Who says we don’t care for the environment?

A recent study reckons we don’t…

CONCERN for the environment has dwindled into a ”middling” issue that many people do not have strong feelings about, a major study into Australian attitudes towards society, politics and the economy has found.

Food, health, crime, safety and rights to basic public services – the tangible things that people confront on a daily basis – are dominant national concerns.

”Australians are effectively indifferent to global and societal issues, rating these significantly lower,” said the report What Matters to Australians, produced by the University of Technology, Sydney and the Melbourne Business School, with the support of the Australian Research Council.

Just my own opinion, but I reckon almost everybody has “concern for the environment”. Heck, even the evil skeptic James Delingpole, currently in Australia on a speaking tour, is enjoying Taronga Zoo.

It’s just that more and more of us don’t think an essential, oderless, colourless trace gas – er, make that human contribution to that trace gas, CO2, which occurs mostly naturally – is harmful to the environment.

And maybe we don’t think spending $76,000,000,000,000 to fight C02 is worth it.

And that taxing it won’t save the polar bears… which don’t need saving anyway.

Via Climate Nonconformist, who adds:

The environmentalists came on too strong and now they’re being ignored. Plus, getting your predictions wrong all the time doesn’t help. Nor do scandalous revelations about hidden declines, corruption of peer review, avoidance of data/FOI requests or deleted emails.

BTW, nice picture of man-made clouds the Age put above the story…

Must be that global warming…

Of course it’s just weather, however.

While winter is a distant memory for most Americans, it continues unabated in Anchorage, Alaska — where a new bout of precipitation this weekend helped the city break its record for seasonal snowfall, at more than 133 inches (3.38 meters).

In fact, if there actually were some global warming (we haven’t seen any in 15 years), you might see some happier natives.

“Okay…now the records broken [it stood for 57 years - bing], could you please make the snow go away??!!”

Can’t blame whoever said that. Usually Alaska sees an average of around 60 inches or a full one and a half metres less snow over the long winter season.

And no wonder with news like that, we’re seeing the following.

Green campaigners and climate scientists are losing the public debate over global warming, one of the movement’s leading proponents has admitted.

Dr James Hansen, director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who first made warnings about climate change in the 1980s, said that public scepticism about the threat of man-made climate change has increased despite the growing scientific consensus.

Consensus, eh? Well, James. Perhaps people’s growing scepticism maybe, just maybe has something to do with that consensus and your their years of grossly exaggerated computer model BS fear-mongering that time has allowed us to check out.

And boy oh boy have there been some whoppers, such as these by Australia’s own government-funded $180,000 per year part time Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery.

Keeping it on the home front, it could be that folks became a little more cynical when the weather was used by a government that can’t balance the books as an excuse to impose a giant new tax on everyone.

Confirmed: no global warming for the past 15 years

So why oh why PM Gillard your continued push for a carbon dioxide tax, a tax that will do nothing to avert something that isn’t even happening anyway, that the people don’t want, and that is detroying both your own reputation and the very future existence of the ALP as a major political force?

New UK Met Office global temperature data confirms that the world has not warmed in the past 15 years.

Analysis by the GWPF of the newly released HadCRUT4 global temperature database shows that there has been no global warming in the past 15 years – a timescale that challenges current models of global warming.

The graph shows the global annual average temperature since 1997. No statistically significant trend can be discerned from the data. The only statistically acceptable conclusion to be drawn from the HadCRUT4 data is that between 1997 – 2011 it has remained constant, with a global temperature of 14.44 +/- 0.16 deg C (2 standard deviations.)

“[I]t has remained constant”. No warming. No cooling. It’s hard to even argue climate change on that one.

The perils of going Green

Lord Lawson is talking about events in the UK, but the same applies in Australia, not least because of the carbon dioxide tax we will be unnecessarily burdoned with in a few months.

It is sad that fashionable obsession can lead an intelligent man like Tim Yeo into such a farrago of factual error and economic illiteracy. The reason why there is no economic case for ‘going green’ is simple. It is that green energy is hugely more expensive than carbon-based energy, it always has been and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

That, and no other reason, is why the world relies on carbon-based energy – coal, oil and, increasingly, gas.

And that is why to ‘go green’ requires either a heavy tax on carbon-based energy, to make it less competitive, or a massive subsidy for wind power and other forms of green energy, to make them more competitive – and probably both. Either way, these represent a huge economic cost and a burden on the consumer that bears especially hard in an age of austerity, but which would be unjustifiable at any time.

Read on.

Just what benefit will be achieved from raising Australia’s already high electricity costs via the CO2 tax? Least of all when the Gillard government claims people will be compensated?

Well if they’re going to be compensated, then what’s the point of the tax in the first place?

It’s just a money-go-round, a massive government-led collection of private wealth to be then redistributed as the government sees fit.

Hello? That’s Socialism, and Cory Bernadi is right to call Gillard out on that.

And socialism? If (too much of) your hard-earned work, as represented by money, is taken away from you and given to someone else who didn’t work, then where is the incentive to work?

Nobody works too hard, and then what happens to society?

Australia’s clean energy scam

The Blissful Ignoramus takes a closer look at Australia’s clean energy future.

How appropriate.

The key, mission-critical system used by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency for reporting and calculation of “emissions” by the “biggest polluters”, is called OSCAR.

And now, with just over 4 months till the carbon ‘tax’ begins, the “science” is in.

OSCAR is trash.

As indeed was the government’s $20 million taxpayer-funded advertising campaign for the carbon “tax”, which according to the Auditor-General:

“.. contained facts which were not properly sourced and seven breaches of financial management regulations.”

Read on. Perception is reality, errors (cheating?) abound, red tape is through the roof, and as for the amount of money wasted… eek!

Related: the ABC still champions the failed experiment that is solar energy as a primary source of power.

Related: Get with the times. The word “cold” is obsolete!

Gavin Atkins:

I HATE to break the news this way, but Australia is not going to meet its target to reduce greenhouse emissions by 5 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020.

Of course, the introduction of the carbon tax might make some difference, but I’m willing to stick my head out and call it right now. With only eight years left, carbon dioxide emissions have actually increased by 4 per cent on 2000 levels.

UPDATE

Related:Carbon derivitives trading; the ticking time bomb buried in Julia and the Greens’ Clean Energy Future legislation.

No wonder (rightfully dumped) former Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull was/is so gung ho for a carbon (dioxide) tax/ETS. His mates back at Goldman Sachs are set to make a killing.

Oh if only the climate really needed saving and we had the God-like power to actually do something…

UPDATE II

Labor still has $10mil left to flog their disastrous and useless CO2 tax before July hits.

The climate debate of 2011: round up, part 2

Following professor Bob Carter’s Part One of his climate review of 2011, here’s Part Two.

Stimulated by research spending of billions of dollars, inexorably, and month by month. torrents of new scientific information appear that are relevant to the twin issues of global warming and climate change.

No one scientist, or group, can possibly absorb and précis accurately the full range of this literature, though valiant efforts are made both by the IPCC and by its essential counterpart, the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

To date, research findings are consistent with a largely natural, though still incompletely understood, origin for modern climate change. Discounting virtual reality computer model studies, no recent paper has provided empirical evidence that dangerous human-caused global warming is occurring; and neither the atmosphere nor the ocean are currently warming despite the continuing increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

*my emphasis*

Read on.

Some tidbits:

• Climategate enquiries a whitewash
• Japan has wasted $78 billion on fruitless global warming projects
• U.S. Congress passes Luetkemeyer Amendment to halt taxpayer financing of UN climate panel
• Former German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, calls for an audit of the IPCC
• Snows of Kilimanjaro defy global warming predictions
• Tropical storm activity hits a 40-year low
• Computer climate models use false assumptions
• Nary a climate refugee to be seen
• Floods decreasing around the world
• Scientific ‘consensus’ wrong again: biodiversity loss much less severe than feared
• Kyoto Protocol loses support from four big western nation
• Earth may be headed into a mini-ice age within a decade
• Another false alarm: Pacific Islands defy sea-level rise hysteria
• U.S. Science Committee calls on IPCC to address conflicts of interest
• Carbon dioxide price collapses in Europe
• Yet another false alarm: no decline detected in the Great Barrier Reef

Those bullet points link to the full stories. Bob’s piece has excellent, briefer summaries.

H/T

Tim Flannery’s dud alarmist predictions

He gets paid $180,000 for just three days of work per week as Australia’s Climate Commissioner. Despite repeated warnings of catastrophic sea-level rises, he lives by the water. And he’s almost always wrong.

Andrew Bolt:

Small problem, though: after so many years of hearing Flannery’s predictions, we’re now able to see if some of the scariest have actually panned out.

And we’re also able to see if people who bet real money on his advice have cleaned up or been cleaned out.

So before we buy a great green tax from Flannery, whose real expertise is actually in mammology, it may pay to check his record. Ready?

Read on.

Via s_dog

The climate debate of 2011: round-up

Professor Bob Carter, a geologist, discusses “the the most important events which influenced the climate debate in 2011.”

2011, and the Unlucky Country finally gets a carbon dioxide tax

Australian voters entered 2011 with the pre-election commitment of Prime Minister Julia Gillard still sounding in their ears –

There will be no carbon [dioxide] tax under a government that I lead.

Nonetheless, cognitive dissonance had already arrived on the Canberra political scene, in the shape of the Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change (MPCCC) that was established in late 2010 in order to plan for the introduction of just such a tax.

Thereafter, the political year yielded a spectacular display of chicanery, scientific malfeasance, media bias and economic and social irresponsibility, all underpinned by a confusion of both purpose and morality and accompanied by an uncertainty of outcomes: and that’s just the global warming picture.

It is fitting, therefore, that the year should have ended shortly after the closure of the IPCC’s COP-17 climate conference in Durban, the outcome of which was a politically wonderful Clayton’s agreement regarding global warming – which is to say, it was the type of agreement that you have when there is in fact no agreement. As one commentator put it, the Durban partner nations’ statement appears to have agreed to an agreement to agree in future to an undefined agreement. Science magazine Naturecommented that “Despite the celebratory atmosphere, the platform represents an exercise in legalese that does little or nothing to reduce emissions, and defers action for almost a decade”.

Read on.

H/T & H/T

Oh, and why does a geologist’s opinion matter?

Carter’s view of climate science is profoundly influenced by the fact that he’s a geologist. He thinks in terms of geological time – eras and epochs. When compared to those timescales, 150 years of thermometer readings is a mere blink of an eye. As he writes in his accessible, well-argued book:

By overemphasizing the trivially short instrumental record, and greatly underemphasizing the varied changes that exist in geological records…the IPCC signals its failure to comprehend that climate change is as much a geological phenomenon as it is a meteorological one.

Meanwhile, as it becomes increasingly evident that drastic government measures to curb a problem that likely doesn’t exist will lead to so much pain with negligible gain, and as it becomes increasingly evident that alternative energy is outlandishly expensive and grossly inefficient, the Australian Greens leader, Bob Brown, continues to demonstrate his complete and utter lack of economic literacy.

This time he wants to make changes to our Super (i.e. increase taxes on it) that will hurt those worse off and punish those who want to contribute.

This once almost quaint quirk in Australian politics is weilding far, far too much influence for just one senator from a remote, sparsely populated region of the nation.

Global warming forecast models essentially worthless

Walter Russell Mead explains:

To predict the amount of CO2 that human industry will be emitting in 2050, you need a figure for the world’s GDP by then. That means you have to have long range forecasts for China, India, South Africa, Russia, Brazil, Germany, the US, Canada and many other countries. Nobody has any forecasts of the 50 year GDP growth of any of these countries that is worth anything at all, because economic forecasting doesn’t work that way. (It hardly works at all, but certainly not on this long term basis.)

And then you have to forecast how much CO2 will be emitted per unit of GDP. That involves forecasting the rate and nature of technological change, the state and composition of world energy reserves in thirty years, and many other things which simply cannot be known by anybody living today.

An astrologer would throw up his hands in dismay at this sloppy reasoning and hazy science.

And yet Australia’s lone ranga, PM Julia Gillard, pushes on with her useless, expensive carbon dioxide tax. With any luck, she’ll be gone by Friday.

UPDATE

Almost a fifth of MP snub Julia’s BBQ. Ouch.

“Absolutely useless”

That’s how Prince Philip described wind farms recently.

And in a line that’s reminiscent of Clint Eastwood’s famous, “Get off my lawn!”, he told a turbine peddler who was hoping to set up shop on his land quite clearly to “stay away from my estate, young man.”

Why the peddler was surprised is anyone’s guess since the prince had good reason to pan the inefficient, massively expensive gimmicks.

Please, enough of this clean green China crap

Who are our political overloads trying to kid? Please don’t tell me PM Gillard, Brown and Flannery and Co. actually believe their own BS.

Via JM, Tim Blair and Catallaxy

As it turns out, it’s not the advanced economies that have a CO2 problem

The Third World emits far more CO2 than us.

It’s all moot of course, since CO2, let alone the piddly “man-made” emissions, can’t possibly be a problem and/or driver of climate… especially not “our” 3% (or even 30% if you like) of the 0.04% of the atmosphere that this essential trace gas makes up.

But anyway, the raw data is in.

Industrialized nations emit far less carbon dioxide than the Third World, according to latest evidence from Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Global warming alarmism is turned on its head and the supposed role of carbon dioxide in climate change may be wrong, if the latest evidence from Japan’s scientists is to be believed.

Click.

Link.

Via spot_the_dog aka sdog

Sure, the Third World outnumbers the West, and yet with all our cars and factories and pundits breathing hot air, we still can’t match a bunch of folks sitting around a campfire.

Our dubious climate policy

Professor Henry Ergas confronts Australian economist and wannabe climate guru, Ross Garnaut.

ROSS Garnaut has an unusual concept of democracy. The Prime Minister goes to the country promising “there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”. Once in office, she then proposes to implement one, with the added twist of making repeal by a future government prohibitively costly. Yet, according to Garnaut, rejection of the government’s proposed legislation would amount to a failure of Australian democracy on a historical scale, indeed to “a corruption of democracy” caused by “distortion of reality and abuse of truth”.

The sky is green. Water makes you thirsty.

And then intellects like Professor Robert Manne insist us little people with even smaller brains should be shut out of the debate, with only those pre-approved (by whom?) being allowed to participate.

There is an ever-growing giant foul stench in the political air as day by day, we see evermore desperate measures by the decaying Left to reconsolidate their waning toxic grip on the psyche of the nation.

So far, this year has been cooler than last year

And a number of months cooler than 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007… and all the way back to even 1988.

Yep, better do something about that global warming.

Yes, Ms Gillard. Please introduce a carbon tax that won’t cool the temperature one skerrick on a planet that hasn’t been warming anyway.

Last year we had record cold winters across the globe, from Korea to the UK, this year looks set to possibly be even colder, yet I can’t get a plastic bag at the supermarket because the planet is in peril.

A glimpse into the future

This is what Australians can look forward to when Gillard’s ineffective carbon (dioxide!) tax comes into effect, a tax that will not alter global temperatures one iota.

UK energy customers are struggling to meet the cost of steep price hikes with 71% turning to savings, credit cards and overdrafts to pay for their energy bills.

The recent price increases have added a whopping £155.75 per year onto the average household energy bill, with gas prices shooting up by 17.4% and electricity bills up by 10.8%.

These rising costs mean 71% of customers are now finding it difficult to pay their bills, according to Moneysupermarket.

Two-fifths of consumers say they will use their savings, 17% will dip into overdrafts and 12% will use credit cards to meet higher costs.

H/T