Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Elections

At Last a Politician Mentions Climate Fraud: Queensland Senator Ian MacDonald

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I’VE been unimpressed with new Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the nature of the Coalition’s election victory. During the recent election then Shadow Minister, now Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, repeatedly stated that “We agree… on the science of climate change, we agree on the targets to reduce emissions and we agree on using markets as the best mechanism.”

There has been no one prepared to publically put the alternative perspective on climate change, to speak up and explain that of course the climate has always changed, but there is no evidence to suggest we currently have a climate catastrophe or that a carbon tax will have any effect on the climate. Until yesterday. While I wouldn’t consider Ian MacDonald’s speech to the Australian Senate particularly well written, it is inspiring in so much as at last we have an Australian politician speaking plainly in parliament about the nonsense that is climate change and the carbon tax… Ian Macdonald

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Australia Will Have Minister for Sport, But No Minister for Science

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Dennis Jensen MP, Liberal from Western Australia, in an interview with Latika Bourke explains some of what’s wrong with the new Abbott Cabinet and also highlights problems with some of the more absurd of the proposed Abbott-government policies including ‘Direct Action’ on climate change.Dennis Jensen

You should be able to listen here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-17/dennis-jensen-hits-out-at-science-confusion-in-new-ministry/4962898

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Remembering Appalling Policies Introduced by Previous Coalition Governments (Part 1)

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POPULAR sceptical blogger, Jo Nova, has responded to Labor’s defeat in yesterday’s Australian federal election with the headline ‘Voters crush the carbon tax and corruption – worst Australian government gone’. Howard and Abbott

I’m not so sure. It remains my view that the previous Coalition Government lead by John Howard was a disaster, particularly when it came to mismanagement of both the economy and the natural environment.

Indeed the Howard government, of which our new Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, was a senior Minister, was instrumental in introducing a raft of very damaging legislation.

Top of the list is perhaps the renewable energy certificate, an ongoing economic disaster as detailed in an article by Ray Evans and Tom Quirk entitled the ‘The Ruinous Privileges of Renewable Energy’:

“THE mechanism through which electricity consumers pay greenmail to the owners of windmills and solar panels is the mandatory Renewable Energy Certificate, introduced by John Howard in his 2001 MRET legislation. As James Delingpole explained in the Australian on May 3, writing about the ghost town of Waterloo in South Australia (now depopulated by the impacts of the sub-audio frequency vibrations generated by the nearby wind farm), a 3-megawatt wind turbine, costing $6 million, will be lucky to generate electricity worth $150,000 in a year, but will receive $500,000 in RECs, paid for by the hapless electricity consumer.
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Coalition’s Soil Carbon Plan Unviable

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THERE will soon be a federal election in Australia. One of the issues that should be discussed and debated is ‘climate change’ and how the Australian Labor party, led by Kevin Rudd, versus the Conservative Coalition, led by Tony Abbott, plan to address this important issue.

Central to the Coalition’s policy is a Direction Action Plan [1] and central to this plan is the idea that farmers can and should be paid to sequest carbon in their soil. Liverpool Plains February 2007

This is how the plan is explained in the policy document:

“Soil Carbons – Once in a Century Replenishment of our Soils

The single largest opportunity for CO2 emissions reduction in Australia is through bio-sequestration in general, and in particular, the replenishment of our soil carbons. It is also the lowest cost CO2 emissions reduction available in Australia on a large scale.

Significantly improving soil carbons also helps soil quality, farm productivity and water efficiency, and should be a national goal regardless of the CO2 abatement benefits.

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The Central England Temperature Index: A Useful Reference

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It has been suggested at this blog that it is too risky for mainstream politicians, for example the leader of the Coalition, Tony Abbott, to admit to being sceptical of anthropogenic global warming. It has been suggested journalists at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) would simply poke fun at him.

I disagree.

Indeed using Bob Carter’s new book Taxing Air as a reference, he could start educating ABC journalists on some of the basics. A good starting point is the longest established ground temperature record, termed the Central England Temperature Index (CETI).

Central England Temperature Index

This record starts in 1659, which was soon after the invention of the thermoscope but before the Fahrenheit scale came into use.

It is a 353 year-long data set, archived by the British Meteorological Office, and it shows that the average summer temperature in Central England in the eighteenth century was 15.46ºC while that for the twentieth century was 15.35ºC.

Yes.

Far from being warmer due to assumed global warming, comparison of actual temperature data shows that UK summers in the twentieth century were cooler than those of two centuries previously.

This is the sort of very useful information that Mr Abbott could share with ABC journalists.

He could then conclude, as Professor Carter does, that our longest available thermometer records, like our shorter and more accurate modern measures of temperature, offer little by way of evidence for the occurrence of dangerous human-caused global warming.

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To order your copy of Taxing Air and an extra copy to send to Mr Abbott, visit http://www.taxingair.com. The book has great charts like the one embedded into this post of the CETI.

Bob Carter is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed research papers in professional scientific journals. The great majority of these concern interpretations of ancient environments, including paleo-climatic studies. Link to full of list of publications here http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_4.htm

Dumping the Carbon Tax without Dumping Anything

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THE Coalition’s attacks on the carbon tax have been more about broken promises than policy, allowing Kevin Rudd to ‘dump the tax’ without actually dumping anything, writes Chris Berg…

“WHEN Julia Gillard promised in 2010 that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led – but that her government would pursue an emissions trading scheme – she probably thought it would defuse a toxic debate and help secure victory.

Like so many of Labor’s ploys in that election, it was far too clever by half. Tony Abbott dined off Gillard’s no-tax promise for three years.

Now it’s Kevin Rudd’s time to dine. On Sunday we learned that he wants to transition from a fixed-price carbon tax to a full-blown floating-price emissions trading scheme one year ahead of schedule. Kevin Rudd laughs

Here’s the riddle: why?

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