in part due to environmental concerns, including fears that the intense heat and energy around its plants would harm or kill desert birds.
Ivanpah is jointly owned by privately-held BrightSource, power plant owner NRG Energy Inc and Google Inc …
Late last year, Oakland-based BrightSource said it would focus increasingly on markets outside the United States and in using its technology for industrial applications like enhanced oil recovery, desalination and augmenting existing fossil fuel power plants…
BrightSource is more than 20 percent owned by French power equipment maker Alstom SA. Other investors include venture capital firms VantagePoint Capital Partners and DBL Investors, Goldman Sachs Inc GS.N, Chevron Technology Ventures and BP Ventures.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/13/solar-ivanpah-idUSL2N0LI1D420140213
00
LOL at 2.2B for 400MW.
No in fact LMFAO
20
No wonder the United States is going down the toilet …
20
I thought the united states was on the cusp of a new era of prosperity.
08
I was talking to someone recently who has pretty impeccable finance industry qualifications and I asked the question “USA today, recovery or bubble?” He replied bubble without a moment’s hesitation.
The only reason the US has a record high market level right now is the Fed. printing money. Until QE is finished and tapering complete, its impossible to tell how much of the so called recovery is in fact a recovery and how much of it is a bubble.
However I predict that when there is not 65 Billion/month of fantasy currency being pumped into the US economy, you will see the kind of rationalisation of spending that will very likely rule out spending 2.2B on a mere 400MW of sometimes power. That’s the kind of luxury they simply cant afford.
30
What f.cking plant do you live on “Mattb”???
Do you enjoy making a fool of yourself ??
51
planet…..
21
I live on a diverse range of both plant and animal foods.
17
Shock horror.. you mean you eat MEAT ?
How do you reconcile that with planetary climate action?
50
good time management skills I guess.
16
OT, sort of
I know there’s a few Newcastle guys floating about, so some silly news.
From what have heard, Waratah Shopping centre is about to erect 2 small wind tuirbines in the parking area.
Now I know they were have issues with the sparrows, but surely this is a bit of overkill ?
I’m actually amazed its even being allowed.
Maybe I mis-heard the construction guys who were about to start digging the foundations ?
I don’t know.. must do some more enquiries if I can find time.
I hope they have good insurance incase something goes wrong with one of them.
10
Just checkin’. Even with “our” ALPBC, these were in the papers in October 2011.
Maybe they are having trouble getting approval….OR…..just waiting for the “right” time to put them in.
Surely now is not the right time! Or ever.
30
It appears I did not hear incorrectly.
I emailed the centre owners, also mentioned I would probably shop elsewhere.
Here is their reply.
(start quote)
Dear Andy,
Thank you for email regarding the wind turbines.
There will be 3 turbines going in, and no it is not to get rid of the birds.
Nekon Pty ltd incorporates sustainable energy strategies within all their properties, and these turbines will generate green energy, and we consider these turbines as good corporate governance.
I do hope you see the good efforts in them going up, and hope you re-consider shopping at the Village.
Have a nice day.
Kind regards,”
(end quote)
00
Abbott asks a sceptic to review the RET. But will it reduce the temp and change the climate by 2100 or 2300 or 2500? Of course not.
That’s unless you think that reducing temp by an unmeasurable 0.0001c could make a scrap of difference at all?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/abbott_asks_sceptic_to_review_useless_green_energy_target_will_he_ask_the_t/#commentsmore
40
Back when Penny Wong understood what it meant to be Finance Minister (I know it was a long time ago). She actually had a salient view on CO2. Then she was sent off for re-education. There is another quote of hers stating that it would disadvantage and damge Australian industry unless it was aligned with a global move, but I cant find it sorry.
http://youtu.be/69KoyIYWSGs
http://youtu.be/g_KVBwKU7B8
00
I’m disappointed in Penny Wong. She seemed to have a lot of potential when she first came the political scene. She was thoughtful, insightful, articulate, she listened, and she even spoke politely to people who disagreed with her. Then she turned into another ALP hack during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. She seemed like a potential stateswoman in her early years but she sacrificed her character in the pursuit of power.
The ALP used to have honourable members in parliament. Not any more. Somehow the modern ALP drags its members down into the gutter.
BTW, I am a swinging voter. I have no allegiance to any party and I vote for the party whose policies seem best for Australia. The only aspects of a candidate’s personality that matters to me are their competence and their honesty.
10
I agree JLC. Her real problem is that she is in the Senate and can only get so high in the food chain. If the ALP wanted to break the gender barrier they should have got Penny up instead of Gillard. Can you imagine Penny Wong having to bleat out that now we would see the “real Penny”? Sadly though she is reduced to having to parrott out the party lines and present herself as just another hack.
00
Bolt can be an embarrassment to the cause on occasions. This review has nothing to do with the so called warming, it is a review of the impact of the RET on energy costs.
Finesse is the operative strategy.
12
and the RET is not even about solar panels on rooftops, other than it being a way that the govt has managed to leverage some private capital to fund the RET.
To boltards though it is a review of how lefty inner city types make others pay for their misplaced desires to save the climate.
111
Save the climate from what exactly?
50
not sure you’re following.
18
You got that right.
50
Safetyguy66, I think Mattb is a RETard. Leave him alone, he knows not what he says. He is just a CAGW parrot, not a very swift one either and certainly not worth saving from himself.
61
what’s the caps for in RETard?
06
Ahh sorry RET yes yes I get it now.
06
Matt’s been taking the “slow” pills !!
40
Oh dear Matt, you really aren’t bvery swift are you. This has been fun.
30
According to USA sec of state Jo and David and other sceptics “are the world’s most destructive force and believe that the world is flat”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/16/secretary-state-kerry-lashes-out-at-climate-change-skeptics/
He blames CAGW for all types of horrors that even the IPCC would not accept. But why bugger up a good BS story with pesky facts and logic and reason.
30
What about this CLOWN ??
Friday Funny – two guys with a ruler blow up the White House global warming video claims
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/07/friday-funny-two-guys-with-a-ruler-blow-up-the-white-house-global-warming-video-claims/
21
We have to be grateful in Melbourne for the Coode Canal. It took 2,000 people 20years to build with steam shovels and cut through Fisherman’s bend so that the Yarra was straight and wide for a whole mile, bypassing the swamps at the junction of the Yarra and Maribyrnong rivers and the Moonee Ponds creek. Coode Island was formed and eventually the old Yarra bed was filled in for Coode Road, just South of West Footscray Road. The area is now the major part of the port of Melbourne. No swamp at all.
Prior to that much of South Melbourne and Port Melbourne was subject to widespread flooding, including all of King Street and Moray Street. Thousands of homes now exist on what was mosquito infested marsh.
Past Melbourne the Yarra bends were cut through, forming Herring Island from an old bluestone quarry by knocking in the sides. It is now the straight section of the Yarra for Head of the River.
How much of this would be allowed today? None of it. One group even wanted to stop dredging the shallow Port Phillip Bay for larger boats and the scare tactics were endless. None of the dire predictions came true.
We have to be thankful for all the great work done by so many people to make a marshy swamp the city we have today, the biggest port south of Singapore and a great place to live. Of course we could bring back the swamps and seagulls and mosquitoes and the occasional wandering aborigine. Makes sense.
51
You have to wonder if these could be built these days.
00
Bit silly building in low-lying areas that are prone to flooding. Thank goodness we in Brisbane are not so stupid.
60
I’m glad someone else noticed the similarity to Brisbane 2011. But the similarity doesn’t end there. The flood control gates which should have been opened were left closed for too long. In the case of Wivenhoe they should have been opened in anticipation of receiving more rain during summer and prior to the catchment drenching which had been forecast for the weekend. In Somerset the Huntspill sluice should have been opened at the onset of heavy rain. In neither case would it have stopped the torrent of rain from falling or prevented all flooding, but a bad situation could have been made better if not for human error.
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“In the case of Wivenhoe they should have been opened in anticipation of receiving more rain during summer”
Since we had been assured by you-know-who that the drought was going to be permanent, that it would almost never rain again, I imagine it seemed like a good idea to hang on to every drop that fell.
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The original Moreton Bay colony was a coastal settlement at Redcliffe. It was flood proof but lacked fresh water. It was abandoned within a year and a new (flood prone) settlement was located inland around the Tank Stream – now the site of the Brisbane CBD.
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You forgot the /sarc
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Yep. Somewhere near the Brekky Creek pub there used to be a sign, halfway up a lamp post, showing the height of the ’74 floods.
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Gotta luv this one..
Tony Abbott turns up to talk to farmers about the drought… no more drought. ☂
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Yeah I saw the footage of him on TV this morning hopping over puddles in his Moleskins and Blundstones. I was thinking, what drought? lol
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Gees the 7 report annoyed me.
They mixed it in with more allegations of spying, and even let Shortbrain have a say.
Silly Billy.. the alleged spying happened under a Labor government, you monumental fool !
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The Prime Minister could be from the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party and the DSD would still be piping trade negotiations to Uncle Sam. Sure, now they’re called the ASD – probably not just spying for Defence purposes any more.
You would think it would be a Liberal government who would deregulate the economy, float the dollar, and encourage competition, but Keating did that under Labor.
You would think a Labor government would favour centrally planned pollution reduction, bank bail-ins, and imposing new taxes, but the Abbott government agreed to all that 6 months ago.
The agenda doesn’t change just because the people voted for a different set of puppets wearing a different coloured tie.
Exmouth, Pine Gap, ANZUS, the Asian Pivot, Five Eyes, IMF, WTO … it’s all unfortunately a lot more complicated than “Le baaa” versus “Lie-bral”.
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ps.. and it would not surprise me one little bit if people linked to Labor did use any information gained for financial benefit.
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No Drainage = Floods = man made climate change
No Fuel Burn = Fires = man made climate change.
No Power = No Airconditioning = man made climate change
How bloody stupid.
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I like that within a few days you all get to not only lampoon the Met Office for not realising that there were going to be Biblical floods, but also to claim that there was only flooding from said biblical floods because the EU has interfered. Maybe the Met Office was also responsible for the original biblical floods…
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“Mattb”, something for your “education.
It has a gigantic supercomputer, 1,500 staff and a £170m-a-year budget. So why does the Met Office get it so wrong?…..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240082/It-gigantic-supercomputer-1-500-staff-170m-year-budget-So-does-Met-Office-wrong.html
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Because they are predicting what they would like to happen in order to confirm their models. Not what they actually think will happen.
How long do you think someone could keep their job at the UKMO by producing reports that said the opposite of the agreed, consensus, 97%, settled science, model predictions?
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Are you back at work now Mattb ?
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I think we would all be very interested at who is paying “Mattb ” to spew forth his drivel………
Come on “Mattb”, come clean !
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I believe Mattb is somehow an elected local guv councillor in Perth.
So the Perth taxpayer is paying him on his spare time
ie the 80 odd % of the 6 hours a day he is sitting at his desk.
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Siting at his desk and blogging on Jo Nova with drivel……
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What a surprise – SILENCE FROM MATTB and no response…..
GUTLESS WONDER !
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what do you expect to questions levelled at 5:01 and 6:07?
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Looks like Mattb’s work starts at 11:30 or thereafter, and finishes around 4. (with 1hr 30 mins for lunch)
That’s a long day for a green local councillor !
All courtesy of the Perth taxpayers.
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being a local councillor in Perth is not a “job”. It is an extra curricular activity with a very modest allowance.
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So you take the allowance, and avoid the activity, right.
Or is making fatuous, irrelevant remarks on blog counted as your activity.
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speaking of RET, no-one is truly able to assess all the CAGW costs because everyone in the business chain is being charged for RET & carbon (dioxide) tax.
what i find odd in this SMH article by Bianca is the use of Brickworks tax statement, & giving the final word to someone who told them they weren’t a member of the Libs or Nats, but who would state the carbon tax was “here to stay”:
16 Feb: SMH: Bianca Hall: Fairfax revisits Tony Abbott’s carbon tax warnings
Sydney brick manufacturer Brickworks Ltd, which trades as Austral Bricks, was visited in September 2011 by Mr Abbott, who predicted the business would lose $2 million a year because of the carbon tax.
But things have been much worse than that, says managing director Lindsay Partridge, a Liberal Party member. ”The real cost to the business has been somewhere between $8 million and $10 million a year,” he says. Mr Partridge maintains that in 40 years in business, 2012-13 was the worst year, with costs up by about 3 per cent.
Brickworks’ statement to the ASX for the 12 months to July 31, 2013, shows it had a 9 per cent rise in revenue, and a 97 per cent rise in profit from ordinary activities after tax attributable to members.
***But Partridge admits that it was difficult to separate the cost of the carbon tax from other price rises, saying his suppliers passed the extra cost of electricity to him in the form of higher manufacturing and other costs…
(FINAL PARAS)Visiting Canberra’s Unique Meats twice in his campaign, Mr Abbott warned it was ”going to be hit left, right and centre by the carbon tax”. During one visit on August 17, 2011, he warned that owner Matt Hicks – who told Fairfax he was not a member of the Liberal or Nationals parties – faced cost rises of 10 per cent under the carbon tax.
Almost three years later, Mr Hicks agreed his costs had risen by ”at least” 10 per cent. ”You could see it right across the board.”
Mr Hicks said his power bills had risen from about $4000 to $5000 a quarter three or four years ago to $7500 now. Refrigerant has been particularly costly, he said, increasing from $50 or $60 a kilogram to about $150.
But he was disappointed in Mr Abbott. A lot of business owners had expected immediate relief from carbon pricing after the Coalition government’s election. ”I think … it’s here to stay,” he said.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/fairfax-revisits-tony-abbotts-carbon-tax-warnings-20140215-32svg.html
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There is going to be HELL TO PAY if Abbott doesn’t hurry up and repeal this PLANT FOOD (carbon DIOXIDE) tax !
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The unfortunate people got flooded because:
a) they live in a (drained) swamp.
b) they received record rainfall.
Blaming some secret UN Agenda/Green conspiracy just comes across as a lunatic rant.
111
James Delingpole has just written an article 10 Lefty Lies About The Floods Which Have Devastated Britain
Rainfalls normal. Flooding was planned.
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Phew – all apologies for criticism of the Met Office pls post here.
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No thanks. Maybe if they apologise for claiming the floods are the result of AGW, when clearly, it was just environmental mis-management.
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Actually, the Bishop reports that the Met Office have left the Met Office’s Chief Pscientist Julia Slingo up the creek without a paddle.
She either failed to understand the Met Office’s reports or she mislead the public.
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Give ’em Flannery’s number. He can explain to them why rain won’t fall any more, and even the rain that does fall won’t fill the rivers and dams.
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You build in a fire hazard area – you just might get a bushfire. You live on a floodplain – you might get flooded. If your farm land has a history of droughts, you might get a drought. Live near a dormant volcano, you might just get covered with ash or lava. Live on a major fault line…
The severity of any natural event might, at any time, be unprecedented.
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Here in mid-Wales there has been a profileration of wind generating stations (aka wind”farms” by greens). These have been built on drained upland peat bog which has caused a great deal of erosion and flooding downstream of the watersheds.
Flood meadows have been given permission for development.
The draining of the land and building of the Clywedog dam has increased runoff, flooding and erosion.
In this area in my youth salmon and trout spawned, with salmon runs all the way up the river, and there were many species of fish – sadly no longer, the green dream has killed off the biodiversity of the river Severn in the upper reaches.
The Green plan is to make new wetlands in different areas to replace the ones drained due to “green” policies instigated by the so-called Environment Agency.
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Jonathan, being “SIMPLE”, calls for whatever he considers “ecocide” to be criminalised. unbelievable that such insanity is published by the MSM every single day!
15 Feb: Guardian: Jonathan Rowson: The seven dimensions for action on climate change
To act on climate change, we must shake off the anti-capitalist stigma and focus on seven simple components
Photo Caption: Albert Einstein said to think of things as simply as possible, but not too simply.
The Grist journalist David Roberts says climate change is inherently simple: “Do something, or we’re screwed!” Amusing, and true, but too simple because the call to “do something” gets complicated as soon as you ask: what exactly does that “something” mean? On the other hand, when a professor of climate change, Mike Hulme, writes “all human practices and disputes now can be expressed through the medium of climate change,” the challenge begins to sound like a philosophical inquiry into what it means to be human…
First, we need a form of simplicity that rejects the lazy conflation of climate change with environmentalism by presenting a more energising set of associations. The environmental framing is unhelpful because the psychological, social and economic phenomena driving fossil fuel production are obscured by debates about the killing of badgers, the dredging of rivers and the protection of otters. Moreover, as long as environmentalists are the public face of climate change it is too easy to conveniently and unfairly dismiss a universal moral imperative as a tribal anti-capitalist agenda…
Distantly inspired by classic research in cognitive psychology on “the magical number seven” that suggests we struggle to hold more than seven items in our working memory at the same time, here is my take on the simplicity we need:
1. Science matters because it is the closest thing we have to an objective reference point for debates that might otherwise lack grounding. It is striking that the world has authoritative agreement on its main systemic threat, but no equivalent authority is close to even constructively disagreeing about what to do about it…
2. Law matters, because it acts as a powerful constraint at scale. Our best hope for rapid climate mitigation still lies in international law, ideally with agreement on a global carbon budget and national commitments commensurate with the need to keep most of our remaining fossil fuels in the ground. We also need law to help administer effective carbon taxes, to reinterpret the fiduciary duty of trustees to balance short-term shareholder value with longer-term risks, and perhaps even to create the crime of “ecocide” that could, for instance, help to limit deforestation…
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/behavioural-insights/2014/feb/14/seven-dimensions-action-climate-change
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18 Feb: Australian: Brian Williams: Expect more deadly heatwaves in Queensland, scientists say
Heatwaves like much of Queensland has been recording this year are already hotter, longer, more frequent and occurring earlier in the season.
Over the past 100 years heatwaves have caused more deaths than any other natural hazard.
The CSIRO and Weather Bureau have found that since 1950 the annual number of record days across Australia has more than doubled and maximum and minimum temperatures have increased by 0.9 per cent.
A Climate Council report released on Monday says this shows that the frequency of record hot days are now more than three times the frequency of record cold days.
It’s even worse down south, with hot weather in Adelaide, Melbourne and Canberra having already reached levels predicted under warming scenarios for 2030…
Chief councillor Tim Flannery said that climate change had made heatwaves worse over the past 60 years.
“In a stable climate that would not be happening,” Professor Flannery said.
Transport, electricity services, wildlife and the Great Barrier Reef are all affected by heatwaves.
“We see another impact of heatwaves in … an extended bushfire season,” Professor Flannery said…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/expect-more-deadly-heatwaves-in-queensland-scientists-say/story-e6frg6n6-1226829885095
again, on Google’s main news page, as the only other result in the “SCIENCE”??? section, right next to the above Flannery piece & the Rowson/Guardian lunacy, is the following, which i copy precisely as it is showing. websites getting thousands or even millions of hits a day would never appear on the google homepage news, yet this is becoming a pattern:
Dunken K Bliths
5 hours ago – Google+
WELCOME TO THE F*CKED STATE OF AFFAIRS IN AUSTRALIA ABBOTT AND THE OIL/COAL LOVING GANG…… Australia chooses climate change denier to head renewable review http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/australia-chooses-climate-change-denier-to-head-renewables-review-65883 #dunkpunked #climate #deniers #australia #government
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Cosier’s back on the job of begging for funding!
17 Feb: SMH: Colin Cosier: The old Wilkes Base in Antarctica is now a toxic waste dump
The toxic dump left over from an era when rubbish was turfed out onto the ice is a 45-year-old problem requiring millions of dollars and a decade-long commitment to clean up.
But the Australian Antarctic Division’s program leader in charge of human impacts research, Martin Riddle, said while there was broad agreement on a need to clean up Wilkes there was no plan or money to do it…
Dr Riddle said the cost of a clean-up would be high. “The main challenges are financial and competing pressures for resources and logistics – the opportunity cost. It will require a 10-year commitment to get the job done,” he said…
Colin Cosier and Nicky Phillips travelled as part of the Australian Antarctic Division’s media program.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-old-wilkes-base-in-antarctica-is-now-a-toxic-waste-dump-20140216-32tuz.html
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Cosier’s back on the job of assisting in the begging for funding!
17 Feb: SMH: Colin Cosier: The old Wilkes Base in Antarctica is now a toxic waste dump
The toxic dump left over from an era when rubbish was turfed out onto the ice is a 45-year-old problem requiring millions of dollars and a decade-long commitment to clean up.
But the Australian Antarctic Division’s program leader in charge of human impacts research, Martin Riddle, said while there was broad agreement on a need to clean up Wilkes there was no plan or money to do it…
Dr Riddle said the cost of a clean-up would be high. “The main challenges are financial and competing pressures for resources and logistics – the opportunity cost. It will require a 10-year commitment to get the job done,” he said…
Colin Cosier and Nicky Phillips travelled as part of the Australian Antarctic Division’s media program.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-old-wilkes-base-in-antarctica-is-now-a-toxic-waste-dump-20140216-32tuz.html
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Delingpole resurfaces!
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/02/16/Lefty-Lies-UK-Floods
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Is anything that the CAGW advocates doing or saying capable of being prosecuted for fraud or extortion?
If so, how do you go about making a complaint?
10
Just followed a link on the Bishop Hill site to James Dellingpoles’ new home with the completely unprovocative title “10 LEFTY LIES ABOUT THE FLOODS WHICH HAVE DEVASTATED BRITAIN”…………
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My blog article on the Somerset floods: Somerset Floods – Manmade disaster
There’s a graph that could be the “smoking gun”, showing the the Environment Agency were fully aware of the depth and duration of flooding if dredging did not occur.
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“She used to run the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Natural England, not that that’s a bad thing per se.”
I have to disagree with Joanne there. The RSPB is a Very Bad Thing. I was given a year’s membership of it when I was a teenager. It was about the time that a remarkable number of stories emerged about heavy-handed tactics adopted by the RSPB, supposedly in the name of protecting birds, but without, in reality, providing much in the way of protection. When my membership lapsed, I was bombarded with an ever more angry sequence of letters, demanding that I renew.
Christopher Booker himself covered one of the most obnoxious cases of RSPB misbehaviour. There is a place called Langholm Moor, just inside Scotland, where landowners get revenue from grouse shoots. The thing is that the Red Grouse, like other game birds, needs a bit of help. People who disapprove of shooting don’t grasp that there wouldn’t be any grouse or pheasants at all in the absence of shooting (even though the grouse is a native species, whereas the various pheasants are all introduced). At Langholm, the people managing the grouse moor were concerned that the grouse population was being ravaged by a protected raptor, the Hen Harrier (Circus cyaneus, known as the Northern Harrier in the US and Canada). The RSPB agreed to conduct a study, jointly with the landowners, to assess the impact of a growing harrier population on the grouse. The rules were strict. The findings would be agreed by both sides and would be published on a pre-arranged date. Guess which publicly funded body issued its own lop-sided version of the report a week early.
This is also the RSPB which insists that wind turbines pose no threat to birds, despite the evidence that large numbers of raptors, scarce by definition, because the prey always outnumbers the predator, are killed by turbines. Harriers themselves tend to hunt quite low, but I’ve seen them soaring like buzzards, which would put them in bird-chopper territory. It’s odd that the RSPB told one set of lies on behalf of preserving the Hen Harrier a dozen years ago, but now tells another pack of lies to obscure the destruction of raptors. The RSPB is an absolute disgrace and I have to assume that Baroness Young has been complicit in its failure to do what it was expressly set up to do.
30
Maybe a bit late but I did a quick calculation of what an extra 0.5 W/m2 of heat hitting the oceans might mean for the flooding in England. 24 hours of this extra energy all going into vapourising water (44 000 J/mol) and all of it condensing on England would mean an extra 50 mm of rainfall.
Now I don’t know how much rain fell in other areas during that period but lets say it was a generous 10% of the rainfall around the world and that only 90% of the energy went towards warming up the oceans and everything else a tiny bit. That brings it down to 0.5 mm. Even if it was 10% of the water from a week of evaporation, that is just a few millimetres
Small, but it could make all the difference.
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[…] Thank Agenda 21, Red Tape and Green sustainability for Somerset floods in UK: http://joannenova.com.au/2014/02/thank-agenda-21-red-tape-and-green-sustainability-for-somerset-floo… […]
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[…] Thank Agenda 21, Red Tape and Green sustainability for Somerset floods in UK. […]
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