Watch this space - how long before Greg Hunt deletes this damning info on climate change?

Seems the Federal Government hasn't gotten around to pulling a web page that scientifically debunks global warming denier Ian Plimer's misleading nonsense. Crikey writes:

Plimer’s 2011 book —  How to Get Expelled From School (launched by John Howard and mailed by the IPA to hundreds of schools) — listed 101 questions for sceptical students to ask their “warmist” teachers, i.e. those who respect science. The federal Department of Climate Change (abolished by Abbott) prepared a response that thoroughly debunked his claims in words a child can understand. How long before Environment Minister Greg Hunt is instructed to have this demolition of Plimer taken down?

I've downloaded and saved the PDF but it will be interesting to see how long it takes for the truth to be hidden in the interests of Ian Plimer's fans like Gina Rinehart.

At the time of writing, the PDF is still online here.

I've previously blogged about Ian Plimer's unrepentant deceit here.

PS On 13 August 2014 the PDF is still up there on Greg Hunt's website. Perhaps Greg hasn't actually read it?

PPS today (18/8/16) I again checked the link and wouldn't you know it, it's gone! The department of misinformation has finally caught up. I will contact Crikey and let them know.

Australia lags as world adapts to new industries

With the very public collapse of manufacturing in Australia you might think the country would nimbly leap to new industrial opportunities. Instead, we are losing them to more progressive nations.

Victoria's Hazelwood open-cut brown coal mine
still burning after some weeks.

Our race to the 19th century in fossil-based energy generation has robbed us of our once world-leading position in clean energy technology. Meanwhile South Korea, for instance, has a 3-month fast-track patent process for local innovations in clean energy, part of a program that devoted 2.7% of GDP to clean energy. By contrast, we have boosted our filthiest fossil fuel source, Victoria's brown coal mines, one of which is ironically now burning out of control after heatwave-induced bushfires. It is expected to burn for another two weeks. [Note: the fire was 'under control' as of 9 March - it burned for a little over four weeks. However there are coal mine fires on every continent except Antarctica including one in Pennsylvania that has burned since 1962.

Note#2: Radio National News reported on 21 March that the fire was officially "out"]

Then there is the Abbott Government's patchwork National Broadband Network. In a country ruled by 'the tyranny of distance', you might think state-of-the-art communications was essential.

The Coalition's internet connection vision.

But no, Malcolm Turnbull's fibre to the node concept will leave my copper connection to the home operating out of this pit just outside my front door (pictured). The cost savings inherent in this second-best model do not take into account the cost of repairing/replacing these copper tangles  left over from 100-year-old telephone technology. Impressive, no?

Now it's industrial hemp, a forest-saving, low irrigation crop with a thousand uses. As it has no intoxicating effects, there was never even any justification for banning it and now even the USA, which invented the ban, is legalising the growing of hemp. But conservative, backward Australia remains in the dark ages as it misses out on yet another opportunity to compete in the 21st century. Once the 'lucky country', should we now be known as the 'dumb country' as we race towards banana republic status?

Just say no - emblematic of Australia's
attitude to everything?

Global warming deniers lose court battle but leave taxpayers with the bill

Here's a nice, sober outline of how the international conspiracy against climate science operates. While the denialists lost their court case in New Zealand, they have successfully cast doubt on good science, wasted the time of parliament, scientists and the courts, and left taxpayers with the legal bill after liquidating the 'charitable trust' that appears to have had no function but to run this case.

As usual on The Conversation site, the comments add a lot more to the story (including the usual trolling by a climate 'sceptic').

A tough list for climate change sceptics to deny

Even climate change sceptics probably like biodiversity, which has
already fallen by 30% in the last 40 years - a yellow dragonfly I snapped
in our back garden in Woolloomooloo, Sydney.

Climate change sceptics never mention the alarming data below, one of the best summaries of the pain our children will face if we don't act now to seriously remedy the problems being caused by our attachment to the fossil-fuel economy. Climate change sceptics also conveniently gloss over the credibility of senior scientists like NASA's Prof James Hansen, hardly a "tree-hugging hippie greenie" as they like to typify renewable energy supporters and conservationists. The following is the must-read introduction to http://climatesummit.org.au/. 

------------------------------------------

The world’s best climate science from NASA (Prof James Hansen), the Potsdam Institute (Prof John Schellnhuber- chief climate adviser to the European Community), the Tyndall Climate Research Centre (Prof Kevin Anderson) is now telling us desperately urgent action needs to be taken within 5 years to avert a global catastrophe taking place as early as 2040. If the Federal Government along with other Governments of leading polluting nations don’t act quickly enough, billions of people lives will be put at risk.
AUSTRALIA: In the last three years Australia has experienced an avalanche of extreme weather, including record heat and fires in Victoria with 374 fatalities, a record two years of rain, repeated “1-in-a-100-year” floods, record heat waves in Adelaide and Perth, and Cyclone Yasi, all following a devastating decade-long drought.
GLOBAL: It’s happening everywhere, with record global temperatures, more than 15,000 temperature records broken in the USA in March this year, devastating floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia, record heat and drought in Texas, and what the Europeans are calling “weather weirding”. Most of these changes and extreme events have a direct link to climate change.

Handy links to corporate greed and gutter journalism

Mockery in pictures - this is how The Telegraph
pictured Tim Flannery in their hate campaign.

OMG the idiot level of public debate is excruciating. Take climate change. The more climate sceptics, and their champions the Murdoch press, are refuted by scientists, the lower becomes their rhetoric. The Daily Telegraph the other day published one of the most pejorative pieces of moronic abuse ever seen in print, mocking Tim Flannery because it's raining. As if climate scientists ever predicted the La Nina/El Nino cycle would go away. The tone of the drivel is set by the headline: "It's a case of Tim foolery..."

Meanwhile The Sydney Morning Herald published a piece on the latest - quite alarming - National Climate Report from the CSIRO which reveals that isotopic fingerprinting of all-time-high levels of carbon in the air shows it mostly comes from humans burning fossil fuels. And much more. No doubt Clive Palmer will ignore this as he uses his billions to sue the government over the carbon tax. Perhaps Clive reads only the Telegraph?

And more on corporate greed as an ex-Goldman Sachs manager tells how the firm enjoys "ripping the eyes out of the muppets". (Muppets = clients). Sweet. Yes, this piece is also from a Murdoch site but it comes under the tabloid formula heading of "Look how the working bloke gets ripped off" while the Flannery piece comes under the "Let's mock all greenies and lefties" heading.

Remind me please why I am subsidising oil companies?

You know how climate sceptics go on about the chardonnay-sipping tree-hugging socialists who are dependent on the nanny state, and how governments shouldn't subsidise renewable energy projects because that would be "picking winners"? Well today's Australian Financial Review lists $10 billion in annual subsidies we the taxpayers give to coal, oil and gas companies. (Story summary below)

Meanwhile today's Australian reports that squillionnaire Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest, the most aggressive critic of the mining tax, admits that his Fortescue Metals Group has never paid a cent of tax (although they say they will start this year).

That's awesome - I pay them to pollute the planet while they avoid tax and lobby against a sustainable economy. The big end of town is truly running the place to their benefit at our expense.

Here is my paraphrase of the AFR story by Marcus Priest (I can't link because of the AFR's paywall):

While Prime Minister Julia Gillard said coal would supply energy in Australia for at least another four decades, Greens leader Bob Brown said he had lobbied treasurer Wayne Swan to abolish subsidies to fossil fuel companies and apply the savings to education, health and transport.
Treasury and the Department of Resources last year identified $8 billion in fossil fuel subsidies including a concession to North West Shelf gas. After Greens deputy leader Christine Milne marked the passing of the carbon tax legislation with a call for a “national conversation about how we can move away from fossil fuels”, Nationals leader Warren Truss said The Greens would never be satisfied.
 The Australian Conservation Foundation has identified further benefits of up to $2 billion from depreciation allowances to the oil and gas industry under rules which should be overhauled according to the Henry tax review. But David Byers, chief executive of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association said the depreciation provisions had attracted investment that helped Australiawithstand the GFC. 

How much we pay to pollute

OK we know this is Wallerawang and that's steam rising
in the background but steam still requires energy and
this is the most relevant power station shot in my photo library.

I know most people don't get excited about politics but I think you and your families need to know just HOW MUCH our governments subsidise coal-fired power stations, as recent inquiries in NSW have established. You are paying a fortune to subsidise the big polluters, a far cry from the bullshit being spread by climate change deniers. Note this quote:

"In short, this inquiry tells us, the coal-fired power stations in NSW are unable to compete... unless their coal is supplied at around one quarter of the cost of export coal. Given that Cobbora has the potential to supply 30 million tonnes of coal to the state’s coal fired power plants by 2020, as noted by the Australian Energy Market Operator, the lost export revenue potential from the mine could amount to some $2.7 billion a year, at current prices."

That's $2.7 BILLION a year from one publicly owned mine alone. Even the Arab states are investing heavily in solar because they can't afford the price of their own oil... Full story at http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/nsws-great-big-coal-subsidy-scandal

[And read the comments to see how this doesn't even include the power price hikes we are all paying.]

Climate change deniers disappear up their own propaganda

Professor Ian Plimer, a rock star of the climate sceptic
movement - rebutted but keeps on keeping on.
Photo by Spainy via Flickr

Rupert Murdoch's minions continue their shameless and nonsensical propaganda against the carbon tax. Janet Albrechtson in the Oz today  recycles the old "Australia is so small we won' t make any difference anyway" furphy.

A correspondent on one of my email lists rebutted it this way:

When my dog shits in the park, why should I pick it up? My costs are quite high - you tell me how big the benefit is for the Australian dogshit problem. It's 0.00001 percent. I'm not doing it!

Perfect.

Albrechtson trots out some remarkable fallacies, for instance that Henry Ford didn't need a Horse Tax to usher in the age of the motor car.

But even more amazingly she again trots out the repeatedly discredited Ian Plimer, apparently ignorant of the many rebuttals to his work and apparently too poor a journalist to do the research.

So here's a helping hand for Janet (and anyone else interested in grounding the debate in fact instead of fiction): Just Google 'Ian Plimer rebuttal' and you will find a wealth of links doing just that. Perhaps the best collection (from Wiki) is here.

I have not seen Plimer or his mates rebutting these rebuttals, but rather continually reverting to their discredited positions, indicating they are simply trying to convince the ignorant. Therefore any argument or event that features these people is similarly discredited.

Oh wait: Plimer has replied to a series of sharp questions from George Monbiot about his nonsense. Tellingly he didn't answer any of the questions but posed a list of technobabble questions in return. A very patient scientist took the time to unravel Plimer's questions here. Warning: the technobabble here will make your eyes cross.

Funniest letter ever

In comment on Tony Abbot's crusade against the carbon tax, this letter in today's SMH:

Tony Abbott can relax. If he's right, and the gas is ''invisible, odourless, weightless, tasteless'' as he claims, our entire output of it will weigh nothing. At the very reasonable $23 per tonne, none of his polluting friends will ever have to pay a cent.

Terry McGee Malua Bay

Why didn't I think of that?

Near carbon-copy echo in the room?

Just joking. Ian Verrender in the SMH today began his article on the carbon tax almost identically to my post from yesterday, writing:

Brace yourselves for the onslaught of the ideologues.

He presents some interesting points which confound climate-denier rhetoric. While deniers scream 'why should Australia go it alone?' Verrender points out that 32 other countries have similar schemes including all of Europe, which now wants to increase its 2050 carbon cuts to 95 percent and has started taxing all airlines that fly into Europe.

He concludes his story:

If you truly believe that the amount of crap we've pumped into the atmosphere during the past 200 years has had no impact on the environment, good luck getting the sand out of your ears when you finally extract your head...

A price - whether through a carbon tax or a trading scheme - minimises the heavy hand of government.

And there we have the ultimate irony. Both sides of Australian politics are committed to reducing carbon emissions. But in an odd twist, Labor is pushing for a market-based solution while the Coalition advocates government intervention. It's a funny old world.

Carbon tax will put the cat among the pigeons

Rupert Murdoch's screamers today - The Tele is totally negative
(they could have said 'What the tax will do for the planet') and
The Australian, which declared last year it would "destroy
The Greens", affirms the end of  Gillard's government. The lead headline
actually read: "Gillard's clean energy crusade", 'crusade' implying
an ideological folly. That's not news, it's propaganda.

Brace yourself for a propaganda battle now Australia has a firm carbon price, modest though it is. I think the package and its compensations go a long way to making a nonsense of the naysayers' predictions of economic disaster. Opposition leader Tony Abbott unsurprisingly declared war on it, urging TV viewers to join him in a campaign to stop it becoming law before it is due to kick in next July.

Personally I'm very happy about the $18,000 tax-free threshhold. It's a good progressive reform that helps every taxpayer but is of proportionately greater benefit to low income earners, unlike the Coalition version which always most-benefited the rich. It will also encourage people to get off welfare and into work as such a move will more likely offer an immediate increase in income.

The commentariat this morning predictably split into their ideological niches but I liked this story from two scientists in the SMH. It concludes with the following paragraphs which I think put it all into perspective:

Debating with climate change sceptics

This morning I received an email from a friend who thinks the whole climate change thing is a fraud.  He forwarded a speech by David Evans who is part of the new 'Galileo movement', ie climate sceptics who compare themselves to Galileo who on this very day some centuries ago was forced by the church to recant his view that the earth revolved around the sun. This is a neat inversion of the facts I have researched because these sceptics are the ones using dodgy science, not the other way around.

This technique of inversion is used ruthlessly by aggressive conservatives worldwide and it is winning them a lot of undeserved traction. An example is the current editorials in The Australian claiming it is the fair and unbiased journal despite its declaration last year that it had set out to destroy the Greens - much like Fox News describing itself as 'Fair and balanced'.

Normally I don't bother debating with these types as they simply ignore all the arguments and hold their view. But my friend IS a thinker and a genuine person so I replied. I linked him to some excellent climate science websites that soberly debunk the sceptic claims, and reproduce the thread below. The original David Evans' speech is at the bottom; my response with links at the top.

Do not be alarmed (or even alert)

This video opinion piece is designed to reassure climate change sceptics that their opinions are really sound. Ostensibly. It's excellent and only four minutes 11 secs. Have a look!

A whack at climate change sceptics

The SMH published a letter from me today - always nice. It's on climate change and is the first one after all the Penny Wong 'miaow' letters, although at 4.23am the headline is placed after the letter on the website!

Text of letter as published:


Two severe weather events helped tip our economy into the worst contraction since 1991 (''Mining slide drags down the economy'', June 2). Whether or not these natural disasters are linked to human-induced climate change, more severe weather is exactly what scientists predict as a result of global warming.
Maybe now climate sceptics will comprehend the massive economic costs we risk if we fail to address the problem. These would make the price of a carbon tax look like child's play.

Carbon tax dwarfed by cost of wild weather

Michael Gormly Woolloomooloo

Culture jam of the year

Have to pay these people who stopped a football match in Italy with their anti-nuclear banner. The impotence of the authorities to act is quite funny. Italy is about to to the polls to vote on a resumption of nuclear power generation in the country. Note the applause from the crowd.

Mediawatch busts climate sceptics

I enjoyed the episode of Mediawatch titled Balancing a hot debate in which the outright propaganda from shockjocks about global warming is exposed. Most of them interview only two scientists, active deniers Professors Ian Plimer and Bob Carter. Plimer's nonsense has been detailed on this blog here and here.

You have to give him credit for having the hide to continue presenting as an expert, but you have to wonder at the motivations of shockjocks like Alan Jones who continue to give him credibility, a wondrous approach for a so-called journalist.

Particularly astonishing is the continuing shockjock assertion that human-induced C02 is only 0.001% of the total. That figure is probably arrived at because charlatans count all the C02 in the history of the world and calculate human emissions as a percentage of that. However if you take CURRENT figures, it's more like 30%, as outlined in my posts linked above and evidenced several ways in the Mediawatch episode, eg this from Professor Matthew England:

... Atmospheric CO2 is now around 390ppm up from 280ppm pre-industrial -- and humans have emitted more than enough to be responsible for all of this rise and more (I say this as [fortunately!] the oceans and terrestrial biosphere have absorbed just over 1/2 our emissions to date). So 110ppm rise due to us out of 390ppm there today, or approx. 28% of today's atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

If Alan Jones and the like had the any integrity they would give people like this a run. Unfortunately their audience listens, believes, and the lie is spreading to the point where it will topple governments trying to address the reality.

States in bed with criminals who profit from prohibition

While it is well known that prohibition creates the turf on which organised crime operates, globalisation and new technology are enabling a frightening illegal network in which some governments ARE the criminals as detailed in a new paper by the Global Commission on Drug Policies.

Senior government officials in countries such as Russia, Albania, South Africa and Venezuela, often favourites of the President or occupying senior policing roles, have been outed as kingpins in international crime, controlling international networks smuggling drugs, weapons, dirty money and people. Drugs are probably the most lucrative of these markets.

The rule of law, human rights and democracy itself are under serious threat while relatively honest governments fight a losing battle against these global crime organisations. Such governments are hamstrung  because they operate mostly within national boundaries while their opponents operate across borders.

Not cool: Oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico

This shot of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig looks like something out of a Star Wars movie. But this is reality, not CGI animation. Here the rig is listing badly not long before it sank.

No such problems with Solar Thermal power generation and storage...

Big oil money behind the climate change deniers exposed

A clever global campaign to create and promote questionable science undermining support for green energy has been funded in large part by American oil giant Koch Industries.

Greenpeace has done the research tracing nearly $50 million of Koch money over nine years going to climate denial organisations, some of which was used to create non-reviewed junk science including the one that denies global warming is harming polar bears. You've probably heard of that one.

Other 'research' projects purported to show that converting to clean energy reduced employment, but were equally flawed. However the most common use of the money is to disseminate these factoids throughout the media and to lobby governments and politicians to keep burning fossil fuels, protecting Koch’s profits.

Why they don't just use the money to diversify into green energy and make money that way, I don't know. Perhaps it's simply the conservative mindset.

Science was reason's triumph… the defeat of the Beast. But what happened when the Beast learned science?  – Arthur Miller

A favourite Labor furphy attacked

The Sydney Morning Herald has been kind enough to publish another of my letters, this one responding to a slightly strange attack on The Greens by Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner that ran nationally in the Fairfax press.

I didn't have the space to query his outrage that, in his electorate, The Greens outpolled the Liberals and a swag of Lib preferences went their way. Tanner frames this as some sort of unholy alliance rather than simply the swings and roundabouts of the preferential system.

If he doesn't like it, perhaps he would prefer a proportional representation system which grants parties the same proportion of parliamentary seats as the percentage of their vote. Under this system The Greens would have several seats in the House of Representatives whereas now they have none. Be careful what you wish for, Mr Tanner.

Another way to see the preferences swing is that there is so little difference between Liberal and Labor that people are voting accordingly.

Text of my letter:

No compromise on useless policy

Lindsay Tanner does himself no favours by repeating Labor's favourite furphy about the Greens opposing its climate change legislation ("Greens do nothing to bring about change", March 25). His criticism implies the legislation would have achieved something. But its targets were a joke and there were so many compensations to the big polluters that anyone serious about addressing climate change would have to reject it.

It's true that politics is about compromise, but Labor's scheme would have locked Australia into climate vandalism for decades. Better to have no legislation and the hope of some real improvement. Calling this "political posturing" reveals more about Labor's bankrupt approach to politics than any supposed Greens cynicism. 

Michael Gormly Woolloomooloo