Labor's Carbon Tax is really a redistribution of income scam

Julia Gillard's freakish political contortion, the likes of which have probably never before been seen in Australian politics, of breaking an election promise to not introduce a carbon tax, bowing to the radical Greens and then introducing a carbon tax can have no other outcome than increase the size of the Australian deficit and reduce employment.

Let's assume that the amount raised from power companies by the carbon tax each year is $10 billion.

There are a number of groups that will be especially hurt by an increase in power prices - those at the low end of the income spectrum, trade exposed industries whose position against overseas competition will be damaged and small business, which seems to be a forgotten factor in the conversation so far.

It's clear that the government can't compensate all groups affected so let's assume that they distribute the money to low income earners. Note that they are on record as saying that the money will not simply go into Treasury coffers so let's also assume that it joins the short list of promises kept by this government since being elected in 2007.

The tax is introduced in 2011 and low income workers rejoice as they see the effects in their bank balances. They then feel the pain when they get their utilities bills but, being conscientious with their money and in no way tempted to buy more grog or smokes or stick it in the pokies or back something to beat Black Caviar*, they pay what they owe. So there's no impact on them.

Power companies now have an incentive to reduce the amount of CO2 they produce, which is the whole point of the exercise and so they invest in clean technologies that have the effect of reducing CO2 emissions to zero thus fulfilling the government's ambition.

Can you see the problem?

At this point the government will raise no money at all from taxing so-called 'carbon pollution', the cost of power will not be reduced due the investment made by power companies that needs to be paid for meaning that low income households will still need financial support to meet their utilities bills.

So the government now has a $10 billion hole in its budget. Is it going to fill the void by raising taxes or by increasing the deficit? Either way, the impact on employment is negative.

And while all that has been going on our trade exposed industries have been shedding jobs at a terrific rate to countries that are not bound by the onanistic impulses of the climate brigade.

So let's give all of the money to trade exposed industries instead of low income workers.

The government gets stuck in the same cycle. When the power companies clean up their act the government will need to maintain support for trade exposed industries otherwise there'll be a massive loss of jobs in a short time frame to overseas competitors. Not a palatable outcome for any politician.

And all the while small business is getting hammered and is shedding jobs.

So here's Labor's dirty, little secret. I'm going to shout it at you so that you can take it in.

Labor's carbon tax CAN ONLY WORK IF POWER COMPANIES NEVER REDUCE THEIR CO2 OUTPUT.

The government knows this, of course, which is why it's just a great, big, redistributionist scam but it also knows that its allies in the mainstream media won't point it out to the voting public any time soon.

The result will be that the tax will be in place before an emissions trading scheme is introduced, which the government expects will continue to provide the revenue it needs.

And bad luck to the people who lose their jobs because of it.

* I don't live in this world, either, but the good folk who create government budgets surely must.

(Nothing Follows)

Fox News on global warming

Fox News continues to prove why it calls itself fair and balanced in this piece looking at global warming.















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Climate Poetry

Al Gore really must be right into this whole climate change thing.

After all, what else could inspire someone to turn one's hand to poetry?

Here's Al's climate poem:

One thin September soon
A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun

Vapors rise as
Fever settles on an acid sea
Neptune’s bones dissolve

Snow glides from the mountain
Ice fathers floods for a season
A hard rain comes quickly

Then dirt is parched
Kindling is placed in the forest
For the lightning’s celebration

Unknown creatures
Take their leave, unmourned
Horsemen ready their stirrups

Passion seeks heroes and friends
The bell of the city
On the hill is rung

The shepherd cries
The hour of choosing has arrived
Here are your tools

Oh, bravo! Bravo! The talent! The wonder! Magnificent!

Can you imagine the screeching scorn from the cultural elites if George W Bush had written such drivel?

I think that The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy needs to be updated.



I might have a crack at some climate poetry, too...

Tracking brave souls
Data inconvenient
An abacus to use

Water ebbing up and
Down across endless
Stools in the night

Belching cars go
By jingo I say
These graphs are not

Round and round they
Go to the dogs
Stars shine down dimly

Half a degree
One degree
Two degrees upward

All in the Valley of Death
Predicted the Six Hundred
Climate Models

I can no longer continue
A crisis befalls us
Not of climate but of poetry.

How'd I go?

Al Gore, as they say in The Simpsons, eat my shorts...

(Nothing Follows)

These people are crazy

Add to the myriad of dire predictions of the consequences of climate change today's warning that the fish are going to go crazy.

Warmer ocean temperatures caused by global warming could cause sharks and other fish to become more aggressive, according to a new Australian study.

Research conducted by the University of New South Wales found that a slight lift in water temperatures — just two or three degrees — can cause some fish to become up to 30 times more aggressive than they normally would be.

The studies were conducted on young damsel fish, but head researcher Dr Peter Biro told ninemsn "he would be surprised" if sharks did not also undergo a similar transformation in warm water.

"I would imagine it ought to affect sharks ... We think it is linked to the metabolism of the fishes — it increases their need to feed," Dr Biro said.

The research involved putting the damsel fish in varying temperatures of water and placing other fish behind glass to see how they reacted.

Dr Biro said it was "obvious" the warmer water had an effect.

"Some fish would literally charge at the glass," he said.

"I'm quite confident that if the glass was not there they would have torn the other fish to shreds."

He predicted the increased aggression caused by climate change would cause some fish populations to dwindle, but it would eventually correct itself.

"I think in the short term we might see some effects," he said.

"But I think the animals will adapt, they won't all kill each other."

The test also exposed previously unknown behavioural traits that exist among the damsel fish species.

While some fish showed extreme aggressive reaction to the warm water, others did not react at all.

The majority of the fish tested appeared to be at least twice as aggressive in the warm water.

How could this test be carried out in anything that remotely resembles reality?

In the event that the oceans do heat up by 2-3C, which they show no signs of doing, then it'll take decades or, more likely, at least a century, as there's an enormous amount of heat required to do that.

So how did they undertake this test? Heat water up slowly over a week or two? No wonder the fish become pissed off - they're too bloody hot.

And what did they conduct this test on? A damsel fish.

This is a damsel fish:



Apparently, after testing on this little feller they expect sharks to get just as grumpy.



I dare them to try it on sharks.

Here's another point.

Sharks move around between colder and warmer oceans but it doesn't seem to matter what temperature ocean they're in to munch up the ocassional human...

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NZ climate scientists massage things other than sheep

NZ climate scientists go to work on the NZ temperature record.

Before:



After:



They've turned a 0.06C rise per century since 1850 into 0.92C...

Apparently, THAT is science!

Read all about it.

(Nothing Follows)

Climategate comments

Many people are passing the so-called Climategate scandal off as not being important and not affecting climate science.

The problem with that view is that without confidence in the dendro temperature record climate science is pretty much reduced to localised physics and the ice core record, which, inconveniently, shows warmer Roman and Medieval Warm Periods than present.

The corruption of the HadCRU temperature record is plain to see in the very code that produces the models. We already knew that the NASA GISS temperature record was suspect so it was amusing to see the CRU crowd casting doubt on Hansen's methodology.

Here are the best examples of just how bad this situation is:

Summary of emails from Bishop Hill.

Willis Eschenbach's attempt to get information via the FOI.

The comments in the code tell the story:

; Plots 24 yearly maps of calibrated (PCR-infilled or not) MXD reconstructions
; of growing season temperatures. Uses "corrected" MXD - but shouldn't usually
; plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to
; the real temperatures.


And for terrific entertainment:



One might be able to defend one or two emails here and there and I have defended the use of the term 'trick' to describe a programming shortcut (though the trick referred to looks dubious) but the overall tone of the emails and code is one of manipulation of both data and scientific journals.

It's also interesting that all of the people involved seem to be activist environmentalists with email exchanges with Greenpeace, WWF and the NYT's enviro reporter, Andy Revkin. People in the hard sciences tend to split down the political middle. Perhaps the conservatives go to work for industry and the lefties go and work in theory-land at the universities.

I developed a view quite some time back that climate science seemed to attract mediocre scientists to its ranks. My reasoning is that they are able to undertake research that is not able to be tested in the here and now whereas decent scientists want to see their research create tangible outcomes. Michael Mann and our very own David Karoly are two shining examples of this mediocrity. These scientists have achieved prominence (and funding) far beyond where their abilities should have taken them. Nothing I have read in the emails changes my opinion.

I have also been commenting for a long time that climate scientists will give real scientists a bad name in the public square. Job done.

(Nothing Follows)

Climate debt payments will go to world's most corrupt countries

Ironically, if the United Nations has its way then there will be a massive wealth transfer from the light blue shaded countries to the dark blue as payment for so-called 'climate debt'.




The Central Americans want money:

CENTRAL American nations will demand $US105 billion ($114.2 billion) from industrialised countries for damages caused by global warming, the region's representatives say.

Central American environment ministers gathered in Guatemala overnight to discuss the so-called "ecological debt" owed to them and to set out a common position ahead of climate talks in Copenhagen next month.

Guatemalan environment minister Luis Ferrate said the $US105 billion ($114.2 billion) price tag was "an estimate" of the damage done by climate change across 16 sectors in Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama.

Ferrate minister said the region "had never faced" so much drought, aridity, flooding, and precarious food security.

A formal proposal will be presented in Denmark, officials said.

His Nicaraguan counterpart Juana Arguenal said that Central America would press industrialised countries to reach concrete decisions to reduce "greenhouse" gases at Copenhagen.

"We hope for a deal that is ethical and moral," she said.

Why wouldn't the Central American countries be asking for money from Brazil due to that country's clearing of 'the lungs of the earth', The Amazon?

Thieves, the lot of them.

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The greatest scientific scandal since Piltdown Man will have no impact

The information provided yesterday by the hacking of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit is the greatest scientific scandal since Piltdown Man.

Here we have a large number of high profile, interconnected scientists who are actively conspiring to fabricate scientific results that show alarming 20th century warming and reduced warming during the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods.

A number of people are going through the emails including: Andrew Bolt, Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts and Lucia at The Blackboard so I don't need to.

This will have no impact - nil, nada, none, zero, zip - on the whole global warming/climate change movement.

The problem is that the mainstream media is too invested in advocating for climate change to even consider undertaking an investigation into the information provided by the hack.

By the end of next week this will all have died down. People like Steve McIntyre might find some data that shows results have been fabricated but he's done that before and the media has ignored him, which they'll do again this time.

If the mainstream media does not investigate a situation is which there has been conspiracy, fraud, obstruction of justice, falsification of data, suppression and tampering with evidence and public corruption (as Robert M pointed out at WUWT) then it will be yet another example of the slow decline of Western civilisation.

Here's an email that I haven't seen elsewhere, has an Australian reference:

From: "Thomas.R.Karl" To: Phil Jones Subject: Re: FW: retraction request Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 08:21:57 -0400 Cc: Wei-Chyung Wang

Thanks Phil,

We R now responding to a former TV weather forecaster who has got press, He has a web site
of 40 of the USHCN stations showing less than ideal exposure. He claims he can show urban biases and exposure biases.

We are writing a response for our Public Affairs. Not sure how it will play out.

Regards, TOm

Phil Jones said the following on 6/19/2007 4:22 AM:

Wei-Chyung and Tom,

The Climate Audit web site has a new thread on the Jones et al. (1990) paper, with lots of quotes from Keenan. So they may not be going to submit something to Albany. Well may be?!?

Just agreed to review a paper by Ren et al. for JGR. This refers to a paper on urbanization effects in China, which may be in press in J. Climate. I say 'may be' as Ren isn't that clear about this in the text, references and responses to earlier reviews. Have requested JGR get a copy a copy of this in order to do the review.

In the meantime attaching this paper by Ren et al. on urbanization at two sites in China.

Nothing much else to say except:

1. Think I've managed to persuade UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit.
2. Had an email from David Jones of BMRC, Melbourne. He said they are ignoring anybody who has dealings with CA, as there are threads on it about Australian sites.
3. CA is in dispute with IPCC (Susan Solomon and Martin Manning) about the availability of the responses to reviewer's at the various stages of the AR4 drafts. They are most interested here re Ch 6 on paleo.

Cheers

Phil

Disgraceful...!

UPDATE: Bishop Hill has a terrific summary going...

(Nothing Follows)

Well, this should be interesting...

On such important issues to their agenda the organised left tends to overwhelm online polls, as I've demonstrated previously.

Let's see how this one goes:

9:29AM



10.47AM



11.37AM



Yes:No ratios so far are 1.62, 1.68 and 1.68. I'd expect the final result to be close to that.

4:38PM



UPDATE:

Someone has posted what appears to be a heap of emails and other documents from the Hadley Climate Reseach Unit that would be, if true, should be the end of climate science as we know it.

I predict the following:

• most of the information will be shown to be true;
• the mainstream media will give this almost no coverage;
• there will be small, inconsequential discrepencies found that will be used to discredit the entire document set; and
• it will have no impact on the climate debate, which, ironically, has very little to do with the actual climate.

(Nothing Follows)

Lying pieces of crap scientists tell more climate lies

These people really piss me off.

Who?

The scientists who keep making predictions of doom and gloom about the fate of the Great Barrier Reef unless Australia unilaterally slashes its economic wrists.

Why do they have any credibility at all when every, single one of their previous predictions about the reef have been hopelessly wrong?

THE Great Barrier Reef has only a 50 per cent chance of survival if global CO2 emissions are not reduced at least 25 per cent by 2020, a coalition of Australia's top reef and climate scientists said today.

The 13 scientists said even deeper cuts of up to 90 per cent by 2050 would necessary if the reef was to survive future coral bleaching and coral death caused by rising ocean temperatures.

90 percent. How would they know? It's impossible for them to know that. Impossible.

"We've seen the evidence with our own eyes. Climate change is already impacting the Great Barrier Reef," Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, said in a briefing to MPs.

Bullcrap. There is no evidence that the Great Barrier Reef is being impacted by anything remotely resembling the negative affects of climate change - affects, it should be noted, that won't actually be noticeable for 40-50 years and that's ONLY if the predictions of the hitherto useless IPCC climate models are correct.

Australia is one of the world's biggest CO2 emitters per capita, but has only pledged to cut its emissions by five per cent from 2000 levels by 2020. The Government said it would go further with a 25 per cent cut, if a tough international climate agreement is reached at UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December, but this is looking increasingly unlikely with legally binding targets now off the agenda.

Why bring out the per capita statement when it's immaterial to the argument? China ADDS Australia's output every 3-4 months. We can cut our emissions by 100% and have zero effect.

"This is our Great Barrier Reef. If Australia doesn't show leadership by reducing emissions to save the reef, who will?" asked scientist Ken Baldwin.

Why would any country - and I assume they mean India, China, Brazil and Russia etc - take any notice of Australia 'showing leadership' when Europe has had a carbon trading scheme for a number of years, thus 'showing leadership', that NO COUNTRY HAS TAKEN ANY NOTICE OF??? These people are truly zealots.

But the Government is struggling to have a hostile Senate pass its planned emissions trading scheme. A final vote is expected next week.

The World Heritage-protected Great Barrier Reef sprawls for more than 345,000 square km off Australia's east coast and can be seen from space. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that the Great Barrier Reef could be "functionally extinct" within decades, with deadly coral bleaching likely to be an annual occurrence by 2030.

Bleaching occurs when the tiny plant-like coral organisms die, often because of higher temperatures, and leave behind only a white limestone reef skeleton.

Predictions of bleaching have the same record as climate models - nil, nada, zero, zilch, none.

The Australian scientists said more than 100 nations had endorsed a goal of limiting average global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, but even that rise would endanger coral reefs.

They said global warming was already threatening the economic value of the Great Barrier Reef which contributes $5.4 billion to the economy each year from fishing, recreation and tourism.

Are they saying that if we pass an ETS that it will protect the $5.4 billion? Making travel, accommodation, food and everything else will somehow protect this income? Have they done a projection on what the revenue will fall to if an ETS is implemented? If not then why not? It should be easy for them given they calculated that we need to cut emissions by 90% by 2050.

These people are seriously the pits and an embarrassment to real scientists.

(Nothing Follows)

Man-made climate change finally proven to kill people in China

Here's proof that it's possible for man to interfere with the climate and end up killing people, which takes the climate change scorecard to:

Real man-made climate change: 38
Fake man-made climate change: 0

At least 38 people have died in some of the worst snows to hit northern China in decades, state media says.

The most fatalities occurred in Shanxi province where nearly 500 traffic accidents left 24 people dead and 70 injured when heavy snowfall pummelled the region this week, the China News Service said.

Officials have said the two storms in Beijing were artificially induced, sparking anger among residents. The extent of the weather manipulation efforts remains unclear.

In some places this week's snowstorms were the biggest in up to 60 years, leaving up to one million people in need of some form of disaster assistance, the report said.

Some scientists including Australia's own Climate Anti-Prophet, Tim Flannery, have suggested that sticking sulphur and whatnot into the atmosphere would help avoid the consequences of any warming. Not factored into their calculations is the loss of life that is almost certain to occur. Not that they seem to care too much about that...

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Australia's worst ever PM sells us down the river

Australia's worst ever prime minister, Kevin Rudd, seems determined to sell Australia's future generations down the financial river in order to feed the here and now of his megalomaniacal ego.

I cannot for the life of me understand why he is trying so hard to implement an economy-wrecking emissions trading scheme in advance of the Copenhagen Convention.

Does it give us any leverage at Copenhagen? Can't see how, myself.

Is such an expensive political wedge worth it in the long run?

When Anthony Watts first posted the link to the text of the treaty to be negotiated I took the time to read through it and became more and more concerned with what is in there.

While nobody has been looking, Australia's climate negotiators have been working on a treaty that will cost Australian working families over $7 BILLION per year.

Where will the money go?

To the United Nations so that they can give it to third-world and developing nations as payment of the West's so-called 'climate debt'.

Who in their right mind would think that the bulk of the money would not end up in the hands of UN middlemen and tinpot dictators?

Why would the West want to continue to donate to Africa, for example, when the more than $2 TRILLION of aid already given to that benighted continent has been so appallingly wasted?

I wonder whether the Average Joe Labor supporter is concerned with his side's abandonment of fiscal responsibility in the name of 'saving the planet' or dealing with the 'global financial crisis'?

Anyhoo, here are a couple of logos that are more appropriate given the times we live in:






(h/t Andrew Bolt for some links)

(Nothing Follows)

Give that man an award for bravery

The loopy left must really be hating the fact that the fraud that is climate change is being exposed for all to see right before the Copenhagen Climate Junket is due to take place.

Here's Liberal Party senator Cory Bernardi putting into simple language the reason why the proposed emissions trading scheme is such a disaster for Australia.



You know, when a company changes its brand it's normally because the old one has problems.

Thus, when the earth's climate stopped doing what climate astrologers predicted it changed from global warming to climate change, which allowed activists to ditch the inconvenient truth of the old brand and include a whole bunch of other apocalyptic consequences - flood, famine, drought, pestilence - to scare the kiddies with.

Simple. as. that.

The greatest threat to freedom does not come from Wall Street or the Religious Right or even Islamic Fascism.

The greatest threat to freedom comes from Big Environmentalism.

(h/t Andrew Bolt)

(Nothing Follows)

10 signs you're talking to a Climate Liar

Climate Liars are those people who use deliberately dishonest examples to prove that climate change (aka global warming, aka new age astrology) is real.

Here are some signs that you're talking to one.

1. They use the Hokey Stick as proof that we're in a period of unprecedented warming. In the history of science there have been very few more egregiously dishonest pieces of science. That it became so widely used by the so-called leaders of the climate change 'debate' should give people pause for thought.

2. They are Al Gore, James Hansen, George Monbiot or any other offical spokesperson for the IPCC.

3. They tell you that Tuvalu and the Cartaret Islands are being inundated because of sea level rises associated with climate change. Both islands are, in fact, atolls. What's the difference? An atoll is an island of coral formed during volcanic activity. Over time the volcano subsides and the atoll disappears under the sea, which is exactly what's going on with Tuvalu and The Cartaret Islands. Tuvalu is the 4th smallest country in the world with a size of just 26 sq kms (10 sq miles). Check it out:



4. They tell you that the British judge did not find at least 10 'errors of fact' in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

5. They tell you that all of the dissent by highly regarded, highly qualified scientists is simply due to the power of Exxon to buy people off. At the same time they'll tell you that the tens of billions of dollars being spent by governments around the world will not encourage climate scientists to, basically, make shit up.

6. They tell you that the models used by the IPCC have made accurate predictions historically and will do so in the future. The truth is that the sum total of models used by the IPCC that have made accurate predictions is zero, nil, nada, none which is, not coincidentally, the number of financial models that predicted the global financial crisis.

7. They tell you that solar cycles have no meaningul role in the earth's temperature in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. If they can't pin any increase on CO2 then they have no way of implementing their socialist agenda.

8. They tell you that creating green jobs will not be at the cost of real jobs. If that were the case then unsubsidised green jobs would exist now by the million. Being closer to Karl Marx than Milton Friedman it comes as no surprise that they don't understand how the jobs market works. The green jobs lie is similar to the lie that increasing the minimum wage won't also increase unemployment.

9. They are an owner or commentor at Realclimate.

10. They tell you that carbon dioxide is pollution.

(Nothing Follows)

Steve Fielding doesn't believe in man made climate change

Steve Fielding is exactly the sort of fellow who drives the left mad.

A strong believer in god, Fielding does not believe in man made global warming which at first blush seems contradictary, as they are both religious positions but makes sense if you compare it to his believing in Christianity but not Islam.

Family First senator Steve Fielding has made up his mind on climate change - the world is not warming now, and humans aren't changing the climate.

The government and the country's top scientists have tried to convince Senator Fielding, who holds a crucial vote in the upper house, that global warming is real.

But he's released a document setting out his position.

"Global temperature isn't rising," it says.

On emissions trading, Senator Fielding said he wouldn't risk job losses on "unconvincing green science".

The document says it is a "fact" that the evidence does not support the notion that greenhouse gas emissions are causing dangerous global warming.

Senator Fielding later sought to clarify his position, saying he believed in global warming, but he did not think the world was warming now and did not think humans were causing global warming.

"Over the last 15 years, global temperatures haven't been going up and, therefore, there hasn't been in the last 15 years a period of global warming," Senator Fielding told AAP.

"I think that global warming is real, and climate change is real, but on average global temperatures have stayed steady while carbon emissions have increased over the last 15 years.

"Man-made carbon emissions don't appear to be causing it."

Because of the numbers in the upper house, Senator Fielding's verdict means the government will have to rely on the opposition to get its emissions trading scheme (ETS) legislation passed.

I was with Steve Fielding a couple of months ago and politely asked him to defeat the emissions trading scheme, which would allow Australia to avoid having its economy ruined for no good reason.

He responded that he didn't think he had the power.

Perhaps he sought advice from a higher power and has been rewarded?

Whatever the case may be if the emissions trading scheme is nobbled then Australia will have dodged a bullet.

(Nothing Follows)

Professor Ian Plimer takes on the Climate Taliban

To describe Australian professor Ian Plimer as a curmudgeon is to do somewhat of a disservice to curmudgeons the world over. He has developed a reputation over the years for combating lunatic ideas that have somehow gained a foothold in the public square.

He is most famous for taking on creationism and, specifically, the Noah's Ark nonsense.

Being a geologist by profession it therefore comes as no surprise that Plimer does not buy into the latest leftist fad of climate change (aka global warming, aka climate variation).

Such is Plimer's concern that the reputation of science is being sullied by a small group of rather moderate scientists and a much larger group of activist environmental groups that he penned a book, Heaven And Earth, as a counter to the weight of agitprop from the Climate Taliban.

The book has been reviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald's Believer-In-Chief, Paul Sheehan, who is remarkably even-handed in his assessment.

Perhaps even the most ardent supporters are becoming uncomfortable with the fact that climate models are proving so horribly inaccurate.

What I am about to write questions much of what I have written in this space, in numerous columns, over the past five years. Perhaps what I have written can withstand this questioning. Perhaps not. The greater question is, am I - and you - capable of questioning our own orthodoxies and intellectual habits? Let's see.

The subject of this column is not small. It is a book entitled Heaven And Earth, which will be published tomorrow. It has been written by one of Australia's foremost Earth scientists, Professor Ian Plimer. He is a confronting sort of individual, polite but gruff, courteous but combative. He can write extremely well, and Heaven And Earth is a brilliantly argued book by someone not intimidated by hostile majorities or intellectual fashions.

The book's 500 pages and 230,000 words and 2311 footnotes are the product of 40 years' research and a depth and breadth of scholarship. As Plimer writes: "An understanding of climate requires an amalgamation of astronomy, solar physics, geology, geochronology, geochemistry, sedimentology, tectonics, palaeontology, palaeoecology, glaciology, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, ecology, archaeology and history."

The most important point to remember about Plimer is that he is Australia's most eminent geologist. As such, he thinks about time very differently from most of us. He takes the long, long view. He looks at climate over geological, archaeological, historical and modern time. He writes: "Past climate changes, sea-level changes and catastrophes are written in stone."

Much of what we have read about climate change, he argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modelling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive". Errors and distortions in computer modelling will be exposed in time. (As if on cue, the United Nations' peak scientific body on climate change was obliged to make an embarrassing admission last week that some of its computers models were wrong.)

Plimer does not dispute the dramatic flux of climate change - and this column is not about Australia's water debate - but he fundamentally disputes most of the assumptions and projections being made about the current causes, mostly led by atmospheric scientists, who have a different perspective on time. "It is little wonder that catastrophist views of the future of the planet fall on fertile pastures. The history of time shows us that depopulation, social disruption, extinctions, disease and catastrophic droughts take place in cold times … and life blossoms and economies boom in warm times. Planet Earth is dynamic. It always changes and evolves. It is currently in an ice age."

If we look at the last 6 million years, the Earth was warmer than it is now for 3 million years. The ice caps of the Arctic, Antarctica and Greenland are geologically unusual. Polar ice has only been present for less than 20 per cent of geological time. What follows is an intense compression of the book's 500 pages and all their provocative arguments and conclusions:

Is dangerous warming occurring? No.

Is the temperature range observed in the 20th century outside the range of normal variability? No.

The Earth's climate is driven by the receipt and redistribution of solar energy. Despite this crucial relationship, the sun tends to be brushed aside as the most important driver of climate. Calculations on supercomputers are primitive compared with the complex dynamism of the Earth's climate and ignore the crucial relationship between climate and solar energy.

"To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable - human-induced CO2 - is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science."

Over time, the history of CO2 content in the atmosphere has been far higher than at present for most of time. Atmospheric CO2 follows temperature rise. It does not create a temperature rise. CO2 is not a pollutant. Global warming and a high CO2 content bring prosperity and longer life.

The hypothesis that human activity can create global warming is extraordinary because it is contrary to validated knowledge from solar physics, astronomy, history, archaeology and geology. "But evidence no longer matters. And any contrary work published in peer-reviewed journals is just ignored. We are told that the science on human-induced global warming is settled. Yet the claim by some scientists that the threat of human-induced global warming is 90 per cent certain (or even 99 per cent) is a figure of speech. It has no mathematical or evidential basis."

Observations in nature differ markedly from the results generated by nearly two dozen computer-generated climate models. These climate models exaggerate the effects of human CO2 emissions into the atmosphere because few of the natural variables are considered. Natural systems are far more complex than computer models.

The setting up by the UN of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988 gave an opportunity to make global warming the main theme of environmental groups. "The IPCC process is related to environmental activism, politics and opportunism. It is unrelated to science. Current zeal around human-induced climate change is comparable to the certainty professed by Creationists or religious fundamentalists."

Ian Plimer is not some isolated gadfly. He is a prize-winning scientist and professor. The back cover of Heaven And Earth carries a glowing endorsement from the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, who now holds the rotating presidency of the European Union. Numerous rigorous scientists have joined Plimer in dissenting from the prevailing orthodoxy.

Heaven And Earth is an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence.

Interesting, isn't it, that the Climate Faithful - a group not noted for given any time to their political opponents - now includes members who are prepared "...to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence"?

Sheehan will be exorcised from the Church of Climate Change for that.

Good on Ian Plimer for writing the book.

Given his dog-with-a-bone reputation the Climate Taliban can look forward to quite a bit of pain from Plimer in the future.

UPDATE 20 April - from a commenter who has read Plimer's book:

I have just finished reading Professor Plimer's very detailed, logical and utterly convincing 493 page overview of planet Earth's climate history and the incredibly complex natural forces and feedback mechanisms which are known to influence planet Earth's climate. He cites over 2000 scientific references.

One is left in awe of Nature, its power and complexity - and somewhat embarrassed by the simplistic ideas, scientific illiteracy and ignorance displayed by so many politicians and well-meaning environmentalists.

"Heaven and Earth: Global Warming - The Missing Science" should be a compulsory text for all lawmakers and environmentalists worldwide.

Let's hope they immerse themselves in the peer-reviewed science Professor Plimer presents. Let's hope they spend the time required to comprehend the big picture concepts and some of the important detail. Let's hope they have the bravery to admit that many of their beliefs have no scientific foundation. Let's hope that scientific reason prevails at the Copenhagen meeting on climate change later this year - anthropogenic global warming is a myth and emission trading schemes are a foolish, expensive waste of worldwide resources.

(Nothing Follows)

Reality catching up with Climate Charlatans

The group of people who steadfastly retain their faith in the CO2-as-cause-of-global-climate-catastrophe meme is growing smaller and smaller with the increasing release of new science demonstrating that CO2 is far from the bogey-compound it's made out to be.

This group now almost exclusively comprises publicly funded climate scientists, environmental activists who have hijacked the cause to suit their own political purposes and left wing politicians who see global warming as an ideal cause to increase government control in people's lives.

Professor Philip Stott provides a cogent analysis of the current state of play and why the Climate Faithful can expect to be disappointed:

Yesterday, a mere 35,000 protesters [by contrast, between 60,000 and 80,000 folk participated in the Peterloo protests of August 16, 1819] took to the streets of London to shout about - er, well - everything, from evil bankers to ‘global warming’ and the urgent need to support motor-car manufacturing. To say that the protest was both inchoate and incoherent would be to understate its naivety. Moreover, it took no fewer than 150 separate organisations, from trade unions to charities, to muster the 35,000 souls. Meanwhile, some 70,000 diehards trekked to Wembley to watch a fairly boring friendly match between England and Slovakia (at least England won 4-0). By contrast, in 2002, the Countryside Alliance persuaded over 400,000 people to march in defence of hunting the fox and country living, a figure confirmed by the Metropolitan Police; and just think of those 1819 Peterloo statistics when adjusted for relative population size. Moreover, the ‘global warming’ contingent yesterday was, as usual, a small, if rather noisy, runt. As ever, it was a case of empty vessels making the most sound.

35,000 is a pathetic turnout, really, especially when one considers that the G20 is being held and there are a more than usual number of protesters in town.

Al Gore describes Global Warming as a 'planetary emergency'. If this were true then why are there so few people who are out and demonstrating?

Consider this. If, by 2050, the planet is going to be a wasteland, or well on the way to being one, due to man's continued burning of fossil fuels then why are governments so blasé in their response? Why don't they ban motor car racing? Night time sporting events that require lighting? Tourism via air travel? Big plasma TVs (such as California is considering)? Or a raft of other 'unnecessary' items?

Imagine that a real planetary emergency existed; scientists had established with 100% certainty that a meteor would hit earth in 2050 with the potential to wipe out a large amount of life on earth.

Wouldn't there be more than 35,000 people marching in the street? Wouldn't the policy response of government be more meaningful than the failed cap-and-trade carbon scheme?

The Five Big ‘C’s

Sadly, I think that neither our politicians, nor the mainstream media like the BBC and The Times, have quite yet grasped how few people are convinced by the ‘global warming’ panic. I speak to many groups around the country, and I am constantly amazed (and encouraged, I might add) by the level of scepticism I encounter. Indeed, I am now more convinced than ever that, despite the hysteria and the manic depressive hyperactivity that will inevitably accompany the run up to the Copenhagen climate meeting in December, we are about to enter the Last Days of the ‘Global Warming’ Grand Narrative. It is surely crunch time for ‘global warming’, as it faces what I call the five Big ‘C’s:

The Credit Crunch: all over the world, important corporations are quietly withdrawing support for so-called ‘renewables’, while targets for carbon, and markets for luxuries like ‘organic’ food, are collapsing. We can no longer afford the indulgences of Green ‘global warming’ utopias. After all, which is the more dangerous? ‘Global warming’, or the massive reordering of the world economy folk demand in its name [“Not in my name!” cry I], likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes? Luckily, it won’t happen;

I've pointed out before that it's not just in the financial world that bubbles are created that need to be cleaned up by way of a recession. Good times are also when some of the world's dopiest ideas take hold. Global warming is just one of them.

The Coal Crunch: during the latest cold snap in the UK, wind power provided a derisory 0.4% to 0.6% of our electricity. Just guess what coal generated? Over 50%. All over the world, we are seeing a resurgence of coal, gas, and oil. There is no choice. The politicians have left the diversification of our energy supplies woefully late. Coal and gas will be Kings once again, and soon. As we read in today’s The Sunday Telegraph: “The Government gives the go-ahead for three new 1,000 megawatt gas-fired power stations in Wales. Each of them will generate more than the combined average output (700 megawatts) of all the 2,400 wind turbines so far built. The days of the ‘great wind fantasy’ will soon be over.” The fatuous jibe of the arrogant and snide UK Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, that opposing wind farms is as “socially unacceptable” as “not wearing a seatbelt”, will surely come back to give him severe political whiplash. No wonder politicians are held in contempt by so many;

Anyone who promotes wind power as the answer to the world's energy needs is an immoral, incompetent misanthrope.

The Colonial Crunch: the idea that the countries of the BRIC(K) [Brazil, Russia, India, China, and (Kenya)] are going to roll over and accept the capping of carbon, and to fall happily in line with the more damaging and expensive delusions of Europe over climate-change policy, is just political hogwash. In reality, of course, Europe itself is backtracking like mad. Developing countries will no longer be lectured to neo-colonially by former weakening colonial powers that constantly fail to swallow their own medicine;

But, but, but...aren't we 'showing leadership' to the rest of the world by slashing our economic wrists? Of course those countries aren't going to do anything. Their leaders would be hung, drawn and quartered in the public square by their own populations.

The Climate Crunch: especially damaging is the inexorable, and probably inevitable, fact that climate itself increasingly fails to fall compliantly into line with the virtual world of the climate modellers. This will severely undermine the whole credibility of the Grand Narrative with the public. In addition, attempts to scare the world sick, like the recent cobbled-together science meeting in Copenhagen, are even concerning some of the more serious scientists involved, like Mike Hulme, Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA), and founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research: “We should let politics decide, without being ambushed by a chimera of political prescriptiveness dressed up as (false) scientific unanimity” - a most brave, and wise, comment. Further, certain of the scientific claims are so far fetched that they are just bringing down ridicule onto the basic science involved; and finally:

I'll go into broken record mode here: climate models have a zero percent successful prediction rate. This must be the case for three fundamental reasons: 1) they're the result of massive backfitting, which statistically invalidates them as predictive tools; 2) they do not include all of the variables involved in determining the climate; and 3) of the variables they do include they incorrectly weight their impacts leading to CO2 being the main driver of their projections.

The Credibility Crunch: in the end, I predict that the real killer crunch with the public will be the ever-widening credibility gap between the rhetoric of the politicians and their appalling hypocrisy and abject failure to be able to reduce CO2 emissions in any meaningful manner. As coal-fired power stations are re-established around the world [without carbon-capture-and-storage (CCS), of course]; as gas flourishes; as tar-oil sands are developed; as car ownership continues to grow; and as politicians, and pie-in-the-sky academics, fly to ever more conferences, the public will call time on the Great ‘Global Warming’ Charade. After all, people now have real problems to face, like losing their jobs and being unable to pay the rent or the mortgage.

Which is demonstrated by the increasing gap between the economy and the environment in public surveys when asked to choose which one governments should focus their attention on.

The ‘Global Warming’ crash is surely imminent. The lever that switched the signal to green, and the branch-line points to the main line, will cause a mighty collision, the fall out from which could be both terrible and fascinating to watch. The Fat Controllers had better be well prepared.

I must admit that I will feel a great sense of satisfaction when the Climate Curtain finally falls.

Politics always lags the public mood so it'll be another few years yet before that happens. I look forward to enjoying the nice bottles of red I've got stored in the cellar just for the occasion.

Parenthetically, the death of Climate Fascism will also weaken the power of the United Nations and that will be a good thing, as well.

(Nothing Follows)

Climate models continue to predict higher temperatures than reality

Why anyone can continue to support the IPCC's models' projections when they have proven themselves to have no predictive ability at all is beyond me.

Then again, dogma trumps data for the Climate Faithful and it's important for them to stick together and not admit any faults. The policy is consistent with the lengths they go to in order to protect their data and methods from external scrutiny, which is problematic given it's public money that's funding the research.

There's a reason why I refer to the science of modelling climate as Climate Astrology. It's equally fair to refer to models in the financial markets sector as astrology.

When the models are created almost exclusively by a method of backfitting, as climate models are, it comes as no surprise that they don't work.

The fact is that they can't work.

After only a short period of time temperatures are not only well under the lowest predictions of the IPCC's models but are now expected to fall further at a time when CO2 continues to rise, driving yet another nail into the coffin of CO2-as-primary-driver-of-temperature theory.



Dr Syun Akasofu from the International Arctic Research Center provides an update:

The global average temperature stopped increasing after 2000 against the IPCC’s prediction of continued rapid increase. It is a plain fact and does not require any pretext. Their failure stems from the fact that the IPCC emphasized the greenhouse effect of CO2 by slighting the natural causes of temperature changes.

The changes of the global average temperature during the last century and the first decade of the present century can mostly be explained by two natural causes, a linear increase which began in about 1800 and the multi-decadal oscillation superposed on the linear increase. There is not much need for introducing the CO2 effect in the temperature changes. The linear increase is the recovery (warming) from the Little Ice Age (LIA), which the earth experienced from about 1400 to 1800.

The halting of the temperature rise during the first decade of the present century can naturally be explained by the fact that the linear increase has been overwhelmed by the superposed multi-decadal oscillation which peaked in about 2000.*

This situation is very similar to the multi-decadal temperature decrease from 1940 to 1975 after the rise from 1910 to 1940 (in spite of the fact that CO2 increased rapidly after 1946); it was predicted at that time that a new Big Ice Age was on its way.

The IPCC seems to imply that the halting is a temporary one. However, they cannot give the reason. Several recent trends, including the phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the halting of sea level increase, and the cooling of the Arctic Ocean, indicate that the halting is likely to be due to the multi-decadal change.

The high temperatures predicted by the IPCC in 2100 (+2~6°C) are simply an extension of the observed increase from 1975 to 2000, which was caused mainly by the multi-decadal oscillation. The Global Climate Models (GCMs) are programmed to reproduce the observed increase from 1975 to 2000 in terms of the CO2 effect and to extend the reproduced curve to 2100.

It is advised that the IPCC recognize at least the failure of their prediction even during the first decade of the present century; a prediction is supposed to become less accurate for the longer future.

Dr Akasofu is no scientific slouch, either, as his Wikipedia entry shows.

Naturally, the Climate Taliban will play the man rather than the science and accuse him of being funded by Big Oil, driving a gas guzzling V8 or not driving a Prius.

(Nothing Follows)

A bunch of climate change graphs

Here are a bunch of graphs I've cherry-picked from icecap that not only show a clear downward trend in temperature but also demonstrate why it is happening, as well as predicting cooler times ahead.

Solar activity + ocean data suggest cooling

Be10 record proves solar influence

Guest post by David Archibald

A couple of years ago on Climate Audit, I undertook to do battle with Dr Svalgaard’s invariate Sun using Dye 3 Be10 data. And so it has come to pass. Plotted up and annotated, the Dye 3 data shows the strong relationship between solar activity and climate. Instead of wading through hundreds of papers for evidence of the Sun’s influence on terrestrial climate, all you have to do is look at this graph.

All the major climate minima are evident in the Be10 record, and the cold period at the end of the 19th century. This graph alone demonstrates that the warming of the 20th century was solar-driven.

The end of the Little Ice Age corresponded with a dramatic decrease in the rate of production of Be10, due to fewer galactic cosmic rays getting into the inner planets of the solar system. Fewer galactic cosmic rays got into the inner planets because the solar wind got stronger. The solar wind got stronger because the Sun’s magnetic field got stronger, as measured by the aa Index from 1868.

Thus the recent fall of aa Index and Ap Index to lows never seen before in living memory is of considerable interest.

Sun v CO2

Ruh-roh...

How are those hurricanes looking?

More CO2 = fewer hurricanes?

That's a bit unexpected for the Climate Faithful, isn't it?

These data show how inured to reality the climate movement has become.

(Nothing Follows)

Climate Jihadist Hansen exposes the contempt environmentalists have for democracy

James Hansen - a man who started out as a Climate Fraud, moved into the Climate Lunatic category and now become a senior leader of the Climate Jihad - has now decided that what is holding the world back from taking action on the 'urgent' problem of climate change is democracy.

Really?

If that was the case then wouldn't we see action already being taken in non-democratic countries?

China? No action.

Hmmmm...

Cuba? Hello?

Venezuela? Nothing.

North Korea? Someone already turned the lights out.

Hansen's claim that democracy is the problem should come as no surprise to anyone following the politics of climate science given that the ultimate goal of the Climate Jihadists is to bring down democracy as we know it in favour of socialism.

From that leading source of balanced reporting on climate change (not), The Guardian:

Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist has said.

James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. "The democratic process doesn't quite seem to be working," he said.

Speaking on the eve of joining a protest against the headquarters of power firm E.ON in Coventry, Hansen said: "The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.

"The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I'm not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we're running out of time."

Hansen said he was taking part in the Coventry demonstration tomorrow because he wants a worldwide moratorium on new coal power stations. E.ON wants to build such a station at Kingsnorth in Kent, an application that energy and the climate change minister Ed Miliband recently delayed. "I think that peaceful actions that attempt to draw society's attention to the issue are not inappropriate," Hansen said.

He added that a scientific meeting in Copenhagen last week had made clear the "urgency of the science and the inaction taken by governments".

Officials will gather in Bonn later this month to continue talks on a new global climate treaty, which campaigners have called to be signed at a UN meeting in Copenhagen in December. Hansen warned that the new treaty is "guaranteed to fail" to bring down emissions.

Hansen said: "What's being talked about for Copenhagen is a strenghening of Kyoto [protocol] approach, a cap and trade with offsets and escape hatches which will be gauranteed to fail in terms of getting the required rapid reduction in emissions. They talk about goals which sound impressive, but when you see the actions are such that it will be impossible to reach those goals, then I can understand the informed public getting frustrated."

He said he was growing "concerned" over the stance taken by the new US adminstration on global warming. "It's not clear what their intentions are yet, but if they are going to support cap and trade then unfortunately i think that will be another case of greenwash. It's going to take stronger action than that."

Isn't lobbying of any form part of the democratic process? Is environmental lobbying somehow more legitimate than corporate lobbying or lobbying by religious groups or the unions or racial groups or the left handed?

Hansen exposes the contempt that the modern day, Big E Environmentalist movement has for democracy. We should be thankful for that and it might help explain why an increasing number of people, when polled, do not believe the Climate Agitprop fed to them via the mainstream media.

This man and his climate models have a zero percent successful prediction rate. His previously touted Scenario B model, which used wrong inputs to be correct for a few years, has now failed miserably given recent cooling, as have all models. That should come as no surprise to anyone who understands how models are created and what their pitfalls are.

As I've said before, Hansen is the modern day Trofim Lysenko. History will not be kind to him.

(Nothing Follows)