Clive Palmers done a deal to pass the Direct Action plan. Earlier this year Palmer declared that Direct Action was “hopeless” and “dead” – saying it would be too expensive and achive little for the environment. Now he’s done a deal to pass it, insisting we get a review of an emissions trading scheme, something not so long ago he would have mocked too. The man has no principles.
In the end, this is $2 billion wasted. We may get a few new trees and some slightly richer soil as a side effect, which is good, but this is an inefficient way to do it.
It’s good news that Abbott did not pander to the Gore’s great wish to get a promise of an Emissions Trading Scheme. That would have been a win for Gore. He would have loved to wave “Australia’s committment”. Instead he will wave that Australia is still planning and considering an emissions trading scheme.
But the continued wasted funds to groups like the Climate Change Authority means there will be another two or three years of full gloss press releases urging the public to be afraid. The Coalition needs to wise up and fund alternate views. We need a national debate, and either we fund no campaigners or we fund both sides of the debate.
With the government only funding the side-for-alarm, the public and media only see official or “credible” claims that are alarming. Those claims are never tested by anyone or any organization with any government backing. Without a government funded audit team on the BOM or on climate science, the Coalition is just setting itself up for failure on climate issues because the only “credible authorities” will be ones determined to make any Coalition reluctance to go the full carbon agenda look foolish. Climate is a major policy area and needs auditing — just like finances are audited, a court trial has a defense, or governments have oppositions.
The public need to hear both views so they can make up their own mind.
Don’t we owe it to the environment?
PS: Post edited and updated on the fly. Sorry, it’s a busy day.
Unfortunately we have elected a government which is a politically inept bunch of amateurs. For all their Rhodes scholars, they seem to have flunked Politics 101. They have proven to be spineless, unprincipled and a major disappointment. An I am one who enthusiastically voted for them.
They are pandering to loud minorities, the toxic “progressives” and others who will never vote for them anyway. And in so doing, they are driving away their natural voter base. I, for one, will be voting “informal” in the next election.
Tragically, while these flunkies are screwing up their one and only chance to fix the mess Australia is in, they are guaranteeing that Labor will be re-elected and the damage will be continued. In spades.
So regarding the whole Global Warming scam: don’t count on it going away any time soon.
211
Could you please explain to me just how your informal vote will help to prevent Labor being re-elected?
131
Gees max..
If lots of once Liberal voters are dis-enchanted with the Liberals, and vote informal, then Labor will win more seats.
If the Liberals don’t start to listen to what the people who voted for them want done, this is exactly what will happen.
161
Hi Griss,
Yes, I agree that an informal vote is a vote for Labor. That’s my point. It seems to me that “progressives” would never vote informal, because for them it’s the side not the principle.
I also agree that the Liberal Party should be listening to those who voted for them and I agree that they don’t seem to be doing so.
But, I really don’t understand why so many people think that if they don’t vote, it will make the Liberals start to listen. All it will do is hand the electorate to Labor and we’ll be in doggie do-do all over again.
I often email my local member to let him know of my concerns. In my opinion, if that’s what you want to do – inform the politicians of your opinions, then that’s the way to do it.
Voting informally tells nobody, anything.
121
Oh believe me, I have contacted the Liberals many times expressing my disenchantment at the weak-kneed actions.
The Liberals need to show they are worth voting for again or it becomes.
Maybe yet another 3 years of hard, stupid Labor is what Australia need to live through to wake up to reality.
101
“The Liberals need to show they are worth voting for again or it becomes….”
….. why bother voting for this mob !!!
(seems the last bit got accidentally deleted)
Sorry, but I’m not voting for them just because they are not Labor or the Greens.
They want my vote, there needs to be a better reason… and currently there isn’t.
62
Yes Griss, I share your disenchantment, but I’m also looking at the positive things that have occurred recently that would never have occurred under a Labor/Green government.
Terminating the carbon (sic) tax.
Stopping the boats and the deaths at sea.
Initiating a Royal Commission into Union corruption.
Labor was able to get it’s ludicrous legislation through parliament because it had support in the Senate. The Libs do not, so they must play games with an idiot like Palmer.
I wouldn’t expect you to vote Liberal just because they are not Labor/Green, that would be voting for the side rather than the principle. I guess it boils down to which side you think is more principled?
90
There isn’t a whole lot they can do if he is hamstrung in the Senate. If he had a majority in both houses I’m quite sure you’d all get something resembling your wishlist. Abbott is making a good fist of a bad hand and I’d challenge anybody to do better at herding the cats in the Senate than he is doing at the moment.
120
No, I disagree.
Tony Abbot is demonstrating amateurish, spineless, political ineptitude. Even worse, he seems to be emulating Julia Gillard in his unprincipled efforts to retain power at any cost.
He knew on the first day of his reign that Labor were going to oppose everything he proposed. In fact, he acknowledged this in his prediction that he would be calling a double dissolution within six months.
So from a tactical viewpoint he should have presented each of his proposals to Parliament, one at a time. They would have been passed in the lower house, then defeated in the Senate.
He should have continued with this process until every piece of his agenda had been presented, and defeated.
In parallel with this, he should have put the ABC onto the market, disbanded the Human Right Commission, rescinded 18C, and frozen all immigration from the Muslim countries.
Then he should have called a double dissolution election.
He would have been returned with the biggest landslide in Australian history.
Instead, he has alienated his voter base, made a fool of himself among those who would never vote for him anyway, and pretty well assured that Labor will be back in power at the next election.
I have usually voted Liberal in the past. If this rabble to not get their act together in a hurry, I will, as I have previously stated, vote “informal”.
20
Yep William,
Ignore the good things achieved in just 12 months by the Abbott Govt.
You know, things like:
Terminating the carbon (sic) tax.
Stopping the boats and the deaths at sea.
Initiating a Royal Commission into Union corruption.
You vote informal at the next election. Then your vote will join all the others from those who were too drunk, too stoned, or just too stupid to manage to put a number 1 in a valid square on the form.
Yeah, that’ll learn ’em.
10
By voting informal, I deliver a message to the Liberals that I am totally disgusted with their spineless, unprincipled, inept and amateurish incompetence.
By the same token I deliver the message to Labor that I am equally unimpressed by their performance.
While this may seem to be cutting off my nose to spite my face, in reality it is an admission that the Australian people will be screwed whoever they vote for.
At least by voting “informal” I have delivered one punch before I have to bend over.
51
Hi William,
Yes I understand your disgust with some of the pollies and policies that we have to choose from, but do you think that each candidate in your electorate will view the number of informal votes as criticism of their policies/party? If so, what issues are you disgusted with? How would they know?
As I said to Griss, an informal vote is, (in my opinion) a vote for Labor. As such I would ask, why not just vote for whoever is not in power?
20
Hi William,
I understand your sentiments entirely. My disgust rose to fever pitch many years ago when I took the decision to never vote for them again. Bear in mind that if you vote for them, with even the most in disgust, you are giving them “de facto” support.
I am a natural coalition supporter so I now get my name of the list and go home early. Even so I don’t like my work flow being interrupted by a politician (I have paid the fines on a number of occasions)
The howls of protest are starting about now, but I will not vote for an organisation that does not meet my expectations of integrity and competence.
52
Peter Reith said words to the effect that the NSW and Victorian Liberals governments were too gutless to govern, and the same is true of the Abbott government.
Yes, an informal vote is a vote for Labor, but that is the only means by which we can FORCE the Liberals to ‘lurch to the mainstream’. If you keep voting Liberal and they continue to be too cowardly to take on the Left, NOTHING – REPEAT, NOTHING – will change. The Left will continue to set the agenda and ruin our society. We had the seven wasted years of the embarrassing Fraser government, the eleven years of ‘masterly inactivity’ of the Howard government, and now we are looking at six – but hopefully three – years of more conservative cowardice and inaction. Then Labor will get in and continue from where they left off. None of their agenda will have been undone. They win no matter who is in office.
I lodged an informal vote at the last election, because I knew that we would be where we are right now–that is, with the Left setting and running the agenda and the Liberals cowering from them and trying to divert everyone’s attention from their impotence.
What gets up my nose more than anything is that the Left are laughing in our faces. They know they are running the show, and they know the Liberals are too gutless to do anything about it. The opportunity to undo the harm the Left have done to our society has long gone. As Keating said to rapturous applause during this speech conceding defeat, ‘We have made many changes, and those changes will not be undone.’
So, let Labor in. We know they will continue to vandalise our society. We know that they hate our culture, our heritage and our history and that everything they do is designed to trash our society. The harm they have done to our social cohesion and sense of community will never be undone. The best a conservative government can do now is manage the problems by purging the Left from the institutions of the country – the courts and tribunals, education, policing, the public service and so on. But unless the Liberals man-up this will not happen. We have to let them know that we will not be taken for granted. We have to let them know that they have to earn our vote.
77
Umm, just how do you suggest this “purge” should take place?
Should we just sack all the teachers, police, journalists, public servants, judges, University staff etc, because they voted for Labor/Greens?
40
MaxL,
I started to write a detailed response, but I just do not have time, and quite frankly I just do not care. This country is finished – the Left have won.
But as a parting gesture, let me just leave you with these thoughts: compare the history of judicial appointments under Labor with those under the Liberals; and compare the way Labor and the Liberals approach the ‘Human Rights’ Commission.
30
Barry
What is the answer? I was always perplexed by the fact that the right can ever win despite the fact that most people are born into poverty. Renounce compulsory voting. I came from communist Poland hoping that I will participate in free elections then I realised that vote is compulsory just like it was under communism. You had to show up and nobody cared who you voted for. Courage was not to vote. You live in a free country and all you can do is to vote informal but at the same time you bitch about the system. With taking no responsibility you forfeit your voice in opinion. If you dissatisfied don,t go and face some responsibility . Horror 20$ or something. Not like loosing my job many years ago and parents persecuted many years ago.
To me informal voting is cowardness
60
I don’t really have time to go into detail, but here are a couple of thoughts:
First to your comment: ‘To me informal voting is cowardness’
With the greatest of respect, if you want a conservative agenda and you vote for a party that says it will give it to you but does not – and has NO history of ever doing it – you are a fool. Because we do not have the Swiss system of direct democracy, which gives people the power to stop government destroying our economy and our society, the only power we have – I stress the word ONLY – is to withhold our vote and let the Left continue to destroy our society until it becomes so intolerable that a genuine conservative political force emerges. There is NO other option.
But to very quickly raise a couple of things that go back to my point about purging the Left from the institutions of this country. I have already mentioned the contrast between the approach of Labor and the Liberals to the justice regimes in this country – although I think it is more accurate to call them compliance regimes rather than justice regimes, because as well as providing a justice regime their other purpose is to punish us if we do not conform to the Left’s ideological agenda. The Left unashamedly and aggressively politicise the institutions of this country (but how can it be otherwise – people are people and all people have beliefs, prejudices and hatreds). But do the Liberals do the same? No, they are too scared to.
Take a look at education. The Left have aggressively imposed a leftist curriculum in schools for the purpose of brainwashing children about global warming and myths about our culture, history and society. They didn’t hold inquiries and ‘consult’. They just DID IT. What do the Liberals do? Timidly go in and suggest they will make some changes and then lose their nerve under a withering assault from the Left. The Left will win this one.
What should they have done? Given examples of the rubbish being taught to students and highlighted how education outcomes are falling and how education is failing children from disadvantaged backgrounds (read as poor parenting, thanks to the welfare system) and aggressively gone on the attack with a specific agenda to reform the curriculum. Then, at the state level, they should pull Labor’s stunt of using an ‘independent’ commission, meaning a bunch of politically reliable mates, to oversee the performance of state schools and use this as a pretext for changes in management at individual schools.
Look at NGOs. Using our tax money the Left are nurturing a massive advocacy industry that is relentlessly pushing a leftist agenda in all areas of public policy. Do the Liberals do the same? No. Do they even take the money off the leftist NGOs? No.
A Liberal government with brains and balls would have created its own Climate Change Authority and stacked it with the likes of the contributors to this blog.
On the subject of immigration, read this article and this article. Because this is a socialist country I will not say any more on the subject.
So, to answer your question as to why conservatives NEVER win. Simple: they know they will be subjected to a withering assault from the leftist media and they are too unimaginative (read as stupid) to define their objectives and an agenda for carrying them out, but then they are also too cowardly to see it through.
I won’t spend any more time on this, because it is wasted time. The Left have won. They have debased our society and they are gradually eroding the very limited freedoms we used to have. There is no-one to stop them. Our once decent country is finished.
00
The global elite are planning to phase out an essential life support system called coal power and spend umpteen billions of taxpayers’ money supporting unworkable ‘alternatives’ – and Australia doesn’t even have a national discussion. The LNP need to grow some cajones and take a stand.
“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
Bill Cosby
50
William, I share your disappointment with the overall performance of the current government. I also understand your reluctance to vote for them again, but Australia cannot afford another Labor/Green disaster.
So, what to do?
Rather than vote “informal”, why not select an Independent who gives their first preferences to a Conservative? That way you register your dissatisfaction without helping the “enemy” (unless of course the Independent is a Windsor or an Oakshott).
As a traditional Conservative voter, my biggest gripe is that the Conservative Parties will not run against each other in a Conservative held seat.
41
The behaviour of Oakshott & Windsor ensures I will never vote independent.
If I want progressive policies of carbon(sic) retardation to diminish the quality of my life, vote for a politician of any stripe.
Again, we need to end the concept of a ‘career politician’.
All we have created in Australia is an oligarchy, allowing certain types of people to carry out agendas.
51
You can send your party a message and vote for them as well. The trick is don’t vote above the line and don’t give your party your first preference.
Example: You want better roads and smaller government.
Vote:
1. Motorists party
2. Liberal democrats
3. Major party (Lib or Labour)
Your vote goes to the major party in the end but you have made your preference known. If by some amazing chance Motorists get in, it is not a wasted vote. Your minor party candidate should follow his/her party interests in negotiations with the government in power.
It is a bit of extra work to vote below the line, but quite interesting. It actually gives me a bit of pleasure to think of the counters and scrutineers arguing about how to allocate my vote so I sometimes mix the numbers up a bit so they are less easy to follow.
It helps to have a practice voting paper filled in before getting to the polling booth.
61
In September 2013 the new government included the Clive Palmer who declared direct action was hopeless and dead.
On 24th June John Stensholt wrote in the SMH the headline: “Clive Palmer drops a huge $1 billion as influence peaks”.
On 25th June a new Clive Palmer stood with Al Gore on the steps of our parliament house and told a brand new story. Chaos has ruled since.
Nobody will convince me that Al Gore is not calling the shots for Clive Palmer, and through Clive Palmer for Australia.
30
Nonsense William.
Those of us who think with you that direct action, though more likely to have a larger effect on the environment than any sort of ETS aka a carbon tax, is a waste of a couple of billion dollars, also think that Abbott’s “coal is good for humanity” comment is the most courageous thing any politician has said about climate change. Voters aren’t fools and that comment will stick with many AGW skeptical voters to the next election. The fools who voted for Clive Palmer’s Party are the real political novices. A vote for the Coalition parties instead would have meant the end of the Climate Change Authority.
A good test of the Direct Action policy, unnecessary though it is, is the Green’s negative, hysterical reaction to it.
30
It is all a load of BS anyway. Here’s point 20 from the latest Royal Society and National Academy of Science report.
https://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/question-20/
They state that we could stop all human co2 emissions today and it wouldn’t make any difference to co2 levels or temp for thousands of years.
These idiots are either liars or fools or both.
70
They are right but for the wrong reason.
Correct reasoning; CO2 has no effect on Earth temperature.
Liars, yes
Fools, yes
30
Yes, there’s that word “might” again.
10
You cannot change the culture in the BOM or SBS or CSIRO or the ABC. Man made global warming is a political position, not science and these pseudo public service organizations are very political. Nearly 60% of the ABC vote Green, a communist organization led by people like Lee Rhiannon who trained in Moscow as a fifth columnist and Adam Bandt who wrote his thesis on communism. It is about power. To be positive, we just abolished their tax on breathing.
However Abbott is about power too and this undercuts their claims that the government is doing nothing, so it is politically necessary. Presumably things which need to be done anyway will be done with emphasis on those things which can claim carbon savings and improve the environment practically. There will be no carbon tax, no ETS. Even Clive Palmer knows this. Scientists like Bernie Fraser will continue to investigate an ETS. Ross Garnaut might even look at how efficiently green cheese can be mined on the moon and they can report to each other.
Change will come. The hype is cooling. The US (despite Obama on the golf course), China, India, even Germany and the UK are slowly pushing this fantasy into the background. The public have experienced the bitter winters, watched the farcical rescue of couch scientists from record ice which was not supposed to exist and noted as every prediction failed. We have even heard profound announcements that heating causes cooling and long words like counterintuitive. It will quickly move from fashionable to yesterday’s news.
Unfortunately it will take another fifteen years for this monster scam to come to a conclusion. Meanwhile ‘their’ ABC, as it is surely not ours, will continue to attack the elected government, but this takes the wind out of their windmills. A Senate investigation into the BOM fudging will help too, exposing a uniquely Australian form of international scientific cooperation.
Once someone announces that the world is actually cooling, the scam will just vanish. Then we will have to send money to the UN to prevent the possible invasion of shape shifting space aliens. The defence will be funded by Alien credits, traded by merchant banks and a tax on all non Aliens. It will be supported by the Green, who think aliens should migrate freely under Green multi species policies. They will be issued with Green cards.
200
Realpolitik demands a fig leaf from time to time. Clive needs a lot more of course but Tony just needs enough to cover the budgie smugglers. Its a nice segue to an enquiry into the temperature record though.
60
On the bright side it has rendered the Greens completely irrelevant on environment policy. They have managed to negotiate themselves into what they must consider the worst of all possible outcomes. Whether its enough to turn around the drag that 7 years of Labour/Green nonsense put on the economy, only time will tell.
Not having a climate position at all would have probably been a weakness for Libs at the next election, this way they get to appear to be doing something and can direct at least some of the funds to job creation. Its about as good as it gets in the current “climate”. It would be nice to see them go to the next election with some policies to unwind more of the climate bureaucracy, we can only hope.
As for having Palmer and Co. deciding policy in Australia right now, its pretty scary… the only party with a combined IQ lower than the national individual average.
http://www.examiner.com.au/story/2438222/more-lambie-gaffes-in-pipeline-says-analyst/
90
I’m actually going to raise this same thing again, because Clive actually mentioned it last night in his interview with that utterly clueless Tony Jones. I was only waiting for the one thing, and Clive delivered, again showing how little his understanding is also.
Here’s the link to the interview.
Clive mentioned, at the 3.50 mark of the interview the following:
And then later at the 12.30 mark:
This was a reference to the COP21/CMP11 UNFCCC meeting in Paris in early December of 2015.
Now, why I was so interested in what Clive said about the ETS, it shows how he hasn’t really looked at the real intent of any ETS.
There are 43 Annex 1 Countries, already considered to be Developed and 153 Annex B Countries, categorised by the UN as still Developing. Of those 43 Developed Countries there is a sub list (Annex 2) of 24 Countries whose job is is to pay ALL costs for those other 153 Countries to mitigate their CO2 emissions, considering all they need do now is to just report them.
The means for those 24 Countries to pay all those costs is via the introduction of an ETS, with the money raised to go to the UN for distribution to those 153 Countries.
This was enshrined in the UNFCC right from the early days, and to this day, remains a sticking point as to why there has been no replacement for the Kyoto Protocol.
So, when Clive says we should retain that ETS for Australians, then good luck with that mate, because I feel sure the UN will have something to say about that.
I have written about this at my home site on three or four occasions now, and perhaps the best explanation is at the following Post.
The UN and Climate Change – Ten Fateful Words
That Post may seem a little dated now, from November of 2010, but the information is still the same.
Those ten fateful words are the following:
(Developed Countries which pay for all costs of developing Countries)
I’ve been following the actual wording since I started this in early 2008, and while the wording has changed slightly, especially since Copenhagen, when it was, umm, cleansed in an effort to hide the real intent in plain sight, luckily Wikipedia has a wayback facility, so here’s the link to that wording dated from April 2008, and it stayed like that up until Copenhagen, and as part of the existing and still legal wording, that is still the real intent.
Australia is one of the 24 Countries which pay, and China is still categorised as one of the 153 Countries which get paid, considered to be still Developing, so now you can gain an inkling as to why Kyoto is finding itself so difficult to replace.
So, when Clive, and everybody else has the thinking that an ETS will be for Australians, be very aware that it is most definitely not, no matter what they attempt to legislate.
Tony.
241
Yes Tony and when you look at the last 33 years of co2 emissions it’s enough to make you want to throw up. See my post below at 7. Can’t these idiots even understand simple kindy maths?
40
Here are co2 emissions from EIA for the OECD and non OECD countries from 1980 to 2012.
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=90&pid=44&aid=8&cid=CG6,CG5,&syid=1980&eyid=2012&unit=MMTCD
In 1980 the OECD countries emissions were 11.2 giga tonnes pa and non OECD (China, India etc) were 7.3 GTs pa. But by 2012 OECD total was just 12.8 GTs pa and non OECD was 19.9 GTs pa.
Over that 33 years the OECD emissions had increased by just 1.6 GTs pa and the non OECD had soared an extra 12.6 GTs pa. What a joke.
60
And another new study has found that the sun has controlled temps in China since the 1960s. Not CO2 and the data shows little increase in the raw temp data.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/new-paper-finds-sunshine-has-controlled.html
40
That is stupid … the computer models show, quite decisively, that the sun can only have a marginal affect on atmospheric temperature. I mean, look at how far the sun is from the Earth. Stand twenty feet away from an electric heater, and you can’t feel its warmth. And the sun is much further away than twenty feet.
Sorry, I have been in a meeting with a bunch of eco-illogic-ists* all day. Except one of them referred to themselves as, “a food technician”. Go figure.
* eco-illogic-ists is a speech impediment that I seem to have developed quite recently; about morning tea time, in fact.
81
I’ve obviously missed something here. Can someone please explain it to me?
I understood that the government abolished the Climate Change Commission and that the members regrouped as the Climate Change “Authority”, relying entirely on funding from public donation. Same old crew, though, Karoly, Flannery etc.
By the way, Bernie Fraser’s voice has always sounded as though it were percolating up from a deep crypt.
So, where is this apparent push to re-fund the Climate Change “Authority” from our hard-earned taxes coming from?
And, Ursus Augustus (2.58 pm), I doubt very much Palmer needs a bigger fig leaf than Abbott – it’s certainly many years since he was able to look down and check it out.
70
No- we had a climate change authority and a climate commission, which went private to become the climate council. Being a climate councillor is a bit like being a rent-a-cop, or Ross Garnaut or something- no-one takes any notice because they are self-appointed, self-important and more than slightly risible.
The Climate Change Authority remains, with that affable pensioner Bernie Fraser drawing funds as its head. But four of the nine positions are vacant, so we can only hope that the government can appoint some sensible members (perhaps Warburton, Newman, Plimer and Carter or Kininmonth or Marohasy) to balance the outrageously stacked membership up until now.
70
Damn me.
All these names, acronyms, and doubtless soon pseudonyms. Kinda reminds me of cards up sleeves and a pea and three thimbles.
They are very nimble people indeed.
20
Wouldn’t it be better to persuade one of the five remaining to leave?
30
I thought we all agreed that the global warming scare is a scam, lead by certain individuals and most likely some companies hell bent on controlling our lives even more so than they do now using that scare to impose taxes and other control mechanisms on the populace. Labor or Liberal in government makes very little difference given their conduct thus far. What is really needed is a court cases that puts one of those leaders in prison along with the likes of Bernard Madoff, another type of scam artist of epic proportions (but not as big as the AGW ones of today). Once that happens, they will all scurry away and find some other scam to peddle. At least then they will take another 10 or so years to build it up. Unfortunately, the way I see it I won’t hold my breath on that happening, especially since the scientific community as a whole remain silent (and hence are as guilty as the leaders of the scam) and so this AGW scam will not only remain, it will grow.
71
The scientific community has remained silent? Hardly. The US 1998 Oregon Petition was very real with 30,000+ scientist and engineer signatures including some very well known and famous scientists like Edward Teller, a mere Nuclear Physicist. It was dismissed totally on the basis that they were not ‘climate’ scientists like Tim Flannery or Bernie Fraser or Ross Garnaut or Richard Dennis or Al Gore or the ABC’s own Dr. Karl. None of our Climate Commissioners were meteorologists, but attack is the best defence.
A scientist is also a rare and shy animal who often works for large anonymous organizations where you are not allowed to speak out, or at least that is the effect. So only independent, self employed or retired scientists actually have this ability. Thus skeptics are usually strong individuals, where the warmists speak for organizations they control and speak with the authority of people whose voices are not allowed to be heard.
So members of NASA, the Royal Society, the American Association of Physicists and many more associations are forced to listen to their own leaders push very political views for their own reasons. Such is politics inside organizations. It is a testimony to the power of the internet that blogs such as this allow knowledgeable individuals to have a voice, or they would not be heard at all.
41
Tim Flannery was appointed to the Climate Commission by the previous Labor Government.
When the CC was disbanded last year he established the publicly funded (by donation) Climate Council.
Gillard established (by Act of Parliament) the Climate Change Authority in 2011. The make-up of its members is bemusing to say the least.
Climate Change Authority
It’s role as follows:
It too should be disbanded, as it’s an absolute waste of taxpayers $, but this would be difficult while we still have a RET and other requirements under the Act.
70
Direct action? A single project in Victoria would win hands down. Thank you Tony Abbott.
Browncoal, Black Coal, ‘Natural’ Gas
All are natural although some would have you believe coal is the devil’s work. All are rotted plant metter and roughly hydrocarbons of different length, multiples of CH2. From simple ethane C2H4 to much longer chains. However brown coal has twice the CO2 per kw of its older metamorphic cousin black coal.
Why? Simple. It is very wet. Effectively half of the energy generated is used just to dry the coal.
A few years ago there was a group in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria working closely with Monash university on a new technology to dry the brown coal. Even better, there was an order from India for $300million of our dried brown coal. Fantastic you would think, but it was knocked on the head by the very Green Victorian Labor government whose seats depend on Green preferences. The Age newspaper on the front page roared with great self righteousness that not only was it immoral to export brown coal, they were going to make it ‘blacker’! We did not want their black money, it seemed.
However this process could halve Victoria’s CO2 emissions! Where the Greens have campaigned to shut Hazelwood, it would become a model power plant. Already very clean and now very efficient. You could also turn on the $28Bn unused desalination plant next door and stop evaporating 30% of Victoria’s fresh water, but that might be moving too fast for our Greens, who do not really want to solve problems but ‘destroy the joint’.
However you also might have to convince the Green governments in exile at Age and the ABC and SBS that coal only looks black. In the air it is invisible and is used to make plants and trees, but that might be too much like magic. No one really believes in chemistry. They also believe if sea ice melts, we will all drown. However they not only vote, they influence other voters who believe what they are told by a massive, totally trusted, government funded and rigorously impartial body like ‘their’ ABC.
120
Yes, indeed
Lignite has a TM% (total moisture on an air dried basis) of about 50%, with some lignites measuring up to 70%. German technology with the most technologically up-to-date power plants dry the raw feed first. Older plants let it dry out some on a stockpile but not for longer periods to avoid the stockpile spontaneously combusting
The basic reason for aluminium smelters being sited in Victoria (a long distance from the bauxite mines) was to take export advantage of the brown coal deposits in La Trobe Valley. We have seen recently that the ALP, without open demur from the Greenies, have agreed to exempt the Vic smelters from the RET – to help cut costs and maybe stay afloat. Hypocrisy ? Of course, but people don’t mind being hypocritical; they just mind it being pointed out
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My point is that on the surface, this $600 million a year (yes, not $2.5Bn) could fund great efficiencies. There are many more, like using US style school buses to reduce the traffic dramatically. For all the money spent on public transport, you can tell when school holidays are on. Some private schools in Melbourne already do this, like St. Michaels and pick up all over Melbourne. Safe and cheap, door to door. The savings would be massive, not just in CO2.
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In much the same way, the Darling Range, WA bauxite operation of Alcoa and Worsley Alumina were only economic because of the supply of cheap power from the relatively low quality (high ash content) Collie COAL.
Without this relatively low cost power the Alumina Industry would never have existed.
Even the low grade Boddington Gold mine would not have been re-opened without the low cost (6c/kwhr) power from Collie COAL.
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Aluminium is 90% recylcable at present. I have argued for years for it to be used as fuel. The 10% is the conversion from Bauxite, so if alumina was recycled, close to 100%. It burns with about 50% of the kj/kg of oil, but unlike oil, we will not run out of it. 80litres of aluminium metal has about the same heat energy as 80litres of petrol, given a density of 2.2.
For smelting, the arbitary cost/mw does not matter as the base load has to be dumped at night, so why not get something for it? It was why Alcoa was invited to Australia in the first place. That is why smelters in China are next door to the power stations. While the Greens say aluminium processors are getting cheap power, they are actually subsidizing what we have to do anyway.
What was wrong about Portland was that it was 1,000km from the power station. Historically was pork barelling and the state built a $250million power line to get the power from Yallourn. Worse, half the power is lost in the lines. So aluminium has been used as a political tool for years. However no one has yet realised its potential for long term, safe and massive energy storage. We cannot make oil or coal. We can make aluminium, which is totally recyclable.
Wherever and whenever there is energy, you can make aluminium. (In the US aluminum)
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Port Henry, Geelong, Victoria , Australia, has its own power station only 30km away at Angelsea (with brown coal resource).
Port Henry is closing down with the loss of 1000 jobs in Geelong. At victim of Green/Labour policies. They can’t even sell the power station because we don’t actually need the extra power.
Green/ Labour gone mad?
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Absolutely mad. This is a perfect model. No electricity losses. Aluminium is the future, even with nuclear. You need to store, transport energy. Plus you can build everything. The big Audis are aluminium. Jags are aluminium. There is every chance Detroit will go to aluminium, saving 200-400kg per car and all the fuel with it. So what do thinking Greens do? Dump aluminium. We may be the Lucky country, but we are far from the Clever country.
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Yes, keeping the Climate Change Authority and Direct Action are wasting money, but that’s really OK, because wasting money is what governments do. There is no practical limit to governments’ abilities to waste money, and these are small change compared to some stuff.
At least they aren’t destroying the economy, because that’s what the carbon tax or ETS would do.
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A British Army Colonel was sent to Washington, on liaison.
Because he was a full Colonel, he was entitled to a Staff Car.
Of course a driver was also required to drive the Staff Car, and a mechanic was also required to maintain it.
An Administrative Clerk was require to pay the driver and the mechanic, and to balance the Colonel’s expense budget.
Because there were now three other ranks, a cook was also needed to ensure that they were fed properly. Which took the total support staff to four.
This required a Sergeant to manage the troops so that the Colonel could concentrate on his own duties.
Of course the other ranks needed somewhere to live, so they had to rent a sizable house, with seven bedrooms to cater for all of the soldiers, plus the housekeeper, and a Corporal to ensure that the soldiers did not get into trouble on their time off.
Now that they had ten soldiers, including the relief driver, another cook, and another Corporal, the Sergeant was overworked, so needed his own administrative assistant, taking the total to twelve, when we include the caretaker for the small apartment block they move into.
And so on …
This organic principle works in any bureaucracy, and is very quick to form (it does it almost spontaneously), but is very hard to dismantle, once formed.
Socialist Governments can wish whole new departments into existence, but it takes more than one term in government for them to become “unwished” in a Conservative Government.
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Cancer comes to mind.
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Ahhh yes, it must have been a British MADE automobile… that then was the start of the whole problem.
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No its not OK
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Remember when …
Climate Change: The current rate of CO2 rise is unprecedented in the recent history of the Earth
Last Train to Copenhagen
By Dr. Andrew Glickson
Global Research, November 28, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/climate-change-the-current-rate-of-co2-rise-is-unprecedented-in-the-recent-history-of-the-earth/16226
Not so fast …
Overheated Antarctica update: (“researchers’ camps were frequently buried in snowdrifts” )
OCTOBER 29, 2014
NEW STUDY SHOWS THREE ABRUPT PULSES OF CO2 DURING LAST DEGLACIATION
A new multi-institutional study including Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, shows that the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide that contributed to the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago did not occur gradually, but was characterized by three “pulses” in which CO2 rose abruptly.
Scientists are not sure what caused these abrupt increases, during which levels of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, rose about 10-15 parts per million (ppm) – or about five percent per episode – over a period of one to two centuries.
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2014/10/29/new-study-shows-three-abrupt-pulses-of-co2-during-last-deglaciation/
. . .
Abbott, Palmer et al are climate quacks.
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The REALLY stupid thing about the Direct action plan and planting trees, is that..
.. left to its own with the increased atmospheric CO2, plant life in Australia will FAR out-strip that number of new trees. !
2 million or even 10 million trees, is but a pin prick against nature.
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In the Bob Carter ( and other authors) book “Taxing Air” they state that OZ’s Exclusive economic zone actually absorbs 10 times the co2 that we emit every year.
It’s the very cold southern ocean etc that sequests the co2.
Just another reason why everything they are telling us is a pack of lies.
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The end of the drought would have absorbed billions of tons of tons of CO2 in grasses, bushes and trees. Even the CSIRO had to admit the greening, partly due to increased CO2 as well. Restoring green fields in the outback just might be self sustaining, over a large enough area. The water in the Ord, a few Sydney Harbours a day are largely wasted. Greening the deserts would not only capture masses of CO2, it could change the climate. Now wouldn’t that be ironic.
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I never could see that filling Lake Eyre significantly increased rainfall in NSW.
I do have a vague recollection that the atomic bomb tests at Monte Bello Island were followed by rain in the eastern states.
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The CSIRO had a rain making program for generations, for fifty years.
For Lake Eyre, you have to make it rain and Australia, being the oldest continent, is dead flat.
However you could do it with a long black strip, rutile or some mosses. That would produce a huge updraft in the world’s sunniest area and that in turn would have brought rain to Western NSW. Lake Eyre could be refilled from the Goyper or Spencer Gulf. Such geoengineering/ terraforming/ piping is quite possible. It raises a question. If man could change the climate, should we? What should we do? Warmer, more rain? More CO2? Yes.
The people against everything would not hear of it though. Evaporation should blow away
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I sat next to John Spooner (Taxing Air) at the Patrick Moore Lunch in Melbourne last Monday. We had a good time.
They say a lot of good things in that book. However I told him that I found the section on the Green House Effect incomprehensible! He blamed William Kinimonth.
30
I do not understand why people are so surprised by the actions of this government. All they are doing is getting in place the policies they took to the election. You must have been following a different election campaign if you thought that a coalition government was going to throw out all the climate change bureaucracy in the first 12 months.
Fact is the environment minister Greg Hunt is a global warming believer, as is communications minister Malcolm Turnbull and pretty much all members of the cabinet. PM Tony Abbott once called climate change “crap” but has ever since sworn his belief in the global warming monster.
You can say what you like about the greens but for a minority political movement that averages between 7 and 15% of the vote they know how to campaign for what they want. It took them 30 or so years to get the media and politicians singing their tune and people really think that posting some smart comments on a blog is going to change that? Who’s delusional?
If you don’t like it then join the Liberal or National party, go to branch meetings and educate the membership on these issues. Annoy your local member with demands they look at alternative perspectives and tell them where to find the information. Jo has provided hundreds if not thousands of documents and sources for climate facts.
Sitting in front of a computer typing in your complaints to a blog is guaranteed to change absolutely nothing.
GET ACTIVE!
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Most of the cabinet are global warming believers? What absolute rubbish!
Tony Abbott once called climate change, “crap”? No, he didn’t. He called the science settled on global warming, “crap”. He still holds that view, in private.
You come here, calling people “delusional” and you seem to not know the status, the long game played to bring this rubbish to its conclusion.
Then you have the audacity to lecture us on how to “GET ACTIVE” when you don’t have a clue whom the posters are or their activities outside this blog?
Not a good look.
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Why would it surprise anyone that this government would entertain such stupidity.
Remember, the Minister, Greg Hunt, is the man who was once asked on national TV whether or not he believed CO2 was a pollutant. He just would not answer this very simple question … yes or no.
It was inevitable, therefore, that such stupidity would flow on from there.
Greg Hunt firmly believes that human activity CO2 emissions, which is only responsible for about 0.11% of the greenhouse heat effect, causes dangerous global warming and is the key driver of climate change. He is an IPCC disciple.
20
Could Tony Abbott take the opportunity to give the Climate Change Authority more balance? How about retire Profs David Karoly, Clive Hamilton and Ian Chubb and replace them by the likes of Jo Nova, David Evans and Bob Carter?
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The climate should not be a major policy area. Governments can do nothing about it.
50
But that is an ideal foundation for Government policy. After all, any such policy must necessarily fail. Failure can be and is used by Government to justify still more spending, more regulation, higher taxes, larger staffs, and more departments of direct action. Which will also fail. Thus leading to still more of the same in a never ending and accelerating cycle. It is almost as good as printing money, borrowing it, spending it twice, and demanding the taxpayers pay it back times three.
They get what they want. The private sector shrinks and the public sector grow. That it is not sustainable is the growing herd of elephants in the halls of Government that is not discussed and carefully evaded. All on the notion that a thing not named, thought of, or discussed does not exist. Sadly there are many such unidentified and undiscussable elephants in almost all public and private institutions. Much to the detriment of all who hold their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor, and their liberty as necessary and important to the continuance of their lives.
It is such that I no longer ask “Is there intelligent extra terrestrial life somewhere out there?” and search for intelligent life here on earth. I have found some but precious little. The remainder of the human like life forms apparently have given up on what little intelligence they might of had before they became adults.
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Not knowing for sure what Abbott’s powers include vs. Palmer’s I can only hope Palmer is a political eunuch who won’t be able to force anything through. I’d hate to see you getting out of the frying pan only to be tossed back in again.
20
But maybe I’m wrong in that hope.
10
Now that “Direct Action” is passing into law, perhaps the Government should expand the remit of the Climate Change Authority to oversee or advise on the Direct Action plan (with some appropriate changes to the Authority membership as suggested above). Seeing that Australia seems to be stuck with maintaining this pointless authority, this might set it on a path to do something at least part way useful.
30
Voting informal is like an own goal. We need a choice for real leadership instead of the cultural Marxist Labor and timid LNP parties. Check out the Manifesto of the Australian Liberty Alliance party which is planned to get up in 2015:
http://australianlibertyalliance.org/downloads/ALA_MANIFESTO_OG14001R1.pdf
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VITAL INFORMATION…READ ALL, SEND ON TO FRIENDS/ACQUAINTANCES WHO MIGHT FIND IT USEFUL:
31 Oct: BusinessSpectator: Robert Gottliebsen: The class action risk for super funds dumping resources
Trustees of big superannuation funds like the Australian National University are taking considerable personal risk if they divest fossil fuel resource stocks as a result of their personal environmental beliefs.
There are people already making preliminary preparations for such actions against trustees should members of the funds suffer. Those actions are being considered on a national interest basis but of course, will be years away.
And while I am not normally in favour of such actions, big superannuation funds are there for member benefit, not to invest on the basis of the personal beliefs of the trustees.The trustees of superannuation funds have a fiduciary duty to maximise returns for members. That does not mean that they have to always make the right investment decisions, but all decisions have to be taken in good faith for the benefit of members…
If the trustees assembled a large amount of research which showed that fossil fuel stocks were likely to perform worse than other shares, then the trustees would be on stronger ground.
But all the indications are that the latest decisions reflect either the personal environmental beliefs of the trustees or that those trustees feel they are under pressure from people who have certain beliefs…
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/10/31/national-affairs/class-action-risk-super-funds-dumping-resources
20
ouch. i posted this o/t on jo’s latest thread, but now realise this would have been a better place to put it
ebola, CAGW, overpopulation – hitting the trifecta!
29 Oct: National Science Foundation: Award Abstract #1460714
RAPID Proposal: Psychological distance, risk perceptions and communication behaviors during the Ebola outbreak
Awarded amount to date: $84,110.00
Investigator(s): Z. Janet Yang zyang5@buffalo.edu (Principal Investigator)
Sponsor: SUNY at Buffalo
***Abstract: In addition to the issue-specific value of knowing more about risk perceptions related to the Ebola outbreak, findings from this project will inform the design of communication messages related to risk issues that are often perceived to be psychologically distant by the American public, such as climate change and overpopulation…
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1460714&HistoricalAwards=false
10
In the Abbott Government, I expected a two fisted brawler as the leader, however he seems to have turned out to be a shadow boxer.
12
I don’t know what happened to my previous attempt at posting this, so this may be a duplicate.
No, I disagree.
Tony Abbot is demonstrating amateurish, spineless, political ineptitude. Even worse, he seems to be emulating Julia Gillard in his unprincipled efforts to retain power at any cost.
He knew on the first day of his reign that Labor were going to oppose everything he proposed. In fact, he acknowledged this in his prediction that he would be calling a double dissolution within six months.
So from a tactical viewpoint he should have presented each of his proposals to Parliament, one at a time. They would have been passed in the lower house, then defeated in the Senate.
He should have continued with this process until every piece of his agenda had been presented, and defeated.
In parallel with this, he should have put the ABC onto the market, disbanded the Human Right Commission, rescinded 18C, and frozen all immigration from the Muslim countries.
Then he should have called a double dissolution election.
He would have been returned with the biggest landslide in Australian history.
Instead, he has alienated his voter base, made a fool of himself among those who would never vote for him anyway, and pretty well assured that Labor will be back in power at the next election.
I have usually voted Liberal in the past. If this rabble to not get their act together in a hurry, I will, as I have previously stated, vote “informal”.
21
William,
You are absolutely correct in your analysis. Voting is becoming the choice between dumb and dumber.
00
Given that only two of the six double dissolutions held, resulted in the government gaining control of the Senate, and that in two of the six, the government ended up losing those elections and further, given the somewhat lacklustre improvement from the last election results for the half Senate that the Libs obtained, I doubt your assertion that if Abbott were to hold a double dissolution he would gain the “…biggest landslide in Australian history.”.
The suggestion that if the government doesn’t gain control in the Senate that it should hold another election or elections until it does gain control of the Senate would be a sure fire way to force multiple elections on the Australian public.
A government must work with what it’s got. The purpose of the Senate is not just to rubber stamp what the House of Reps wants. I suggest that the reason why Abbott is having difficulties is because of the bizarre electoral procedures for the Senate. The fact that someone with less that 1% of first preferences can gain a seat in the Senate indicates that the Senate system is broken and needs fixing.
It’s the hypocrisy of the Labor/Greens which is preventing Abbott’s legislation from passing. So, maybe you should keep on voting for Labor/Greens or informal, both of which achieve the same result.
00
It’s time to save those billions because, however you look at it, the impact of 0.04% of carbon dioxide being doubled to 0.08% is infinitesimal, probably being less than ±0.1 degree and maybe less than ±0.01 degree of warming or cooling. You can put your own figures into this calculation:
Start with the real world and assume there is 2% water vapour and 0.04% carbon dioxide. Assume the radiating altitude is 4.5Km and temperature gradient 7C/Km. Imagine replacing the 98% of other air molecules with CO2. The troposphere is a mean of 11Km high. It is unlikely that the radiating altitude would rise above 7Km. So multiplying the CO2 concentration by about 2,500 raises the radiating altitude 2.5Km. So just doubling it raises that altitude a mere 1 metre. Applying the temperature gradient, that 1 metre represents 0.007 degree of warming. But there is a cooling effect because carbon dioxide absorbs some incident solar radiation in which the 2.1 micron photons have about 5 times the energy of the 10 micron ones coming up from the surface. There is also a cooling effect due to the gradient being reduced by inter-molecular radiation. And there is a cooling effect due to greater expanse of vegetation which, in general has higher emissivity than soil and rock.
10
Yes, he does: it’s whatever is good for him. Follow the money. He may have worked out a way or ways, or been told a way or ways to profit from it all, himself. So, it’s time to reassess.
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Barry:
I don’t know what has happened to the mechanics of this thread, but on my computer I am unable to respond to comments directly. The “reply” button is missing.
I agree with everything you have said.
The central issue is that the political left is all about the acquisition of personal power, and the exercise of that power over other people.
So the political left attracts the particular personality type that in schoolyard were called “bullies”.
They attach themselves to particular “causes”, not because they believe in those causes, but because the cause is a lever which allows them to exercise their bullying, under the veneer of respectability.
As a case in point, the left have no interest whatsoever in the “climate change” scam. It is merely a tool to be used in their self gratifying, narcissistic exercise of power. And the abuse of those who would defy them
I had, in my innocent youth, seen photographs and read historical accounts of “soldiers” lining up herds of people by ditches and shooting them. In my innocence, I could not understand how that could happen. What kind of people would do that?
Then I became exposed to the people who populate the political left, and it became crystal clear. All you have to do is watch the venomous hatred that oozes out of the political left, and you can see where those shooters came from, and where the operators of concentration camp gas ovens come from.
On the other hand, the political “right” are like intellectually challenged children. Completely unaware of the realities of the world around them. They think the function of government is all about improving the lot of humanity, and “doing the right thing”. The “left” and the “right” operate in two completely different universes.
As you said Barry, “stupid”.
00