Gillard condemns us to the carbon tax plan (commencing 1 July 2012), and the future emissions trading plans (2015), setting Australia up to be the last dumb-patsy-standing as the rest of the world heads the other way and bails out of the carbon facade.

Australia must immediately pour billions into government coffers, and the man who can justify it all is Ross Garnaut.

For all the expense, the effort, and the pain, what reason did Garnaut put forward?

a/ It will reduce world temperatures. (No.)

b/ 20th century temperatures were perfect. (Says who?)

c/ Australia won’t be so “popular”. Correct answer!

That’s right, the prof of economics has studied it all, crunched the numbers, been paid a stack, and it boils down to “tut-tut-tut, nobody will like you if you don’t do what I say”. (Well, actually it is just foreign “intellectuals”that won’t like you — shucks!)

Garnaut the schoolyard prefect is telling us off. From The Australian:

“ Australia risks a backlash from the international community if it fails to make “proportionate” efforts to cut its carbon emissions.”

But wait, it gets worse, we might confuse them [...]

When we trade real things, people who cheat get caught easily. They can’t get away with it for long. But in the quasi world of meaningless permits-for-air, the only limit to cheating is “what they can get away with”.

For example: Carbon credits paid to China to build hydro dams end up helping bankers buy yachts, and feed the mafiosi in China. They evict homeowners, don’t pay them enough compensation, flood their valleys and commit these people to homelessness or more slavery to bankers through mortgages.

Sure, some useful outcomes might occur. But hoping we get lucky is not “planning”. It’s policy-by-accident. If solar energy, say, is a good idea all on its own, we don’t need to invent fake reasons to force people to use more of it.

We could for example tax [...]

Sigh. Time to party right? Heigh Ho and ra ha ha and all that. Yes, forgive me for not cracking open the champagne. Rudd (Australia’s PM) has finally admitted what skeptics have known for two months, that he doesn’t have the courage of his “convictions” and that all the pious rhetoric was a bluff.

A week before the National Budget comes out, he’s announced he’s shelving the Emissions Trading Scheme that was a defining part of his election campaign for Kevin ’07. It shocked some of the pundits.

Naturally, it’s not bad news, but let’s face it, a green tax is still on the agenda, literally billions of dollars is still being wasted in government programs, we’re still “signed up” for UN agreements worth gadzillions, and to top that off, we have a Prime Minister who’s so unprincipled that in his own words he’s a donothing delayer, an inactivist, a man who gambles recklessly with our childrens future. He’s a political coward, and a failure as a leader, and he’s acting against what he believes is Australia’s best economic interests. He said all that, and all the quotes of his faux anger (see below) come from just one speech.

“A coalition government would create a $1 billion fund that would be used to purchase initiatives aimed at reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has announced.”

The Coalition will have to find $3.2 b, compared to Rudd’s $40-$114 billion money-go-round.

Mr Abbott said the criteria by which the coalition would judge the bids for spending would fall into four categories. It must involve a reduction in emissions and it must improve the environment. ‘Third, there must be no increase in cost to consumers”, … (fourth, no lost jobs).

So the Libs take the policy that gives them the back door escape route — they can say that nothing about their scheme is bad, even if the science of climate change turns out to be “absolute crap”.

It’s a lot better than the Turnbull-led effort in Nov 2009 of dancing with the trading scheme on offer, except that I wish the  Liberals would be brave — stand up to the science bullies, and just say Who needs any policy at all on a topic [...]

For the first time anywhere in a major western democracy, a mainstream party is ready to face an election on “climate change” and face the bullies. The Australian Liberal Party have elected a new leader, held a secret ballot and voted 55 : 29 to defer the Emissions Trading Legislation.

Abbott said he was “not afraid to fight an election on climate change policy. And I am not frightened of an election on this issue.”

This will reverberate around the world in the lead up to Copenhagen.

The finale of one of the hottest weeks in Australian politics came down to a nail-biting 42:41 finish, but the earlier three-way split had Abbott a clear winner, and the secret ballot leaves no doubt the party doesn’t want to rush into this massive emissions trading legislation. The recent galaxy poll showed 80% of coalition voters don’t want it either.

Thanks to the ClimateGate instigator, who-ever you are. The Australian people owe you a fortune. Somehow the God of Reason has smiled upon us and our democratically [...]

D-Day is tomorrow. If Turnbull can find six complicit senators they can pull the “guillotine” on questions, and force a vote. With their seven votes the ETS legislation could be passed, and from that instant, Australians will be poorer. Even if the scheme doesn’t start, from that moment on businesses and banks will ‘invest’ and demand compensation if it’s not carried through.

Turnbull will face almost certain wipeout the next day as leader in a spill he claims he can win, but has “deferred” from Monday until Tuesday. He is nothing but naked bluff. His determination to help the Labor Party at the expense of his own ambition defies logic and begs dark questions.

“My office has had an absolute deluge of emails,” Abbott said.

“The phone lines [...]

This week will be written up in history books. Late yesterday a parliamentary mutiny occurred as opposition cabinet members abandoned their leader. Three on Monday: Mitch Fifield, Brett Mason and Mathias Cormann. Then Thursday: six more, and on Friday Concetta Fierravanti-Wells all quit their appointed shadow positions. Senate offices are apparently being swamped with emails. The message it seems, is getting through. (Thanks to all of you who have sent emails, I been copied in on many, please keep them coming ).

Senator Fierravanti-Wells had been expected to back the ETS laws but has now indicated she will vote against the bill.

‘I acknowledge the avalanche of correspondence and feedback conveyed to me from a wide cross-section of the community, most especially after the decision of the joint party room to amend and support the legislation,’ she said.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells, [...]

The implications are extraordinary. The unfolding ClimateGate scandal shows criminal behaviour from “leading scientists”. It damns the integrity of the IPCC process — which based its reputation on these men and their work. Legal attacks are starting. This is just the beginning. Even the big-name believers in the theory  (such as Monbiot) are asking questions they have never asked before. Blogs are coming alive with anger, with disgust, mockery and now the real war begins. Smart well educated (but busy) people like surgeons, lawyers, professors and CEOs are getting motivated. As this top layer of brains and energy coalesces into action, the scandalous neglect [...]

The temptation is all too strong. How many bureaucrats would work just as hard to show that their department was less important, less necessary, and less deserving of funding? It’s the fatal trap of socialist management. The incentives are wrong.

When governments are faced with poor reports, but they write their own report cards, they have many options to upgrade their “score”. It’s insane to think that people might not take every opportunity they can to improve their mark. They are human.

Big problems like inflation, unemployment, national growth, or global temperatures can be “improved” two ways –one way takes tough decisions and years of work, and the other way takes a quiet statistical summit, a white paper and an in-house training weekend. It’s easier to “solve” big problems by changing the way you measure them. By changing definitions, methods of interpreting the data, or through sheer statistical chicanery it’s possible to issue press releases with the words “improvement”, “better than expected” or at least “figures have plateaued”.

For example, the inflation of the 1970s was partly “cured” by defining inflation as the consumer price index (CPI), then changing the way that [...]

Banking is not a secret but no one tells you how it works… it’s hard to get your head around it, but if everyone understood, some aspects would be outlawed tomorrow (just like they used to be).

Greens and bankers make strange bedfellows. The bankers know where the Greens are coming from, but the Greens need to find out why bankers, “the paper aristocracy”, are so keen to save the planet. It’s an unholy alliance.

This is the US Money Base graph. Base money is cash and reserves at the central bank. It’s a graph to stop you in your tracks, starting from 1918 and going up to this week. It took 90 years to grow the US money base up to about 800 billion dollars, then in four months from August 2008  it doubled. This is the parlous state of our “managed” paper currencies. Just as one fiat system collapses, some people want to set up another.

In a [...]