The slow death of a great democracy: carbon sunday

Everyone wants a free lunch, and some people even believe it exists. Julia Gillard is playing to that crowd, offering the impossible. Somehow, we will cool world temperatures while using some of the most expensive forms of energy we can find, and, wait for it, most Australians will become better off too. It’s money for nothing.

Why we didn’t do this years ago?

Quotes from wise men tell us that there is nothing new under the sun, and those who forget history are condemned…

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“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”

Possibly, Alexander Tytler (circa late 1700’s)

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“Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage […]

Gillard’s tax on “carbon pollution”: the facts

It’s 22 times as expensive to to something rather than nothing.

Gillard’s tax on “carbon pollution”: the facts

The PDF version for printing

If the Australian Government’s proposal to oblige 500 big “polluters” to engage in what the City of London calls “trading hot air” were to achieve its stated aim of cutting 5% of Australia’s CO2 emissions by 2020, and assuming HM Treasury’s 3.5% pure-rate-of-time-preference commercial discount rate for inter-temporal investment appraisals –

By 2020, CO2 in the air would be 411.987 parts per million by volume, compared with 412 ppmv if no action were taken. Global warming forestalled by 2020 would be 0.00007 C°: i.e. 1/14,000 C°. 0.00007 C° is 1/700 of the threshold below which modern instruments and methods cannot detect a global temperature change at all. At this rate, total cost of the carbon tax/trade policy will be not less than $127 billion between now and 2020, not counting gasoline and power price hikes. If all the world’s measures to cut greenhouse-gas emissions were as cost-ineffective as the Australian Government’s proposed policy, forestalling just 1 C° of global warming would cost the world $1.7 quadrillion. Forestalling all of the […]

Monckton: Is carbon dioxide mitigation cost-effective?

Lord Christopher Monckton compares the cost of action with the cost of inaction and finds that even assuming that the IPCC estimates are correct, that would be far more expensive to reduce CO2 than to pay to adapt to the potential damage. He compares 8 case studies of carbon trading schemes, as well as wind-farms, and even a bicycle-hire program, and finds that costs vary from $90 tr -$101,000 tr per degree forestalled. By Garnaut’s own discount rates, the global abatement cost would be 2.3-4.5 times the inaction cost. — Jo Nova

7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […]

The Everything Tax — a tin pot raffle with no prize

Another great contribution from Speedy 🙂

If the ABC was relevant (Part 37)

(The Collector)

[Scene: A street corner. JOHN is carrying a clipboard. He approaches BRYAN.]

John: Hi – I’m Bob Brown from the Greens. What’s your name?

Bryan: I’m Bryan Dawe from around the corner. What’s up?

John: The Greens are holding a raffle to raise funds and save the world. Would you like to buy a ticket?

Bryan: What’s the prize?

John: Prize?

Bryan: What do you win?

John: The lucky winner will receive… [consults clipboard] a lifetime supply of free air.

Bryan: Sorry, I’ve already got one. [Keeps walking]

John: Come back! You haven’t got a ticket!

Bryan: You haven’t got a prize…

John: But everyone wins a prize in this raffle – we’re going to save the world!

Bryan: What from?

John: Everything!

Bryan: What does Everything do?

John: Everything does Everything, Bryan! Droughts, floods, heatwaves, blizzards, hurricanes, volcanoes, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, species extinctions, plagues, pestilence and starvation. And that’s only for starters…

5.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]

Cartoon world of Global Warming — watch the message unfold

Share this with friends:

What a great video. Enjoy. Skill and talent meet a roomful of science.

Thanks to encounterbooks

I like it!

Hat tip to Christian K in Germany. 🙂

http://tinyurl.com/6howlvu

PS: I’m touring at the moment with Monckton, sorry for the gaps between posts. It’s much fun all round, especially as journalists try to trip him up and come unstuck, as did the ABC this morning, when Adam Spencer was so angry that Christopher had excellent answers to all the questions that he hung up mid-interview. Ouch for him. Monckton was nonplussed about this interview, so much so, he couldn’t remember who the interviewer was he told us the story this morning.

Why don’t the interviewers do their homework and read the answers the Monckton has given to Abrahamson and others before they try to “enjoy” scoring points? These are the holes you might step in if you don’t read both sides of the story. When will the believers wake up and realize they’ve been living in a groupthink bubble?

As I’ve said — Monckton puts on […]

Monckton: The Climate of Freedom — Hancock Lecture — Background Notes

Background notes to the Lang Hancock Memorial Lecture by Christopher Monckton (70 pages)

5.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]

Monckton Evans Nova — speaking Monday night in Perth

See the Monckton Tour page for details. 5.45pm Wilsmore Lecture Theatre. UWA Chemistry Dept. $25.

Ph 043 542 3636 to Book. (I hear tickets are almost all gone).

Then we’re all travelling to Newcastle and Sydney this week. Book now!

4 out of 10 based on 3 ratings

Survey shows skeptics are smarter

I kid you not. Chris Mooney at Desmog has got the data that shows skeptics were more literate and numerate than believers, and he wants to share it.

Last week, an intriguing study emerged from Dan Kahan and his colleagues at Yale and elsewhere–finding that knowing more about science, and being better at mathematical reasoning, was related to more climate science skepticism and denial–rather than less.

When faced with the news that smarter more mathematical people were skeptical of man-made global warming, it’s a sure bet that as a Desmogger, he would fail to reach the obvious conclusion. Are believers gullible fools who can’t see the flaws in the reasoning? No. Skeptics are more literate and numerate about everything else, except for climate science, when they become dangerously overconfident and seek only to use their intellect to punch holes in the theory. Its not like these bright types have anything else to do is it? Of course.

This is bad, bad news for anyone who thinks that better math and science education will help us solve our problems on climate change. But it’s also something else. To me, it provides a kind of uber-explanation for climate skeptic and denier behavior […]

The Fog of War — more propaganda against Monckton

Anson Cameron makes a PR contribution in the big fog of the Climate War (Please: don’t dump the Monck), and I must say that it’s more sophisticated than the 50 religious academics who have no answer to Monckton and are terrified he might — God-forbid — speak.

Cameron’s been called out from somewhere to go into damage control. The pro-tax-team might be catching on to the idea that academics and clumsy GetUP campaigns have helped the skeptics no end. (Ta boys!)

Cameron’s better than the brutes-of-silence, and pretends to be oh-so-sensible and wise, but in the end the pretext that underlies his commentary is a joke. He can point to lots of keywords that are ripe for mockery, but when it comes down to it, Mr Cameron can’t explain why Monckton is wrong on the climate. Oh, he can link to Real Climate and mention the Stefan-Boltzman equation, but can’t explain it (I assume, or he would have; this is his only substantial point after all).

Cameron resorts to ad hom after ad hom, probably doesn’t realize how anti-scientific that is, and pulls out all the usual Monckton Voodoo doll points to stick pins in. But, when it boils down […]

Viscount Monckton answers Megan Clement of “Conversation”

Christopher Monckton

Answers by The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

to questions by Megan Clement of “Conversation”

30 June 2011

All of the questions and answers herein must be reproduced in full: otherwise none of my answers may be disseminated in any form, in whole or in part.

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Q. I’m mainly interested in your reaction to the petition that’s been going round in Western Australia urging Notre Dame to cancel your visit. Is this an issue of free speech?

I understand that the petition makes the following assertions, to which I shall respond seriatim:

Primo, I am alleged to have circulated “widely discredited fictions about climate change” and to have distorted the research of countless scientists.

Please specify three instances in which I am thought to have circulated “widely discredited fictions about climate change”, with a clear citation in each instance of my ipsissima verba, and provide evidence, in the form of at least five peer-reviewed refutations […]

Terrified of Monckton! GetUP don’t want anyone to hear him speak

Menzies House are reporting that GetUP are so scared that some Australians might hear Christopher Monckton speak, that they had a campaign to get the Brisbane Broncos football club to break their contract and cancel the “Climate of Freedom” speeches by Monckton in Brisbane.

GetUP are a virtual arm of the Labor Party, being funded by Unions*. They’ve already removed the “idea” where someone boasted they’d axed the Bronco’s deal. (Did anyone save a screen image? Pass it on 🙂 )

They are desperate! They know they have no answer to what Monckton has to say, and that Monckton convinces people everywhere he goes, so their only option is smears, slurs and banning him. GetUP have become ShutUP.

We don’t ask to silence them. We know if people hear both sides of the story they’ll make up their own minds, and we look forward to that happening.

Their plan will backfire, and could prove a media bonanza for us. Right now, scores of people are phoning the club to express their disappointment that the Broncos turned out to be spineless puppies, obeying their masters, caving in to “pressure” and not standing up for Australians.

We can take some easy actions.

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David Archibald’s Speech: Global warming is a litmus test for our politicians

David Archibald

Rally 1st July 2011

We can thank the global warmers for one thing. Their claim that the sky is falling got people like me to investigate. What I found was that global warming is exactly wrong. Instead of warming, our planet is cooling as solar activity weakens.

The heating effect of carbon dioxide is minuscule. It is lost in the noise of the climate system. That is why the temperature of the planet today is exactly the same as it was thirty years ago. On top of all that, the carbon dioxide level of the atmosphere is dangerously low. All living things would be better off if we had more of it in the atmosphere.

You have not been told that before because the global warmers have corrupted all the institutions that are meant to serve us. The CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, the universities, have all sold their souls, and sold the Australian People down the river. Those institutions we once respected are now venal and not to be trusted.

Global warming is a litmus test for our politicians. If they believe in global warming, they are easily deluded fools.

That leads me to a useful […]