The Abbott government has committed Australia to joining the next big global climate pact.
The global accord is to be agreed in Paris in December. Countries are announcing their carbon targets to take effect from 2020, with the US pledge expected next week.
SMH’s bunch of delusional clowns want to present a “fait accompli” to dissuade any contrary voices in the hope that people will go away because “the decision has already been made; too late now”.
Agreements cannot be forecast any more than the weather on the 28th of February, 2073
Nothing will be achieved by UNFCC and COP21 except an increase in Australia’s deficits if it doesn’t stop humouring the credulous and the misanthropes.
In these days of budget deficits and razor gangs surely somewhere in officialdom there must be some committee which is looking to see that we are getting are getting value for our taxpayer’s dollar. So where is the value of the money spent so far? Lots of dud prognoses, “never going rain again”, “our kids will never see snow”, and enormous sums spent on mothballed de-salination plants, carbon taxes, international meetings in Copenhagen, Cancun and shortly Paris. etc., etc,
As there is no relationship between levels of carbon dioxide and global temperatures are we all collectively mad?
No, we are not all mad. I don’t get the impression that you are mad and I’m pretty sure that Jo, her guest-writers and most of her readers are sane. Unfortunately, the opposition is quite often sane, as well. Their pseudo-scientific assertions are not rational, persuasive, or even plausible (as you say, the lack of correlation between increasing CO2 and static temperatures does stand out rather).
Unfortunately, they expect to get their way at the Paris boondoggle, where the voices of reason won’t be admitted to the proceedings, so their confidence, unlike their science, may not be misplaced. Any agreement reached in Paris will be designed to be voter-proof. Obama is always dreaming up ways to exclude the legislature and the voters who elected it from any influence over decisions; he also favours operating through the dictators’ club known as the UN. In Britain, which party ends up predominating after the election won’t affect the government’s approach to Paris, because both are equally addicted to warmist-nonsense. That applies to numerous other governments around the world.
Many regimes expect a huge windfall. Vanuatu and the Maldives shamelessly angle for big pay-outs. China’s bribe probably couldn’t be satisfied with dollars (China pretty much owns all of those already), but some characteristically abject capitulation by Obama, in return for a meaningless commitment from the Great Hall of the (excluded) People, could induce China to trouser the West’s suicide-note.
I always wondered why they dont have this “world Powers” meetings in say Bulamakanka instead of Paris, Copenhagen and the like…. Or Better still somewhere near a wind farm!! Then they can claim that the whole shemozle was “Carbon Neutral”!!!…. and with a bit of luck see for themselves how sick you can get…….
SMH tries to pull a similar stunt. Preempting discourse.
The Abbott government has committed Australia to joining the next big global climate pact.
The global accord is to be agreed in Paris in December. Countries are announcing their carbon targets to take effect from 2020, with the US pledge expected next week.
SMH’s bunch of delusional clowns want to present a “fait accompli” to dissuade any contrary voices in the hope that people will go away because “the decision has already been made; too late now”.
You’ve ‘nailed it right on the head’. It seems to me that there’s a new way of doing things and that is, to do them backwards. First you make the announcement that something is going to happen but you make it look as though it already happened. From my perspective this strategy began at the IPCC when they decided to release the Summary for Policymakers before releasing the actual summary report on the science.
In the US, the individual states were first asked to agree to participate in Common Core and only after signing on to the program were the states advised as to what the details of the program actually were. There are other examples of this phenomenon, but can’t recall them off the top of my head.
In the ‘Issues Paper’ itself, they state that comments and suggestions can be submitted to them for evaluation prior to the release of the actual post-2020 targets which will occur in June of this year.
pat wrote:
CAGW sceptics can makes submissions:
28 March: Dept of the Prime Minister & Cabinet: UNFCCC: Setting Australia’s post-2020 target for greenhouse gas emissions …
Information on how you can make a submission.
Submissions open Saturday 28 March 2015 and close 3pm AEST Friday 24 April 2015… https://www.dpmc.gov.au/taskforces/unfccc
provide EVIDENCE the public can understand.
It’s probably a good idea to contribute to the discussion by getting involved in the process. I’m sure a short but clearly written submission can have an impact. It won’t hurt to try.
I’ve got it!! ” “It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us; and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”” That’s the force that keeps: 1)all CO2 close to earth and 2)will make the temperature rise because we cannot let it go!! I am devising a chart and some stats to go with the assumption, I need more money please!!!
I have to admit to being more than a little scared.
At the end of this year, the western world may sign up to the longest economic suicide pact in history. The eastern world (mainly India and China) will ensure it is exempt from the suicide provisions in the pact, even though they will be the largest carbon dioxide emitters on the planet.
The year 2015 will be remembered for being an unprecedented one for climate BS, it will be coming at us in swarms and battalions. All to convince the public that a policy of unreliable, scarce and expensive energy is essential to solve a non-problem. Those exhibiting the highly dangerous Save the World Syndrome will be everywhere extolling the virtues of economic Armageddon.
I used to think many alarmists were inflicted with Noble Cause Corruption, but from Cook’s grand deceit on “97% of climate scientists agree” to the serial and gross manipulation of raw climate data to ‘prove’ the existence of imminent Thermageddon, you can only reach one conclusion that the Global Warming movement is guilty of a giant and unforgivable scam.
In my innocence, I used to also think the western world would be saved from its own stupidity by the US Congress and Senate which would vote down any climate treaty, but the ever devious Obama is jumping through hoops to ensure the Paris agreement is not seen as a treaty requiring ratification by the country’s lawmakers.
If you want to glimpse at just a little of what the future promises us if Paris is successful, then take a look at South Africa where long revolving power cuts throughout the country have become the norm, the result of a lack of investment in cheap reliable energy generation and a ban on fracking.
I think its anther reason to be fully self contained for power and water if you can…..it matters not whether they dump power, if you can roll your own, youre laughing….
Bit at a higher level view, you would have to conclude that the west seems determined to hand its prosperity to the east and then fall on its sword.
My guess if you want to know who’s behind it all, is see who prospers regardless as it happens….then you will know who will be in the inevitable Nuremberg-like trials in years to come.
… I used to think many alarmists were inflicted with Noble Cause Corruption
Still true, but some are way more cynical in their abuse of power. Noble Cause corruption is so strong a motive that it simply drowns out hypocrisy as a concept within the mindset. That’s why Branson can run airlines worldwide and tell everyone else to save the planet; or the editor/owner of HuffPuff (HuffPo) can use her own private Lear jet to attend a conference designed to persuade people to fly less – the hypocrisy is simply not seen, it doesn’t exist for them
I’ve commented previously, I believe the war is lost. The rational thing now is to try and preserve as much of our currently functioning, economic power grids as possible in an attempt to preserve some aspects of civilization (examine the current UK situation before labelling this as alarmist)
How to do this ? Use the MP email list on earlier threads here to ask constantly what planning is there to guarantee current Twh supply as both economic and reliable. Use TonyOZ’s figures from the Energy Association’s website (until it is hidden from public access); use the exact Twh figures by region if you can, matching the regional figure to the MP’s geographical electoral area. The repeated use of actual, accurate numbers is quite a wedge into this because the Greenies and ALP activists can’t count very well at all
My own area of expertise is actually quite busy keeping the supplies of suitable raw fuels out of the hands of Receivers with the drop in sale prices (yet another bottom cycle, but now superimposed on the Greenies’ assaults)
“I have to admit to being more than a little scared.”
Me to!
The whole AGW thing has a sort of Jonestown quality to it. Even the cult members who realized the error of their beliefs perished in the maelstrom when the whole scam collapsed.
Putting things into an Easter context the AGW crowd is becoming as frenzied as the crowd outside the court of Pontius Pilot.
Sir,
These characters are clearly Sith, the evil Force-wielding foes of the Jedi, who are disguising themselves in the clothes of the heroes and are misusing Science as a vehicle for their cynical scam by driving it without their L-plates on. Ninety-seven percent of my neurones agree my interpretation of the data is unquestionable.
I expect to promptly receive a bachelor degree in Cartoon Science from that sandstone bastion of academic integrity, UQ, who are already known shelterers of washed-up cartoonists masquerading as scientists; state sponsored errorism, if you catch my drift.
We must create regime change in St Lucia. We cannot wait for the smoking gun of monopsonistic biases in climate science, which may come in the form of a mushroom cloud of fuel poverty, business failures, child mortality, last-gasp mergers, and lost production opportunities. You are with us or you are with the errorists. Will the UQ board take the bold action required, or will it become irrelevant?
The dirty little man in the car next to Fatso looks like Pachauri, the infamous leacher of young women in the TERI organisation. Hopefully, he will soon take the PERP walk and spend a few years at the Greybar Motel.
It works by suggesting that the dupe is smart because they realise that it is true. They’re too busy both feeling smug and dreading the truth, which is a little less than flattering, so they swallow it whole.
I have been posting this on Facebook many times now,the warmists ignore the IPCC projection failure completely:
“For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected.”
There is a good side to all this irrational carbon dioxide scare. The windmills are useless of course and solar is a joke, except for electronic in the outback. However the push for savings in emissions of all sorts is dramatically reducing energy consumption. The swap to incandescent lights, Hybrid cars, Hydrogen cells, Lighter, smaller vehicles, computer optimized engines and an overall focus on consumer energy efficiency, which makes a great change from the 1970s when a frost free refrigerator with ice maker required its own dedicated power station.
Of course it is all for nonsense reasons and with India, Africa, Russia, China, South America, Asia out of the equation, emission reductions are useless and all about crippling Western manufacturing and sowing discontent prior to the socialist revolution. What must be frustrating is that the Capitalist entrepreneurial West is prospering from this, obsoleting cars and planes and creating new materials. That windmill money is funding manufacturing and making capitalists richer! Damn.
Paris will happen and cunning politicians will placate the Donkey (Don Quixote) vote and agree to reductions which will happen anyway, as is obvious in Australia with the collapse of manufacturing. What the organizers of Paris really want is an agreement to let them tax Western countries directly, to force them to hand their sovereign right of taxation to a set of communist unelected bureaucrats in the UN. Hopefully that will not happen. Surely even Obama is not so anxious to please his Leftist Green friends. John Kerry however seems to worship Al Gore and cares more about his hair.
I have the solution; EVERY liberal, democrat, progressive, should rush to STOP using electricity, stop driving cars, ride bicycles,recycle everything. Since they truly
believe in anthro-climate-change, they will be glad to save the world with their sacrifice.
They don’t need us, they claim to have 97% of the people with them. If that many people
stop using energy, the problem is solved. Any guess how many will do it??
I’ve got a better idea still: since the air we breathe in is .04% CO2, but what we breathe out is 4% CO2 – a 100-fold increase, let’s have all progressives, leftists, alarmists, etc. who firmly believe in CO2-driven AGW simply STOP BREATHING! That would solve a whole lot of problems!
Pretty sure the 97% Doomsday Global Warming is a parallel universe.
(thesciencetimes): “Every science fiction fan is familiar with the notion of parallel universes with the Star Trek series being one of the first to popularize the notion.
However, thanks to the Large Hadron Collider, we may soon have proof that a parallel universe does, in fact, exist.”
1 Apr, 2015,, The Economic Times, India:
NEW DELHI: In what appears to be a setback for former UN climate panel chief Rajendra Pachauri, the Delhi Police has found “no evidence” to back his claim that he had been a victim of hacking.
The 74-year-old scientist, facing charges of sexual harassment, had complained to the Delhi Police on February 17 that his computers, electronic equipments including his mobile phone were hacked by “unknown cyber criminals”.
. . .
Not only a sexual predator, but, a habitual liar has been in charge of the UN-IPCC!
I would have thought that being a habitual liar would be part of the job description? At the very least you’d want someone who can lie convincingly, and have no ethical crises as a result – you know, traditional ‘used car salesman’ credentials…
“No evidence” Eh. What sort of competent hacker would leave evidence and even if they did would the Delhi plods be able to find it ?
No evidence is just that, no evidence & proof of nothing.
It may be a bit much calling old ChooChoo a scientist though .
Not just scientist and certainly not a railway engineer. Chief Climate Scientist! Leader of the infamous 97%. Then Australia’s Climate Council are all famous Climate Scientists too. The Magnificent Seven include a paleoentologist, an ecologist, a chemistry professor, a chemical engineer, a former MD of British Petroleum another engineer and an activist. Not a meteorologist among them. Yes, we are all Climate Scientists. Cue the Marlborough man music.
Nice but it misses the real point. The public is still going on by what a lot of the scientific community is saying (eg, see the CSIRO information pages) not just the politicians and the IPCC. In fact I doubt very much many people know who or what the IPCC is or even stands for. So the real point is not so much the IPCC but the skeptical scientists who by and large are still silent on this. It will only ever change when they come out as a combined force and expose the lies and myths about AGW, ultimately to shut down the other scientists who have deliberately skewed and corrupted the data to try and support a scam, which by the way is still succeeding in the West, which is where the real money still is (for now). And that’s the other point, it’s all about money not science, fueled by the mindless fools mostly of the left who ultimately want to destroy our way of life.
Yes, the public goes on what the publicists for the BOM and CSIRO say and that is all about Climate Change/Global Warming. No one is going to say Global Warming is a scam.
How many scientists can write advertising copy? How many scientists have boring occupations and nothing particularly exciting. Then came Global Warming and web sites, so they hired publicists and business managers who grabbed the next big thing, Climate Change and then waxed lyrical about warming and how much great work the BOM was doing to change the weather. Every cyclone is routinely upgraded to a Category 5. You can always give an excuse later.
Employed public service scientists must see this as a necessary evil and you have to think few would really care. In fact most would see a popular interest in meteorology as a great thing where meteorologists were suddenly in demand at parties to pronounce on the social issues of the day. Great. So do not expect a revolution against Global Warming/Climate Change to start in the BOM or similar bodies like the CSIRO. Even without their massive support for leftists politics and the Greens, why would anyone attack their own livelihood? That is also how large organizations like NASA and public Associations can be used to promote and serve the interests of a few activists at the top. It works. Now they are furiously busy hiding the decline, just to keep the funding going. It is not just the University of East Anglia doing this.
“Sunrise” program has Flannery and Monbiot suggesting that we bring back apex predators to Oz.Fannery getting wild-eyed about the re-introduction of the Komodo dragon.Why not Megalodon or Carnifex? They use this corollary with the return of the wolf and Puma to Yellowstone.(I was about to say jelly stone boo-boo) .For sure this will make camping more interesting,but what type of animals will this affect; cane toads Camels,cats,dingoes?Return to paradise Tim?
I likewise just watched this with a sense of horror – ‘rewilding’ to me has very little to do with creating more real wildness, but to create areas where people are not allowed to go. I bet you anything they want the rewilding and then the ‘exclusion zone’ to protect the introduced apex predators.
Also the quote about the EU having an area the size of Poland no longer used for farming was quite telling – he neglected to mention that it’s ‘pockets’ of farm land spread over the whole of the EU – which would make using said land for rewilding not practical – unless you have someone else signing off on the monies…
Tim is looking for another taxpayer funded hobby horse to ride – he should get a resounding ‘B*GGER OFF’ on social media. Also writing to your local member might be in order to head this silliness off at the pass.
What Apex predator? A marsupial? Perhaps the Tasmanian ‘Tiger’? Like NZ, Australia had giant cuddly wombats and emus and other harmless giant marsupials until man turned up with his dog and fire and wiped them out. Not even rats and no big cats and mammals like bears. For 50,000 years in Australia, man was the Apex predator and carnivore, so there was no need for agriculture. What is Flannery talking about? A qualified Science Fiction writer, like L. Ron Hubbard.
A year ago, amongst the comments at jonova, I made a note that the BoM had predicted a *doomsday super El Niño for 2014/15,* and, the last time they were *so confident* 38 people died in the Queensland floods, and, maybe we should be preparing again for floods.
If we listened to the BoM (we did), we prepared for a failed prediction. Again.
~ ~ ~
The chronology by quotes & links:
SMH, February 17, 2009: Drought and fire here to stay with El Nino’s return
“David Jones, the head of the bureau’s National Climate Centre, said there was some risk of a worsening El Nino event this year, but
it was more likely to arrive in 2010 or 2011.”
wikipedia: The 2010–11 floods killed 38 people in Queensland.[6]
As of 26 January, an additional nine people were missing.[7]
The Queensland floods were followed by the 2011 Victorian floods which saw more than fifty communities in western and central Victoria also grapple with significant flooding.
SMH, November 19, 2013: “Australia will face fiercer El Nino weather patterns – causing severe drought – as a result of human-induced global warming, world-first research led by Sydney scientists has shown.
While the El Nino cycles typically trigger drought in the eastern states, so-called super El Ninos – such as those in 1982 and 1997 – have been detected since the mid-1970s.”
“Recently speculation has been rife that the end of 2014 will see an El Niño event — the change in Pacific ocean and atmosphere circulation that is known to produce drought, extreme heat, and fire in Australia.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s latest statement predicts that Pacific Ocean temperatures may approach El Niño levels by early winter, but the jury is out beyond the end of this year.
Given the catastrophic effects El Niño can have, should we be getting prepared anyway?”
11 June, 2014, the guardian:
“The global El Niño weather phenomenon, whose impacts cause global famines, floods – and even wars – now has a 90% chance of striking this year, according to the latest forecast released to the Guardian.
The hot, dry skies will then track to heat-wracked Australia, where 2013 was already its hottest year on record and El Niño is threatening to turn the temperature up even further.
Andrew Watkins, manager of climate prediction services at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, said, “El Niño is one of the largest influences on Australia’s climate.”
SMH, March 6, 2015: El Nino declared as climate scientists watch on with ‘amazement’
“Climate scientists are monitoring this with amazement,” said Cai Wenju, a principal CSIRO research scientist who has published widely on the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern. “We only understand what we have seen.”
. . . April 3, 2015 – 12:55PM, Brisbanetimes: Twelve southeast Queensland dams are overflowing and might pose a threat to people living downstream.
In this interview (via kenskingdom) on ABC radio @15.00min, 29 March, 2015, Dr Rob Vertessy, Director, Bureau of Meteorology on Sunday Profile explains why questioning the BoM on it’s long term models is a “furphy.”
You be the judge.
(nb. @13.50 note questions on data tampering @BoM)
2 April: CBS: John Ramos: Dublin (California) Residents Question Timing Of Building New $35 Million Water Park
Amid California’s record drought, the City of Dublin is breaking ground on a massive new water park. Residents are wondering about the timing of the project…
“You can never predict a drought,” Dublin parks director Paul McCreary told KPIX 5…
The city’s parks director said the recreation and aquatic center will include indoor and outdoor pools and water slides. It’s been planned for 10 years now but got postponed when the economy tanked in 2007.
“At this point we’re moving forward with construction. Again, there’s more to the project than just the pools,” McCreary said…
“When we finish the project and it’s still in a drought and we can’t fill the pools, we’ll address it at that point in time. But we are moving forward with the project as planned,” McCreary said.
Right now, Dublin’s water restrictions forbid the filling of any empty swimming pools. The city is hoping the weather will change by the time they open their new water park in two years http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/04/02/dublin-residents-question-timing-of-building-new-water-park/
Christine Milne will be the first one there in her Wicked Weasel (look it up) micro bikini. Given she is certain we are in for a warmer, wetter world, lining up for a dip at a water park in Ireland should be a safe bet for her as an alarmist stunt.
And now you have that image…youll never be the same again.
We’re having the best general, soaking rain for 6monthhs here on the Northern Tablelands and North west.Walgett and other places have missed out- again. Time to open a bottle of Kirsch!
Soaking the Central Tablelands too, with the promise of more to come. Its shaping up to be another good year on the land down our way, which is bad news for the warmists who are depending on a never ending drought to help with their credibility problem.
If we sacrifice a state, will that help? Bring your sacrfices to Paris in December. Throw another virgin on the fire. Cook me up some forcing and some ‘schtick…
…trying to fight the mind control…ahhh…can’t maintain coherent thoughts…guess I’ll just have to Ramble On…
Not entirely relevant to the cartoon but I am currently reading an excellent book ” The Emperor of all Maladies” a Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee published in 2011. A memorable quote “In science, ideology tends to corrupt: absolute ideology corrupts absolutely.” Robert Nisbet. sadly, climate science isn’t the only sort that has been corrupted by money.
1 April: Business Spectator: Bloomberg: God save the planet: UK renewables rise to 20%, emissions fall 8% in year
***Meanwhile, China is moving from implementing a pilot carbon market to establishing a fully fledged national emissions trading scheme, due for lift-off in 2016, according to the Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Association. Bloomberg New Energy Finance does not expect the country to have a fully national programme before 2020 but when it does, the market is likely to shape the future of pricing worldwide, so watch this space.
However China’s proactivity vis-à-vis its carbon market has not yet translated to submitting a greenhouse gas pledge to the UN, ahead of Paris’ Climate Summit… http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/4/1/policy-politics/god-save-planet-uk-renewables-rise-20-emissions-fall-8-year
***China’s ETS sounds great, doesn’t it?
reality check:
3 April: Reuters: China turns away more than half of carbon credit applicants to curb glut
(Reporting by Kathy Chen and David Stanway; Editing by Tom Hogue)
China’s top regulator has ruled that more than half of the 54 mitigation projects that recently sought to register for carbon credits are ineligible, it said on Friday, amid worries that a glut of permits is undermining its pilot carbon markets.
Projects that help cut climate-warming greenhouse gases can apply to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) to be ruled eligible to receive a type of carbon credit known as a CCER, which can then be sold on some domestic exchanges to help companies cover their emissions reductions targets…
…project developers suggested the rejections were the result of a recent tightening of qualification rules.
To qualify now, a project must prove that it could not have gone ahead without the income generated through the sale of carbon credits…
“We have only been told that the authority’s checks would be stricter, but it isn’t clear where the bar will be,” said one project developer, who declined to be name because of the sensitivity of the matter.
China has issued 14 million credits so far to help companies covered by its seven pilot carbon markets meet a June compliance deadline, but demand and prices have remained low.
The authority is trying to prevent too many credits from flooding into the markets, where trade in locally-issued carbon permits is already thin. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/03/us-china-carbon-idUSKBN0MU0KA20150403
2 April: Environmental Defense Fund: Fred Krupp: How to save the planet? Be reasonable.
Last week I had the honor of receiving a 2015 William K. Reilly Award for Environmental Leadership, from American University’s Center for Environmental Policy. I want to share this recognition with my colleagues at Environmental Defense Fund – and with our partners and allies…
China’s climate commitment is also heartening, and EDF has been proud to play a role in China’s pilot carbon trading programs… http://www.edf.org/blog/2015/04/02/how-save-planet-be-reasonable
3 April: Greenbiz (from Business Green): Jessica Shankleman: How industry lobbyists undermine sustainability
European businesses taking ambitious steps to reduce their carbon emissions inadvertently support lobbying against robust climate change policies through their membership with major trade associations, a new report has revealed.
The undermined businesses include Unilever, which last year ended its direct membership of BusinessEurope, hinting at tensions over the lobby group’s stance on environmental policies and sustainability issues, but has remained a member of Cefic, the European Chemical Industry council, despite advocating opposing views on the need for carbon market reform.
The report, published by Policy Studies Institute (PSI) at the University of Westminster, is based on publicly available responses from trade associations to the European Commission’s consultations on climate, energy and carbon market reform, as well as individual interviews and companies individual climate change policies disclosed to CDP.
It outlines that six trade associations including BusinessEurope, Cefic and Eurometaux lobbied against European Commission efforts to try to salvage the EU’s emissions trading scheme (ETS). In early 2013, MEPs voted down the so-called backloading proposals; the plan took eight more months to gain approval…
Unilever remains a member of Cefic despite admitting it had opposing views on backloading and told CDP that Cefic’s position on climate change is “more or less consistent” with its own…
***The report was commissioned by the charity ShareAction, which asks investors to demand more ethical practices from the companies they hold shares in.
ShareAction chief executive Catherine Howarth said investors should ask questions of companies to ensure that their public positions on climate change aren’t being undercut by their membership in controversial European lobby groups.
***”Runaway climate change would be immensely costly for long-term investors such as pension funds,” she said in a statement. “That’s why many such investors have committed themselves to supporting a strong global deal and EU leadership on climate.
“But right under their noses, many companies in their portfolios are contributing shareholder funds to secretive trade associations that seem determined to undermine climate security. This Jekyll and Hyde behavior on climate change has to stop.”
Her comments echo those of U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, who repeatedly has urged green businesses to take action on climate change, rather than relying on “wishy washy” lobbying campaigns from trade associations.
Whether this report gives companies the push they need to quit lobby groups that appear to conflict with their own aims remains to be seen… http://www.greenbiz.com/article/are-industry-lobby-groups-undermining-green-business
30 March: PSI Blog: Businesses are using trade associations to undermine EU climate policy, says report
Commenting on the report, Ben Fagan-Watson, lead researcher and Research Fellow at PSI, said: “Companies which are making strong commitments to deal with climate change need to ensure that their trade associations are singing from the same hymn sheet…
The full report ‘Lobbying by Trade Associations on EU Climate Policy’ can be downloaded here and the annexes are available here.
The research, funded by the Tellus Mater Foundation… http://www.psi.org.uk/site/news_article/lobbying_report
PSI.org.uk: Research Fellow, Ben Fagan-Watson
Ben Fagan-Watson is a Research Fellow in the Environment Group, and joined PSI in July 2009. He is currently co-ordinating a Rapid Evidence Assessment for Defra which is assessing the impact and implementation of complex environmental policies on complex systems. He is interested in exploring how the investment community can drive reductions in corporate demand for energy and materials, and in the influence that large multinationals have on climate policy.
From 2013-14, Ben was on secondment to CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) where he was the Head of Government Relations. CDP is an international not-for-profit organisation that gathers key environmental information from over 5,000 of the world’s largest businesses on behalf of 722 investors worth $87 trillion. He led CDP’s research into corporate lobbying on climate policy, and contributed to the Guide to Responsible Corporate Engagement in Climate Policy which was written with eight leading institutions, including three UN agencies…
***In addition, Ben has conducted two action-based research projects for Defra assessing how to encourage pro-environmental behaviours around food waste, and assessing whether ‘trusted intermediaries’ (such as plumbers, or plumbers’ merchants) can be used to spread pro-environmental, water-saving behaviours and products to the general public…
ABC includes a graph with times for the lunar eclipse in each State tonight:
ABC: Bad weather may rain on unusual Easter eclipse
Skywatchers will be treated to a red-tinged moon this Easter Saturday night — if they live in an area that’s not blanketed by cloud… http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/04/02/4210045.htm
unless i’m missing something, surely Fairfax have jumped the weather gun.
re chief executive Catherine Howarth of ShareAction, which commissioned the PSI study posted above:
ShareActiion: Catherine Howarth, CEO
Earlier in her career she was Senior Researcher at the New Policy Institute.
Catherine is a board member of Green Alliance. She was a Member Nominated Trustee of The Pensions Trust (the multi-employer pension scheme for the UK’s not-for-profit sector) for five years until Spring 2013. She served for four years on The Pensions Trust’s Investment Committee.
Catherine holds a First Class BA in Modern History from Oxford University and an MSc in Industrial Relations from the London School of Economics.
In June 2011 Catherine was named a ‘Rising Star of Corporate Governance’ by Yale University’s, Millstein Center. In 2013, Pensions Insight featured her as one of the 50 most influential people in pensions and in May 2011 Investment and Pensions Europe called her one of the ‘top ten women in pensions’. Catherine was recognised by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2014…
Matt Davis, Director of Communications and Public Engagement
Matt joined ShareAction in August 2014. Beginning his career in journalism as the investment reporter at Money Marketing, Matt went on to win several awards for his investigative work covering politics and law enforcement in the United States. His work has been published in outlets including The Guardian, People Magazine and Agence France Presse…
Jon Hoare, Director of Investor Networks
Prior to joining ShareAction, Jon worked in Government across a range of policy areas for a number of Departments including the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, and most recently, the Cabinet Office. Jon holds a BA in Politics, and an MA in Political Philosophy, both from the University of York…
Jamie Audsley, Head of Outreach
More recently he spent time working in business at Pearson, the FTSE 100 and world’s largest education organisation…
READ THE REST http://shareaction.org/team
link from above:
About ShareAction
ShareAction is a groundbreaking charity that promotes Responsible Investment by pension funds and fund managers. Bringing together leading charities, trade unions, faith groups and individual investors, our aim is to catalyse a shift at each level of the investment chain, so that Responsible Investment becomes the norm.
ShareAction was launched in 2005 as FairPensions and now has built a strong track record of persuading major investors to increase shareholder activism on environmental, social and governance issues. Today, ShareAction is recognised in the UK as the leading NGO that monitors and engages with the investment industry. In 2013 we changed our name to ShareAction, to better reflect the broad range of issues we campaign on.
***Our mission recognises the simple but under-appreciated fact that the trillions of pounds invested in pensions have the power to change our world…
ShareAction believes strongly in connecting pension savers with the management of their money and in making the investment industry more transparent and accountable in its dealings with pension savers and retail clients…
ShareAction – Our Member Organisations
includes:
CAFOD is the official overseas development and relief agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales…
CWU, The Communication Workers Union, is the biggest union for the communications industry in the UK. It was formed in January 1995 when the Union of Communication Workers joined forces with the National Communications Union, and its members include employees in the Post Office, BT, cable TV and the financial services industry…
Friends of the Earth
Greenpeace
Oxfam
UNISON is Britain and Europe’s largest public sector union with more than 1.3 million members…
Unite is Britain’s largest union with two million members in every type of workplace…
WWF
ETC ETC
SMH tries to pull a similar stunt. Preempting discourse.
SMH’s bunch of delusional clowns want to present a “fait accompli” to dissuade any contrary voices in the hope that people will go away because “the decision has already been made; too late now”.
Agreements cannot be forecast any more than the weather on the 28th of February, 2073
Nothing will be achieved by UNFCC and COP21 except an increase in Australia’s deficits if it doesn’t stop humouring the credulous and the misanthropes.
400
In these days of budget deficits and razor gangs surely somewhere in officialdom there must be some committee which is looking to see that we are getting are getting value for our taxpayer’s dollar. So where is the value of the money spent so far? Lots of dud prognoses, “never going rain again”, “our kids will never see snow”, and enormous sums spent on mothballed de-salination plants, carbon taxes, international meetings in Copenhagen, Cancun and shortly Paris. etc., etc,
As there is no relationship between levels of carbon dioxide and global temperatures are we all collectively mad?
120
No, we are not all mad. I don’t get the impression that you are mad and I’m pretty sure that Jo, her guest-writers and most of her readers are sane. Unfortunately, the opposition is quite often sane, as well. Their pseudo-scientific assertions are not rational, persuasive, or even plausible (as you say, the lack of correlation between increasing CO2 and static temperatures does stand out rather).
Unfortunately, they expect to get their way at the Paris boondoggle, where the voices of reason won’t be admitted to the proceedings, so their confidence, unlike their science, may not be misplaced. Any agreement reached in Paris will be designed to be voter-proof. Obama is always dreaming up ways to exclude the legislature and the voters who elected it from any influence over decisions; he also favours operating through the dictators’ club known as the UN. In Britain, which party ends up predominating after the election won’t affect the government’s approach to Paris, because both are equally addicted to warmist-nonsense. That applies to numerous other governments around the world.
Many regimes expect a huge windfall. Vanuatu and the Maldives shamelessly angle for big pay-outs. China’s bribe probably couldn’t be satisfied with dollars (China pretty much owns all of those already), but some characteristically abject capitulation by Obama, in return for a meaningless commitment from the Great Hall of the (excluded) People, could induce China to trouser the West’s suicide-note.
80
I always wondered why they dont have this “world Powers” meetings in say Bulamakanka instead of Paris, Copenhagen and the like…. Or Better still somewhere near a wind farm!! Then they can claim that the whole shemozle was “Carbon Neutral”!!!…. and with a bit of luck see for themselves how sick you can get…….
20
Bernd Felsche,
You’ve ‘nailed it right on the head’. It seems to me that there’s a new way of doing things and that is, to do them backwards. First you make the announcement that something is going to happen but you make it look as though it already happened. From my perspective this strategy began at the IPCC when they decided to release the Summary for Policymakers before releasing the actual summary report on the science.
In the US, the individual states were first asked to agree to participate in Common Core and only after signing on to the program were the states advised as to what the details of the program actually were. There are other examples of this phenomenon, but can’t recall them off the top of my head.
In the case of the article you linked to, they conveniently published it before the official publication by the Australian Governmet – Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet of this report: Setting Australia’s post-2020 target for greenhouse gas emissions – Issues Paper.
In the ‘Issues Paper’ itself, they state that comments and suggestions can be submitted to them for evaluation prior to the release of the actual post-2020 targets which will occur in June of this year.
pat wrote:
It’s probably a good idea to contribute to the discussion by getting involved in the process. I’m sure a short but clearly written submission can have an impact. It won’t hurt to try.
Abe
20
May the co2 be with you
180
And the Forcing be with you.
190
The Force is real I tell you, CERN has found it!
110
Ahem! Look at the date of this world-shattering pronouncement.
04
… and that’s the very reason it’s so credible.
The Science is settled!
40
Second-best part of that was the physicist that looked similar to Harry Potter.
Best part was the finalé; trash-talking the damn midichlorians.
10
I’ve got it!! ” “It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us; and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”” That’s the force that keeps: 1)all CO2 close to earth and 2)will make the temperature rise because we cannot let it go!! I am devising a chart and some stats to go with the assumption, I need more money please!!!
30
I have to admit to being more than a little scared.
At the end of this year, the western world may sign up to the longest economic suicide pact in history. The eastern world (mainly India and China) will ensure it is exempt from the suicide provisions in the pact, even though they will be the largest carbon dioxide emitters on the planet.
The year 2015 will be remembered for being an unprecedented one for climate BS, it will be coming at us in swarms and battalions. All to convince the public that a policy of unreliable, scarce and expensive energy is essential to solve a non-problem. Those exhibiting the highly dangerous Save the World Syndrome will be everywhere extolling the virtues of economic Armageddon.
I used to think many alarmists were inflicted with Noble Cause Corruption, but from Cook’s grand deceit on “97% of climate scientists agree” to the serial and gross manipulation of raw climate data to ‘prove’ the existence of imminent Thermageddon, you can only reach one conclusion that the Global Warming movement is guilty of a giant and unforgivable scam.
In my innocence, I used to also think the western world would be saved from its own stupidity by the US Congress and Senate which would vote down any climate treaty, but the ever devious Obama is jumping through hoops to ensure the Paris agreement is not seen as a treaty requiring ratification by the country’s lawmakers.
If you want to glimpse at just a little of what the future promises us if Paris is successful, then take a look at South Africa where long revolving power cuts throughout the country have become the norm, the result of a lack of investment in cheap reliable energy generation and a ban on fracking.
351
I think its anther reason to be fully self contained for power and water if you can…..it matters not whether they dump power, if you can roll your own, youre laughing….
Bit at a higher level view, you would have to conclude that the west seems determined to hand its prosperity to the east and then fall on its sword.
My guess if you want to know who’s behind it all, is see who prospers regardless as it happens….then you will know who will be in the inevitable Nuremberg-like trials in years to come.
70
Still true, but some are way more cynical in their abuse of power. Noble Cause corruption is so strong a motive that it simply drowns out hypocrisy as a concept within the mindset. That’s why Branson can run airlines worldwide and tell everyone else to save the planet; or the editor/owner of HuffPuff (HuffPo) can use her own private Lear jet to attend a conference designed to persuade people to fly less – the hypocrisy is simply not seen, it doesn’t exist for them
I’ve commented previously, I believe the war is lost. The rational thing now is to try and preserve as much of our currently functioning, economic power grids as possible in an attempt to preserve some aspects of civilization (examine the current UK situation before labelling this as alarmist)
How to do this ? Use the MP email list on earlier threads here to ask constantly what planning is there to guarantee current Twh supply as both economic and reliable. Use TonyOZ’s figures from the Energy Association’s website (until it is hidden from public access); use the exact Twh figures by region if you can, matching the regional figure to the MP’s geographical electoral area. The repeated use of actual, accurate numbers is quite a wedge into this because the Greenies and ALP activists can’t count very well at all
My own area of expertise is actually quite busy keeping the supplies of suitable raw fuels out of the hands of Receivers with the drop in sale prices (yet another bottom cycle, but now superimposed on the Greenies’ assaults)
190
“I have to admit to being more than a little scared.”
Me to!
The whole AGW thing has a sort of Jonestown quality to it. Even the cult members who realized the error of their beliefs perished in the maelstrom when the whole scam collapsed.
Putting things into an Easter context the AGW crowd is becoming as frenzied as the crowd outside the court of Pontius Pilot.
90
Whoops,
Pontus Pilate!
00
Pontius Pilate
10
I thought the jedi were the good guys….
80
Sir,
These characters are clearly Sith, the evil Force-wielding foes of the Jedi, who are disguising themselves in the clothes of the heroes and are misusing Science as a vehicle for their cynical scam by driving it without their L-plates on. Ninety-seven percent of my neurones agree my interpretation of the data is unquestionable.
I expect to promptly receive a bachelor degree in Cartoon Science from that sandstone bastion of academic integrity, UQ, who are already known shelterers of washed-up cartoonists masquerading as scientists; state sponsored errorism, if you catch my drift.
We must create regime change in St Lucia. We cannot wait for the smoking gun of monopsonistic biases in climate science, which may come in the form of a mushroom cloud of fuel poverty, business failures, child mortality, last-gasp mergers, and lost production opportunities. You are with us or you are with the errorists. Will the UQ board take the bold action required, or will it become irrelevant?
21
Dey’re puttin Obiwan over us, the barstewards……..
80
The dirty little man in the car next to Fatso looks like Pachauri, the infamous leacher of young women in the TERI organisation. Hopefully, he will soon take the PERP walk and spend a few years at the Greybar Motel.
92
Here something you won’t read in the MSM: European springs are starting later, just like during the tail of the LIA.
http://notrickszone.com/2015/04/02/cooling-europe-temperature-vegetation-data-show-central-european-springs-starting-later/
There is a clear and unmistakable trend towards regional cooling.
81
It works by suggesting that the dupe is smart because they realise that it is true. They’re too busy both feeling smug and dreading the truth, which is a little less than flattering, so they swallow it whole.
20
Noble cause? Noble Rot, more like.
70
I’ll drink to that!
00
I have been posting this on Facebook many times now,the warmists ignore the IPCC projection failure completely:
“For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.1°C per decade would be expected.”
LINK
The Temperature chart:
LINK
They go on as if my post does not exist.
121
There is a good side to all this irrational carbon dioxide scare. The windmills are useless of course and solar is a joke, except for electronic in the outback. However the push for savings in emissions of all sorts is dramatically reducing energy consumption. The swap to incandescent lights, Hybrid cars, Hydrogen cells, Lighter, smaller vehicles, computer optimized engines and an overall focus on consumer energy efficiency, which makes a great change from the 1970s when a frost free refrigerator with ice maker required its own dedicated power station.
Of course it is all for nonsense reasons and with India, Africa, Russia, China, South America, Asia out of the equation, emission reductions are useless and all about crippling Western manufacturing and sowing discontent prior to the socialist revolution. What must be frustrating is that the Capitalist entrepreneurial West is prospering from this, obsoleting cars and planes and creating new materials. That windmill money is funding manufacturing and making capitalists richer! Damn.
Paris will happen and cunning politicians will placate the Donkey (Don Quixote) vote and agree to reductions which will happen anyway, as is obvious in Australia with the collapse of manufacturing. What the organizers of Paris really want is an agreement to let them tax Western countries directly, to force them to hand their sovereign right of taxation to a set of communist unelected bureaucrats in the UN. Hopefully that will not happen. Surely even Obama is not so anxious to please his Leftist Green friends. John Kerry however seems to worship Al Gore and cares more about his hair.
161
It worked a long time ago and far, far away. And it works for me in the here and now. 🙂
Very apt. Best cartoon in years, even if a bit too true to be funny.
Unfortunately much of the public is the Imperial Storm Trooper in this little mind trick.
40
In another scene,Al and Patchy could be seen using the Jedi mind-trick to grope some masseur/work colleague.
41
In another scene,Al and Patchy could be seen using the Jedi mind-trick to grope some masseur/work colleague.
21
The emperor is not as forgiving as I am.
30
I have the solution; EVERY liberal, democrat, progressive, should rush to STOP using electricity, stop driving cars, ride bicycles,recycle everything. Since they truly
believe in anthro-climate-change, they will be glad to save the world with their sacrifice.
They don’t need us, they claim to have 97% of the people with them. If that many people
stop using energy, the problem is solved. Any guess how many will do it??
131
I’ve got a better idea still: since the air we breathe in is .04% CO2, but what we breathe out is 4% CO2 – a 100-fold increase, let’s have all progressives, leftists, alarmists, etc. who firmly believe in CO2-driven AGW simply STOP BREATHING! That would solve a whole lot of problems!
40
Pretty sure the 97% Doomsday Global Warming is a parallel universe.
(thesciencetimes): “Every science fiction fan is familiar with the notion of parallel universes with the Star Trek series being one of the first to popularize the notion.
However, thanks to the Large Hadron Collider, we may soon have proof that a parallel universe does, in fact, exist.”
51
Rajendra Pachauri?
January 6, 2015, The Economic Times, India:
Lima Call for Climate Action: No errors of emission
By RK Pachauri
1 Apr, 2015,, The Economic Times, India:
NEW DELHI: In what appears to be a setback for former UN climate panel chief Rajendra Pachauri, the Delhi Police has found “no evidence” to back his claim that he had been a victim of hacking.
The 74-year-old scientist, facing charges of sexual harassment, had complained to the Delhi Police on February 17 that his computers, electronic equipments including his mobile phone were hacked by “unknown cyber criminals”.
. . .
Not only a sexual predator, but, a habitual liar has been in charge of the UN-IPCC!
101
I would have thought that being a habitual liar would be part of the job description? At the very least you’d want someone who can lie convincingly, and have no ethical crises as a result – you know, traditional ‘used car salesman’ credentials…
00
“No evidence” Eh. What sort of competent hacker would leave evidence and even if they did would the Delhi plods be able to find it ?
No evidence is just that, no evidence & proof of nothing.
It may be a bit much calling old ChooChoo a scientist though .
51
Not just scientist and certainly not a railway engineer. Chief Climate Scientist! Leader of the infamous 97%. Then Australia’s Climate Council are all famous Climate Scientists too. The Magnificent Seven include a paleoentologist, an ecologist, a chemistry professor, a chemical engineer, a former MD of British Petroleum another engineer and an activist. Not a meteorologist among them. Yes, we are all Climate Scientists. Cue the Marlborough man music.
50
Nice but it misses the real point. The public is still going on by what a lot of the scientific community is saying (eg, see the CSIRO information pages) not just the politicians and the IPCC. In fact I doubt very much many people know who or what the IPCC is or even stands for. So the real point is not so much the IPCC but the skeptical scientists who by and large are still silent on this. It will only ever change when they come out as a combined force and expose the lies and myths about AGW, ultimately to shut down the other scientists who have deliberately skewed and corrupted the data to try and support a scam, which by the way is still succeeding in the West, which is where the real money still is (for now). And that’s the other point, it’s all about money not science, fueled by the mindless fools mostly of the left who ultimately want to destroy our way of life.
40
Yes, the public goes on what the publicists for the BOM and CSIRO say and that is all about Climate Change/Global Warming. No one is going to say Global Warming is a scam.
How many scientists can write advertising copy? How many scientists have boring occupations and nothing particularly exciting. Then came Global Warming and web sites, so they hired publicists and business managers who grabbed the next big thing, Climate Change and then waxed lyrical about warming and how much great work the BOM was doing to change the weather. Every cyclone is routinely upgraded to a Category 5. You can always give an excuse later.
Employed public service scientists must see this as a necessary evil and you have to think few would really care. In fact most would see a popular interest in meteorology as a great thing where meteorologists were suddenly in demand at parties to pronounce on the social issues of the day. Great. So do not expect a revolution against Global Warming/Climate Change to start in the BOM or similar bodies like the CSIRO. Even without their massive support for leftists politics and the Greens, why would anyone attack their own livelihood? That is also how large organizations like NASA and public Associations can be used to promote and serve the interests of a few activists at the top. It works. Now they are furiously busy hiding the decline, just to keep the funding going. It is not just the University of East Anglia doing this.
10
“Sunrise” program has Flannery and Monbiot suggesting that we bring back apex predators to Oz.Fannery getting wild-eyed about the re-introduction of the Komodo dragon.Why not Megalodon or Carnifex? They use this corollary with the return of the wolf and Puma to Yellowstone.(I was about to say jelly stone boo-boo) .For sure this will make camping more interesting,but what type of animals will this affect; cane toads Camels,cats,dingoes?Return to paradise Tim?
30
I likewise just watched this with a sense of horror – ‘rewilding’ to me has very little to do with creating more real wildness, but to create areas where people are not allowed to go. I bet you anything they want the rewilding and then the ‘exclusion zone’ to protect the introduced apex predators.
Also the quote about the EU having an area the size of Poland no longer used for farming was quite telling – he neglected to mention that it’s ‘pockets’ of farm land spread over the whole of the EU – which would make using said land for rewilding not practical – unless you have someone else signing off on the monies…
Tim is looking for another taxpayer funded hobby horse to ride – he should get a resounding ‘B*GGER OFF’ on social media. Also writing to your local member might be in order to head this silliness off at the pass.
70
What Apex predator? A marsupial? Perhaps the Tasmanian ‘Tiger’? Like NZ, Australia had giant cuddly wombats and emus and other harmless giant marsupials until man turned up with his dog and fire and wiped them out. Not even rats and no big cats and mammals like bears. For 50,000 years in Australia, man was the Apex predator and carnivore, so there was no need for agriculture. What is Flannery talking about? A qualified Science Fiction writer, like L. Ron Hubbard.
20
I told ya so!
A year ago, amongst the comments at jonova, I made a note that the BoM had predicted a *doomsday super El Niño for 2014/15,* and, the last time they were *so confident* 38 people died in the Queensland floods, and, maybe we should be preparing again for floods.
If we listened to the BoM (we did), we prepared for a failed prediction. Again.
~ ~ ~
The chronology by quotes & links:
SMH, February 17, 2009: Drought and fire here to stay with El Nino’s return
“David Jones, the head of the bureau’s National Climate Centre, said there was some risk of a worsening El Nino event this year, but
it was more likely to arrive in 2010 or 2011.”
wikipedia: The 2010–11 floods killed 38 people in Queensland.[6]
As of 26 January, an additional nine people were missing.[7]
The Queensland floods were followed by the 2011 Victorian floods which saw more than fifty communities in western and central Victoria also grapple with significant flooding.
SMH, November 19, 2013: “Australia will face fiercer El Nino weather patterns – causing severe drought – as a result of human-induced global warming, world-first research led by Sydney scientists has shown.
While the El Nino cycles typically trigger drought in the eastern states, so-called super El Ninos – such as those in 1982 and 1997 – have been detected since the mid-1970s.”
theconversationCSIRO/BoM: 20 February 2014: Should we be preparing for an El Niño in 2014? (Wenju Cai)
“Recently speculation has been rife that the end of 2014 will see an El Niño event — the change in Pacific ocean and atmosphere circulation that is known to produce drought, extreme heat, and fire in Australia.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s latest statement predicts that Pacific Ocean temperatures may approach El Niño levels by early winter, but the jury is out beyond the end of this year.
Given the catastrophic effects El Niño can have, should we be getting prepared anyway?”
11 June, 2014, the guardian:
“The global El Niño weather phenomenon, whose impacts cause global famines, floods – and even wars – now has a 90% chance of striking this year, according to the latest forecast released to the Guardian.
The hot, dry skies will then track to heat-wracked Australia, where 2013 was already its hottest year on record and El Niño is threatening to turn the temperature up even further.
Andrew Watkins, manager of climate prediction services at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, said, “El Niño is one of the largest influences on Australia’s climate.”
February 5, 2015, bloomberg.com: El Nino Forecasts Flop as Puzzled Scientists Wonder Why
SMH, March 6, 2015: El Nino declared as climate scientists watch on with ‘amazement’
“Climate scientists are monitoring this with amazement,” said Cai Wenju, a principal CSIRO research scientist who has published widely on the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern. “We only understand what we have seen.”
. . .
April 3, 2015 – 12:55PM, Brisbanetimes: Twelve southeast Queensland dams are overflowing and might pose a threat to people living downstream.
In this interview (via kenskingdom) on ABC radio @15.00min, 29 March, 2015, Dr Rob Vertessy, Director, Bureau of Meteorology on Sunday Profile explains why questioning the BoM on it’s long term models is a “furphy.”
You be the judge.
(nb. @13.50 note questions on data tampering @BoM)
10
Hope springs eternal!
2 April: CBS: John Ramos: Dublin (California) Residents Question Timing Of Building New $35 Million Water Park
Amid California’s record drought, the City of Dublin is breaking ground on a massive new water park. Residents are wondering about the timing of the project…
“You can never predict a drought,” Dublin parks director Paul McCreary told KPIX 5…
The city’s parks director said the recreation and aquatic center will include indoor and outdoor pools and water slides. It’s been planned for 10 years now but got postponed when the economy tanked in 2007.
“At this point we’re moving forward with construction. Again, there’s more to the project than just the pools,” McCreary said…
“When we finish the project and it’s still in a drought and we can’t fill the pools, we’ll address it at that point in time. But we are moving forward with the project as planned,” McCreary said.
Right now, Dublin’s water restrictions forbid the filling of any empty swimming pools. The city is hoping the weather will change by the time they open their new water park in two years
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/04/02/dublin-residents-question-timing-of-building-new-water-park/
time will tell.
Happy Easter folks.
20
Christine Milne will be the first one there in her Wicked Weasel (look it up) micro bikini. Given she is certain we are in for a warmer, wetter world, lining up for a dip at a water park in Ireland should be a safe bet for her as an alarmist stunt.
And now you have that image…youll never be the same again.
10
We’re having the best general, soaking rain for 6monthhs here on the Northern Tablelands and North west.Walgett and other places have missed out- again. Time to open a bottle of Kirsch!
50
Soaking the Central Tablelands too, with the promise of more to come. Its shaping up to be another good year on the land down our way, which is bad news for the warmists who are depending on a never ending drought to help with their credibility problem.
20
If we sacrifice a state, will that help? Bring your sacrfices to Paris in December. Throw another virgin on the fire. Cook me up some forcing and some ‘schtick…
…trying to fight the mind control…ahhh…can’t maintain coherent thoughts…guess I’ll just have to Ramble On…
20
a “political oversight”:
3 April: WUWT: Anthony Watts: WUWT gets results – Tom Nelson’s Twitter @tan123 account reinstated
I just got this email from an employee at Twitter:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/03/wuwt-gets-results-tom-nelsons-twitter-tan123-account-reinstated/
50
People Power!
It makes me feel like feel like singing a song, like Kum-by-Ya or We Shall Not Be Moved.
30
Indeed the stuff of smoke screens, Stevenson screens and BOM Technical Advisory Forums.
20
Get an Engineer elected to the UK Parliament …
20
Not entirely relevant to the cartoon but I am currently reading an excellent book ” The Emperor of all Maladies” a Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee published in 2011. A memorable quote “In science, ideology tends to corrupt: absolute ideology corrupts absolutely.” Robert Nisbet. sadly, climate science isn’t the only sort that has been corrupted by money.
50
The IPCC needs to explain why we have this Southern Hemisphere cooling signal.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=3649
00
1 April: Business Spectator: Bloomberg: God save the planet: UK renewables rise to 20%, emissions fall 8% in year
***Meanwhile, China is moving from implementing a pilot carbon market to establishing a fully fledged national emissions trading scheme, due for lift-off in 2016, according to the Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Association. Bloomberg New Energy Finance does not expect the country to have a fully national programme before 2020 but when it does, the market is likely to shape the future of pricing worldwide, so watch this space.
However China’s proactivity vis-à-vis its carbon market has not yet translated to submitting a greenhouse gas pledge to the UN, ahead of Paris’ Climate Summit…
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/4/1/policy-politics/god-save-planet-uk-renewables-rise-20-emissions-fall-8-year
***China’s ETS sounds great, doesn’t it?
reality check:
3 April: Reuters: China turns away more than half of carbon credit applicants to curb glut
(Reporting by Kathy Chen and David Stanway; Editing by Tom Hogue)
China’s top regulator has ruled that more than half of the 54 mitigation projects that recently sought to register for carbon credits are ineligible, it said on Friday, amid worries that a glut of permits is undermining its pilot carbon markets.
Projects that help cut climate-warming greenhouse gases can apply to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) to be ruled eligible to receive a type of carbon credit known as a CCER, which can then be sold on some domestic exchanges to help companies cover their emissions reductions targets…
…project developers suggested the rejections were the result of a recent tightening of qualification rules.
To qualify now, a project must prove that it could not have gone ahead without the income generated through the sale of carbon credits…
“We have only been told that the authority’s checks would be stricter, but it isn’t clear where the bar will be,” said one project developer, who declined to be name because of the sensitivity of the matter.
China has issued 14 million credits so far to help companies covered by its seven pilot carbon markets meet a June compliance deadline, but demand and prices have remained low.
The authority is trying to prevent too many credits from flooding into the markets, where trade in locally-issued carbon permits is already thin.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/03/us-china-carbon-idUSKBN0MU0KA20150403
00
The IPCC mind trick was to demonise CO2 and the masses accepted it without question.
https://trustyetverify.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/carbon-versus-carbon-dioxide/#more-1698
10
EDF boast:
2 April: Environmental Defense Fund: Fred Krupp: How to save the planet? Be reasonable.
Last week I had the honor of receiving a 2015 William K. Reilly Award for Environmental Leadership, from American University’s Center for Environmental Policy. I want to share this recognition with my colleagues at Environmental Defense Fund – and with our partners and allies…
China’s climate commitment is also heartening, and EDF has been proud to play a role in China’s pilot carbon trading programs…
http://www.edf.org/blog/2015/04/02/how-save-planet-be-reasonable
00
3 April: Greenbiz (from Business Green): Jessica Shankleman: How industry lobbyists undermine sustainability
European businesses taking ambitious steps to reduce their carbon emissions inadvertently support lobbying against robust climate change policies through their membership with major trade associations, a new report has revealed.
The undermined businesses include Unilever, which last year ended its direct membership of BusinessEurope, hinting at tensions over the lobby group’s stance on environmental policies and sustainability issues, but has remained a member of Cefic, the European Chemical Industry council, despite advocating opposing views on the need for carbon market reform.
The report, published by Policy Studies Institute (PSI) at the University of Westminster, is based on publicly available responses from trade associations to the European Commission’s consultations on climate, energy and carbon market reform, as well as individual interviews and companies individual climate change policies disclosed to CDP.
It outlines that six trade associations including BusinessEurope, Cefic and Eurometaux lobbied against European Commission efforts to try to salvage the EU’s emissions trading scheme (ETS). In early 2013, MEPs voted down the so-called backloading proposals; the plan took eight more months to gain approval…
Unilever remains a member of Cefic despite admitting it had opposing views on backloading and told CDP that Cefic’s position on climate change is “more or less consistent” with its own…
***The report was commissioned by the charity ShareAction, which asks investors to demand more ethical practices from the companies they hold shares in.
ShareAction chief executive Catherine Howarth said investors should ask questions of companies to ensure that their public positions on climate change aren’t being undercut by their membership in controversial European lobby groups.
***”Runaway climate change would be immensely costly for long-term investors such as pension funds,” she said in a statement. “That’s why many such investors have committed themselves to supporting a strong global deal and EU leadership on climate.
“But right under their noses, many companies in their portfolios are contributing shareholder funds to secretive trade associations that seem determined to undermine climate security. This Jekyll and Hyde behavior on climate change has to stop.”
Her comments echo those of U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, who repeatedly has urged green businesses to take action on climate change, rather than relying on “wishy washy” lobbying campaigns from trade associations.
Whether this report gives companies the push they need to quit lobby groups that appear to conflict with their own aims remains to be seen…
http://www.greenbiz.com/article/are-industry-lobby-groups-undermining-green-business
30 March: PSI Blog: Businesses are using trade associations to undermine EU climate policy, says report
Commenting on the report, Ben Fagan-Watson, lead researcher and Research Fellow at PSI, said: “Companies which are making strong commitments to deal with climate change need to ensure that their trade associations are singing from the same hymn sheet…
The full report ‘Lobbying by Trade Associations on EU Climate Policy’ can be downloaded here and the annexes are available here.
The research, funded by the Tellus Mater Foundation…
http://www.psi.org.uk/site/news_article/lobbying_report
PSI.org.uk: Research Fellow, Ben Fagan-Watson
Ben Fagan-Watson is a Research Fellow in the Environment Group, and joined PSI in July 2009. He is currently co-ordinating a Rapid Evidence Assessment for Defra which is assessing the impact and implementation of complex environmental policies on complex systems. He is interested in exploring how the investment community can drive reductions in corporate demand for energy and materials, and in the influence that large multinationals have on climate policy.
From 2013-14, Ben was on secondment to CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) where he was the Head of Government Relations. CDP is an international not-for-profit organisation that gathers key environmental information from over 5,000 of the world’s largest businesses on behalf of 722 investors worth $87 trillion. He led CDP’s research into corporate lobbying on climate policy, and contributed to the Guide to Responsible Corporate Engagement in Climate Policy which was written with eight leading institutions, including three UN agencies…
***In addition, Ben has conducted two action-based research projects for Defra assessing how to encourage pro-environmental behaviours around food waste, and assessing whether ‘trusted intermediaries’ (such as plumbers, or plumbers’ merchants) can be used to spread pro-environmental, water-saving behaviours and products to the general public…
00
Fairfax Brisbane Times pre-empt the weather for tonite’s lunar eclipse!
4 April: Brisbane Times: Brisbane Times: Tim Barlass: Happy Easter. National Parks camp sites are full … and it’s raining –
***Not only were there no stars to sleep under, the low cloud obliterated views of the transit of a full lunar eclipse on Saturday night…
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/nsw/happy-easter-national-parks-camp-sites-are-full–and-its-raining–20150404-1mdzsp.html
ABC includes a graph with times for the lunar eclipse in each State tonight:
ABC: Bad weather may rain on unusual Easter eclipse
Skywatchers will be treated to a red-tinged moon this Easter Saturday night — if they live in an area that’s not blanketed by cloud…
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/04/02/4210045.htm
unless i’m missing something, surely Fairfax have jumped the weather gun.
10
re chief executive Catherine Howarth of ShareAction, which commissioned the PSI study posted above:
ShareActiion: Catherine Howarth, CEO
Earlier in her career she was Senior Researcher at the New Policy Institute.
Catherine is a board member of Green Alliance. She was a Member Nominated Trustee of The Pensions Trust (the multi-employer pension scheme for the UK’s not-for-profit sector) for five years until Spring 2013. She served for four years on The Pensions Trust’s Investment Committee.
Catherine holds a First Class BA in Modern History from Oxford University and an MSc in Industrial Relations from the London School of Economics.
In June 2011 Catherine was named a ‘Rising Star of Corporate Governance’ by Yale University’s, Millstein Center. In 2013, Pensions Insight featured her as one of the 50 most influential people in pensions and in May 2011 Investment and Pensions Europe called her one of the ‘top ten women in pensions’. Catherine was recognised by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2014…
Matt Davis, Director of Communications and Public Engagement
Matt joined ShareAction in August 2014. Beginning his career in journalism as the investment reporter at Money Marketing, Matt went on to win several awards for his investigative work covering politics and law enforcement in the United States. His work has been published in outlets including The Guardian, People Magazine and Agence France Presse…
Jon Hoare, Director of Investor Networks
Prior to joining ShareAction, Jon worked in Government across a range of policy areas for a number of Departments including the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, and most recently, the Cabinet Office. Jon holds a BA in Politics, and an MA in Political Philosophy, both from the University of York…
Jamie Audsley, Head of Outreach
More recently he spent time working in business at Pearson, the FTSE 100 and world’s largest education organisation…
READ THE REST
http://shareaction.org/team
link from above:
About ShareAction
ShareAction is a groundbreaking charity that promotes Responsible Investment by pension funds and fund managers. Bringing together leading charities, trade unions, faith groups and individual investors, our aim is to catalyse a shift at each level of the investment chain, so that Responsible Investment becomes the norm.
ShareAction was launched in 2005 as FairPensions and now has built a strong track record of persuading major investors to increase shareholder activism on environmental, social and governance issues. Today, ShareAction is recognised in the UK as the leading NGO that monitors and engages with the investment industry. In 2013 we changed our name to ShareAction, to better reflect the broad range of issues we campaign on.
***Our mission recognises the simple but under-appreciated fact that the trillions of pounds invested in pensions have the power to change our world…
ShareAction believes strongly in connecting pension savers with the management of their money and in making the investment industry more transparent and accountable in its dealings with pension savers and retail clients…
ShareAction – Our Member Organisations
includes:
CAFOD is the official overseas development and relief agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales…
CWU, The Communication Workers Union, is the biggest union for the communications industry in the UK. It was formed in January 1995 when the Union of Communication Workers joined forces with the National Communications Union, and its members include employees in the Post Office, BT, cable TV and the financial services industry…
Friends of the Earth
Greenpeace
Oxfam
UNISON is Britain and Europe’s largest public sector union with more than 1.3 million members…
Unite is Britain’s largest union with two million members in every type of workplace…
WWF
ETC ETC
00