CLIMATEGATE DOWN UNDER
Saturday, November 28, 2009 at 10:21AM Writing in the Telegraph, James Delingpole explains how Australia is leading the revolt against Al Gore’s great big AGW conspiracy – just as the Aussie geologist and AGW sceptic Professor Ian Plimer predicted it would.
ABC news reports that five frontbenchers from Australia’s opposition Liberal party have resigned their portfolios rather than follow their leader Malcolm Turnbull in voting with Kevin Rudd’s Government on a new Emissions Trading Scheme.
The Liberal Party is in turmoil with the resignations of five frontbenchers from their portfolios this afternoon in protest against the emissions trading scheme.
Tony Abbott, Sophie Mirabella, Tony Smith and Senators Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz have all quit their portfolios because they cannot vote for the legislation.
Senate whip Stephen Parry has also relinquished his position.
The ETS is Australia’s version of America’s proposed Cap and Trade and the EU’s various carbon reduction schemes: a way of taxing business on its CO2 output. As Professor Plimer pointed out when I interviewed him in the summer, this threatens to cause enormous economic damage in Australia’s industrial and mining heartlands, not least because both are massively dependent on Australia’s vast reserves of coal. It is correspondingly extremely unpopular with Aussie’s outside the pinko, libtard metropolitan fleshpots.
Though the ETS squeaked narrowly through Australia’s House of Representatives, its Senate is proving more robust – thanks not least to the widespread disgust by the many Senators who have read Professor Plimer’s book Heaven And Earth at the dishonesty and corruption of the AGW industry. If the Senate keeps rejecting the scheme, then the Australian government will be forced to dissolve.
This would be great news if a government actually falls due to trying to force through AGW taxation.
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Reader Comments (16)
Let's hope we hear the name Turnbull in the next 48 hours:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/29/2756438.htm
The Coalition's treasury spokesman, Joe Hockey, is coming under mounting pressure to declare whether he will put up his hand to be Liberal leader.
Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull is continuing to defy his internal critics, saying he is confident he has got enough support to win a leadership ballot at Tuesday's partyroom meeting.
He is fighting to keep his job and the party's support for the emissions trading scheme (ETS). So far the only challenger is Tony Abbott, and Mr Turnbull says he is confident of beating him.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2755882.htm
I am writing this in the expectation that Tony Abbott or Joe Hockey will replace Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader on Monday and that Turnbull will, in the inglorious Liberal tradition, say to himself that if he cannot be leader and prime minister he will resign from parliament [...]
The Government's emissions trading scheme proposals, which Turnbull embraced out of the same expediency, are a dreadful error of judgement. They should not be countenanced without lengthy examination and debate.
The Copenhagen Comedy is going ahead, governments, the IPCC and other Global Cooling Deniers pretending that the cat isn't out of the bag. What they plan is to commit us to accords that would see taxes leap in the name of authoritarianism and global wealth redistribution.
Another victory is needed then to keep up momentum. Let's hope that comes in Canberra.
thanks not least to the widespread disgust by the many Senators who have read Professor Plimer’s book Heaven And Earth
Plimer's book contains dozens of errors and unsubstantiated assertions. It has been totally rubbished, and he has made it worse by refusing to answer detailed scientific questions, instead resorting to absurd bluster.
There are problems with AGW, but Plimer (a geoligist, not a climate scientist) isn't a credible critic.
If climate scientists are the best spokesmen, then why is the number one spokesman for the movement a failed politician?
Peter, what exactly is a 'climate scientist'. To me, surely it would be a relatively minor branch of physics which would be highly dependent upon maths and stats for interpretation of data. This being so, then anybody who has had training in one of the numerate physical sciences such as engineering, geology etc would have a good understanding of whether the climate predictions and their scientific bases are robust and can with stand examination. Of course, the fact that the CRU at the Univ. of East Anglia would release neither data nor code because, in the words of Prof(?) Phil Jones, "people just want to find something wrong with it" (that by the way is priceless) leads any reasonable person with scientific training to suspect that something is wrong, and it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp4sMasX-_8
Keep believing your own smears Allan. The coming years will prove who was making it up, won't they? Reality isn't as gullible or ignorant as you.
For a kick off the code referred to there isn't a climate model.
Models and data have actually been publically available for some time. What of any significance have the 'skeptics' found wrong with any of it? What improvements have they offered? The answer is jack shit in both cases.
Frank, when even Monbiot says he is deeply shaken by the falsehoods coming from the CRU, then you know there is a problem.
Frank, the problem is that all the evidence they are providing is that the Climate is changing. No one, even crazies like Allan and Pete are disagreeing that the Climate is changing. They, and personally I would agree, have difficulty believing that we, as humanity, are changing it. There is no evidence or data to suggest that Human Beings are causing Climate Change.
Seamus, don't be daft. The evidence is also given for the link between us and CO2, and between CO2 and increasing T (as well as evidence for increasing T, of course).
Why do you think the 'skeptics' spend so much time attacking the source of the evidence with their crazy conspiracy theories (now disproven by these leaked emails)? It's because the evidence itself is compelling.
People like Allan, this is all they have to cling to. Nothing.
There is a link between us and increasing Carbon emmission. There is less link though between Carbon emmission and variance in the Global Climate. The Climate has changed for billions of years. 10,000 years ago we had an Ice Age. How many factories and 4x4 caused it? Climate change is a natural event and it shows the extreme arrogance of humanity that we automatically think we caused it and that we can fix it.
Seamus that argument makes no sense.
We know that people died 1000s of years ago of natural causes. That doesn't mean that people charged of murder didn't do it.
Similarly the fact that changes occurred without us before doesn't mean we can't cause similar or worse changes now.
But, Frank, there is no evidence that the current Climate Change is in any way, shape or form different from previous Climate Change. There is no evidence that the changes are due to human intervention nor is there any evidence that they can be cured by human intervention.
Seamus, actually yes there is. The rate of change is faster than any change in a long time, for a start.
Secondly the CO2 concentration is higher than it's been in a very long time. We know that we are the cause of this. The physics means that we should expect to see all that CO2 up there having some effect. And whaddya know, we do.
Thirdly it doesn't matter a tinkers damn if it happened before or not. Many events that happened before would be a big problem if they happened again now.
An excerpt which prompts the question 'what are they hiding'? Why do they want neither the data nor the code to be independently checked or audited given the huge repercussions of the MMGW debate?
At 09:41 AM 2/2/2005, Phil Jones wrote:
Mike,
I presume congratulations are in order - so congrats etc !
Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? - our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who'll say we must adhere to it !
If that isn't a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc then I don't know what is. There is high Carbon emmission, there is climate change, so Carbon emmission causes Climate Change. No one has ever shown me a piece of evidence that
a) Carbon emmissions cause Climate Change
b) reducing Carbon output would stop Climate Change
Seamus,
"If that isn't a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc then I don't know what is"
I agree. It isn't, and you don't know what is.
" No one has ever shown me a piece of evidence that
a) Carbon emmissions cause Climate Change"
See the link above.
"b) reducing Carbon output would stop Climate Change"
A strawman. It would remove that particular forcing and would remove that particular threat of dangerous climate change. (edit: 'mitigate' is probably better than 'remove'...depends how much you reduce and when)
Monbiot was rightly appalled at some of the leaked emails. But he stated clearly that his belief in the essential correctness of AGW was unchanged.
Allan
A geologist like Plimer is not the most obvious scientist to write credibly on AGW. If you want a much more credible summary of the main areas of weakness with AGW try here