Jo Nova in The Australian: Carbon credits market is neither free nor worth anything

Credit to The Australian for printing both points of view. Published as an Op-Ed today.

Carbon credits market is neither free nor worth anything

THE paradox du jour: people who like free markets don’t want a carbon market, and the people who don’t trust capitalism want emissions trading. So why are socialists fighting for a carbon market? Because this “market” is a bureaucrat’s wet dream.

A free market is the voluntary exchange of goods and services. “Free” means being free to choose to buy or to not buy the product. At the end of a free trade, both parties have something they prefer.

[Those who know what real free markets are know that an emissions trading scheme is not and never can be a free market. The “Carbon-Market” is a market with no commodity, no demand, and no supply. Who needs a “carbon credit”? The government entirely determines both supply and demand.]

A carbon market is a forced market. There is little intrinsic incentive to buy a certificate for a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. It says a lot about the voluntary value of a carbon credit that when given the option to pay $2 to offset their flight emissions, 88% of people choose not to. A few do it as a form of green penance to assuage guilt, and others do it for their eco public relations campaign or branding.

To create demand for emissions permits, the government threatens onerous fines to force people to buy a product they otherwise don’t need and most of the time would never even have thought of acquiring. Likewise, supply wouldn’t exist without government approved agents. Potentially a company could sell fake credits (cheaper than the real ones) and what buyer could spot the difference? Indeed, in terms of penance or eco-branding, fake credits, as long as they were not audited, would “work” just as well as real ones.

Despite being called a commodity market, there is no commodity: the end result is air that belongs to no-one-in-particular that has slightly-less-of-a-trace-gas. Sometimes it is not even air with slightly less CO2 in it, it is merely air that might-have-hadmore-CO2, but doesn’t. It depends on the unknowable intentions of factory owners in distant lands.

How strange, then, that this non-commodity was at one time projected to become the largest tradable commodity in the world – bigger even than the global market for oil. In 2009, Bart Chilton, chairman of energy markets at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, estimated global carbon markets would be worth $2 trillion within five years.

The UN may claim that carbon is “tracked and traded like any other commodity”, but if I buy a tonne of tin, I either get a tonne of tin or I get $20,000 because I onsold it — someone, somewhere gets the goods. If a bulk shipment of coal arrives empty, buyers notice. Fraud is easy to spot.

Unfortunately, fraud has been a big, ongoing problem with emissions trading. This market needs auditors, and the auditors need auditing (the top two auditors in the EU emissions trading scheme were both suspended in 2009 for irregularities).  The EU has already lost €5bn to carbon-trading VAT fraud. The mafia are laundering money in Italy through renewables schemes, and after one tax loophole was closed, market volume in Belgium dropped by 90%.

The carbon market also depends on the honesty of people claiming: “We wouldn’t have built that dam without that carbon credit.” How would we know? The Xiaoxi dam in China was already under construction two years before the owners applied for credits “to build it”.

Since an ETS exists by government fiat and has no intrinsic value without it, it is technically a fiat currency rather than a  tradeable commodity. Supply and demand is set by bureaucrats in the EU. If the price is too high, politicians will issue more credits, and if it’s too low they will delay them (as the EU is planning to do). Bureaucrats can also give exemptions to trade-affected industries (or their friends, and to their fans in marginal seats).

Those who say that a carbon market is “like” other derivatives markets are wrong. Derivatives markets are sometimes quite disconnected from actual products such as pork bellies or gold bars, but eventually the supply and demand for real goods will determine the price. In some places the size of the derivatives market exceeds that of the commodity market, but that’s a reason to question those schemes, not to set up a market in an atmospheric nullity or something as frivolous as an “intention” not to build a dam.

So, who profits from the carbon market? The brokers in a carbon market –  like large financial institutions such as Deutsche Bank, UBS, Morgan Stanley, CBA, Citi, HSBC, Macquarie, – make money on every trade. The global carbon market turned over $176bn in 2011. These groups have been lobbying for a market, not a tax, and the reasons are obvious.

Most of the key factors in a carbon market are misnamed. The market is not free. An essential plant fertiliser is called pollution. The aim of the market is not to make clean energy but to change global temperatures by an amount that rounded to the nearest degree, equals zero*. The US has no market but has reduced emissions (largely thanks to shale gas), while any reductions in EU emissions were largely due to falling GDP. Yet the government wants to join the EU scheme.

Ironically, the reason for having any carbon scheme at all comes from monopolistic research. There are virtually no grants specifically available for sceptical scientists, but funding galore for unsceptical ones.

We need a free market in science before we even discuss the need for a free market in carbon.

[The people who demand a free market in CO2 apparently don’t give a toss about the lack of one in scientific research. Who amongst the carbon market lobbyists and politicians argues that we ought to be funding skeptical scientists? To get a fair hearing in a court, we know we have to fund both sides. Monopolies don’t work in business, and they don’t work in science either. May the best researcher win!]

But don’t hold your breath – the global warmers prove to be mostly global hypocrites.

——————————————————————————-

Reproduced with permission (though it retains a few edits and phrasings that didn’t fit in the final copy see [..]).

*Pace, Matt Ridley for that expression.

9.5 out of 10 based on 135 ratings

267 comments to Jo Nova in The Australian: Carbon credits market is neither free nor worth anything

  • #
    Brian G Valentine

    US emissions have dropped mostly because production has. Shale gas has displaced some coal use but shale extraction is opposed by every greenie on every street corner.

    Today I read about the US sick-conomy. Labor statistics bureaus tout 7.9% unemployment but have dropped those “not seeking employment” and “not receiving unemployment benefits” from the figures, estimated to push that figure upwards of 12% nationally, regionally much worse.

    Italy and the EU are basket cases, I don’t even care to think about them, this is all needless and entirely the result of green policies and the only thing the Government is good at is attempting to whitewash this dirt.

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    • #

      Brian, you mention this:

      U.S. emissions have dropped mostly because production has. Shale gas has displaced some coal use but shale extraction is opposed by every greenie on every street corner.

      Not only has Shale Gas, (which is still Natural Gas) displaced SOME coal fired power. It has actually displaced ALL the coal fired power that has closed down, and in fact more NEW power is generated from the Natural Gas source than from those closed coal fired power plants.

      I have a Post on just that and detail all the data as well.

      U.S. Electrical Power Sector CO2 Emissions Are Down!

      Tony.

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      • #
        Brian G Valentine

        My point was that it isn’t clear to me that existing gas wells, not shale gas, replaced the coal because the shale is not located near all the coal plants that were closed.

        In any case there was no reason to shut many of these coal plants in the first place, it was all greenie puling that did it. Gas turbines are not base load electricity as far as I am concerned, the problems from that are supposed to be taken care of by a “smart grid,” an idea that is a bunch of shit to me because it is a regional application not National.

        Greenies are WORTHLESS

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        • #

          Brian,

          as I explained in my Post, those coal fired plants that have closed were in the main, those tiny coal fired plants, nearly all of them time expired, around 50 years old most of them, and in the main, used as spinning reserve, hence only used for Peaking Power periods of time, a few hours a day. Replacing ALL of them PLUS with Natural Gas fired plants is a same for same replacement for the job that they do, and the power that they replace.

          That is borne out by the fact that the overall total Capacity Factor for coal fired power has RISEN, even with all those small plants closed, a further confirmation that these closed plants were only used as that spinning reserve.

          All closed plants have been, in the main, all smaller than 50MW total Capacity. Not one plant larger than 750MW has closed in the more than five years I have been watching, and none are scheduled to close in the near term.

          The fact that more Natural Gas fired power has come on line than the coal fired power closed down is also a stark indicator that extra power is required due to the intermittent nature of all renewable power generation, and the need for fast acting backup power plants that can come on line quickly to supply power not coming from Wind Power.

          Tony.

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          • #
            Brian G Valentine

            Gas supplies back up power for wind in many cases yes, particularly Texas, from what I understand, used more gas over the winters 2011 2012 than if the wind power wasn’t there at all, resulting from intermittancy.

            New coal plants were not permitted in the Midwest, due entirely to greenie advocacy. These, I had thought, were to take up lost capacity.

            80

  • #
    Ace

    Very good.
    When I was a kid on country rides I asked my family why those old houses had windows bricked up.
    They explained because light used to b taxed.

    I learned that people in the past were fecking loonies.

    I didnt have to liv long to see they still are.

    Air tax. Who’d a thought it?

    250

  • #
    Kevin Lohse

    Don’t hold back Jo, say what you REALLY mean. The advantage of a market over a tax for a free trader is that a government can skim the cream by taxing the market-makers without having to build an enormous bureaucracy. The disadvantage of a market over a tax for a socialist is that a government can skim the cream by taxing the market-makers without having to build a bureaucracy. The collapse of the free market in Carbon in the US showed that an open market in CO2 emmisions was not feasible. The history of a heavily-regulated ETS market in the EU demonstrated that such a market was prone to manipulation by interests inimical to an orderly market, As I have posted before, some commentators believe that the Mafia and other organised crime are players in the EU ETS. Certainly The EU ETS is a good example of how crony capitalism, which should really be known as crony socialism as it was invented by Mussolini and his fascists, can overrun a badly thought-out policy.

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  • #

    Brian: Just a note-the unemployment people did not “drop those no seeking employment” and “not receiving benefits”. Actually, that has been the way statistics were always presented. I worked in unemployment (looking for people who “forgot” to report that they found a job and were no longer entitled to benefits) in the late 80″ and that was the way statistics were done. I corrected people many times who thought the unemployment rate was how many people who did not have jobs. It’s only those registered for work and/or benefits.

    The Bureau of Labor Statistic will tell you the participation rate which is declining, but there are many reasons why people don’t work. They may be retired, they may working for cash, they may be homemakers, etc. As noted, they may have given up.I suppose that’s why the unemployment rate includes just those looking for jobs.
    (http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000)

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    • #
      Brian G Valentine

      In any case the US EPA has exactly one function: Put people out of work and claim success for “reducing emissions”

      I cannot describe my anguish over these people

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      • #

        I agree totally. The EPA is as anti-business as it comes. It makes sense that they would be–industrialization and enlarging of society are pretty much in direct opposition to “saving the environment”. They are the Environmental Protection Agency–no mention of jobs or industry anywhere in there. I’m sure that is what was intended when naming the agency.

        I personally think they need to be reigned in greatly. Clean air and water are a great idea. Trying to eliminate all human influences on the environment is not.

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        • #
          Mark D.

          De-fund the US EPA soon or we’re doomed.

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          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            They don’t need to defund it – they just need to redeploy the staff, and send the current operating expenditure allocation to Jo. They could call it out-sourcing if it made them feel any better.

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  • #
    Mark Hladik

    Excellent!!!!!

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  • #
    janama

    Well done Joanne. Excellent article.

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  • #

    Sadly, this article shows once again the so called progressives think what reality is a matter of whim. The only thing that concerns them is who’s whim. They believe it is simply a matter of controlling the one thing that controls whim: brute force.

    Before they get nasty, they try using the magic words that they believe created modern technological civilization: markets and trading exchanges. When you dig roughly one micron under the surface of their words it is nothing but brute force with tissue paper and lipstick on it. Then, when each new program fails to deliver the goods, they double down on the brute force.

    The one thing they can’t accept is that reality is what it is without any respect for their or our whims. Especially, they can’t accept that to produce requires an act of mind, the freedom to act, and the mutual respect to own the products of your actions. When their *sacred* brute force enters the picture, these things vanish and the outcome can only be despair, poverty, death, and destruction.

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  • #

    Absolutely stunning, Jo. A brilliant article. Good on the Australian for publishing it, too. Let’s hope it gets more people questioning the whole works. Well done.

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  • #
    Manfred

    Nice, Jo.

    The carbon dioxide market is nothing more and nothing less than a colossal diversion of resources into a pointless black green hole of greed. It was seized upon with unfettered haste, indeed with unbridled enthusiasm (a red flag in itself) by the politicians and marketeers on the basis of the flimsiest science and the stridency of green dogma. To consider the ETS a failure is a mistake because that would suggest there was a point in the first place. There never was. As a criminal scam however, it has been successful beyond the wildest dreams of avarice. History will roast them.

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  • #
    MadJak

    Bravo! Well Done Jo.

    Any attempt at a command economy must be stopped. If they were serious about this issue, they would do what has been done in the past quite successfully. They would regulate.

    I guess introducing regulations for a difficult to measure trace gas provided to much of a headache – especially when the greens want a vehicle for yet another attempt at a command economy.

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    • #

      A regulated economy IS a command economy. All you are doing is quibbling over what to call it. Consider that command elite of a command economy use force to get its way. A the regulators of a regulated economy uses force to make sure the regulations are followed. That is a distinction without a difference.

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      • #
        MadJak

        Hi lionel,

        There is one difference between the two. Removing Regulations is easier than trying to unscramble the influence of fluctuating carbon credits through the supply chain.

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        • #

          Removing the regulation may be possible but unscrambling the influence of the regulation is just as difficult as it would be for carbon credits. Since the production if an produced good is influenced by the production of all other produced goods, the influence of a regulation, of which the so called carbon market is one instance, spreads through out the economy. That spread is a pervasive and as perverse as the influence of carbon credits. In both cases the cost of the things unseen and unaccounted for vastly outweighs any imaginary benefit.

          Substituting one fiction for another does not change the fundamental principles of economic cause and effect.

          30

  • #
    pattoh

    Funny how the cowboys from the City Of London seem to be the real winners in all of this carbon trading scam.

    Funny how the City of London sets the Gold Price.

    Funny how the City of London ( along with Comex ) stores a big proportion of the various nations Gold reserves.

    Funny how the City of London is a big player in the “Gold Leasing” Market. ( What is the ratio or multiple to real physical gold ?)

    Not funny how the Bundesbank was told there might be a bit of a wait ( 7 years?) if they want to have some of their physical Gold repatriated.

    Not funny that Hugo Chavez also got the brush off when he tried a few years ago. ( 2007?)

    REALLY SCARY if the EU collapses under the weight of circular bail-outs & the member nations need the reserves as security / backing for any new national currencies which may be have to be issued.

    Call me cynical, but for mine the money changers ( who really,REALLY love market forces so much that paternity IS obvious) are not really friends of humanity.

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    • #
      RoHa

      “Funny how the cowboys from the City Of London seem to be the real winners in all of this carbon trading scam.”

      It’s because they are all evil socialists.

      71

      • #
        pattoh

        Roha

        I reckon they designed the Fabians & thereby the LSE.

        One global government would be so much easier to influence./sarc.

        50

    • #
      Ace

      Petoah, who exactly do you man when you say:

      “the money changers ( who really,REALLY love market forces so much that paternity IS obvious) are not really friends of humanity”

      00

      • #
        pattoh

        Ace

        Google LBMA & have a think about who makes it up. ( & what they do for a living & who they make money for)

        While you are there have a squint at where some of GS’s money goes. ( I.E. who & what they choose to support)

        And if you are really up for a ride around the internet nut-job conspiracy theorists*, have a wander around looking at who controls the various reserve banking institutions around the world & look closely at their pedigrees. Also do a bit of a family tree & family history search on some of the major merchant banks.

        If you believe the world is a benevolent & generous place you would be wasting your time.

        However, I have always maintained that paranoid cynical pessimists only ever get pleasant surprises & I like my dog.

        * thanks Julia

        30

  • #
    Yonniestone

    I’m shocked the Fairfax Media didn’t run this. sarc/

    70

  • #
    ianl8888

    I readily agree that having this published in the Aus is a good answer to my “quo vadis” question. It may even have an effect – it will be grim fun to analyse any response from the ALP/Green factions. So congratulations, Jo

    You’ve noted that some “few minor edits” took place before publication. Before I read the Aus article later today, there is some minor interest to be had in second-guessing which bits were “edited”

    eg.

    Ironically, the reason for having any carbon scheme at all comes from monopolistic research. There are virtually no grants specifically available for sceptical scientists, but funding galore for unsceptical ones

    … I wonder if that made it through

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    • #
      Sceptical Sam

      It did. And, it’s a great line.

      Well done, Jo. Well done, “The Australian”

      Yet another reason to support Jo’s blog, and buy the “Oz”.

      70

  • #
    Bulldust

    There is one broken free market right now that I know of … gold. Having read a few articles on it I am still unsure what is going on. There are a few conspiracy theories out there, but they are _out there_. But the fact remains that there is a clear disconnect between the paper gold market and the physical one. Try collecting physical gold in any serious quantity right now and you’d be struggling to get much. Hypothetical question for all readers here, but still… Venezuela and Germany tried asking for 90 and 300tonnes of their gold back from the US and UK, and there was a bit of an awkward moment. It’ll take a few years, they told the Germans… it’s on ‘loan.’

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  • #
    handjive

    Quote:
    “There are virtually no grants specifically available for sceptical scientists, but funding galore for unsceptical ones.”

    Timely post at NoTricksZone on this:

    (T)he German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) – an arm of the Federal Environment Ministry – awarded the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) about a dozen research contracts worth some 2 million euros since 2007.
    According to the law, government institutes and agencies are required to publicly call for tenders Europe-wide. This was not done.

    In summary, the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) is not only informing the public that the PIK is the keeper of climate science truth, but it looks like its director is illegally circumventing public contract bidding laws and funneling contracts to the PIK, to which he is member of its support society.
    .
    Comment from P Gosselin
    30. Juli 2013 at 22:07 | Permalink | Reply
    And it’s indeed very interesting that a director of Munich Re Prof. Dr. Peter Höppe is a member.
    Boy, like there’s no conflict of interest there! This all stinks to high heaven.

    80

  • #
    WheresWallace

    You are free not to pollute.

    619

  • #
    Peter Hume

    What is really traded on the so-called carbon markets, is tax receipts. It’s a market for tax receipts, not a market for “carbon” which no-one willingly pays for. When you see the statists gabbling on about carbon markets you can only shake your head in wonder at whether people are that stupid, or that dishonest.

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  • #
    RoHa

    Congratulations on getting it into a mainstream paper, even if it’s one run by Soul-Eater Rupert Murdoch’s World Domination League. Be nice to see something like this in a paper run by She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s Sunshine and Lollipop Re-eduction Camp. Or in a respectable newspaper, if there is one left anywhere in the world.

    But I see an apparent contradiction in the article. You start with “people who like free markets don’t want a carbon market”. Then you say “The brokers in a carbon market – like large financial institutions such as Deutsche Bank, UBS, Morgan Stanley, CBA, Citi, HSBC, Macquarie, – make money on every trade. The global carbon market turned over $176bn in 2011. These groups have been lobbying for a market”

    These groups aren’t socialists. They are the ones who whine about wanting a free market and complain about government regulations. (The Mafia isn’t too fond of government regulation, either.) And the Global Financial Crisis showed what they will do when they have that freedom from government regulation.

    not a tax and then go on to say that and the people who don’t trust capitalism want emissions trading. So why are socialists fighting for a carbon market? Because this “market” is a bureaucrat’s wet dream.

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    • #
      RoHa

      Damn! Editing fail.

      The “not a tax and then go on to say that and the people who don’t trust capitalism want emissions trading. So why are socialists fighting for a carbon market? Because this “market” is a bureaucrat’s wet dream.” bit should not be there.

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    • #

      Roha, across the spectrum the rule is clear, those more ideologically socialist are more likely to argue for a “Carbon market” and visa versa for ideologically “right” wing.

      Are there any free market think tanks lobbying for a carbon market? Very few green groups (though there are some) are campaigning against the carbon market (say in favour of a carbon tax).

      Large corporate entities are not “free market” by default. Having made it to positions of power, some prefer to use regulations to lock out competition and preserve the status quo. Banks are hardly libertarian fans of small government. Regulations by regulators-who-can-be-influenced can serve them.

      They don’t appear to want a free market in science, in currencies, or a free market in interest rates.

      Look at the lobbyists for carbon markets: the renewables industry, academia, green groups, Royal Dutch Shell, carbon exchanges, and at the bottom you will often find people who depend on government largess.

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      • #
        RoHa

        “Are there any free market think tanks lobbying for a carbon market?”

        Perhaps not the think tanks, but the groups you named in the article are not socialists, and they do make a lot more noise about a free market than the think tanks.

        “the renewables industry, academia, green groups, Royal Dutch Shell, carbon exchanges, and at the bottom you will often find people who depend on government largess.”

        Like the big banks who want government largesse to bail them out? What has that got to do with socialists?

        (Academia in that list probably includes a number of socialists, and there might be some in the green groups, but the renewables industry, Royal Dutch Shell, and carbon exchanges look solidly capitalist to me.)

        I don’t deny that socialists are “more likely to argue for a “Carbon market”, but your article didn’t give any evidence for the claim. And it did make the claim that the Big Money boys (do you count them as capitalists?) want it.

        01

        • #

          No I didn’t say the big money boys like free markets.

          I said: ” people who like free markets don’t want a carbon market,”

          Are you assuming that big capitalists like free markets? I pointed out that there are reasons Big-Money might prefer regulated markets. Big-Money is not the same group as small-government or libertarian advocates. Can anyone point me to a conservative or right leaning think tank sponsored largely by a big bank? Do the bankers donate to conservative politicians? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. They play it both ways.

          The banks appear to like their markets slightly free and slightly fixed. What probably matters most is whether they have the ear of the fixers. Why would they want a completely level playing field? Irrationally that would negate one of their competitive advantages.

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  • #
    Murray

    Very well written article. Concise, informative and realistic. Congratulations and keep up the good work please!

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  • #
    Joe V.

    Congratulations Jo. That’s a hard hitting piece to be confronting MSM readers.

    Remarkably the UK Guardian is running a series of articles questioning Green’s stance on science & even in praise of Anthony Watts.

    Consider these titles

    The green movement is not pro-science

    Are climate sceptics the real champions of the scientific method?

    Is this beginning of rehab for the Greens, or for the Guardian.

    Whether this means the Climate Comedy duo Dana & Abrahams are about to get their marching orders , one can live in hope.

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien

      Thanks for those links Joe. The “real champions?” article is excellent, though the last paragraph sinks a bit.

      The really heartening thing about it is the support indicated for comments. It seems that the majority of Guardian readers can see through the smoke.

      10

  • #
    Ross

    Well done Jo , both on the well written article and getting it published in the MSM – The Australian.
    I want to repeat what I have said before — the key reason the skeptics in this “debate” are gaining so much traction ( other than the obvious of the facts being on their side !!) is that they have the best communicators on their side.
    Small in number , grossly under funded in comparison but light years ahead in quality and standards.
    With Jo , Anthony Watts , Christopher Monkton, Andrew Montford,
    Steve McIntyre, James Dellingpole and a few others each with their different communication format and style the alarmists are “on a hiding to nothing”

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  • #
    crakar24

    OT but having a quiet discussion with a few guys here and wanted to show them the infamous Harry read me file, does anyone have a copy or link.

    You can email it directly (with a bit of help from Jo)

    Cheers

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    • #
      crakar24

      Thanks for the red thumb even though i did not ask for it.

      Cheers My little red thumbed friend

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    • #
      Backslider

      First result on Google: Harry Read Me

      Never heard of it before…..

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    • #
      Backslider

      Had a quick look see at that file… looks like somebody doing a whole big bunch of fudging. What’s it all about?

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      • #
        crakar24

        Whats it all ab…………the file was part of climate gate 1 this guy was a code cutter brought in by the University of easy access to fix all their f*&^ckups but as he states the code was so bad he could not fix it so he just did a dodgy took his money and ran.

        This is the same temp database that creates the “hottest year on record” data.

        Cheers

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        • #
          Backslider

          Interesting. Yes, as a programmer I immediately saw that there was a whole bunch of fudging happening… Its a big file, but I didn’t need to look very far.

          20

      • #
        Brian G Valentine

        It is from Climategate 1, from the East Anglia CRU. The author is describing some of the problems with the historical climactic data sets, which were either corrupted or in some cases deleted. It implied that CRU was basing climatic interpretations on data that were corrupt or not there at all, i.e., ad libbing to make up their own story

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        • #
          Brian G Valentine

          By the way from the language used I think I know who the author may be, although it would not be fair of me to identify them.

          If it is the same person, they are not at CRU or in England anymore for that matter

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    • #
      Geoff Sherrington

      I have a DVD with all of Climategate 1 on it, an early version that contains many unredacted email addresses to help navigation.
      This is available to anyone who asks unless the ask sounds dodgy.
      History will show Climategate to be of high importance, perhaps not ranking with Copernicus, but not far behind – unless we have a worse one in the pipeline.

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  • #
    Gogs

    When our legislators introduce new laws or taxes, you would hope they would think things through.

    Just some basic S.M.A.R.T. Goal setting. Goals need to be

    Specific

    Measurable

    Attainable

    Realistic

    Timely

    The “Carbon” Tax and ETS just don’t measure up.

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  • #
    Ace

    Yes I concur with our learned friends here-above…as I didn’t make that clear enough earlier, I shall do so now, very well put and congratulations on getting it about in the press.

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  • #
    Keith L

    Great work Jo!

    40

  • #
    Mervyn

    This should come as no surprise. From the very beginning, this catastrophic man-made global warming scare was always going to end up as the greatest scientific hoax ever perpetrated, backed by governments, science academies, etc etc etc.

    It is a massive fraud.

    As a licensed auditor, I believe emissions trading schemes are not worth auditing at all due to the uncertainty and limitations associated with trading in “hot air”. It would take a very brave auditor, or a very foolish one, to get entangled in this fake, high risk, very unauditable market!

    People should read a recently published book “Punch-Drunk on CO2…Dizzy from Spin” to understand why everything to do with global warming alarmism is misleading and often just plain wrong.

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  • #
    Peter C

    Congratulations Jo.
    And also to the Australian. You are reaching a wider audience now.

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  • #
    crakar24

    OT,

    So this is what global warming in the Arctic looks like

    http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

    Funny i would have thought it would have made it WARMER but there you go it actually makes it colder, the wonders of the omni potent force of a trace gas will never cease.

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  • #
    Peter C

    Second Go,
    Congratulations Jo, and to the Australian.

    Your blog has a wide audience but the Australian newspapaer gets the message out even further.

    40

  • #
    David

    Just another Climate Change denier dishing crap on scientists who know what they’re doing. The scientists (if they can be called that) she is enamored of don’t have a clue but their ideology is much more suitable. I do agree that a CO2 market won’t work though, but from the perspective that the planet doesn’t care about financial markets. It just gets hotter as we pump more CO2 into the atmosphere and will continue to do so.

    Also for the record, CO2 is not plant fertiliser. It’s just used by plants in photosynthesis as an agent to produce oxygen. Nitrogen is a plant fertiliser and the ability of plants to absord CO2 is limited by the amount of Nitrogen in the soil and the availability of water. I don’t know why I’m bothering to explain it though. I’m sure there’s an army of flat earthers here waiting to tell me I’m wrong.

    Cheers

    —-

    REPLY: Just another name-calling sheep following a herd…? David, you are welcome to convince us, but if you use “Denier” you are going have to find some scientific observations we deny. Still, you might be the first eh? – Jo

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      Heywood

      “I’m sure there’s an army of flat earthers here waiting to tell me I’m wrong”

      You might be interested to know that the flat earthers are actually true believers.

      You are just another drive by troll with nothing constructive to say.

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        Brian G Valentine

        They’re busy “Saving the Earth,” but typically a burden to their parents, who are compelled to harbour them in their basement because they refuse to get a job.

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        Ace

        Be more explicit Heywood…you are addressing a thickleton…the Flat earth Society specifically has stated that they believe in CAGW.

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      AndyG55

      LOL, tripe served with a twerp pudding !..

      Thanks for the laugh David. 😀

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      Tom

      There’s one of these unemployed Green kiddy trolls born every minute. This one sounds freshly minted by the secondary education system. You need to start questioning the junk that’s being fed to you, junior. It’s hard at first, but it becomes easier when you realise how much junk there is and how far ahead of the rest of the zombies you are just by being really rad and figuring out stuff for yourself.

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      Safetyguy66

      So your saying scientists designed the carbon tax ?

      Name one.

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      dlb

      “It’s (CO2) just used by plants in photosynthesis as an agent to produce oxygen”

      Wow blow me down David, that’s a bit like saying we eat food so we can exhale carbon dioxide!

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      Andrew McRae

      Warmist, heal thyself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis

      The CO2 is not “just” used to create oxygen. The light is used to create ATP as chemical energy in further growth reactions. The oxygen is a waste product of photosynthesis. The CO2 is not involved in the first light-dependent part of photosynthesis. The second step uses CO2 but does not use any light.
      The plant then eats CO2 from the air by combining it with the ATP from first step to form larger sugars and eventually cellulose and starches that build up the body of the plant. More CO2 lets plants grow faster. The CO2 from the air forms a large portion of the dry mass of the plant.

      This means, in a roundabout way, that trees don’t grow out of the ground, they grow out of the air.

      CO2 is an essential nutrient to plant growth.
      Nitrates and phosphates are essential nutrients too. Any concentrated source of these nutrients is called fertiliser.

      Therefore David is basically correct when saying CO2 is not a plant fertiliser.
      The petrol cars and coal fired power stations are the plant fertilisers.

      Which means… that Tony Abbot is a Plant Fertiliser fertiliser. 🙂 What could be greener?

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        AndyG55

        I don’t think I’d call CO2 a nutrient or a fertiliser. Its more than that.

        Its actually one of the two main building blocks, from which everything is synthesised by the plant. Elements such as nitrogen are just extras added in to make things work.

        Carbohydrates, cellulous and sugars don’t contain any elements except CARBON, OXYGEN and hydrogen.

        No part of life on this planet could exist without carbon dioxide, that how essential it is.

        So we better tax it, hey !!!!

        Next there will be a tax on water. (as opposed to costs to cover the delivery and storage)

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          Safetyguy66

          I guess it shows (like any proof was needed) that the Government cant even apply taxes to elements properly. I mean why go for the 6th most abundant? Shows a distinct lack of ambition.

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      MemoryVault

      Also for the record, CO2 is not plant fertiliser. It’s just used by plants in photosynthesis as an agent to produce oxygen.

      For the record, cretin, everything defined as “living” in the oceans and in the atmosphere on this planet is referred to as a “carbon-based” life-form. That is because the basic building block is carbon, plus water. Plants get the carbon from the air to form cellulose (C6H10O5 – carbon plus water), and animals get it by eating plants containing cellulose (and sugar – also made from carbon plus water), or from eating other animals that eat plants (cellulose or sugar plus water).

      That includes YOU, cretin. YOU are largely composed of carbon plus water. You got the carbon from eating plants that got it from the atmosphere, or from eating animals that eat animals that eat plants, that got it from the atmosphere.

      .
      Seriously Jo, we need a better class of troll. Have you ever thought of imposing a simple knowledge test based on things like the Carbon Cycle and the Water Cycle, that has to be passed before someone can use the COMMENT facility?

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        Andrew McRae

        Heheee, ahh I do like naming things.
        A group that certifies you know the basics of CO2 for blogging.
        University of Nova? No, wait, the abbreviation is too odious.
        Jo Uni, or JU for short.
        But this still has airs of the same dogmatic academia that has failed us, it needs more practicality in the name.

        Okay, how about…
        an Associate Certificate of Demogenithermalism Commentary
        from the Nova School Of Preserving Human Industrial Civilisation.
        marketing tagline:
        “An ACDC from NovaSOPHIC – Get switched on for the climate debate.”

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        Ace

        I like your style today Memory Vault.

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      Bob Massey

      Go away and play with your incomplete, incompetent, incompatible, imbecilic Climate Models you snuffling little troll.

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        AndyG55

        I’m sure you missed a few of the more descriptive adjectives….

        but you are certainly on the right track. 🙂

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        Ace

        No man thats wrong, jess plain wroooong…we want him to stick around and actually learn hs been lied to about us “deniers”. And so we can insult him.

        The worst kind of troll isnt actually the timewaster that gives the genus its name, but the drive-by polluter, the twirp who just throws an odd comment out of his passing browser to litter the board and aint got the balls to stick around for the response.

        Are you there David….

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      Backslider

      It just gets hotter as we pump more CO2 into the atmosphere and will continue to do so.

      You have this backerds David. It’s like this: CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise, following temperature rise.

      Just ask the ice cores. The whole World knows that AL Gore et als’ guff on CO2/ice cores is total crap.

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        Ace

        Its no good Backslider, with his level of scientific literacy hell assume “et al” is an endorsement of cannibalism.

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      • #

        I thought Jo just told us that there weren’t any “deniers” on this blog?

        And here is Backslider apparently denying the greenhouse effect.

        More CO2 in the atmosphere means less hear re-radiated to space, ie, CO2 warms the planet. We can agree on this, yes?

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          Rereke Whakaaro

          Here we go again.

          I don’t see Backslider denying anything, are you sure you are on the correct blog?

          As I read it, Backslider was referring to Al Gore’s epic comedy, where he rode the cherry picker like the hero he is, to indicate that a) he had a head for heights, and b) that he had chosen a vertical scale for his mega-graph that made it look really, really scary, to those people who didn’t understand graphs.

          What that scary graphs shows though, if you look at it closely, is that temperature and CO2 are both cyclic, with a 700 year phase shift between the two signals. CO2 lags temperature by 700 years.

          OMG that might mean that temperature might just drive the natural release of CO2, which might just mean that changes in CO2 are not anthropogenic after all. Shirley Knott.

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            crakar24

            I believe if you have a really, really close look at Al’s red co2 line it actually twirls around in a loop.

            Probably gave the CG developer a little too much artistic licence.

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          Backslider

          And here is Backslider apparently denying the greenhouse effect.

          I didn’t deny anything other than Al Gore’s crap re. CO2 and ice cores.

          Are you saying that you endorse it? (*snigger*)

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      Mark D.

      David says:

      It just gets hotter as we pump more CO2 into the atmosphere and will continue to do so.

      Any time you read “pumping and CO2” in a sentence you can be absolutely certain you are dealing with a scummy warmist on a mission of propaganda.

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      Angry

      “david”……JUST ANOTHER MORONIC IMBECILE OF THE GLOBAL WARMING CULT.

      Look up “anamist” you fool, it describes your cave man beliefs!

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  • #

    […] Jo Nova in The Australian: Carbon credits market is neither free nor worth anything […]

    00

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    pat

    good one, jo.

    however, it’s worth noting that Friends of the Earth & the Greens are against an ETS, even tho it’s only because they want a high fixed price.

    also, it might have been worthwhile to include a link to IETA:

    International Emissions Trading Association
    Upcoming Events
    Latin American and Caribbean Carbon Forum, 28-30 August 2013, Rio de Janeiro
    Carbon Forum Asia, 24-25 September 2013, Bangkok
    Carbon Forum North America, October 1-2 2013, Washington, DC
    http://www.ieta.org/

    i don’t mind the following being characterised as anti-free-market or anti-capitalism as what we have today is strictly CRONY CAPITALISM in bed with the pollies across the political spectrum. i’ve cherry-picked those we are more familiar with:

    IETA Current Members
    includes:
    Baker & McKenzie
    Bank of America
    Bloomberg New Energy Finance
    BNP Paribas
    BP
    Chevron
    Citigroup
    Dow Chemical
    Duke Energy
    Ernst & Young
    Gazprom
    GDF Suez
    Goldman Sachs
    Hess Corp
    Ice Futures Europe
    JP Morgan Chase
    KPMG
    Lloyds Register
    Morgan Stanley
    Origin Energy
    PetroChina International
    PriceWaterhouseCoopers
    Reuters Point Carbon
    Rio Tinto
    Shell International
    Standard Bank
    Syngenta
    Total
    http://www.ieta.org/our-members

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      RoHa

      “what we have today is strictly CRONY CAPITALISM in bed with the pollies across the political spectrum.”

      Exactly. This is where the real power lies. Free market think tanks don’t have much power, and the continual stream of privatisations we see shows that socialists have even less. And Jo knows this. She names and blames the big players. That is why I am puzzled by the reds-under-the-beds stuff.

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    Mark F

    Um, I’d bet that there are plenty of fiscal conservative financial house traders licking their chops in hope that they’ll be able to do zillions in commission on Carbon trades. Follow the money. This one’s gonna be bigger than the derivatives scam! Hollow mortgages were one thing – imaginary commodities are quite another – never was any value, only flow-through skimming.

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    AndyG55

    Congrats Jo.

    Its finally getting out there that this carbon tax is a RORT, ripe for the picking by those with the funds to make more, and the lack of morals to do so.

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    Sunray

    Loved the article in the Australian, so I told them they need to give you much more exposure in the Australian. I hope that I did not give them the wrong idea because of my clumsy choice of words. Anyway, I really love this site, so after a serious family illness, I am back with a new name and server, to learn from and encourage those of like mind.

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      Bob Massey

      Welcome back Sunray, I hope the illness didn’t have too much of a detrimental affect on you or the family 🙂

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    Ben

    Very stupid post, Joanne. Your economic knowledge vis-a-vis free markets fails undergraduate level.

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      AndyG55

      Says the junior high school student.

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      Heywood

      Wow.

      Unfortunately Jo, this is the down side of getting published in The Australian.

      It attracts all the drive by trolls with spittle laden, fact free comnents.

      It is surprising though that they stray from their usual ‘safe’ articles in Fauxfax and the ALPBC.

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      Andrew McRae

      Is that because your university economics professors don’t teach any Austrian school literature and focus instead on pseudo-Keynesian monetarist meddling? Failing that exam should be a prerequisite for serious work.

      According to some economics luminaries, orthodox Economics failed itself.

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      MemoryVault

      .
      Go ahead, Ben, educate us.

      Forget cheap ad-homs. Elucidate us (and Jo) on the TRUE nature of “free markets”.
      Trust me, we are all ears, and we wait with baited breath to learn the nature of your profound wisdom.

      .
      Besides, we all enjoy a good laugh.

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        Winston

        MV,
        FYI, “Ben” is a veteran of the Adam Smith carpet bombing era just prior to the convoy. He and Adam, the latter of whom I believe may actually be Mark Dreyfus from his annoying and pompous tone and the turn of phrase and style of attack he uses (not to mention being completely unencumbered by factual content- but I digress) are true Labor believers, but not “light on the hill”, “looking after the workers” Martin Ferguson type Labor- but neophyte, prima donna Labor, spin doctors Armani suits with not the slightest conscience or regard for the damage the last 6 years of incompetence has wrought on a once resilient economy.

        Another 3 years of Ben and his comrades’ version of economics we’ll be Spain, another 5 and we’ll be Greece, another 7 and we’ll be toast.

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      John Knowles

      Perhaps you’d care to enlighten us rather than merely slag the hard-working owner of this web-site.

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    pat

    oh dear & what’s with the Greg Hunt finale!

    31 July: ABC: Giant solar power station for far western NSW
    The Federal Government has announced plans to build a $450 million solar power station four times the size of Sydney’s CBD in far western New South Wales.
    The project will be built in conjunction with AGL across two sites in Nyngan and Broken Hill in the state’s west.
    The Federal Climate Change Minister Mark Butler says it will be the biggest solar power station in the Southern Hemisphere…
    The Federal Government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency will provide $166.7 million, and the NSW Government $64.9 million…
    The Shadow Energy Minister, Greg Hunt, says the Federal Government’s funding is a little over a tenth of what was originally promised under the Solar Flagships program.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-31/giant-solar-power-station-for-far-western-nsw/4855944

    Fox has left out Taxpayers for Common Sense spokesperson on tv saying it’s another case of the govt picking “winners”:

    30 July: Fox News: John Roberts: Mini-nuclear plants the next frontier of US power supply — or the next Solyndra?
    A boon to the economy? Or a boondoggle?
    That’s the debate raging over a new nuclear technology that — depending on your perspective — is either a game-changer in electrical generation, or a failure-in-the-making that will fleece taxpayers for a half-billion dollars.
    The technology, called “small modular reactors,” will be the centerpiece of an entirely new way of thinking about nuclear power…
    In his June speech on climate change, President Obama talked about shutting down dozens of older coal plants, which left open the question of how that electricity would be produced…
    B&W has taken the lead in the development of SMRs with its mPower design…
    TVA was expected to apply for a construction permit last year. But that application has been delayed until 2015 at the earliest.
    That’s not the only controversial point with SMR’s. The federal government has pledged more than $500 million to help develop the technology. B&W has so far received $79 million for R&D, with the possibility of an additional $150 million…
    That’s not sitting well with the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. It points to the long history of expensive failures in the nuclear industry, backed by 60 years of subsidies.
    Ryan Alexander, president of the group, sees the potential for a nuclear version of Solyndra, the solar power company that went belly up after taxpayers poured a half-billion dollars into the company…
    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/30/mini-nuclear-plants-next-frontier-us-power-supply-or-next-solyndra/

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  • #

    Conrgatulations for a spot on article being published by a newspaper to be read by people to digest and think about.
    Keep up good work.
    Amr

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  • #

    I meant congratulations?!!!

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    Safetyguy66

    F.A. Hayek described the process/road Australia is embarked on with chilling accuracy in his 1943 book “The Road to Serfdom”

    Allowing ourselves to be monstered by our own government, acting under the guise of “whats good for all” only ends in one place, totalitarianism.

    When people like Christine Milne can go into the public arena and make comments like “Barbarism gains votes in Australia”, who can doubt the lengths left/green politicians would go to in order to expand and enhance the powers of government to control ordinary, law abiding citizens in the most minute and invasive ways.

    The carbon tax/ETS is a classic example of a tiny minority of what Paul Keating would describe accurately as “unrepresentative swill” imposing their will on the rest of us and doing it while pretending to come from a position of moral high ground. Ordinary people are being guilt tripped via their general ignorance (not an insult) of science and the scientific process in to believing these half baked political systems have something or even anything to do with the greater good of humanity. Or that these token and economically damaging measures will provide some benefit to the environment, which almost no one other than welded on green supporters suggests is the case.

    This whole process is nothing more than rampant ideology desperately clinging to a cause that has proposed but imagined consequences, so terrifying, ordinary people are genuinely afraid to question the logic and just go along like sheep to the slaughter.

    I don’t know where it will end, but if the greens of this world have anything to do with it, it wont end well for our economy and our general standard of living.

    In Tasmania today another manufacturing business, ACL Bearings went into receivership with the loss of around 140 jobs. The 3rd major Tasmanian manufacturing company to close in as many weeks. http://www.examiner.com.au/story/1671409/10m-redundancy-bill-for-acl-staff/?cs=12

    The greens industry spokesman(why do they even need one) stated that “we need to move away from subsidised traditional industries into more diversified ones”. Now WHAT THE HELL does that even mean? Do you think he could come up with a single example of that sweeping generality of nonsense if pressed? (eco tourism aside), of course not. Greens are more than happy to see high unemployment because that means less industry polluting the environment (in their minds)and also its a good excuse to raise taxes on the wealthy (families of more than 100K combined income) to raise unemployment benefits.

    This madness has to stop. Australia has flirted with green politics and green policies long enough. How high an unemployment rate do we really want? Why do we accept that social issues such as unemployment do not have social solutions, such as reducing energy costs to encourage manufacturing. How long do we accept the notion that presumed scarcity in the environment trumps human needs in the present?

    http://www.the9billion.com/2013/07/23/world-bank-to-restrict-funding-for-coal-fired-power-plants/
    vs
    http://www.mnn.com/health/healthy-spaces/stories/indoor-air-pollution-in-the-developing-world-the-silent-killer

    Greens would be applauding the world banks decision to stop funding coal fired power plants. All the while grinning to themselves that over 2 million people a year die from indoor cooking fires, at least some of which is directly attributable to a lack of access to electricity. But that’s ok, because the world can do without so many people anyway right? Green politics is ultimately about eugenics. You dont have to delve any further than the surface of most green policy to discover the barely hidden and often trumpeted effects on 3rd world populations, they proudly snuff out the lives of the world’s poor in order to ensure their own 1st world living standards for a little longer. They sit in trees tweeting about the devastation of the oil industry on an iPhone made completely from either fossil fuel product or rare earths and dont even see the irony.

    The environment does not trump human needs. People do not need to starve to death in Africa because of climate change, they have been doing that since before AGW was even a concept, now though the greens blame AGW for the starvation, while denying the solutions such as allowing these people to develop their natural resources, build a tax base and enjoy an emerging middle class like all people deserve to have the opportunity to do.

    If anyone should be chaining themselves to anything in the 21st century its people like us and small business people should be chaining themselves to greenies to stop them putting good, decent tax paying citizens out of work and essentially murdering millions in the 3rd world with their out of control nonsense.

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      Graeme No.3

      Safetyguy66
      I always enjoy your comments, but I must take issue with the one about greenies wanting higher taxes on those over $100,000 p.a. Don’t you realise that many greenies get far more than that? Self interest is their middle name.

      The image of a well meaning but harmless looney puddling around in the mud “building a responsible and renewable lifestyle” is a myth. Those who puddle are usually getting public money handouts while the rest have to make 2 (or more) trips in their BMW or Range Rover to collect their share. Flannery gets $180,000 for part time work, and presumably his fellow commissioners do likewise.

      I was recently in the UK and it was obvious how strongly the ‘upper’ class had their snouts in the public trough, while berating the ordinary public on the sacrifices necessary to achieve the green economy. The land owning aristocracy are overwhelmingly in favour of wind farms, following the lead of Prince Charlie. Unfortunately for the Greens the intrusion of reality is causing panic in the Government, now they realise that continuing the existing policies will mean they will have to face an election with power blackouts occurring.

      A month of warm weather has exposed the wind farms as useless in summer as they are in winter. It seems they only generate power when it is not wanted.

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      • #
        Safetyguy66

        No argument from me.

        Its some mind bending hypocrisy that many greens/warmists dismiss reputable scientists who dont subscribe to the belief system on the basis of them having some sort of financial iron in the fire. When far more common is the position of people like Tim Flannery who are directly and indisputably linked to a chain of Govt. funding, share market deals, grants and extras all totally dependent on continuing to ramp up the doom saying. I don’t have figures, but I don’t think it takes too much study to show that by far and away the larger share of money in this debate goes to people promoting or directly attached to the AGW side of the argument. Yet it is one of the key and false arguments used to discredit anyone who disagrees with the so called consensus.

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    David

    Heywood

    I actually thought I was being constructive. I even gave you a little lesson on why CO2 is not a fertiliser.

    Brian G Valentine and Tom.

    I’ve been employed ever since I left school in 1984 except for 5 years when I ran my own business. But don’t let the truth get in the way of your prejudices.

    Safetyguy66

    Please try to keep up. I actually said the Carbon Tax will be useless because it’s tackling the issue of Climate Change from the wrong angle which is financially. Every issue these days seems to be seen as economic. Economics does not provide the answer to every problem that presents itself.

    Climate Change is actually a simple problem to solve. We just need to stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere through the use of Fossil Fuels. The human race has found different ways to produce power before and can again.

    Jo there is a huge amount of funding for scientists who wish to challenge the orthodoxy of Climate Change. The problem is they won’t submit their findings to peer review or when they undertake research they find out that Climate Change as real and caused by man. Richard Muller is one. He was one of many funded by the Koch brothers in the US to disprove man made Climate Change and conducted thorough research which proved the opposite.

    Here’s a link to his announcement which you’ve probably already read but others may benefit from.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

    PS. I use the term Climate Chage denier because it fits the best. If you would prefer a different description just let me know.

    Cheers

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    • #

      Muller 2008: ““There is a consensus that global warming is real. …it’s going to get much, much worse.””
      He set up a group with his green activist daughter. They were never going to “find” anything but green support.
      Muller-the-pretend-skeptic makes three claims. He’s half right on one.

      Nobody calls Muller a skeptic except himself.

      PS: Call me whatever you want. But you need to speak English to write on this site. A science denier denies something. Name it.

      PPS: Point me at the places where skeptics can apply for huge funding to check the CAGW theory.

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        MemoryVault

        You’re wasting your time, Jo.

        Cretin doesn’t even consider himself a carbon-based life-form – meaningful communication is impossible.
        You may as well chat with your crystal collection – as I’m sure Cretin does. Regularly.

        Trouble is, in his case, they talk back.

        .
        Even more troubling, he takes their advice.

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          AndyG55

          More likely his pet rock, or rocks. Probably silicon based.

          This is one guy who should swear to eat only non-carbon foods.

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        Brian G Valentine

        Muller is sceptical all right – of sceptics. He becomes incensed over criticism of his BEST constructions, which are essentially worthless. If his constructions showed the opposite of what he manipulated data to conclude (and could easily have be done) – the AGW crowd would have laughed at it and said it meant nothing.

        Interesting that he sought outside funding for the activity. The Department of Energy in the US didn’t have very high regard for it, and Muller was compelled to look elsewhere for money.

        There are probably few “sceptics” at the University of California, Berkeley. They wouldn’t be able to tolerate the atmosphere.

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      • #

        Sounds like you are accusing Muller of academic malpractice, Jo? If there was only ever going to be one result, you should be able to demonstrate it and have the paper withdrawn…

        Funny how concerns about Muller, who *was* a “sceptic”, only occurred after his results were made public.

        Watts said, “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong. “. Of course, this turned out to have been a less than accurate statement…

        Funny how actual science research never backs up the “sceptics”….so could it be that all the scientists who publish research in this area are wrong? Or could it be that the uni-dropout ex-weathermen who publish nothing are wrong?

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        • #

          1. Anonymous Margot drops in to put words in my mouth. If I was accusing him of malpractice I would have said so. I didn’t.
          2. Mullers results were mostly a boring confirmation that the world has warmed. Even skeptics agree. That shows nothing about the cause of it.
          3. His results stand or fall on the evidence. They were so convincing Judith Curry declined to put her name on the paper. Muller is using a flawed station classification to show hot air doesn’t rise off concrete.
          4. That some skeptics gave him the benefit of the doubt only shows what nice people they are — not the kind who toss ad hominem arguments all the time like yourself. Skeptics just don’t bother researching people’s CV’s unless they have to. They’re more interested in the science. Perhaps you should be too?
          5. Actual science research as defined by “Margot” never amounts to much. Still can’t find the paper with evidence that the models assumptions of water vapor and clouds in the upper troposphere is accurate?

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          Joe V.

          If there was only ever going to be one result, you should be able to demonstrate it and have the paper withdrawn…

          Well didn’t Prof Judith Curry try to have her name withdrawn and how did that go ?

          How does one go about getting a paper withdrawn from a self select journal , created for the purpose anyway ?

          While one can accept the need for Scitechnol Publishing to get work published from little known authors, why does a Professor from a large mainstream North American Academic establishment need to resort to such tactics . Hmmm… ?

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          Angry

          Is that MAGGOT back again……

          04

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      Safetyguy66

      So if you don’t tackle the problem with the mechanism of the market, how exactly do you reduce the use of a common, freely available substance/commodity such as CO2?

      I don’t see anything in your original post other than thinly, or perhaps poorly veiled barbs (like that one) at people, in some sort of attempt to seem worldly. “Please try to keep up” is also pretty “last year” in trolling circles. I believe the current terminology is “like whatevs” or so our Prime Minister and creator of the current half baked attempt at tackling a non problem with a massive new bureaucracy was saying the other day.

      So what do you suggest oh Sage of energy production? Or are your posts strictly confined to witty one liners and hilarious anecdotes?

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        Winston

        Safety,
        I hear discrete trials in around 1100 A.D in Hawaii, showed that sacrificing virgins by hurling them into active volcanoes was very effective at altering the weather, improving crop yields, etc. Now the data was very preliminary, I’ll admit, but perhaps we can get some of that fossil fuel subsidised research money that David was suggesting was so abundant out there, enough to put together a preliminary pilot study. You never know, we might be onto something there, it could be just the breakthrough we were counting on to turn the tide against the ever escalating CO2 induced climate change.

        And I have a prediction. If we conduct the study in say 2014/2015, I predict that we’ll have , say 30 years of cooling directly as a result of our little trial. Then if we have another 30 years of warming after that we can give it another go, and I bet you any money you like it will work again, like clockwork. Money for old rope.

        30

      • #
        AndyG55

        “witty one liners and hilarious anecdotes?”

        surely you meant “witless one liners and moronically stupid anecdotes.”

        46

      • #
        AndyG55

        “I don’t see anything in your original post other than…….”

        just leave the “other than” off, full stop.

        It is a meaningless rant full of statements illustrating his ignorance on basically…. everything.

        The troll quality has surely dipped to a new low, which I really didn’t think was possible.

        46

    • #
      Heywood

      ” I actually thought I was being constructive.”

      No not constructive at all, but based on your condescending and arrogant style, I do wonder if AAD (or Michael as he is more commonly known) has been recruiting fellow travelers.

      “I even gave you a little lesson on why CO2 is not a fertiliser.”

      Actually the way I saw it it was you who was given a lesson.

      “PS. I use the term Climate Chage denier because it fits the best.”

      Fits best? To your own prejudices maybe. So, if it “fits the best”, tells us who on this blog denies that the climate changes.

      80

    • #
      Backslider

      except for 5 years when I ran my own business

      Sad to hear that your business went broke. Do tell us what happened…. I’m sure that taxes played some part in that, huh?

      15

    • #
      Backslider

      Climate Change is actually a simple problem to solve. We just need to stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere through the use of Fossil Fuels.

      So tell us David, when are you going to stop? We await with bated breath (that’s less CO2 emissions!!!).

      So, you really think that stopping CO2 emissions will stop climate change? I think not. If you do, then prove it, with science please.

      50

      • #
        Safetyguy66

        All this time people on both sides of the debate have wrestled with the issues, and David has been sitting quietly on the simple solution. How dumb are we ?

        20

    • #
      Ace

      David makes an ironic choice of moniker…because, as indicated by this verbal slurry of his:

      “………Jo there is a huge amount of funding for scientists who wish to challenge the orthodoxy of Climate Change. The problem is they won’t submit their findings to peer review or when they undertake research they find out that Climate Change as real and caused by man. Richard Muller is one. He was one of many funded by the Koch brothers in the US to disprove man made Climate Change and conducted thorough research which proved the opposite…………”

      …. he is basically part of Jew-hating wing of the New Left for whom the evil Koch brothers are the focus for their Global Protocols Conspiracy the way that the Rothschilds were in the last century.

      Scratch a Green and you find a black-shirt underneath. Always. It never fails.

      These creeps are specially disgusting when they prate of “deniers”.

      46

      • #
        Yonniestone

        Ace is Waterworld Venice Italy?

        10

        • #
          Ace

          Oh Yonnistone, I’ve been waiting for your return since that last excellent foray of yours into the realms of Acesanity (“Its insanity Jim, but not as we know it”).

          Venice is the place I keep fearing people might think I mean by Water World if they dont immediately recognise the location. To be absolutely honest, I never thought my earliest references to the place (when it was a big problem for me interposing itself into every gap of my existence) would become an enigma. Now I cannot remember the signposts I threw in (not clues, as it wasnt meant to be the riddle I accept it became).But I think I mentioned the fekerin great wind turbines that stand like sinister guardians (warders) by the town. As much water as land. Below sea level. I thought the phrase Water World would bring it to mind for others as it does for me but obviously Im more fixated on its aqualine sore points than others. Terraces of sinister houses. Illustrious dead inhabitants. I mentioned dykes (either interpretation will do) what about bikes? Crikey, thats giving it away!

          20

          • #
            Ace

            …in case that wasnt clear, no, its not Venice.

            10

            • #
              Heywood

              New Orleans…

              10

              • #
                Ace

                One I didnt think of. Crikey. Could b the Water World of The West. Horrible thought, Water World with Voodoo and fevers.

                20

              • #
                Ace

                …BUT…I also said just about everyone I meet has been there, so I think that rules out New Orleans whilst making Venice an easy mistake. Although I havent been to Venice even I fancy going some time.

                00

              • #
                crakar24

                i think he meant that german province

                00

            • #
              Yonniestone

              Who said “beware the genius for he borders on insanity”?
              I was taking a stab at Lithuania and wouldn’t take the piss as I never underestimate anyone but have a very dry sense of humor, so I hope I didn’t come across arrogant.
              I like cryptic riddles and sadly stems from watching “Batman” on TV (Adam West) as a boy, Throw in a K.G. Bird clue and I’m set, so considering your recent clues and at the ongoing risk of insulting every European country below sea level I’d say Holland/Netherlands is Waterworld. 🙂

              10

              • #
                Ace

                Yeah well I used to watch Batman as a kid, whenever I could…and riddles were not the beautiful enigmas that got me hooked!

                Well I AM disappointed, even after the dykes and bikes and getting within what…a hundred miles North to South or less, you still couldnt name the town.

                Talk about “At that range they couldnt hit a barn…”

                The whole shared eco nuttery of the place and the movie prompted the expression to come to mind in the first place.I mean, on a map, it evn looks like Costners fckin lagoon.Thankfully, they draw the line at drinking recycled piss.

                10

              • #
                Ace

                …but they named their best river after a lager. How cool is that!

                10

              • #
                Yonniestone

                Amsterdam!

                10

              • #
                Rereke Whakaaro

                Cascades!

                10

              • #
                Ace

                Behold: Water World!

                10

              • #
                Ace

                …no its not Cascades, unless you refer to either the Golden variety or what you are liable to experience standing on their filthy streets minding your own business.

                10

              • #
                crakar24

                Wasnt it Pure Blonde?…no my mistake they were the ones that made it and i dont think it came from the river.

                In SA we have a beer called Pale Ale it even comes complete with a pile of dirt in the bottom of the stubbie and tastes just like the Torrens.

                Ace the golden variety you speak of is bottled in QLD and it is called XXXX.

                Cheers

                10

              • #
                Rereke Whakaaro

                I always thought it was called XXXX because Australians couldn’t spell BEER.

                00

              • #
                Ace

                Crakar24:
                “Wasnt it Pure Blonde?…no my mistake they were the ones that made it and i dont think it came from the river.”

                Actually Crakar I must correct the both of us. In fact at Water World nearly all the piped stuff is drawn from the Rhine. So, yes, it IS made by some Pure Blondes upstream, and it IS recycled piss!!!!

                00

              • #
                Ace

                …I never did discover what variety I got showered with from an overhead window in one O-they aptly named “crooked houses” of Water World.

                00

              • #
                crakar24

                RW,

                I must take up this point with you, Queenslanders cannot spell beer not Australians. To all, whilst QLD is technically connected to Australia they are two different places.

                00

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        A slight correction Ace:

        Scratch a Green and you find a black-shirt underneath

        That should be a brown-shirt. If you are referring to the Nazi Party Sturmabteilung (the SA) which, as well as being the bully boys of the Nazi party, were also paradoxically the original conservation movement in Germany.

        The black-shirts were worn by the SchutzStaffel (the SS), which was Hitler’s private army.

        10

        • #
          Ace

          But but but but but…the black shirts put down the brown shirts…I know, I SAW ROBERT CARLYSLE DO IT!!!!

          Which came first, Kristalnacht or Der nacht von der grosse knopf …or Steve Coogans?

          No but seriously folks, most thity-less are too ignorant to know what a brown shirt was, whereas black always means something bad if theyve seen Star Wars.

          10

          • #
            Ace

            Memorably, when I was in school around 13 we had a student teacher in history one day. He asked us confidently, “Does anyone know what the SS means”?

            OK so I dont really speak German now as I can ask questions but dont understand the answers, I just follow where they are pointing, or interpret the perplexed gabble that tells me theres no U2 at Alexanderplatz, but it was worse then: I put up my hand and assured him “Schwarz Staffeln” thinking that meant, rather literally, black shirt. He hesitated, perplexed, as presumably he spoke less than no German, and to my disgust said “black shirts”.

            10

            • #
              Yonniestone

              Ace my Holden ute is the SS version, and the SS badges on it are kind of “lightning strike” style hmmm.

              10

          • #
            crakar24

            Ace,

            My son did history last year (Note here in SA you dont need English in year 12!!!! so he did history as chemistry played no role in getting a high enough ATAR to make engineering (another !!!!!!))

            Anyway Hitler was a topic as was the early Russian revolution, my son educated me about the SS and SA among other things about Hitler that some have tried to hide/abolish/rewrite from the pages of time. I do listen to him as he got Dux for the school that year 🙂

            PS He did go to a private school free from any indoctrination/government policy bias so he may be an anomoly

            10

            • #
              Ace

              Since Rereke Whackero “primed” me with the cognitive set, I feel a little alarmed Crakar whenever you say things like “We in SA…”!

              I keep thinking of Eugene Terre Blanche.

              00

              • #
                crakar24

                Well we did have a premier called Mike Rann and for a little while there the state was renamed to “Rannistan”.

                And judging by the number of government illegal immigrant dumping grounds here in SA we do have a lot more blick people roaming the streets so who knows maybe there is a Eugene out there somewhere in SA.

                00

      • #
        Safetyguy66

        “It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now–independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one’s neighbors–are essentially those on which the of an individualist society rests.

        Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.”

        ― Friedrich A. von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

        10

  • #
    Ian Wilson

    Congratulations Joanne! It won’t be long before your articles will become main stream.

    40

    • #
      Ace

      Theres been as lot of…in my opinion…misplaced optimism on the skepto blogs recently. But I think the publication of her article is the best thing to inspire hope yet. Given that by accounts Australia seems to be a kind of hard-core bastion of ecomania.

      10

  • #
    Bulldust

    It seems the Philippine government wants to prolong poverty by commiting to 100% renewables in 10 years:

    http://www.manilatimes.net/100-renewable-energy-eyed-in-10-years/12319/

    I came across this because it was rehashed in a another news feed I get.

    40

    • #
      Safetyguy66

      What continues to amaze me is the sheer front of it.

      Government in the first world happily standing by while people actually die, day in day out from issues we dealt with 150 years ago. While at the same time claiming their motivation is the possible death toll in the worst case scenario of AGW.

      The first time I watched “The Great Global Warming Swindle” I was reluctant to discuss my take on it with other people. The notion that developed nations would conspire either actively or notionally, in a similar way to how authorities now describe Al Quieda, basically disparate groups with similar motivations, to try and keep the 3rd world from developing seemed just too far fetched.

      Then over the past few years we have just seen more and more evidence supporting what even now seems like a tin foil hat notion. But how do you explain…

      http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/3/obamas-cruel-advice/
      And
      http://www.the9billion.com/2013/07/23/world-bank-to-restrict-funding-for-coal-fired-power-plants/

      Its not even like they are trying to cover it up and lets face it why would they? Ordinary people really think the whole notion is crazy, yet we see it unfolding before our eyes, those of us with our eyes still open.

      40

      • #
        Winston

        They would rather cause the absolute certainty of millions of deaths from their actions right now as we speak, than risk the mere possibility of (at worst) a few hundred thousand deaths later, many of which could be prevented with proper planning and preparation, EVEN if what they feared was actually true, which it isn’t. It truly beggars belief.

        05

  • #
  • #
    gbees

    “like large financial institutions such as Deutsche Bank, UBS, Morgan Stanley, CBA, Citi, HSBC, Macquarie”

    Don’t forget Goldman Sachs – Malcolm Turnbull’s past employer …

    20

  • #
    Bulldust

    ***NEWSFLASH***

    ANU unveils ‘Raijin’, the country’s biggest, bestest supercomputer. What is ANU going to do with this beast? Solve world hunger, health or poverty? Nope you guessed it…

    http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/australias-biggest-supercomputer-is-off-and-racing-20130731-hv172.html

    30

    • #
      Turtle of WA

      Yes. This will strengthen the monopoly the warmists have on scientific truth. Now that the Warmists have Deep Thought we can all bow down before the Truth that it provides. Unless we use our brain.

      David Bowie may have got it right, inadvertently. (I love the bit about ‘your mind are too green’):

      Saviour Machine

      President Joe once had a dream
      The world held his hand, gave their pledge
      So he told them his scheme for a Saviour Machine

      They called it the Prayer, its answer was law
      Its logic stopped war, gave them food
      How they adored till it cried in its boredom

      ‘Please don’t believe in me, please disagree with me
      Life is too easy, a plague seems quite feasible now
      or maybe a war, or I may kill you all

      Don’t let me stay, don’t let me stay
      My logic says burn so send me away
      Your minds are too green, I despise all I’ve seen
      You can’t stake your lives on a Saviour Machine

      I need you flying, and I’ll show that dying
      Is living beyond reason, sacred dimension of time
      I perceive every sign, I can steal every mind

      Don’t let me stay, don’t let me stay
      My logic says burn so send me away
      Your minds are too green, I despise all I’ve seen
      You can’t stake your lives on a Saviour Machine

      20

    • #
      AndyG55

      They are going to help BOM keep adjusting the temperature upwards.

      That’s going to need heaps of computing power.

      But think of the CO2 released just running the thing 🙂

      or maybe they could try running it using wind power.

      57

    • #
      Backslider

      Oh wow! 1200 trillion rounding errors per second!!!!

      30

    • #
      Safetyguy66

      ‘‘This will have deep implications for policy,’’ NCI director Lindsay Botten said.

      So its barely finished loading windows and getting an iTunes account and already they are talking about throwing goats blood on it for guidance. Wonderful…

      10

  • #
    Matty

    Good stuff Jo, I’m forwarding it to a heap of my contacts. I enjoyed reading it.

    50

  • #
    pat

    Bulldust –
    just about to add something re an earlier comment of yours, & now see the ANU/comp link and simply can’t bear to go there right now.

    anyway, venezuela did get all their gold that they wanted repatriated, unless they were coerced to leave 50 tons overseas instead of 15! there were celebrations each time a shipment arrive in caracas:

    Jan 2012: Bloomberg: Venezuela Receives Last Shipment of Repatriated Gold Bars
    Venezuela today received the last shipment of gold bars in an operation that repatriated 160 tons of the South American country’s reserves of the metal held abroad, said Nelson Merentes, president of the country’s central bank…
    The South American country, which has the 15th-largest holdings in the world, according to the World Gold Council, held 211 tons of its 365 tons of gold reserves in U.S., European and Canadian banks as of August.
    Venezuela will leave about 15 percent of its reserves, or around 50 tons, outside of Venezuela for financial transactions, Merentes said today. He said on Jan. 3 that the country would leave 15 tons of gold in banks outside the country…
    The South American country, which has the 15th-largest holdings in the world, according to the World Gold Council, held 211 tons of its 365 tons of gold reserves in U.S., European and Canadian banks as of August.
    Venezuela will leave about 15 percent of its reserves, or around 50 tons, outside of Venezuela for financial transactions, Merentes said today. He said on Jan. 3 that the country would leave 15 tons of gold in banks outside the country.
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/venezuela-receives-last-shipment-of-repatriated-gold-bars-1-.html

    10

  • #
    Turtle of WA

    Good on you, Jo. Well Done.

    Dick Smith was Talking to Wolfy on 720 this afternoon. Dick reckons there’s a ‘good chance’ that ‘the scientists’ are right. A good chance? Yeah, let’s wreck our economy cause there’s a ‘good chance’ some alarmist doom mongers are right.

    I laughed when Mr Wolf asked a scientist what they were going to use Australia’s new super-computer for. The answer was of course climate alarmism. The guy was talking about the analysis of satellite data. 34 years of data. That should be ample to predict the next hundred years, surely.(sarc)

    30

  • #
    Safetyguy66

    Philip Adams called in a historian to ruthlessly defame Ian Plimer last night. I was so appalled, Im still fuming.

    Listen to the replay, its so disgusting I am just in disbelief.

    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/darwin-and-climage-change-denial/4852912

    I notice though that this pair of cowards, who used the legacy of Darwin’s publication of evolution to try and draw a weak link between evolution and climate theory and the terror of being “controversial”, didn’t mention John Christy in their ad hominen rantings. To suggest that Plimer only holds his views because of jealousy of other branches of science getting more funding and media was one of the most disgraceful and sickning episodes of vile gutter press I have heard in a long time. Shame Phillip!

    60

  • #
    Bob from Arana Hills

    Good work, Jo. To hear KRudd going on about how “conservatives” should like an ETS because it is “market based” is sickening. (See, eg, the Andrew Bolt interview with him last Sunday.)

    50

  • #
    Dave

    CO2 Scam

    * Government sees money in adopting EU ETS.
    * Government tells Aussie scientists that grants are available to confirm CAGW
    * Aussie Scientists lap up the money.
    * Aussie Climate Change Leader Timmy says rains will never fill our dams, Oops?
    * Aussie Scientists get lots of Peer Reviewed Papers out to bring consensus to 97%.
    * Aussie scientists get more money.
    * Warming stops for 15 years,
    * Government wants answers as public don’t believe all the BS.
    * Aussie Scientists bring out Extreme Weather scares to take public’s mind off no warming.
    * Government pays more money to Aussie Scientists.
    * PM tells public he relies on advice from Aussie Scientists.
    * Country going broke slowly, PM puts up price of smokes.
    * Extreme weather event at Xmas Island delays sending illegals to PNG.
    * Government gets Head Scientist to speak at Press Club and back the policy’s
    * Government gives more money to everybody to vote for them.
    * Government gives money to TV, newspapers to advertise all the expensive schemes.

    Rudd – re-elected in 5 weeks from now, but no money left, Rudd leaves to take UN position and Albanese becomes 1st Marrackville Prime Minister.

    Australia heading into deep recession, Scientists flee seeking refugee status in US and UK.

    Biggest con trick seen for many years.

    40

  • #
    Bob Massey

    Jo, Congratulations a grand article. well done 🙂

    60

  • #
    JTF

    Well done Jo. Good to see you are back in the paper. Not that I read it anymore, but hell maybe if you appear a little more often I may go back to buying it…….or maybe not.

    Keep up the good fight, and a few more vid’s wouldn’t go astray. Love seeing you in “motion”.
    JTF

    60

    • #
      Sceptical Sam

      Cripes JTF, what do you read then? The ABC?

      At least try an online subscription to the Oz. Join the 21st century.

      30

  • #
    Alice Thermopolis

    Hey Jo

    Congratulations. Well done.

    “Keep ’em comin’!”

    Alice

    50

  • #
    Drapetomania

    Seriously Jo, we need a better class of troll. Have you ever thought of imposing a simple knowledge test

    Wouldnt work..none of them would pass..
    Name calling/smearing and misdirection and ethic free zones are more their forte..
    And they are all on the grid and drive cars.. 🙂
    As an aside..Dick Smith did a documentary on energy,its on tonight, he bought an electric car..and THEN discovered that coal powers it.
    Face Palm.. 🙂

    10

    • #
      Bulldust

      Also Jo has this weird quirk that she believes in freedom of speech, unlike the warmistas who seek to control content at all times. Real Cimate heavily censors, as does unSkeptical Science, and even the ABC, but they are inconsistent about it.

      21

    • #
      AndyG55

      “and THEN discovered that coal powers it.”

      oh what.. you mean he has to plug it into an electricity socket.

      oh no’s.. its worse than we could ever have imagined. !

      Good one Dick ****

      37

    • #
      AndyG55

      ps.. I went into a Dick Smith store the other day..

      asked to see their Australian made products… 😉

      37

    • #

      If you’re sick of the name-calling, how about discussing the fact that there have now been about 15 independent confirmations of the “Hockey-stick”?

      27

      • #
        crakar24

        I dispute that figure Margot, could you please supply evidence to support your claim. Once you have done this then i will offer a rebuttal if it is deemed one is required.

        regards

        Crakar24

        30

      • #
        Winston

        Oh Really, Margot! Even his own peers doubted the validity of the Hockey Stick, they just didn’t say anything publicly, just in private:

        I believe Dr Mann manipulated the data in paleoclimate studies to conform to a predetermined result, in an attempt to remove (or at least mollify) the somewhat inconvenient “Medieval Warming Period” which he was keen to expunge from history. This was in order to add legitimacy to his contention that modern late 20th century warming was anomalous and outside the natural climate variations that have been seen throughout the Holocene interglacial period. His peers were aware of the shortcomings of his methodology but appear to have fallen into line behind the study rather than insist via peer review on corrections to the paper, or modification of the data and/or conclusions. Climate Audit’s Steve McIntyre showed that the “Hockey stick” graph depended heavily on unreliable data, especially samples of tree rings from bristlecone pine trees, the growth patterns of which were often not responding to temperature at all, but rather to other variables like CO2, variations in precipitation, etc. It was also shown to have depended on a statistical filter that over-weighted any samples showing sharp rises in the 20th century.

        Those defending the various Hockey-stick graphs brought in a lake-sediment sample from Finland (Tiljander), which had to be turned upside down to show a temperature spike in the 20th century; they then added a sample of larch trees from Siberia that turned out to be affected by one tree that had grown faster in recent decades, perhaps because its neighbor had died. Recently, this Siberian larch data was finally corrected by the University of East Anglia’s Keith Briffa to remove all signs of hockey-stick upticks, showing that McIntyre’s criticisms were completely valid, even if they were not prepared to concede it publicly.

        To quote from Climate Audit’s take on proceedings:

        “As CA readers are aware, the “big news” of Mann et al 2008 was its claim to have got a Hockey Stick without Graybill’s bristlecone chronologies (camouflaged as a “no-dendro” reconstruction). CA readers are aware that this claim depended on their use of contaminated modern portion of the Tiljander sediments and that the original claims for a “validated” no-dendro reconstruction prior to 1500 fell apart, even though no retraction or corrigendum to the original Mann et al (PNAS 2008) has been issued. As we learned (from an inline comment by Gavin Schmidt in July 2010), Mann et al have conceded that these claims fell apart, but did so using a “trick” (TM- climate science.) Instead of acknowledging the false assertions at the journal in which the assertions were made (PNAS), they acknowledged the failure of the no-Tiljander no-bristlecone reconstructions deep in the Supplementary Information of a different paper (Mann et al, Science 2009) – a trick for which the term “Mike’s PNAS trick” is surely appropriate (though the term “Mike’s Science trick” also merits consideration.)”

        Further information re: the debunking of this study can be found here:

        http://climateaudit.org/multiproxy-pdfs/

        Including evidence that much of the statistical significance of proxies used in Mann’s study were drawn from cherrypicking 12 larch trees in Yamal, Siberia, with one of those trees being an outlier (YAD061) that should have been discarded from the sample, since it skewed results disproportionately:

        http://climateaudit.org/2009/09/27/yamal-a-divergence-problem/

        Also, witness the over 800 studies gathered here showing that the Medieval Warming Period was not only real, but it was global and of a similar, if not greater, magnitude than the modern Warming Period which can be found here:

        http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/description.php

        Some examples of well-known climate researchers own words validating skeptical assertions regarding the motivation and methodological manipulation evident in this “landmark” study are found below:-

        Michael Mann
        “It would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “Medieval Warm Period”.”

        #300 Bo Christiansen – on Hockey stick reconstructions
        “All methods strongly underestimate the amplitude of low-frequency variability and trends. This means that it is almost impossible to conclude from reconstruction studies that the present period is warmer than any period in the reconstructed period.”

        #0886 Jan Esper on his own reconstruction – also hidden decline
        And the curve will also show that the IPCC curve needs to be improved according to missing long-term declining trends/signals, which were removed (by dendrochronologists!) before Mann merged the local records together.

        #4007 Tim Osborne
        “Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were”

        Tim Osborne #2347
        “Also, we set all post-1960 values to missing in the MXD data set (due to decline), and the method will infill these, estimating them from the real temperatures – another way of “correcting” for the decline, though may be not defensible!”

        #3234 Richard Alley
        “Unless the “divergence problem” can be confidently ascribed to some cause that was not active a millennium ago, then the comparison between tree rings from a millennium ago and instrumental records from the last decades does not seem to be justified, and the confidence level in the anomalous nature of the recent warmth is lowered.”

        Finally, the Wegman Report into the validity of the now infamous ‘Hockey Stick’ paper included some of the following interesting and insightful observations:

        In addition to debunking the methodology used in the ‘Hockey Stick’ global climate reconstruction paper, Wegman goes a step further in his report, attempting to answer why Mr. Mann’s mistakes were not exposed by his fellow climatologists. Instead, it fell to two outsiders, Messrs. McIntyre and McKitrick, to uncover the paper’s errors.

        Wegman uses a technique called social-network analysis to examine the community of climate researchers. His conclusion is that the coterie of the most frequently published climatologists is so insular and close-knit that no effective independent review of the work of Mr. Mann is likely or possible.

        “As analyzed in our social network,” Mr. Wegman writes, “there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis.” He continues: “However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility.”

        He added: 
”One of the interesting questions associated with the ‘Hockey Stick Controversy’ are the relationships among the authors, and consequently how confident one can be in the peer review process. In particular, if there is a tight relationship among the authors and there are not a large number of individuals engaged in a particular topic area, then one may suspect that the peer review process does not fully vet papers before they are published…”

        “However, it is immediately clear that the Mann, Rutherford, Jones, Osborn, Briffa, Bradley and Hughes form a clique, each interacting with all of the others. A clique is a fully connected subgraph, meaning everyone in the clique interacts with every one else in the clique”.

        The report further added:

        “One of the interesting questions associated with the ‘Hockey Stick Controversy’ are the relationships among the authors and consequently how confident one can be in the peer review process. In particular, if there is a tight relationship among the authors and there are not a large number of individuals engaged in a particular topic area, then one may suspect that the peer review process does not fully vet papers before they are published. Indeed, a common practice among associate editors for scholarly journals is to look in the list of references for a submitted paper to see who else is writing in a given area and thus who might legitimately be called on to provide knowledgeable peer review. Of course, if a given discipline area is small and the authors in the area are tightly coupled, then this process is likely to turn up very sympathetic referees. These referees may have coauthored other papers with a given author. They may believe they know that author’s other writings well enough that errors can continue to propagate and indeed be reinforced.”

        In the case of the Michael Mann’s “Hockey Stick” paper, Wegman and his team found the “clique” of gatekeepers to be no more than just 43 scientists, the majority of whom were wholly inter-dependent and inter-related.

        Marcott et al (2013) attempted to resuscitate the zombie-like Hockey stick with one of it’s own, only to be shot down within weeks of publication by various skeptic blog sites who demonstrated fatal methodological errors that even the authors tacitly accepted in their concluding statements within the paper, when they stated: “[The] 20th-century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.” One wonders therefore why they bothered to publish if their statistical methodology was not robust enough to legitimise their conclusions. Yet another example of post-modern science in action.

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          Winston

          P.S There’s a little quote at the beginning from Matt Ridley which I forgot to correctly attribute- sorry.

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          Andrew McRae

          No stone left unturned there, Winston, and the Osborn quotes are just priceless. Nice.

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        Mark D.

        how about discussing the fact that there have now been about 15 independent confirmations of the “Hockey-stick”?

        Shows just how bad the 97% are at peer review?

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    Bulldust

    Well it turns out Labor is planning to slug smokers big time to patch holes in their budget addicted to spending (yes, I see what I did there):

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-01/government-to-raise-5-billion-from-cigarette-tax-increase/4857244

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      Bulldust

      Here’s the irony:

      Federal Treasurer Chris Bowen says the tax increase makes sense as it will deter smokers while providing a boost to revenue.

      “This increase in excise serves several purposes: it provides funds for cancer-related health services; it deters young people from taking up smoking; and of course, it alleviates some of the revenue impacts on the budget,” he said in a statement.

      Complete and utter hypocrasy … if people stopped smoking in droves the tax take would decrease not increase, and by a large amount ($5.3 billion over forward estimates of a few years). How much will go to aid cancer-related health services? Bet your smoking dollar it will be a small proportion.

      I wonder what the smoker/non-smoker breakdown is with voters? We know the Greens all smoke, but that isn’t a taxable product 😀 Somehow I think this may be affecting more Labor voters than Lib, but who knows?

      BTW I don’t smoke, and never have. Well tried one once … even inhaled … didn’t agree with me.

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        AndyG55

        I don’t know if I smoke… nobody has ever tried to light me.

        (sorry, early morning, haven’t woken up properly yet)

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        Safetyguy66

        “Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily recreated in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s own conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.”

        ― Friedrich A. von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

        There is a Hayek quote for all occasions of “Nanny State” nonsense.

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      Bulldust

      Wow .. it would make this the most expensive country in the world to buy cigarettes… talk about free market philosophy:

      http://tobaccoatlas.org/costs/cig_prices/prices/

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    pat

    this is what i heard non-stop on MSM last nite:

    Tobacco-related illness costs the economy $31bn a year as Kevin Rudd hints at excise rise
    This was causing “an extraordinary cost” to the public health system and costing the economy $31.5 billion a year, Mr Rudd said…
    http://www.news.com.au/national-news/federal-election/tobaccorelated-illness-costs-the-economy-31bn-a-year-as-kevin-rudd-hints-at-excise-rise/story-fnho52ip-1226688800585

    (Kevin Rudd) And there was an “extraordinary cost” to the public hospital system. It accounting for 750,000 hospital bed days a year, costing the economy $31.5 billion a year
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/smokers-hit-53b-to-patch-budget-black-hole/story-e6frg6n6-1226689105000

    this is what ABC/SBS now have online, with no suggestion the cost relates to any particular time period, so it’s meaningless:

    ABC: Anti-smoking groups, buoyed by a pledge by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to “get serious” about the $35 billion cost of tobacco-related diseases in Australia, are urging him to solve his revenue problem by raising taxes on cigarettes.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-31/rudd-flags-tobacco-tax-increase/4855836

    SBS:: Australia spends $31 billion on health care for ill smokers
    http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1794799/Tobacco-tax-may-help-youth-quit-smoking-Plibersek

    Big Tobacco states the $30+ billion is over 40 years & that the tobacco companies pay $10 billion a year in taxes already:

    AUDIO: 4BC Radio: More tax for smokers
    Scott McIntyre is spokesperson for British American Tobacco Australia and he explains to Kim & Mary his opposition to this tax increase.
    http://www.4bc.com.au/blogs/2013-4bc-breakfast-audio-blog/more-tax-for-smokers/20130801-2r08s.html

    talk about SPIN!

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      MemoryVault

      .
      According to official Treasury figures (I know, I know . . .), smoking allegedly adds $318 million per year to health care costs, and with the new rise, smokers pay $7 BILLION a year in taxes. So we smokers actually pay our allegedly increased cost on the health system more than 20 times over. EVERY year.

      I say “allegedly” as I know I am included in that health care cost figure, even though my heart attack and subsequent stroke had absolutely nothing to do with smoking. After 50 years of 50+ cigs a day, there was NO discernible or detectable damage to my heart, lungs or arteries, from smoking, even under microscopic examination.

      It matters not. If you are a smoker ANY illness is recorded as “smoking related”, and when my now mangled heart finally gives up the effort, my death will also be recorded as “smoking related”, even though the true culprit was 15 years misdiagnosis of the cause of my high blood pressure.

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        Thanks for this MemoryVault.

        Now, I want to point something out here in reference to smoking and the CO2 Tax, (and all the other Greenhouse gases that the Government has taxed) and yes, this is an exact correlation.

        Note how specifically, the Government relates this out and out tax hike to a health matter. Smoking diseases costs the Health Budget $318 Million a year, and they are raking in $7 Billion a year in taxes.

        Now, they tell us ad infinitum that smoking KIlLS, and they use the SCIENCE to back that up.

        So, have they gone right to the root of the problem and banned cigarettes, because after all, it KILLS and on top of that, it COSTS the Government a fortune.

        If there’s a Cancer, any Cancer, then cut the Cancer out. Stop it at the root cause.

        So, if smoking KILLS and COSTS, then cut it out at the root. Ban the bloody cigarettes.

        Not on your life.

        Look how much money it makes the Government just in the taxes from it.

        So then, those CO2 emissions will KILL us all, so they tell us, and they use the SCIENCE to back that up.

        Then stop those emissions at the root. Shut down those coal fired power plants.

        Are you kidding?

        Let’s just place a TAX on it. Look at how much money it makes us. Make it seem that those polluters are paying, and blame them, when EVERY CENT is passed down directly to electricity consumers in the increased cost of electricity.

        It’s exactly the same.

        They don’t want to ban CO2 emissions. They just want to make money from it.

        I can see the Warmists right now, fingers itching to get at the keyboard, flaming me for even suggesting the two situations are the same.

        Go for your life.

        THEY ARE EXACTLY THE SAME.

        Tony.

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          This Post from Joanne indicates that Australia emits around 110 million tonnes of CO2 each year.

          The current price on CO2 is $26 per tonne, so the Government could be making almost $3 Billion a year from the emissions JUST from the CO2 element of those GHG’s, and then add on the extra for all those other GHG’s at their multipliers, ranging from CO2 price X 21 to CO2 price X 23,900.

          They’re making a motza, literally.

          Judas Priest. Why in hell would they even think of shutting down those emissions.

          Tony.

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          Safetyguy66

          Have you also noticed how AGW disciples routinely roll out the tobacco straw man at every opportunity. Like there is some indisputable link between smokers, tobacco companies and AGW skeptics ????

          Phillip Adams and the tool he was interviewing on Tuesday night did it unashamedly, just built a straw man or is that a tobacco man and then linked it directly to climate skeptics without a pause. Its the most disgusting behavior I have heard in the media that I can remember and considering I have sat through videos with the empress of nonsense Naoimi Oreske and the ever sickeningly smug Anna Rose, thats saying something.

          http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/darwin-and-climage-change-denial/4852912

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    pat

    BTW, i’m not saying Big Tobacco’s figures are necessarily accurate, but i do wonder how MSM could not question the ridiculous figure of $30+ billion a year in tobacco-related costs!

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      ianl8888

      C’mon Pat – the MSM do not want to question the Sun King

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        Sceptical Sam

        Well the green’s “hate media” does. And thank goodness for it.

        Read the Editorial in “The Australian” this morning (2 August 2013). An excellent leader. It tipped a bucket on the Sun King.
        It says the $31.5 billion cost “is a figure derived from a 6 year old report based on fruit cocktail economics: the bundling of apples and oranges with a few bananas thrown in”. Presumably from the fruit-loop faculty.

        “The actual burden on the health budget is less than $2bn, a bill comfortably covered by the $6bn the government collects in revenue from tobacco. The remaining $28.5bn consists of theoretical costs such as pain and suffering, 19bn of which are labelled ‘intangible’ – in other words, hard to pin down.”

        Yet another reason to buy the “Oz”.

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    • #
      Safetyguy66

      You notice what hasnt changed though is the vague and apocolyptic nature of the comments associated with these stories.

      tipping point” with dire consequences”

      More like crapping point with direoreah

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        What makes me laugh every time is that the melting North Polar Sea Ice is always associated in the same breath with rising sea levels.

        Mention Archimedes Principle, and the looks you get are like those akin to speaking a foreign language.

        Tony.

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          Safetyguy66

          Yeah Tony I was trying to explain this to someone at a party with the analogy of the weight of the ice cubes in my rum being already represented in the overall level of the delicious drink, regardless of their solid or liquid state. I would have been better served pouring it over their head.

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            AndyG55

            “I would have been better served pouring it over their head”

            um NO.. what a waste of good rum.

            Get a can of tomato juice or something, or green slime.

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      AndyG55

      Not much mention that the Antarctic sea ice level is more that 2 sd’s above the 1981-2010 average, and shows no sign of early melt (exactly the opposite in fact.)

      But …. so what. These sort of facts are irrelevant.

      http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png

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      AndyG55

      This year it looks more like when it will start to re-freeze.

      The average temp above 80N has dipped down to freezing point very early.

      http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2013.png

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      poles-more-sensitive-than-thought-study

      No more sensitive than Czechs or Slovaks 😉

      gotta go … my taxi doncha know!

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    pat

    final O/T!

    1 Aug: Ninemsn: Tax hike more important for health: Bowen
    Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury accused the coalition of being “in the pockets of big tobacco” and questioned the morality of accepting large donations from cigarette companies.
    But the opposition pointed to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who travelled first-class to Berlin in October 2012 courtesy of a foundation linked to the tobacco industry.
    Mr Rudd declared the trip, funded by the Korber Foundation, in his register of interests.
    “He personally took two first-class flights to Berlin, stayed in a swank, luxurious hotel, courtesy of belly of the beast, the heart of the tobacco industry,” opposition frontbencher Greg Hunt told Sky News…
    http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2013/08/01/02/35/cigarette-tax-hike-to-raise-5-3b

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    pat

    ANALYSIS-Poland to get dirtier as it leans towards lignite coal
    WARSAW/LONDON, July 31 (Reuters) – Poland, one of the heaviest polluters in Europe, will become even dirtier now that its shale gas ambitions have faded and it turns to cheap domestic lignite coal to secure its energy supply…
    http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.2491525?&ref=searchlist

    Cheap coal, carbon hits Centrica power output, CO2 demand
    LONDON, July 31 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Electricity produced by Centrica fell 4.7 percent in the first half of 2013 compared to a year earlier as cheap coal and carbon prices made the UK energy company’s gas-fired plants unprofitable, the firm said Wednesday, likely causing its carbon emissions and demand for EU allowances to fall…
    http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2491089?&ref=searchlist

    Italy to use CO2 auction revenue to reimburse emitters
    LONDON, July 31 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Italy’s government will use revenue from selling phase three carbon permits to refund the nation’s biggest emitters some of the costs of buying carbon permits under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, an official said late Tuesday…
    http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2491734?&ref=searchlist

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    pat

    Price spike fears hit trade in China’s first CO2 market
    BEIJING, July 30 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Fears of future price spikes has stalled carbon trade in China’s first emissions market, market participants said Tuesday, as uncertainty over future demand has frozen liquidity since the scheme launched last month…
    http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2487996?&ref=searchlist

    this may be a loan, but why isn’t it in the australian MSM? KPMG, Bain Capital, lots of Pacific Equity Partners, about which Wikipedia says – “the majority of the firm’s founders originally worked together at consulting firm Bain & Company”:

    Australia’s EDL receives A$75 mln loan to cut emissions
    BEIJING, July 30 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Australia’s government said Tuesday it will lend A$75 million ($68 mln) to low-carbon energy company Energy Development Ltd (EDL) to build projects that will cut greenhouse gas emissions by turning fugitive gases into energy…
    http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2488949?&ref=searchlist

    u can also link to Executive Team from this page:

    EDL Board of Directors
    http://www.energydevelopments.com.au/01_cms/details.asp?ID=10

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    Joe V.

    (EDL) to build projects that will cut greenhouse gas emissions by turning fugitive gases into energy…

    ‘Fugitive gases’ ? I like that one. It’s the fugitive breathers I feel sorry for though. Or is that likely to become furtive breathers, as the production of CO2 becomes progressively demonised ?
    Well just look at smokers today, stigmatised, hounded & persecuted relentlessly across the western world.

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    […] more from Jo here:  http://joannenova.com.au/2013/07/jo-nova-in-the-australian-carbon-credits-market-is-neither-free-nor… var fbShare = {url: […]

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    aet

    Just like the air travellers, all carbon taxes should be voluntary.
    Let belivers vote with their wallets, not mine.

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  • #

    […] [Australia] Carbon credits market is neither free nor worth anything […]

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    Danielle

    An interesting story on New Zealands ETS. The scheme was hoped to encourage more reafforestation in New Zealand, but has instead resutled in the bulk of investment in Europe.
    “As widely expected, a new report released (http://www.climatechange.govt.nz/emissions-trading-scheme/building/reports/ets-report/ets-2012-facts-and-figures.pdf) this week highlighted just what a very international carbon market New Zealand has.

    The Ukraine, Russia and Poland are the central characters in this complex and twisted plot – of the 26.9 million units handed in for 2012, over 70% were ERUs. A further 3.3 million CERs graced the scene, though logic would dictate that these should probably be mainly residual industrial gas units (bought in good faith before eligibility rules changed).

    Finally, in an ETS originally designed to bring forestry to the forefront of NZ’s climate change mitigation strategy, it was in fact the forests of Europe which provided the greenery for the backdrop (3.5 million RMUs were handed in).

    As it turns out NZUs played a cameo role – at a little over 1m tonnes, they accounted for a mere 4% of their own market.All up, 9.2 million units of the total 26.9 m surrendered for 2012 (c.f. total of 16.3 million for 2011) came from the forestry sector – and who can blame them?
    http://www.climatechange.govt.nz/emissions-trading-scheme/building/reports/ets-report/ets-2012-facts-and-figures.pdf

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    […] Sep (JoNova) – A free market is the voluntary exchange of goods and services. “Free” means being free to […]

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    pat

    how wonderful, jo. hopefully, those who read your article will begin to research the subject for themselves.

    meanwhile, a little tale:

    a CAGW believer is terrified!

    1 May: UK Daily Mail: The deadly diesel deception: We were bullied into buying diesel cars to help fight global warming. Now experts say this ‘green’ fuel is killing thousands of us
    By David Derbyshire
    Today, half of the two million new cars bought each year in the UK are diesel, compared with just 18 per cent in 2001.
    For now that the Government has successfully persuaded us to invest in diesel, it has emerged that the fuel is not only less efficient than we were led to believe, but dirtier and more damaging to the environment than petrol. So much so, in fact, that it is killing us in our tens of thousands.
    This week, Professor Frank Kelly, chairman of the Department of Health’s committee on air pollution, said diesel engines could be responsible for more than 7,000 deaths a year because of the pollutants they emit. He added that governments had taken the ‘wrong route’ for decades by encouraging drivers to switch from petrol…
    It is a view backed up by Martin Williams, professor of air quality at King’s College London. ‘In hindsight the switch to diesel was a mistake,’ he says. ‘In the past 20 years we’ve had far more toxic emissions from cars than we should have done.’
    How did such a dirty, noisy and dangerous technology fool so many experts?
    The reason appears to be that car makers, governments and environmental groups were so wrapped up in the mania for reducing carbon dioxide emissions that their ‘experts’ managed to overlook the other highly toxic pollutants that diesel engines produce…
    It is undeniable that diesel engines are around 20 per cent more fuel-efficient than petrol engines, so they generate less carbon dioxide per mile.
    That is why governments encouraged everyone to switch over from petrol by using tax incentives. Petrol vehicles with low fuel economy and high carbon dioxide emissions were penalised with a higher road tax, while diesels with low emissions were placed in a lower tax band. Indeed, diesel cars with the lowest carbon dioxide emissions were not subject to road tax at all.
    I am no global warming denier. I believe that climate change is taking place and agree that we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. But not at any cost.
    And the cost of the switch to diesel is terrifying…
    On top of all this, it has now been discovered that diesel cars could contribute very much more to global warming than scientists first thought. The tiny particles of soot — or ‘black carbon’ — in diesel exhaust are now believed to be second only to carbon dioxide in their ability to cause global warming.
    Sadly, when it comes to the environment, politicians and pundits often lose any grip on their critical faculties. They blindly support the latest supposed panacea for our ills — then force us to adopt it, with often grotesque consequences.
    In the light of mounting evidence that this supposedly green fuel is not so green after all — in fact, it is quite the opposite — surely the Government should do everything it can to put an end to the folly of the dash for diesel…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2617425/The-deadly-diesel-deception-We-bullied-buying-diesel-cars-help-fight-global-warming-Now-experts-say-green-fuel-killing-thousands-us.html

    1 May: ABC: Farmers warn against diesel rebate cuts
    Jeremy Story Carter and Anna Vidot
    The National Farmers Federation has cautioned against scrapping the Fuel Tax Credit Scheme, saying that would hurt agriculture’s contributions to the Australian economy, and rural people.
    At present, farming and fisheries industries can access a rebate to the 38.14 cents a litre excise on diesel for off-road use…
    “That will be working against farmers’ competitiveness in a worldwide situation.”…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-01/diesel-rebate-cut-fears/5422874

    a CAGW zealot sees an opportunity:

    2 May: Australian: Tristan Edis: Boon for solar, as Government may cut diesel rebate
    This would be a boon to the solar photovoltaic panel industry, which sees a substantial market for solar power in Australia to offset the use of diesel in generating electricity in areas remote from the grid.
    The cost of generating electricity from solar is already competitive in many cases with generating electricity from diesel on a lifetime cost basis.
    However even though solar would provide a net saving after a few years of operation (solar panels typically last 20 years or more), the upfront capital cost and unfamiliarity with the technology acts to deter miners and remote farms and communities from installing them.
    However if miners and others using diesel for power were to pay excise, it is expected that this would be enough to drive many to install solar systems…
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/latest/boon-for-solar-as-government-may-cut-diesel-rebate/story-e6frg90f-1226903364044

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    pat

    CAGW gatekeeper, Eric Holthaus is terrified. read all:

    1 May: Slate: Eric Holthaus: Carbon Dioxide Levels in Atmosphere Reach Terrifying New Milestone
    It’s official: Earth’s atmosphere is now in uncharted territory, at least since human beings evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago.
    The Scripps Institute at the University of California-San Diego confirmed the news on Thursday:…
    Every single daily carbon dioxide measurement in April 2014 was above 400 parts per million. That hasn’t happened in nearly a million years, and perhaps much longer…
    That year, the late Scripps scientist Charles Keeling decided to start taking continuous measurements at the top of a volcano in the middle of the Pacific Ocean—about as far from contamination as possible…
    His son, Ralph Keeling, now directs the CO2 program at Scripps, and maintains the iconic chart of atmospheric carbon dioxide that bears his father’s name: the Keeling Curve.
    I spoke with Ralph on the phone on Wednesday about the new milestone…
    http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/01/mauna_loa_atmosphere_measurements_carbon_dioxide_levels_above_400_ppm_throughout.html

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    pat

    nowhere is safe from the carbonazis!

    30 April: Maritime Executive: AkzoNobel Announces First Carbon Credit
    Methodology
    AkzoNobel’s Marine Coatings business, supplier of International advanced
    hull coatings, and The Gold Standard Foundation have announced a new and
    unique methodology to reward the improved fuel efficiency of ships within
    the international maritime industry.
    Certification by The Gold Standard for the first of its kind, peer-reviewed
    methodology will allow ships to generate carbon credits, thus income, for
    the CO2 emission reductions they achieve.
    The methodology is based on ship owners and operators converting existing
    vessels from a biocidal antifouling system to the premium, biocide-free
    advanced hull coating Intersleek…
    International spent more than two years developing the carbon credits
    methodology as part of its research into making eco-efficiency technologies
    more accessible for the wider shipping industry. The company chose to work
    with The Gold Standard Foundation because it is the highest quality and most
    trusted carbon certification standard with rigorous sustainability
    benchmarks over three categories; environmental, social and economic, as
    well as technological.
    http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/AkzoNobel-Announces-First-Carbon-Credit-Methodology-2014-04-30/

    1 May: Reuters: Germany fines airlines for CO2 emissions breach
    Germany has fined airlines for not paying for their carbon dioxide emissions, a government official said, becoming the first country to announce such enforcement of Europe’s Emissions Trading System (ETS)…
    Earlier this month the European Parliament agreed to extend the exemption on international flights until at least 2016 following intense pressure from national governments.
    However foreign airlines are still liable for their emissions made in 2012, before the exemption started.
    “As of 30 April 2014, the German Emissions Trading Authority has finished the process to issue penalty notices to all airlines that were in breach of their obligation to surrender allowances for 2012 intra-EU/EEA flights,” a spokesman at Germany’s Environment Ministry said via email.
    He would not say which airlines had been contacted or how much the fines would be.
    China’s Air China and Shanghai Airlines, along with Russia’s Aeroflot and some small U.S. carriers, all of which are registered in Germany, were in breach of the regulations, according to European Commission documents published in February.
    It was not clear whether those airlines were among those hit with a fine…
    A Bloomberg report citing an unnamed German official said the total fines issued by Germany amounted to 2.7 million euros ($3.74 million).
    As the main air transport hubs for Europe, Germany and Britain are responsible for overseeing the bulk of airlines covered by the EU ETS.
    A spokeswoman for Britain’s Department of Energy and Climate Change said it does not have a formal deadline for the issuing of penalties in emissions cases.
    https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/germany-fines-airlines-co2-emissions-134014105.html

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