Recent Posts
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Thursday
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Why is the renewables industry allowed to sponsor political advertising in schools and call it “education”?
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Wednesday
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In trying to be a small target, the Liberals accidentally disappeared
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Tuesday
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Monday
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The best thing about the Australian election was that Nigel Farage’s party won 30% in the UK
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Sunday
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Saturday — Election Day Australia
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Vote for freedom…
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Friday
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Bombshell: Sir Tony Blair says climate policies are unworkable, irrational, and everyone is afraid of being called a denier
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Thursday
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Blackout in Spain to cost 2-4 billion Euro, likely due to solar plants — blind and biased ABC says “cause is a mystery”
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Wednesday
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Days after Spain reaches 100% renewable, mass blackouts hit, due to mysterious “rare atmospheric phenomenon”
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Tuesday
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Help needed: Site under DDoS attack from hundreds of thousands of unique IPs this week — especially China and the USA
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Monday: Election Day Canada
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When the Labor Party talk about “The Science” the Opposition can easily outflank and outgun them with bigger, better science
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Saturday
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UK Gov spends £50 m to dim sun to create slightly less beach weather
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Friday
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The cocoa price crisis is a Big Government price fixing disaster, not a climate change one
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Thursday
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Blame the Vikings! Moss found in East Antarctica lived in warmer summers a thousand years ago.
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Wednesday
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Tuesday
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Monday
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Easter Sunday
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Saturday
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Good Friday
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In crash-test dummy land, we solve teenage girl climate anxiety with $500b in fantasy weather experiments…
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Thursday
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Nothing says “Safe and Effective” like destroying all the data from Australia’s giant abandoned vaccine study
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Wednesday
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Who owns the oceans? The UN wants to tax ships to reduce carbon emissions — a $40b windfall for unaccountable global bureaucrats
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Tuesday
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Monday
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Sunday
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Saturday
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Conservatives promise to axe the car tax that would have added $10k to petrol and diesel cars
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Friday
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The monster Green Tariffs we put on ourselves are worse than a foreign trade war
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Thursday
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Trump goes gangbusters on coal power and coal mining to supply AI energy demand
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Wednesday
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Instead of $8b in rebates, Labor could have built gas and coal plants and actually made cheap electricity
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Tuesday
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Labor wants the working class to help rich people buy batteries
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Monday
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Sunday
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In Victoria, 40C used to be known as “A Hot Day”, but now thanks to climate change it’s called an “extreme condition” (wasn’t it meant to become a common event?) Nevermind.
The AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) has pretty much warned us the Victorian electrical grid can no longer cope with “a hot day”.
[The AEMO] predicts a one-in-three chance of load shedding under extreme conditions this summer unless additional action is taken.
“Specifically, temperatures of 40C or more in Victoria could be the catalyst for extreme, one-in-10-year electricity demand conditions.
“Particularly when these temperatures are experienced towards the end of the day when business demand is still relatively high, residential demand is increasing, and rooftop PV’s contribution is declining.”
So since solar PV is useless in this situation, the Victorian government is spending one billion dollars installing Solar PV. One billion dollars of generation that is guaranteed not to work when we need it.
Will the new PM, Scott Morrison, be able to solve this problem? Thousands of engineers can.
Once upon a time even the brainless inanimate free market did.
h/t Dave B, Pat
PS: Still travelling.
9.5 out of 10 based on 93 ratings
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10 out of 10 based on 10 ratings
UPDATE: Scott Morrison won 45 to Dutton 40.
Hours from now the Liberal Party members will decide whether Peter Dutton, Scott Morrison or Julie Bishop will be PM. Dutton is aligned with Tony Abbott, but Morrison seemingly and Bishop definitely, with Turnbull. I doubt Bishop has a chance. Morrison has not pinned his colors to the mast on climate change but the ABC is pushing for him according to Andrew Bolt — so we know who threatens the most sacred cows. Go Dutton.
Likewise, Fairfax are telling readers not to vote for Dutton: “In sunny Kooyong, Liberals find the thought of PM Dutton ‘appalling’“. So they managed to find a few people who don’t like him and turn that into a story.
Malcolm Turnbull is, as usual, being statesmanlike, thinking only of the Party:
He’s promised to resign and force a byelection in his seat. Tossing bombs as he leaves. On the plus side: no more Malcolm in Australian politics. Not unless the member for Goldman Sachs joins the Labor Party.
Will the new leader of the Liberals take the easy and obvious winning path of Abbott, Trump Dean, serve the people and stand up to the namecallers? Send a message to your local Liberal Party MP. Ask them today.
Apologies for minimal posting. I’m currently out of the office. Posting from a car in the dark parked by a road where I can get at least one bar of internet access.
I’ll leave it up to more informed commenters for the moment…
Commenter TdeF on Duttons eligibility and what the allegations tell us about Turnbull– :
Keep reading →
8.9 out of 10 based on 85 ratings
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9 out of 10 based on 24 ratings
Abbott is an incredibly powerful man. From the backbench he’s creating disunity, stopping legislation, ruining careers, and bringing down Prime Ministers, all just for the fun of it.
This has nothing to do with the 54% of Australians who are skeptics.
Turnbull has lost control of government. He cannot get legislation through the lower house. But hey, if only Abbott wasn’t there, Australians would be happy to buy expensive electricity.
Peter Hartcher, The Sydney Morning Herald
“Turnbull thinks people will fall on their knees and say hallelujah!
Turnbull’s supporters are angry and frustrated at Abbott. But among many in the conservative faction of the Liberal Party, there is glee. Turnbull has been humiliated. And, to the conservatives’ great satisfaction, he has been humiliated over what they consider his pet fetish – climate change and carbon emissions.
“Turnbull is obsessed with this issue,” says a leading conservative MP. He thinks it’s a “‘greatest moral challenge of our time’ type of initiative”, a reference to the Kevin Rudd description of climate change. It was a challenge that Rudd failed because of an internal insurrection and now Turnbull has been forced to abandon too.
Contemptuously, he adds: “Turnbull thinks people will fall on their knees and say hallelujah! We’re back to the innovation message”, Turnbull’s campaign theme that fell flat at the 2016 election and which he has since abandoned. “He’s blind to the politics because he’s obsessed with the issue.”
But the defeat is about much more than climate change. It’s an ideological and identity marker. And it has exposed Turnbull’s jugular. “You can’t have a government,” says a Dutton advocate, “that can’t rely on the House on a key piece of legislation.”
The Coalition’s primary vote fell to 33% in the latest IPSOS–Fairfax poll. This is Abbott’s fault.
This may be”Turnbull thinks people will fall on their knees and say hallelujah!unfair. It’s Abbott and other conservatives who have revolted against Turnbull, yet Turnbull is being judged responsible. Disunity is death – Abbott delivers the disunity, Turnbull gets the death. But that’s politics.
Yeah. Only a “handful” of conservative MP’s have thwarted Turnbull yet again.
Simon Benson, The Australian
In a counter-move by moderates, The Australian understands that, if Mr Dutton won a second ballot, leading moderates including Julie Bishop, have threatened to resign from parliament, stripping the government of its slim majority and triggering a general election.
If Turnbull had just won 90 seats at the last election, a handful of MP’s couldn’t play these games.
Just bad luck.
h/t Dave B
9.5 out of 10 based on 69 ratings
Good news for people who like political drama. Turnbull lives on, as does the lack of unity, purpose and meaning of The Australian Liberals.
The Australian
Malcolm Turnbull has won a leadership ballot against Peter Dutton in the Liberal partyroom by 48 votes to 35 and Peter Dutton has resigned to the back bench.
Dennis Shanahan:
Malcolm Turnbull’s victory in the leadership ballot has solved little for the Liberal Party.
It has also shortened the odds of an election before Christmas and confirmed the rebellion against the Prime Minister is far wider than just a few malcontents.
9.9 out of 10 based on 58 ratings
Simon Benson, Geoff Chambers, The Australian
Malcolm Turnbull has lost the confidence of half of his Liberal Party cabinet colleagues as the Prime Minister’s backers admit they are bracing for a leadership challenge from Home Affairs Minister and leading Queensland conservative Peter Dutton.
As the leadership crisis engulfs the government, sources close to the Prime Minister were yesterday briefing that they were expecting a leadership challenge as early as today. Liberal MPs last night claimed that Mr Turnbull had begun calling colleagues to shore up support.
Mr Dutton’s camp believed that it could get to the required 43 votes to roll Mr Turnbull…
Peter Dutton may be ineligible to sit in Parliament. His lawyers say clearly no. Other lawyers say “Maybe”.
Anne Twomey, The Conversation
Section 44(v) says that any person who “has any direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth” is disqualified from sitting as a member of parliament.
Dutton, as recorded in the parliamentary register of interests, is the beneficiary of a discretionary family trust. This trust, through its trustee, apparently owns two childcare centres in Queensland. The allegation is that since July 2, 2018, the trust, through its childcare centres, has agreements with the public service to provide childcare services in exchange for childcare subsidies.
The Liberal Party meet again today. The path is not obvious. Legal technicalities have run like a virus through parliament lately.
Would you like 90 seats with that?
The hate media portray the man who won by the largest electoral margin in 20 years as a loser.
Chris Kenny: The Australian
All of this will make many voters wonder why the Liberals wouldn’t, instead, go back to Tony Abbott. Like Kevin Rudd before him, he would be reclaiming the job that was cruelly ripped away from him. While he has never been popular, he is a known quantity and the public would understand the natural justice in his return. Voters gave him a landslide victory in 2013 and he is revered by friend and foe alike as an effective campaigner. Abbott would also bring enormous experience to the job.
To my mind, it has always made most sense that if Turnbull imploded or resigned, the party would return to Abbott. No other contenders have imposed themselves on the party or the public. Yet even Abbott now scoffs at the suggestion.
Abbott says, rightly, it should be about policies not politicians
Pat Griffiths, The Australian:
“It’s not about personalities. It’s not about him, it’s not about me,” Mr Abbott told reporters in Canberra on Monday.
Ending subsidies for renewable energy, stopping price gouging by energy retailers and locking in new baseload power were next on his list.
Among other missteps, the government should withdraw from the Paris agreement on climate change.
“The only way we can win the next election is to have a contest over policy not personalities,” Mr Abbott said.
Dutton hasn’t shown he can take on the Global Bullies yet in the national arena.
Few are true leaders, speaking out unapologetically as a skeptic.
9.6 out of 10 based on 45 ratings
An imminent train wreck that has been coming a long time…
by Simon Benson, Dennis Shanahan, Joe Kelly, The Australian
The leadership crisis engulfing Malcolm Turnbull has deepened, with cabinet ministers privately accusing the Prime Minister of cobbling together his plan to cap retail power prices in a last-minute bid to save his leadership.
The Australian is aware that a number of MPs called Home Affairs Minister and leading Queensland conservative Peter Dutton at the weekend to pledge support should he seek to challenge Mr Turnbull.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott told a Tasmanian Young Liberals meeting at the weekend he was looking forward to serving under a “Dutton government”.
Simon Benson, National Affairs Editor, The Australian, says the word is that the challenge is “inevitable”.
Malcolm Turnbull is in full capitulation mode. In the face of a possible and increasingly likely challenge, he has buckled to rebel MPs, and in the process surrendered the future of his leadership to the demands of a few.
It’s not the demands of a few, it’s the preference of about 4.8 million voters. Let’s do a plebescite?
A defining moment has arrived for a decision between two competing ideas. Does the Liberal Party return to the conservative values that have provided the ballast for its most successful periods in government, aligned with a centre-right orthodoxy, or does it continue with the moderate, centrist experiment? At the heart of it are two interpretations of the Menzies era. Turnbull has argued that the founder of the modern Liberal Party was a moderate. Conservatives violently disagree. They are forced to this crossroad largely through human folly.
What centrist? Since when was mass taxation to change the weather a centrist experiment? Since when did centrists control almost every aspect of the market, supply, demand, the product, the price, and call it “free”?
Four prime ministers look set to be taken down in their first term. The real problem is that the nation is bullied into not discussing big ideas, like the plan to stop storms with our electricity generators (and there are other sacred cows too). Politicians are trying to foist a fantasy plan on the masses. The masses are not happy.
Get your popcorn. The ABC and Fairfax (or what’s left of it) will be slapped by reality again.
The ABC tonight has the insipid: “Turnbull plans more energy policy changes amid internal pressure‘
While The Australian was talking to key players, the ABC are quoting twitter and interviewing the opposition and the Greens.
Along with that non-event, at the top of the ABC-politics page is the classic Lara Tingle Analysis “Abbott’s Influence waning within Coalition”.
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9.8 out of 10 based on 79 ratings
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9 out of 10 based on 22 ratings
Too little, too late, not enough
Turnbull has to go.
Faced with a possible and imminent challenge from Peter Dutton, a limping Malcolm Turnbull has done the barest minimum just to stay in power. He has capitulated, and won’t try to mandate the Paris agreement through law, but he still wants the nation to meet the Paris agreement. If he had pushed it through Parliament he would have faced a leadership challenge for sure, and pundits are saying it’s still likely. How long will Liberal lemmings allow him to lead and give up the easiest, well trodden and winning election strategy?
Tony Abbott is leading the nation from the back bench.
When will the Liberals grow a spine and dump the Paris agreement completely?
Most of the party is too afraid to even talk about how much warming humans may be causing lest they be called a “denier” for doubting that it is not exactly the same as an unaudited, unelected and unaccountable foreign committee says. The nation can’t even have a sensible public discussion on climate change.
As Andrew Bolt says Turnbull’s leadership is now terminal. His clumsy gambit to present the NEG as a done deal too early shows how non-consultative he is, how bad his judgement is, and makes those that defended it look like fools.
The new “Ministerial Agreement” arrangement may be worse because it probably suits the Deep State even better. Decisions about whether to proceed will be done by a Minister advised by unelected committees using models based on a bunch of assumptions about “the cost”. Turnbull has led the party for three years while electricity costs have jumped seismically and now he just wants to keep prices at this obscene level?
The Australian:
Instead [of being legislated in the NEG] the 2015 climate change commitment will be mandated through Ministerial order and only after advice from the competition regulator that it wouldn’t increase power prices.
A condition of the order would be that the advice would have to be tabled in Parliament.
ABC viewers blind-sided by reality again
On Tuesday The ABC news audience heard what an unqualified success it was for Turnbull to get the NEG through the party meeting. It turns out this was a complete bluff — most of the party didn’t even know what was in the plan (the Labor Party got a copy before them). The ABC didn’t point out the obvious — that speaking up against it, or threatening to cross the floor was a major risk, so Turnbull’s gambit was that he might get the illusion of support and unity by railroading it past the party in a high stakes situation. Instead it took other journalists at The Australian and on radio — Ray Hadley — to ask the right questions and expose how deep the resentment was and how fragile was the “unity”. So fragile that three days after his big win Turnbull’s head was almost on the block. We pay a billion dollars for blind propaganda.
The NEG was not about electricity costs, it was (is) primarily about emissions:
The purpose of the NEG was first and foremost to lock in emissions reductions. Fines for failure to cut emissions are ten one hundred times higher than fines for failing to provide electricity.
Daniel Wild, IPA:
The NEG is functional equivalent to the Renewable Energy Target, an Emissions Trading Scheme, an Emissions Intensity Scheme, and a carbon tax. It uses government regulation to support weather-dependent energy generators, such as wind and solar, at the expense of coal.
“Under the NEG, energy retailers could face a $100 million fine for not meeting their emissions reductions requirements, but just as little as a $1 million fine for not meeting their reliability requirements. This means the government is favouring emissions reductions over reliability by a factor of 100-to-one.”
“The goals of reducing electricity prices and carbon emissions at the same time are contradictory. The emissions reduction component will mean that energy retailers will be forced to acquire energy from higher-cost sources than what would otherwise be the case,” said Mr Wild.
Download the IPA Parliamentary Research Brief recommending that the Australian government dump the Paris Agreement and the NEG.
See Pat at comment #2:
Sky News: Turnbull’s NEG changes could make matters worse: Craig Kelly
Prominent conservative backbencher Craig Kelly says Malcolm Turnbull’s reported changes to the National Energy Guarantee could pave the way for a higher emissions reduction target under a future Labor government…
Reportedly, the 26 per cent renewable energy target will not be regulated and not legislated. Mr Kelly has told Sky News this change could ‘make the situation worse,’ as it would allow Labor to easily change the target should it win office.
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_5823292272001 12mins 33secs: 17 Aug:
Facebook: Peta Credlin
h/t Beowulf, Graeme Campbell. Pat.
9.7 out of 10 based on 84 ratings
Normally a governing party, especially with a margin of “one”, would consult with its own members before it consulted with the opposition. Turnbull’s gambit appeared to depend on sneaking the plan past the conservatives and libertarian skeptics.
Simon Benson, Joe Kelly, The Australian
It emerged last night that Labor had been given a copy of the NEG legislation, another move that has angered Coalition MPs who are yet to see it. A Liberal rebel told The Australian it was “disgusting” that Labor had the legislation but they were being asked to sign off on it sight unseen.
To forestall a revolt, Turnbull is said to be giving ground on all kinds of things, like ways to stop the big retailers gaming the market, but not “Paris”?
However, senior ministers have told The Australian this would not be enough to prevent Coalition MPs crossing the floor if the 26 per cent Paris emissions reduction target was not dumped or “decoupled” from the NEG.
The move to cauterise the growing threat of internal revolt came as the Prime Minister’s most senior conservative minister, Peter Dutton, suggested there could be a time when he resigned from cabinet over policy – which would trigger a leadership crisis.
There is also growing discontent with Turnbull’s political leadership as ministers are caught in a crossfire of demands that they resign or stay and head off a leadership crisis.
But the focus remains on the energy legislation, which went from being “ready to go” to a “moveable feast” and threatens to end up looking like a dog’s breakfast as every man and his dog offer up ideas and proposals from price control to “decoupling” from the Paris emissions target.
Not enough time was spent earlier to address the concerns of the Coalition partyroom and so avoid what is now a sizeable revolt…
All roads lead to Paris?
Turnbull, apparently is “wedded” to his plan to be the only nation on Earth to legislate and mandate the Paris target. He knows carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes are widely unpopular or he wouldn’t have buried the “success” of his achievement getting a secret emissions trading scheme through Parliament. (One the World Bank is very pleased about). He’s not glued to Paris for the votes. Nor is he doing it for the environment, surely, since all these international schemes achieve notoriously little except for funding some banker yachts. Turnbull is a smart guy, if he was serious about reducing carbon, he’d be talking about nuclear power, and the cheapest ways to reduce CO2, like supercritical coal, Abbott’s auctions, and anything-other-than-solar. Why the fixation with foreign committee dictats?
Senior Liberal Eric Abetz says Coalition MPs should put cheaper power prices ahead of political unity … MPs should not consider the short-term political consequences for Malcolm Turnbull of defeat of the NEG.
“I don’t think the next generation will thank us for putting unity, in inverted commas, before doing the right thing by the nation,” he said.
9.6 out of 10 based on 85 ratings
The advantage of communist autocrats is that they can create government havoc so much more efficiently.
The Chinese solar boom was so big it became the world’s largest solar market. It was so big it pushed up global “clean energy” investment to a record high. China became the veritable show pony of the solar spruikers: “leading the world in clean energy investment”. Mashable tells us it was so big “the solar boom could be seen from space“.
But the star advertisement for renewable glory was all based on subsidies:
 The Chinese solar boom was “pretty significant” A couple of months ago the Chinese government admitted they were cutting the subsidies to make electricity cheaper again for consumers. That hit the stock market. Now projects are being cancelled and orders are drying up for the hapless manufacturers.
The free market might be telling us something
“Without subsidies there’s no return on investment for over a decade, so investors and property owners aren’t interested in distributed solar. With subsidies it only takes seven years to recoup the investment,” he adds.
China’s solar manufacturers are unhappy with recent government policy changes that have put a brake on the sector.
“We’ve already halted work on 11 megawatts of industrial and commercial distributed solar PV projects,” says the marketing director for one solar photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturer in Guangdong province.
Looks like sustainable power is not sustainable:
China has led the world in new solar installations in each of the past five years, helped by guaranteed electricity prices. But the cost of subsidies has been growing unsustainably, and as manufacturers have expanded rapidly to meet demand the risk of overcapacity has grown.
What the government giveth, it can axeth, nevermind about consultation, standing committees and white papers:
The new policy, which came into effect immediately, has no target for the construction of solar farms, and orders local governments not to approve solar farms that need subsidising.
Shame about the human toll.
The blind free market is so much kinder and more predictable.
hat tip to the GWPF
9.4 out of 10 based on 42 ratings
The climate circus is back in Australia
Election 2019 is coming and Turnbull just lit a fire under the conservative base. The Deplorables are angry. Phones are running hot today. The DefCons awaken. In the last election defiant non-left voters were the “most influential group” — the swingers who ultimately decide the winner. This was the same group the journalists completely missed, like Brexit and Trump voters.
The Australian government, despite the polls showing Australians don’t want to pay more for renewables, has agreed to try to legislate a 26% reduction in emissions, setting a target in stone that almost no other country has done. (Have any?) Most countries have committed to nothing, or rather, they’ve committed to building nearly 300 coal plants. They’re planning 400 more.
A 26% mandatory target means so much more than just higher electricity bills, we’ll have to carve up our cattle and sheep, transport, waste and the rest of the economy too. What are they thinking?
We could lead the world in agriculture or medicine but we picked hara kiri?
We are the largest coal exporter in the world and it’s our largest export earner, we have a lower population density, bigger distances, higher transport needs, and 300 years worth of coal. We already pay some of the highest electricity rates in the world. We have faster population growth than practically any other first-world nation (so we’re offering to ignore that completely and cut our total emissions, not our emissions per capita? Master negotiators, not.)
This is industrial and economic suicide, but on the upside we will look fashionable in UN cafe-latte circles right until the lights go out. Good work Malcolm.
Sadly, the main opposition party’s aim is to destroy jobs and lifestyle even faster. Why go out on a limb when you can launch yourself with a canon? The “conservatives” want a 26% reduction, Labor thinks a 45% cut will stop storms and make electricity cheaper. (So why not do 100%?)
This is a big risk the party did not have to take
Just like 2009 — Turnbull fell on his sword over climate change and was tossed out as opposition leader, he’s doing it again. He runs a one seat majority government, up to ten MPs have such great reservations they say they might cross the floor (and vote against it). Turnbull has to get the Labor party and states to back this. If he fails, the word is it will cost him his leadership. That gives the Labor party huge leverage over the policy details.
They may say “No” because the policy is not suicidal enough and they are scared of losing the Green voters. Or because they want to troll the Libs, watch them immolate and pick a new leader, in which case, the joke’s on them. If somehow Turnbull pulls it off, the Liberal base will desert the party, he’ll have to put in two million dollars of his own money this election to replace the lost donors, and he’ll likely lose anyway. What drives this man?
Foreign readers can get some idea of the schism in Australian politics — the last Prime Minister of the very same party writes of the dissent in the ranks at the party meeting on the NEG: ” there were lots of pleas for unity, but as one MP said, we’ve got to be loyal to our electorates and to party members too, and not show the “unity of lemmings”. On Abbott’s Facebook page there are over 600 commenters, most of whom are congratulating him and pleading for cheaper electricity.
What they [Liberals] have done, to put it in the most simple terms, is back a policy that will now be filtered and modified by the demands of state premiers to whom Turnbull will be obliged to defer if he hopes ever to go before the cameras and claim with that patented supercilious grin that his NEG has carried the day. It won’t be his NEG by that stage. What sort of a “conservative” leader places his destiny in the hands of Laborites?
For people looking to understand the political ramifications, read all of Peter O’Brien’s piece at Quadrant.
These men need our support
It’s a high risk play to talk about crossing the floor in a government that rules by one seat.
 There are still some men in Parliament who stand for something. Image: The Australian. Only a few politicians are brave enough to stand up to the namecalling and media intimidation, and say what most Australians think. Send them your thanks, and let them know how much you appreciate their effort.
The Australian has named and interviewed these key men:
Some just want a price guarantee which Turnbull may be able to (in theory) add to the NEG but the wisest MP’s won’t settle for anything less than pulling out of Paris:
Mr Turnbull and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg yesterday claimed the partyroom meeting as a victory for the NEG with majority support for the policy, and dismissed questions about MPs threatening to cross the floor. However, it is understood that, privately, there were concerns within the leadership group about the fate of the policy. The Australian has confirmed Barnaby Joyce told the partyroom he couldn’t support the bill. He was joined by South Australian MP Tony Pasin, the LNP’s George Christensen, Victorian Kevin Andrews, outspoken NSW Liberal Craig Kelly and NSW Nationals MP Andrew Gee. All cited price guarantees as a minimum requirement for support.
West Australian Liberal Andrew Hastie, Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz and Mr Abbott claimed they would not support the bill on principle because its only purpose was to legislate the Paris target of reducing emissions by 26 per cent on 2005 levels. LNP senator Barry O’Sullivan has also indicated he could cross the floor in the Senate.
…. But it is understood it will fail to win the support of Mr Abbott and Mr Hastie, whose opposition to the NEG is based solely on the Paris target.
Then CC your messages to your local MP — whoever they are. And if you have the energy, CC it to the editors of the major daily papers.
Can a reader (or two) please do an email list of current politicians? (Here’s the 2015 list).
Australians go early to bed,
To reduce power bills which they dread,
Due to blind dumb ambitions,
To cut ‘carbon’ emissions,
By their leaders who serve Paris instead.
–Ruairi
9.3 out of 10 based on 72 ratings
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8.5 out of 10 based on 13 ratings
IPA estimates Paris Agreement to stop storms and hold back the tide may cost $8500 per Australian family
What a deal. You could have free electricity for the next four years or an imperceptible difference in the air outside the nursing home for your children’s 94th birthday.
The Americans went for the money. So did nearly everyone else.
Damian Wild at the IPA calculates that the Paris Agreement will cost patsy Australians $52 billion dollars in the next 12 years.
Rachel Baxendale, The Australian
A study by the Institute of Public Affairs, “Why Australia must exit the Paris Climate Agreement”, estimates our Paris target of reducing emissions to 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030 will impose a $52 billion economic cost between now and 2030, equating to $8566 a family.
“The immutable law of energy policy is this: lower emissions mean higher prices.”
“Each family in Australia will be at least $8,566 worse off under the Paris Climate Agreement, on average. This is at a time when wages are stagnating and the cost of living is rising.”
“$52 billion could purchase 22 new hospitals or pay for 20 years’ worth of the Gonski 2.0 education funding.”
“For families, $8,566 could be used to pay off credit card debt, pay the school fees for a few years, or pay four years’ worth of electricity bills.”
There is a Coalition Partyroom meeting coming today where a Turnbull-with-falling-popularity will try to convince a nervous set of MP’s that they won’t lose their seats if the Coalition runs the same soulless campaign it almost lost on last time. Back then Turnbull took 90 seats and turned them into 76 and barely got elected.
The biggest obvious and easy win for conservatives in 2019 is to copy Abbott-Trump-Dean proven successes, axe the tax, Get Out of Paris, and run an Electro-Scary-Bill campaign. Turnbull can’t do that because he can’t criticize Labor for a plan he wants to do himself. He can’t call it witchdoctor science, can’t mock them for being tools for the Renewables Industry, can’t ridicule their plan to stop floods with solar panels. Can’t vow to limit renewables damage on electricity bills. Turnbull also can’t brag about his glorious successes either — two previous governments tried their damnedest to bring in an emissions trading scheme and paid for it. Turnbull achieved what they couldn’t but he can’t sing about it. The Green left voters would vote green anyway (too much tax is never enough, and it’s about the tribe not the policy anyhow.) And for the Liberal base it’s electoral poison. A million Defcons are still ready to swing.
The Liberals could romp it in in this election if they just dumped Turnbull, grew a spine, and copied recent conservative successes all around the world.
PS: Congrats and thanks to the volunteer team taking 23 semitrailers of West Australian hay to starving cattle and sheep in the East.
A convoy of 23 semi-trailers loaded with hay left Northam on Monday for drought stricken NSW, thanks to efforts by the Christian church-based Rapid Relief Team. RRT, an initiative of the Plymouth Brethren church, purchased more than $660,000 of WA hay which is set to arrive in Condobolin in NSW on Friday after a 3500km trip. The hay is being transported by WA truck drivers, most of whom are volunteering their time for the nine-day round trip.
REFERENCE
Damian Wild (2018) Why Australia must exit the Paris Climate Agreement, IPA. PDF.
9.6 out of 10 based on 77 ratings
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7.8 out of 10 based on 19 ratings
Hear Ye!
To all the world’s recalcitrant, absent, and neglectful parents, paediatricians have arrived to tell you to give your kids a drink during a heatwave, pack food to last through droughts, and that you really need global unaccountable committees to look after your kids. Presumably their junkets meetings will be paid for by you.
Kids are “underprioritized”? (So what do they think 2 billion parents are doing?)
“…researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Irving Medical Center set out some specific challenges associated with the impacts of climate change on the world’s 2.3 billion children and suggest ways to address their under-prioritized needs.“
Researchers discovered children have “anatomic, cognitive, immunologic, and psychologic differences” which put them at more risk than adults. OK. They’ve noticed kids are small and inexperienced. Ambitiously, they apply this to 2.3 billion children, pretty much all of them here on Earth. That’s your kids, mine, “under prioritized”. Hmm.
The finding that children are vulnerable will shock all the parents who assumed their kids would survive the next flood, malaria, and dengue outbreak without any help. What will they discover next?
Dear University Academics, when you have kids you’ll discover that nothing reorganizes an adult’s priorities better than offspring. We all (even you) evolved from 50,000 generations of adults who prioritized their kids though wild climate change like you can’t even imagine. And they survived ice ages, droughts and super volcanoes and did it without iphones.
Yeah. Looks like we need another arm to the UN, WHO, and local Departments of Health.
Why not call it the UN Ministry of Nannies?
So we thought Malaria was bad, now there is Climate-Change-Related-Malaria and it needs its own team, specialist doctors, funding, and naturally, a different prevention and treatment approach. Because when Malaria is caused by coal plants it’s a totally different disease right?
To begin to address the specific needs of children confronted with climate-change related health disasters, Thomson and colleagues are proposing the following:
1. Establish an international consortium of experts to develop adoptable medical and behavioral protocols and to set research agendas to address the unmet child specific needs that arise from climate-related natural disasters.
There is a whole new world of disaster out there. Now we have Climate-Related-Droughts, Climate-Related-Heatwaves, and Climate-Related-Volcanoes. Do we need Climate-Related Ambulances? After-all, rescuing kids from floods is one thing, but rescuing them from Climate-Change-Floods is … different. (Especially if you have to use solar powered boats).
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9.2 out of 10 based on 82 ratings
 … Profit statements confirm what we’ve said — closing cheap coal boosts profits for generators. No wonder AGL won’t sell Liddell for a hundred million dollars. It also shows us that the big “bubble” in electricity prices is from the doubling of wholesale electricity costs. These corporates are reaping it in far above costs. The way to cut wholesale prices is to get rid of the RET, and fix our old coal.
[ABC] Its underlying profit, which excludes one-off items and changes in value in investments and hedging positions, rose 28 per cent to $1.02 billion, at the upper end of the company’s guidance.
Even Andy Vesey admits the coal closures helped AGL:
“This increase in prices in the broader electricity market has mostly been a result of the abrupt closure of non-AGL power stations such as Hazelwood in 2017 and Northern in 2016 and higher input costs from coal and gas,” AGL chief executive Andy Vesey said.
But watch the pea. Who is trying to blame high profits on higher input costs?
Then he tosses a dead dandelion to screwed consumers:
In this environment, we recognise that many Australian households are facing cost-of-living pressures because of the higher energy bills that have resulted from higher market prices.”
Vesey talks about renewables investments as if he is doing a favor to the country:
Mr Vesey said AGL would invest more than $2 billion to boost generation capacity.
What he didn’t say was they were boosting the exact kind of generation that makes things worse for customers, but will help him buy another yacht. See below:
The projects include Australia’s largest wind farm at Coopers Gap in Queensland, a dual-fire power plant at Barker Inlet in South Australia and boosting capacity at the Bayswater coal fired power station.
A final investment decision on a gas import hub in Victoria’s Westernport bay would be made in the next 12 months.
Mr Vesey said the company supported the Federal Government’s National Energy Guarantee for further investment in new generation projects across a range of technologies including gas, pumped hydro and battery storage.
If Mr Vesey likes the NEG and wants “policy certainty” it’s a sure bet that we, the people, don’t:
“While wholesale electricity prices have already begun to fall over the past 12 months, policy certainty is key to encouraging the additional generation supply that will place further downward pressure on prices and benefit consumers over time,” he said.
Where’s the free money? Wholesale electricity prices.
All of AGLs generators are being paid a lot more than they need to be, thank Malcolm Turnbull:
A large part of the profit increase came from a $562 million gain on electricity hedging contracts which had lost $263 million the year before.
However, AGL’s standout division was wholesale power generation which reported a more than 30 per cent increase in margins on the back of higher prices.
h/t Dave B, Dennis.
9.6 out of 10 based on 71 ratings
Just in case you missed it. In the last 24 hours Facebook, Apple, Spotify and Youtube banned Infowars. Suddenly, overnight all five major “platforms” noticed hate-speech they need to censor from the group which was influential in helping Donald Trump get elected. Mid-terms are coming. Coincidence?
This is a free speech line in the sand:
You don’t have to like or agree with Infowars — if they can be banned, anyone could be next:
[Breitbart] The UK Independence Party (UKIP) has urged citizens to defend free speech in the West after big tech firms allegedly coordinated to remove right wing voices, including InfoWars and Tommy Robinson, from social media.
On Monday, Apple, Facebook, Pinterest, Spotify, and Google-owned YouTube permanently removed content from InfoWars and its owner Alex Jones, saying he and the website violated their policies against hate speech and harassment.
Proponents of the ban say Mr Jones is a conspiracy theorist who deserves to be silenced, while critics have claimed the purge is an attempt to interfere in the U.S. midterm elections and described it as a form of “political censorship”.
The monopolistic giants say they are just “enforcing the rules” but so far they’re not quoting any specific content that “broke the rules“, nor can they define “hate-speech” or name the person who made the decision. Maybe “hate-speech” rules are different for the right and left side of politics? Facebook banned Infowars but allows Antifa and Louis Farrakhan to keep posting. Selective enforcement anyone? What looks political, smells political and quacks…
Infowars started in 1999. The Alex Jones Channel on youtube had amassed 2.4 million subscriptions. It’s all gone. So are the podcasts.
The editor Paul Joseph-Watson is responding defiantly on twitter.
The worldwide populist surge cannot be muted. It cannot be unpublished. It cannot be de-listed. It cannot be deleted
.
Twitter hasn’t banned them, though some are calling for that too.
Infowars has replied with a free Infowars App which is currently more popular than CNN:
InfoWars is currently the fourth most popular free app on the Apple App Store, beating CNN, the New York Times, Google News, HuffPost, and dozens of other mainstream news outlets.
InfoWars is called far-right, conspiracy theorist, and the usual insults which are never applied to people who chant conspiracies that fossil fuel controls public opinion, Congress, and the media, or who reckon that the UN should control the weather. It’s not a site I visit much, but in the spirit of free speech we fight back by sharing all the links they want banned. Let the Streisand effect punish the authoritarians who can’t win debates so they try to silence opponents.
Just in: Where will it stop? Twitter has now suspended a Ron Paul Institute executive account and other Libertarians like @ThomasEWoods, and @scotthortonshow.
Breitbart are all over this new mass censorship move. Presumably they are next on the list. After them, climate deniers…
h/t David E who says “The Week of the long knives?”
Of one mind, tech-giants decree,
That free-thinkers who dare disagree,
With what Leftists dictate,
Will be censored for hate,
And to speak out no longer be free.
–Ruairi
9.6 out of 10 based on 92 ratings
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9.4 out of 10 based on 15 ratings
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