VIDEO: Rees braces for leadership challenge

VIDEO: Rees braces for leadership challenge

VIDEO: Rees braces for leadership challenge

VIDEO: Rees braces for leadership challenge

GTG

brb, bbl, you can all kiss my arse. It's bad enough everyone shows up offline :( YEAH I KNOW. Joking. Not really.
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/natalietran
Hope you guys are enjoying your weeks, I'll be back in two days. Hope you're all well.
x

Headlines Thursday 3rd December 2009

=== NSW Government Collapsing ===
Premier Nathan Rees launches attack on own party
NSW Premier Nathan Rees has directed an extraordinary tirade at members within his own party who he accuses of undermining his authority.

Mr Rees will face a leadership vote later today, with three possible candidates prepared to challenge, with MP Frank Sartor appearing the likely victor.

A petition with 17 names has been signed supporting a motion for a spill.

But Mr Rees has vowed to fight on as leader.

He claimed his ability to lead the NSW Government had been "impaired at every turn" by "a malignant and disloyal group", and even went as far as naming the accused MPs.

Mr Rees also suggested that any new Premier would be a "puppet" to Labor party factions.

"Should I not be premier by the end of this day, let there be no doubt in the community's mind that any challenger will be a puppet to Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi," Mr Rees said.

"That is the reality, that is the choice for the state today.

"The decision now lies in the hands of my caucus colleagues."

The Daily Telegraph reports Labor Party bosses are now openly seeking support for Mr Sartor ahead of today's vote.

But the move has reportedly angered left wing MPs, who have threatened to leave the ALP and sit on the upper house benches as Independents, putting at risk the Government's hold on power.

According to The Daily Telegraph, a breakaway group of 10 right-wing MPs have also threatened to split from the Right faction and support Mr Rees.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the NSW Government should 'get its act together'.

"There are just too many days I find myself being asked questions about this," Mr Rudd said.

"I would frankly say to all those folk in the NSW Government `get your act together'."

"Get your act together, the people of NSW expect good government. It's time to end the games."

Mr Rees refused to answer questions from the media this morning.

ONE HOUR TO GO
Tim Blair
NSW Premier Nathan Rees faces a 6pm puppet showdown:
“Should I not be Premier by the end of this day let there be no doubt that any challenger will be a puppet of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi. That is the reality, that is the choice at stake,” he said.
===

Ex-Pentagon chief rips Obama's claim that the Bush administration rebuffed commanders' requests for more troops in Afghanistan, saying the 'misstatement' deserves a response.

McCain: Who's In Charge?
Arizona senator questions Obama's Afghan war policy, airing concerns about conflict between U.S. diplomats and the military

Abbott reveals tax-free carbon plan
TONY Abbott plans to fight a climate change election using land management measures.

Obama Facing New Denmark Disaster?
With a climate change deal far from certain, Obama's 'prestige' is on the line as he returns to Copenhagen

Key Groups Off Jobs Forum Guest List
Corporate execs who bear the task of creating jobs mostly absent from list of invitees to White House jobs summit

'Help us catch the monsters responsible'
POLICE release images of gang wanted over the brutal pack rape of two teenage schoolgirls.

Woman sues over flesh-eating bug horror
HOSPITAL allegedly sent woman home with headache tablets for potentially fatal infection.

Couple turns to porn to pay for wedding
A COUPLE has been raising cash for their dream wedding by raising temperatures as porn stars.

Green downs Jones in just two minutes
UNDERDOG Danny Green takes out Ray Jones Jr - demolishing the American in 122 seconds.

Sperm genes may explain life expectancy
GENES in sperm may determine why female mammals live longer than males, according to a Japanese study.
=== Journalists Corner ===

Talking Turkey
Why did NBC keep the new PETA ad out of the Thanksgiving Day Parade? Bill has answers!
===
Speech Fallout
Newt Gingrich has reaction to the Afghanistan troop surge from both sides of the aisle!
===
Guest: Dan Quayle
Did the president's speech on Afghanistan hit home with Americans? Dan Quayle goes 'On the Record'!
=== Comments ===
Taxpayers’ hard-earned cash at risk in this climate
Piers Akerman
WITH the second rejection of Labor’s ETS Bill, Kevin Rudd has no option but to call an early election. Rudd previously stated that global warming is the greatest moral challenge of our time and that our children and grandchildren would suffer if Australia did not pass his legislation. - The ETS is a Pork Barrel. It will tax business and allow the ALP to redistribute the funds to its' mates. The compensations in the bill are inadequate for the poor, but substantial for those wanting to make a quick buck spruiking the ALP message. If Rudd were serious about making lasting changes to the climate and bringing Australians together over Climate Change he would apologize to the weather right now. - ed
===
Is President Obama an Effective Wartime President?
By Bill O'Reilly
Here is the central question. Is President Obama an effective wartime president? Call it the commander-in-chief factor. Is he determined enough to defeat terrorism in Afghanistan?

Mr. Obama seems to understand the danger. Should the Taliban come back, worldwide terrorism gets a huge victory. And so 30,000 more American troops will be sent to the theater, and once again the president is asking other countries to help out. Good luck with that.

Mr. Obama also set a timetable for U.S. troops to get out of Afghanistan: the summer of 2011. But that's not in stone. It's just on his wish list.

And there's nothing wrong with that. If the Afghans themselves don't fight for their freedom, we'll have to get out. So it's good to send that message.

The problem with President Obama and war in general is that his liberal sensibility is not comfortable with combat. Compare Mr. Obama to Dick Cheney, perhaps the most hawkish politician in the country.

But again, that might not be a bad thing. We certainly don't want another Vietnam. If the Karzai government is hopeless, we have to acknowledge that.

But for now, the president should be as tough as he can be, and I did not see that Tuesday night. I did not see a Winston Churchill-type performance. The president was slick, but did he rally the world to fight the Taliban? I don't think so, but I could be wrong.

Summing up, the president's speech Tuesday night was OK, but not exactly the Gettysburg Address.
===
Think 'Climate-Gate' Is Nonevent? Think Again
By John Lott
The big question is whether universities have too much at stake, both ideologically and financially, to impartially investigate what has happened with Climate-gate
President Obama's climate czar, Carol M. Browner, and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs might think that Climate-gate is a nonevent, but on Monday Pennsylvania State University announced that it was launching an investigation into the academic conduct of Michael Mann, the school's Director of the Earth System Science Center. And Tuesday, Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia, announced that he would stand aside as director while his university conducted an investigation.

Dozens of researchers at other institutions could soon face similar investigations. While Dr. Jones has been the center of much of the discussion because the e-mails were obtained from the server at his university, Mann is named in about 270 of the over 1,000 e-mails, many of which detail disturbing and improper academic behavior.
===
Unless He Really Is the Messiah, Obama's Plan Is Impossible
By KT McFarland
What Obama should have done is narrow the mission to one thing -- kill Al Qaeda -- and partner with Pakistan to do it.

The West Point speech on Tuesday night was vintage Obama -- promise everybody everything and end with stirring words of inspiration. The problem is -- it won’t work.

While claiming he was articulating a clear mission statement Obama then went on to list, by my count, eight different missions: reverse Taliban gains in Afghanistan; defeat and destroy Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan; deny Al Qaeda’s return to Afghanistan and Pakistan; build the Afghan Army; launch economic, especially agricultural projects, in Afghanistan; teach them good governance; secure their population centers and partner with Pakistan on economic, security and political matters. And he’s going to do it in 18 months with an additional 30,000 troops. Unless Obama really is the Messiah, I’d say this is impossible.

What Obama should have done is narrow the mission to one thing -- kill Al Qaeda -- and partner with Pakistan to do it. We should squeeze the recalcitrant Taliban and their Al Qaeda comrades along the mountainous Afghan-Pak border in a pincer movement -- the American Army and Marines on the Afghan side and the Pakistani Army on the other side -- and kill them.
===
ACCEPTED WISDOM UNACCEPTED
Tim Blair
A few weeks ago:

Britain’s new high commissioner to Australia, the politico Baroness Valerie Amos, introduced herself to Canberra with an address at the National Press Club at which she lectured Australians over their growing reluctance to embrace the accepted wisdom on global warming.

“I have been surprised that the science itself is being questioned,” she said.

Several further surprises followed. Even Jon Stewart seems taken aback:

Lord only knows what the Baroness makes of recent changes in Canberra:

Until now, the Opposition was anxious to avoid an election on Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. Turnbull was afraid the Coalition would be smashed if it blocked Rudd …

Turnbull, trembling, negotiated terms. He was happy to agree with Rudd and pass the scheme into law.

Yesterday we saw a role reversal. The Abbott Opposition exuberantly killed the scheme in the Senate. He wanted to follow the instinct to fight.

And Abbott has dared Rudd: “I am not frightened of an election on this issue.”

Now it is the Government that is hesitating.

Australia has changed since Kevin Rudd has been away. He should travel more often.

UPDATE. Former Labor minister Barry Cohen:

Eighteen months ago in Europe and the US, polls indicated 70 per cent supported the global warming theory. That has now dropped to about 50 per cent. Imagine what the result would be if a Coalition-led campaign asked lots of questions about costs, job losses and the science. So far with both main political parties holding a similar view, it’s hardly surprising 66 per cent favour an ETS.

So far the sceptics and deniers have only had Barnaby Joyce and the Nationals to oppose the legislation. Picture a few more headlines such as Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph on Monday, “Power Bills Up $400”, and imagine what the polls would say.

Labor seems certain to win the next election, but it should be wary. Harold Wilson once said, “A week is a long time in politics.” Three months is an eternity.
===
REDUCED VENOM
Tim Blair
Venomous Kate, having become Voluminous Kate, embarks on a diet. Follow her progress here. Not being an idiot, Kate has declined to connect her weight-loss strategy to demands for a reduction of the planet’s temperature.
===
LAND OF DANGEROUS SENTIMENTS
Tim Blair
Proud Canadian Mark Steyn enjoys a Michelle Obama moment:

I’ve waited my entire life for “Canada’s image” to “lie in tatters” and, if it takes laying the entire planet to waste, I say go for it.

Mark’s pride is understandable. It isn’t every day that Canada is denounced as a “thuggish petro-state” by the Guardian‘s George Monbiot (now returned to reliable crankdom after recent outbreaks of sanity). But Canada still cannot compare with Australia, for we have now made the entire Guardian cry. This editorial is beautiful:

Australia may soon hold the first election in which not just the proper response to climate change but even its existence are leading issues.

The Liberal party has thrown out one leader for backing a government bill limiting greenhouse emissions and voted in another who has described climate change as “absolute crap” … by rejecting [Turnbull] Australia’s Liberals have sided with the sceptics. It may be a forerunner of similar confrontations to come elsewhere.

The new Liberal leader is Tony Abbott, a raucous, London-born rightwinger dubbed the Mad Monk. He describes emissions trading as a “$120bn tax on the Australian public” and couches his scepticism in insidious terms that would attract support in Britain too … Sentiments like this, from a country which can afford the costs of adaptation, are dangerous.

We be bad.
===
PLENTY OF ICE
Tim Blair
Any excuse for a party.
===
GOT YER PSYCHOLOGY OF DENIAL RIGHT HERE
Tim Blair
The worst attempt yet to explain away Climategate:

Last week, a private exchange of emails among climate scientists stoked a firestorm of skepticism after it was hacked and posted on the Web.

The memos expressed frustration at the scientists’ inability to explain what they described as a temporary slowdown in warming, and discussed ways to counter the campaigns of climate naysayers.

This, incidentally, is from a piece aiming to dissect “the psychology of climate denial.” Via Alan R.M. Jones, who sends his own explanation of an earlier scandal:

The Watergate tapes expressed frustration at the White House’s inability to explain why five plumbers were waylaid while carrying out routine maintenance at DNC headquarters, and discussed ways to counter underground parking lot meetings and overzealous congressional committees.
===
THE SECRET LIFE OF A CAR GUY
Tim Blair
Chris Masters confesses:

When I left the ABC last year, Andrew Denton interviewed me on Enough Rope outing me as a petrolhead. He wanted to know why I liked cars and motor racing.

Explaining myself proved a little difficult. When passion is a driver, logic is often a hard-working navigator.

But here goes.

Read on.
===
TORY FOLLOWS TONY
Tim Blair
Tony Abbott shows the way for British conservatives:

Tory backbencher David Davis today launched an open challenge to David Cameron’s climate change policies by criticising the ‘fixation’ of the green movement.

The former shadow Home Secretary said the focus on environmental issues would impose tougher targets for reducing carbon emissions that could bring ‘crippling’ costs to the economy.

The comments are likely to be viewed as a direct challenge to David Cameron who has put tackling climate change high on the Tory party’s agenda.

In other world-leading developments, Australian geologist Ian Plimer is now front-page news in the UK. Nice weather over there for a global warming debate.

UPDATE. Climategate is too big for Google.

UPDATE II. Danish carbon fraud! James Delingpole reports:

Carbon trading is the Emperor’s New Clothes of international finance. It was invented by none other than Ken Lay, whose Enron would currently be one of the prime beneficiaries in the global alternative energy market, if it hadn’t been shown to be (nearly) as fraudulent as the current AGW scam. It is a licence to fleece, cheat and rob. Still, jolly embarrassing for the Danes to get caught red handed, what with their hosting a conference shortly in which the world’s leaders will try, straight-faced, to persuade us that carbon emissions trading is the only viable way of defeating ManBearPig.

UPDATE III. “Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was in the US but could barely crack a mention in the New York Times. But there was plenty about some bloke called Tony Abbott.”
===
BREAK DOWN AND LIE
Tim Blair
No big deal:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s plane has broken down for the second time in as many days.

Interestingly, however, the PM’s office felt the need to lie about it:

While Mr Rudd’s office denied the plane had been grounded again, saying they were simply refuelling, when Mr Chisholm was asked if he could confirm the plane had broken down again he said: “Yep.”

He added it was not Mr Rudd who told him, it was, “just the chief of staff”.
===
None so blind
Andrew Bolt
That pesky real-world data keeps wrongfooting the poor alarmists. This time it’s ABC PM’s Mark Colvin, who introduces yet another story about how global warming will devastate us:

MARK COLVIN: Prospects don’t look good for soil moisture in Australia, one of the most important drivers of agricultural productivity. New long-term projections for soil conditions in south-eastern Australia, just released, predict a dramatic impact on soil moisture if the temperature of the globe rises by two degrees. That in turn will affect farm production.

Oh, no! Global warming is drying out our continent!

But then the reporter checks a farmer’s rain gauges and gets a surprise:

MADELEINE GENNER: Now John Ive has used his data along with information from the Bureau of Meteorology to work out long-term trends. He looked at data dating back to 1889 and climate projections to the year 2100.

JOHN IVE: If we are looking in 20 year slices, the driest period we’ve experienced since 1889 to the present was from September 1926 to September 1946 which is you know almost getting beyond most people’s living memory anyway. Whereas the wettest period, this came as a bit of a surprise to me is from March 1983 to March 2003

Oven odder is that this is the only real-world data offered in the entire report to justify the spooky premise that we’re drying out.
===
Gatto does Melbourne University Press proud
Andrew Bolt
Let’s catch up with Melbourne University Press’s latest big signing, the gangland figure it so kindly promoted as one sweet and charming guy:

THE millionaire director of the Autobarn spare parts retailer, Garry Dumbrell, has been accused of hiring gangland enforcers Mick Gatto and John Khoury to negotiate in a land dispute with his elderly neighbours.

Mr Dumbrell, who last week paid a record of almost $21 million for a Hawthorn mansion in Shakespeare Grove, is now preparing his home, Strathroy, on Barkers Road for sale…

Neighbours Alan and Colline Muir, aged in their 80s, said they were away at their hobby farm last week but rushed home after friends warned of unexpected works along their boundary. Another neighbour, who did not want to be named, said she was one of several who witnessed the building works and her husband and another neighbour confronted Mr Gatto.

‘’They had just moved a shipping container 20 metres and erected a new fence 25 metres in,’’ she said. ‘’Basically stealing land from the elderly couple, who are scared to take action.’’

“Stealing” is a tough word, and we’ll all wait for Dumbrell and Gatto’s responses.

But I can’t wait for MUP chairman and Alan Kohler to explain this one away, too, and until then I’ll add Autobarn to the list of companies which do not deserve my custom.
===
A much more useful Tiger
Andrew Bolt

Who needs Tiger himself, when his avatar acts out the story with more frankness? Mind you, even Taiwan’s Apple Action News had to skip the bit in Tiger’s story about his wife using the golf club to actually smash a window to get him out. The animators couldn’t figure how to explain why she broke the back window rather than the one right next to her husband. But they could sure imagine the rest.

We’re not long off having news bulletins that show the world as a journalist imagines it should be, rather than as it is. As the coverup of Climategate shows, we’re not that far from that already.
===
Climategate: ABC filters working beautifully
Andrew Bolt
Number of results returned when searching “Climategate” on Google:

21,400,000

Number of results returned when searching “Climategate” on ABC Online:

One.

One got through? But relax. It was just a reader’s response to yet another article by a warmist scientist.

UPDATE

The ABC now grudgingly adds a story to its site!

Climate expert steps down after hacked emails

But even then, the ABC’s report cites two warmist spokesmen reassuring us there’s nothing to worry about, and not a single sceptic to explain why the emails are in fact so devastating.

Why this coverup, guys?

UPDATE 2

James Delingpole helpfully collates the news the ABC has missed in the unravelling of Climategate.
===
Still one to go, though
Andrew Bolt

Muntadhar al-Zaidi gets his shoe back. Odd that his friends suddenly don’t get the joke.
===
Reef alarmist bleached again
Andrew Bolt

Oh, dear. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the warmist scientist who is most responsible for Kevin Rudd’s claim that global warming will kill the Great Barrier Reef, is contradicted yet again by the real-world data.

Here’s Hoegh-Guldberg four years ago, telling Robyn ”100 metres” Williams that our warmist gases would destroy shell-fish by acidifying the seas:

If we go to industries that depend on crustaceans, crabs and lobsters and things, those too are seeing really interesting diseases popping up which are basically because things are not calcifying anymore, and they’re not calcifying at a rate that keeps up with the processes that take away that calcium carbonate.

But here’s the latest study that says he’s wrong again:

In a striking finding that raises new questions about carbon dioxide’s (CO2) impact on marine life, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists report that some shell-building creatures—such as crabs, shrimp and lobsters—unexpectedly build more shell when exposed to ocean acidification caused by elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).

This is far from the first time that Hoegh-Guldberg’s profitable alarmism gets debunked:

In 1999, Hoegh-Guldberg warned that the Great Barrier Reef was under pressure from global warming, and much of it had turned white.

In fact, he later admitted the reef had made a “surprising” recovery.

In 2006, he warned high temperatures meant “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s great Barrier Reef could die within a month”.

In fact, he later admitted this bleaching had “a minimal impact”.

In 2007, he warned that temperature changes of the kind caused by global warming were again bleaching the reef.

In fact, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network last week said there had been no big damage to the reef caused by climate change in the four years since its last report, and veteran diver Ben Cropp said this week that in 50 years he’d seen none at all.

I did try to warn Australian Story about Hoegh-Gulberg’s alarming tendency of alarmism when I was on the show (pic above), but would it listen?
===
Climategate - even John Stewart understands. But doesn’t absorb
Andrew Bolt

Climategate is so outrageous that even a comedian of the Left laughs at the sheer effrontery of it…

UPDATE

Even the Sydney Morning Herald’s Elizabeth Farrelly, a green of the Hamilton extreme, has been shaken:

This is what renders Phil Jones’s climate-gate treason unpardonable. In fudging the crucial facts, Professor Jones and his colleagues fed the Minchinsaur deniers steroids, strengthening their inertia and encouraging the very catastrophe they hoped to avert.

But wait, Elizabeth. Your dismay is of Stewart’s self-deluding sort: you are dismayed that the people caught faking a warming scare will make others think their scare is a, well, fake. Don’t you think you’re in denial about something here? Isn’t it time to worry not about the seeming of this fake but the reality?

UPDATE

Add Lord Stern to the list of warmists who say they trust the “consensus” produced by exactly the corrupt processes they can’t defend:

The former World Bank economist refused to comment on the University of East Anglia scandal itself, but said that anyone denying the science of climate change was “fundamentally wrong”...

Who is in denial now?
===
Climategate: not news to me, says Shaviv
Andrew Bolt
Brilliant young astrophysicist Professor Nir Shaviv says he’s not surprised at all by Climategate, whether it’s the revelation that data was destroyed to prevent checking, or evidence that sceptics were blocked from publication:

(F)rom what I’ve read in blogsphere, the e-mails did not reveal anything I didn’t think was happening anyway (though it may help the general public get a glimpse of that)....

An editor of one of the more prominent journals wrote a colleague of mine that ”any paper which doesn’t support the anthropogenic GHG theory is politically motivated, and therefore has to be rejected”.

There are many more examples. As I said, these e-mails do not surprise me. They just provide a window to whatever I had thought was happening anyway.

Shaviv was also nastily attacked and smeared by RealClimate, exposed in the Climategate emails as an arm of the Climategate conspiracy.

But he has known for some time that this warmist bubble would burst:

The hysteria surrounding the concept of ‘global warming’ will fade over the years… People will see that the apocalyptic forecasts are not coming true. Today there is no fingerprint attesting that carbon dioxide emission causes a rise in temperature.

His own explanation for the warming that stopped in 2001: the effect on cosmic rays on cloud formation.

Shaviv is coming to Melbourne this week for Albert Dadon’s Australia Israel Leadership Forum, where I shall be only too pleased to meet him. And a little proud, too, since it was my suggestion he be invited. I hope you’ll hear from him, too, on this visit.

Unlike most top scientists, he not only has a blog, but a highly readable one (if too infrequently updated). For instance, there was this after Israel’s Earth Hour:

The Israeli populous saved a “whopping” 65,000 KWhr… In fact, if you compare it to the annual electricity usage of the Al Gore household, of 210,000 KWhr, you realize that Israelis saved a third of what Al Gore wastes in a year. :
===
Psychoanalyse this dupe instead
Andrew Bolt
The very first word signals the devious evasion to come in this Sydney Morning Herald piece:

If the evidence is overwhelming that man-made climate change is already upon us and set to wreak planetary havoc, why do so many people refuse to believe it?

Well, “if” that evidence were indeed overwhelming, sceptics like me would be, well, overwhelmed.

But on that false presumption, or evasion, the writer proceeds to psychoanalyse the people he claims don’t look at the evidence of which he himself seems stunningly ignorant.

Here are his various theories as to what’s really motivating sceptics:

.... the individual reluctance to give up our comfortable lifestyles… the reality of climate change impinges on core aspects of our identity ...We are told a thousand times a day, notably through advertising, that the way to a happy, successful and meaningful life is through consumption ... the human instinct to shut out or modify a terrifying truth ... when it comes to disasters, people do not allow themselves to believe what they know...

All these theories are given more space than the central problem which has informed so many sceptics, and which now alarms even warmist scientists: the plain fact that the world isn’t warming in a way consistent with the theory that man is heating the world with his gases.

Here is the only nod the writer gives to the science - let alone the fakery, fraud, censorship and bullying by warmist scientists - which actually makes all his psychoanalysing so much effrontery:

Last week, a private exchange of emails among climate scientists stoked a firestorm of skepticism after it was hacked and posted on the Web. The memos expressed frustration at the scientists’ inability to explain what they described as a temporary slowdown in warming...

That’s it.

In fact, that’s true denialism. And that’s the point where we may begin to speculate on the psychological state of not sceptics, but this writer.
===
Going Google-eyed over Copenhagen
Andrew Bolt
Google Australia still doesn’t autosuggest Climategate, despite having more than 16.5 million results. I guess the Google Australia staff were simply far too busy, having to compose this appeal for support for the Copenhagen warmist summit.
===
NERD FOILED, FARCE SHUNNED
Tim Blair
The WSJ’s James Taranto notes this AP story – “Rudd had wanted the legislation passed before he attends next week’s U.N. summit on climate change in Copenhagen so he could portray Australia as a world leader on the issue” – and responds:

The AP makes Rudd sound like an insecure high school student, doing something foolish merely in order to look cool. But what’s really astonishing is that this is described as if it were a perfectly reasonable way for adults to behave.

In other summit news, James Hansen won’t be taking a private jet to Copenhagen – or any other means of transportation:

A leading scientist acclaimed as the grandfather of global warming has denounced the Copenhagen summit on climate change next week as a farce.

James Hansen, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Insitute for Space Studies, told The Times that he planned to boycott the UN conference because it was seeking a counter-productive agreement to limit emissions through a “cap and trade” system.

Not only is the science unsettled, so too are the scientists. Where’s the consensus? And over at Ace’s: Iowahawk explains the cult of the Virgin Gaia.
===
CLIMATE BUNNIKINS
Tim Blair
A perfect word to describe desperate, superheated attempts at swatting away Climategate: Debuniking!

(Via Treacher, who writes: “Hey, my typing fingers would be shaky too if I was watching my dreams die.")

UPDATE. From Leonard Nimoy’s fear of global cooling to poley bears from heaven … Ed Driscoll presents a quick history of Bunnikins Panic:

UPDATE II. Hockey stick chipmunk Michael Mann gets with the debuniking.
===
Turnbull’s revenge looks more like suicide
Andrew Bolt
Malcolm Turnbull demonstrates again why he’s not fit to lead. Now his angry email exchange with his former deputy, Julie Bishop, have been leaked to make her seem two-faced and untrustworthy, even though they reveal that Bishop showed a loyalty to Turnbull that this megalomaniac could not return.

Warning: entrust Turnbull with no private emails, and no confidences. Not that I’m accusing Turnbull of leaking them, of course. I mean, it might have been Bishop instead, right?

(Note: interesting that the ABC and Age show far more interest in Turnbull’s leaked emails than in these.)
===

A Cuban-American Warns St. Louis Tea Party About the Dangers of Socialism

A St. Louis Cuban-American warned Tea Party Patriots of the dangers of socialism at the Holiday Tea Party in November 2009.

Headlines Wednesday 2nd December 2009

As nations gather in Copenhagen next Monday to debate global climate change policy that will affect the daily lives of all Americans, the basic science behind the initiative is being questioned — by the scientists, themselves.


Terrorist Willie Brigitte will be freed from jail having served less than half his sentence for conspiring to blow up our only nuclear reactor and power grid

Abbott's focus on battlers, jobs
LIBERAL leader to portray PM as a big spender whose climate change policies will destroy jobs.

South Australia 'heading for crisis'

DEMAND for workers will outstrip supply from 2012, when one-third of South Australia's workforce reaches retirement age, new research reveals.

Afghan Surge Over 6 Months
Obama will announce he is sending 30,000 U.S. troops to be deployed over six months, and plans to discuss endgame for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan

Is 'Imperfect' Bill Dems' Perfect Solution?
As Senate digs in for weeks of health care debate, some push to settle for 'imperfect' bill in order to get it passed

Nathan Rees on borrowed time as Premier

STATE Labor Party bosses are believed to have privately withdrawn support for Premier Nathan Rees, the final sign that his days may be numbered.

Cop Killer Shot Dead
Seattle police kill career criminal Maurice Clemmons, who gunned down four officers in a coffee shop

Mum smothers baby while breastfeeding
A BABY girl has died after her mum fell asleep as she breastfed her on a flight across the Atlantic.

Parents hire private eyes to spy on kids
PARENTS are hiring detectives to spy on their kids, concerned they're into sex and drugs.

What had us reaching for the keyboard
SWINE flu, stimulus package, Lady Gaga and croquembouche among our most Googled terms.

Comedian caught in dumb and dumber plot
THIEVES tried to steal $575k from Ricky Gervais by using a photo from The Office on a passport.

Greedy Westpac spoils Christmas

OUTRAGED home buyers branded Westpac the Christmas scrooge after the bank almost doubled yesterday's official interest rate rise.

Fears grow over killer bug
STUDENTS infected with a potentially deadly virus are victims of a more virulent strain of it - and doctors fear more cases.

Woman's DUI reading stuns police
A YOUNG woman has stunned police by recording a blood alcohol content of 0.385 - one of the highest levels ever recorded, at 19 times over the limit.
=== Journalists Corner ===

From troop levels to our timetable for victory, Obama maps out his strategy for success!
Fox News has Live Coverage of the President's Address!
=== Comments ===
Man of the people who could be Rudd’s worst nightmare
Piers Akerman
NEW Opposition Leader Tony Abbott offers Australian voters their first real political choice since the 2007 election. - It is good to see a conservative getting a go. The Liberal party does not have defined factions like the ALP, but I trust someone with the same kind of scruples as Mr Howard or Mr Greiner. Already The Age is getting upset and calling him a liar for correctly calling the interest rate hike for what it is .. Rudd's fault. - ed.
===
Afghanistan and Iran Causing President Obama Major Problems
By Bill O'Reilly
As you may know, President Obama will address the nation Tuesday night, telling the world he will send more troops to Afghanistan but also that he'll demand the Karzai government stop the massive corruption going on over there.

I mean, we simply cannot have American service people dying so Afghan war lords can sell heroin.

Tuesday night at West Point, the president will try to sell the world that the Afghan war is an international cause, but that's a joke. A few nations are fighting, but very few.

Once again, the USA is carrying the heavy load against the Taliban terrorists and their Al Qaeda pals.

The weakness of the world is also what's driving the Iranian mullahs. As predicted, Iran is defying the United Nations, saying it will not cooperate with inspectors trying to inhibit the mullahs from building nuclear weapons. After years of BS, the U.N. has finally voted to censure Iran, greatly amusing the mullahs who could not care less.

So President Obama is looking at a bad situation in Afghanistan and a worse scenario in Iran as he again tries to rally the world to help out.

In its lead editorial Monday, The Wall Street Journal says: "Until the president, his advisers and the Europeans realize that only punitive sanctions or military strikes will force [Iran] to reconsider its nuclear ambitions, an emboldened Islamic republic will continue to march confidently toward a bomb, over Barack Obama's best intentions."

The very liberal New York Times has also editorialized: "There is no military solution here. But Iran's repressive leaders cannot be allowed to threaten the rest of the world with a nuclear weapon."

The Times believes international pressure and sanctions will stop the mullahs. I do not believe that. Only a naval blockade that drastically limits Iran from importing goods might bring the Iranians around.

President Obama is positioning himself as a negotiator, and that's fine up to a point. The worst thing the USA could do is to start yet another fight without exhausting all other options.

But as Stratfor reports, the Iranian mullahs, Putin and others believe the president is weak and therefore will continue to defy him until something changes.

Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a huge toll on America, especially on the military and their families. We are not in a position of strength right now.

What a mess.
===
STICK TO GOLF
Tim Blair
Visit a doctor, cop a lecture:
Doctors should give patients advice on climate change, a leading body of medical experts has claimed … their controversial plan would see GPs and nurses give out advice to their patients on how to lower their carbon footprint.
===
ALL GOOD
Tim Blair
The Abbott era begins:

Tony Abbott will steer the Liberal Party back to its conservative roots with a 2010 election campaign portraying Kevin Rudd as a Whitlamesque big spender whose climate change policies will smash Australian jobs.

The new Opposition Leader’s first act after ousting Malcolm Turnbull in a partyroom vote yesterday was to scrap his party’s support for Labor’s carbon emissions trading scheme, which he dismissed as “a great big tax”.

And Mr Abbott immediately moved to repair the Liberals’ shattered relations with the Nationals, embracing their contempt for the ETS after months of Mr Turnbull dismissing their views as irrelevant.

As well, Abbott promises sharper policies on border protection and industrial relations. Also good: Abbott is “a hate figure among several constituencies: feminists, aggressive secularists, climate change believers and many middle-ground progressives.”
===
BEGIN THE INCERNCRATION
Tim Blair
Could Malcolm Turnbull be the first political victim of Warmergate? Possibly; those CRU emails wouldn’t have helped him. But nor would the 400,000 or so emails and calls estimated to have arrived at Coalition offices over the past two months.

Turnbull went into full-tilt greenist mode after consulting British conservative leader David Cameron in late September, so it’s only right that carbon-minded BritCons are now facing the lash of reason themselves. The mob awaits:

Two of the main protagonists over in Australia are employees of Murdoch – an Andrew Bolt and Tim BLair - they are whiping up a virtual lynch mob baying for the incerncration of AGW advocates -

All advocates will be incerncrated. This is my pledge.

UPDATE. Mark Steyn on Turnbull: “Signing on to the climate hooey in effect deprived the Australian people of any choice on the most pressing issue of the day.”

UPDATE II. Other causes of Turnbull’s ousting:

A middle ear virus called labrynthitis and an informal vote cost Malcolm Turnbull his leadership yesterday.

I caution against linking middle ear viruses and informal votes to global warming.
===
CAT ON A COP
Tim Blair
A rare sighting of the Texan Law Tabby:

===
ROAD TO DA MADNESS
Tim Blair
Scroll down for calming beach views! Jules Crittenden explores Charles Johnson’s crazy hatred.
===
THIS HAS ALL BEEN EXPLAINED
Tim Blair
NYT paranoia pod Paul Krugman clears up that trifling Warmergate matter:

It’s not – read – this has all been explained. What he meant is they want to put a start on it. We have an end to it, we don’t have a start on it. There’s a lot of loose use of language when you’re just talking among each other. And what (inaudible) really meant, deleting would be meant that, you know, we don’t know when this thing started, because we don’t have very good data back then. There weren’t any weather stations. And that’s what the context was.

Click for video. Warning: crazy eyes.
===
RIGHT THE FIRST TIME
Tim Blair
SMH crylady Marian Wilkinson:

At the recent United Nations climate summit in New York, Barack Obama told his fellow leaders that ‘’the threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent and it is growing’’. The Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, calls the threat ‘’catastrophic’’, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, believes addressing it is ‘’crucial for the future of mankind’’.

Just months ago Tony Abbott described the same threat as ‘’absolute crap’’.

Yesterday the new Liberal leader backpedalled just a little by saying his words were ‘’hyberbole’’ for debate.

I’m annoyed too, Marian. He shouldn’t have backpedalled at all.
===
CRICKET IS DESTROYING THE PLANET
Tim Blair
Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sets a fine example for his Copenhagen-bound carbonite clan:

So strong is his love for cricket that his colleagues recall the time the Nobel winner took a break during a seminar in New York and flew in to Delhi over the weekend to attend a practice session for a match before flying back. Again, he flew in for a day, just to play that match.

Meanwhile, climate crawlers are changing schedules:

An administration official says some world leaders may change their schedules so they can attend an upcoming climate conference the same day as President Barack Obama.

Kevin Rudd may have another chance to meet his mortal enemy, the so-called most popular politician on earth:

===
The game suddenly changes
Andrew Bolt
I sense Paul Kelly is softening, having just seen how electrifying an opposition to a great green tax can be - and how the public mood is shifting.

Kelly on May 16:

The Liberals need to retreat from their madness in threatening to block the carbon emission scheme bills, a manifest act of political suicide. This will become the decisive test of Turnbull’s leadership...To this goal, the Liberals should sanction, if necessary, the Nationals voting against the carbon scheme bills with the Liberals voting for the bills… The Liberal Party needs to remember that you can win elections by “giving prime ministers their dreams”.

Kelly today:

Yet Abbott’s election, like that of any new leader, offers an opportunity. It cleans the slate. It means the public listens anew. It guarantees the Coalition base will be ignited in an unpredictable populist crusade with Abbott and Barnaby Joyce terrifying the nation about Rudd as a big spending, big taxing Whitlamite, reckless in his pursuit of climate change orthodoxies…

Abbott’s success depends on changing the politics of climate change and the momentum is shifting in his direction, though Abbott’s is still a minority position… Abbott is ... a danger to Rudd because he disbelieves the orthodoxy that action now on an emissions trading scheme is an election winner. Abbott will force Rudd to make the case all over again.

But let’s just address what will become a political meme. Spot who is truly running a scare campaign, and one informed by a great lie:

Kevin Rudd:

The Government took a plan to tackle climate change to the last election, to tackle the risks climate change poses to our planet, and especially to the health, lifestyle and livelihoods of our children…

Temperatures in Australia rising by around five degrees by the end of the century.... A fall in irrigated agricultural production in the Murray Darling Basin of over 90 per cent by 2100… Storm surges and rising sea levels – putting at risk over 700,000 homes and businesses around our coastlines… Our Gross National Product dropping by nearly two and a half per cent through the course of this century from the devastation climate change would wreak on our infrastructure alone.

Tony Abbott:

This is a $120-billion tax on the Australian public and that is just for starters. We have heard from the Independent Pricing Regulator in NSW just yesterday that this ETS would add 30 per cent to the people of NSW’s power bills… I am not frightened of an election on this issue, because as far as many, many millions of Australians are concerned, what the Rudd Government’s ETS looks like is a great big tax to create a great big slush fund to provide politicised hand outs by a giant bureaucracy.

Let’s face it: any politician who claims that the world will end in a fireball if you don’t vote for them can’t complain about the scare tactics of their opponents.

UPDATE

In his typically and attractively elegant prose, former Treasurer Peter Costello explains exactly why Turnbull was a disaster - and why his Senators could not ignore the grassroots fury at having their party hijacked by the Left:

The Liberal supporters who work in the branches and hand out the cards on election day will compromise on policy if they think it will lead to government and the chance to implement bigger political objectives. But they do not see it as much of a trade to betray their policy beliefs in a losing cause.

The grass roots of the Liberal Party are emphatically opposed to the Rudd Government legislation on emissions trading… They do not believe it is the job of Liberal MPs to get Labor’s legislation through the Senate… It should not surprise that senators are particularly sensitive on this issue. Senators are selected by the party’s activists and are therefore especially sensitive to the views of the party membership…

Turnbull promised to promote unity. But it is hard to think of any step he took to implement it. It is hard to think of any time when the party has been so deeply riven…

The disunity is a consequence of how the (warming) issue has been managed and broadened out to concerns about the management of the party in general. I have never seen a Liberal leader attack senior colleagues in the way Turnbull did at the weekend. Turnbull’s attacks have been sharper and inflicted more damage on his colleagues than Kevin Rudd ever did.

Now the Turnbull experiment is over… The party must lock in behind (Abbott) and move on. And to do that, the past year is best buried and forgotten along with the madness of the Hewson and the Latham eras.
===
Being green gives you a licence to lie
Andrew Bolt
If the evidence of man-made warming is so clear, why all the wild exaggerations and falsehoods?

Take the latest column of environment writer Fred Pearce in the Guardian (I’ve bolded the false claims and unsupported hype):

Australia is the hottest and driest continent on Earth. Parts have been embroiled in record drought for the past decade, leaving reservoirs empty and agriculture decimated…

Aussie scientists were among the first to warn about global warming. Back in 1988, they printed off posters showing the fin-shaped roof of the Sydney Opera House poking out of a blue sea…

Either the world adopts tough emissions cuts – in which case demand for Australian coal will shrink and the country will face painful economic reforms to cut its soaring domestic emissions. Or the world fails to come up with tough emissions cuts – in which case, say its scientists, there is a real risk of the entire nation becoming uninhabitable.
===
At last a fight over this mad tax
Andrew Bolt

PURE fluke, of course. But the Liberals have voted to stand up at last and fight.

From his very first press conference as the new Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott showed how lucky the Liberals were to somehow pick him in a voting accident.

Abbott, using plain sentences we’d never heard from Malcolm Turnbull, said the Liberals would no longer agree to pass the Rudd Government’s emissions trading scheme. Not now, at least - and almost surely not ever.

Instead, Abbott took this scheme that Turnbull so disastrously backed, and showed how to use it as a weapon not against the divided Liberals - but against the reckless government that had dreamt it up.

You know this ETS, which 80 per cent of voters polled by Galaxy last week said they don’t understand?

They’ll sure understand it now that Abbott is there to explain it to them.

Tell me if Turnbull ever described Kevin Rudd’s scheme to force us off carbon-based power as well as Abbott did yesterday: “This is a $120 billion tax on the Australian public and that is just for starters.

“We have heard from the Independent Pricing Regulator in NSW just yesterday that this ETS would add 30 per cent to the people of NSW’s power bills ...

“What the Rudd Government’s ETS looks like is a great big tax, o create a great big slush fund o provide politicised handouts by a giant bureaucracy.”

And every word true.
===
The Age of Seeming
Andrew Bolt
THE AIDS ribbons were the first red flag of this Age of Seeming - this great explosion of public sanctimony.

For a long while, no celebrity dared turn up at a big do without wearing that loop of red ribbon to show they cared.

Was a single AIDS patient actually saved by this flaunting of compassion?

Don’t be silly. These ribbons were for advertising the wearer’s good heart, not the sufferer’s weeping sores.

It was weird the way they suddenly vanished. Do edicts on the cause-du-jour get published in Vanity Fair, so the fashionable don’t risk turning up to an event caring about the wrong thing?

How mortifying if Cate Blanchett was the only one in a room of red AIDS ribbons to be wearing the brown ribbon of Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

But if red ribbons vanished, this new virus of “consciousness raising” stayed, mutating into ever more offensively reproachful forms.

Only last week, I watched Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the now deposed opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, boast they’d taken the following oath, which they urged all other men to swear, too:
===
Hand it to hustling Gore
Andrew Bolt
What a gravy train is pulling into Copenhagen:

“Have you ever shaken hands with an American vice president? If not, now is your chance. Meet Al Gore in Copenhagen during the UN Climate Change Conference,” notes the Danish tourism commission, which is helping Mr. Gore promote “Our Choice,” his newest book about global warming in all its alarming modalities.

Price? 5,999 Danish kroners or $1300.
===
Climategate: two investigated as new coverup exposed
Andrew Bolt
Here is the lastest news on the scandal that the ABC’s Jon Faine said was too helpful to “conspiracy theorists” to even report:

Britain’s University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.

The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.

Pennsylvania State University is investigating another of the Climategate scientists - Michael “Hockey Stick” Mann.

Here, now, is the latest example of how the Climategate conspiracy suppressed evidence that their data was flawed and faked - which in this case meant temperature rises were exaggerated by not allowing properly for the fact that concreted cities are naturally warmer. Mathametician Douglas Keenan:

Some of the emails leaked in Climategate discuss my work. Following is a comment on that, and on something more important.

In 2007, I published a peer-reviewed paper alleging that some important research relied upon by the IPCC (for the treatment of urbanization effects) was fraudulent. The emails show that Tom Wigley — one of the most oft-cited climatologists and an extreme warming advocate — thought my paper was valid. They also show that Phil Jones, the head of the Climatic Research Unit, tried to convince the journal editor not to publish my paper.

After my paper was published, the State University of New York — where the research discussed in my paper was conducted — carried out an investigation. During the investigation, I was not interviewed — contrary to the university’s policies, federal regulations, and natural justice. I was allowed to comment on the report of the investigation, before the report’s release.

But I was not allowed to see the report. Truly Kafkaesque.

The report apparently concluded that there was no fraud. The leaked files contain the defense used against my allegation, a defense obviously and strongly contradicted by the documentary record. It is no surprise then that the university still refuses to release the report. (More details on all of this — including source documents — are on my site.)

My paper demonstrates that by 2001, Jones knew there were severe problems with the urbanization research. Yet Jones continued to rely on that research in his work, including in his work for the latest report of the IPCC.

If you think the IPCC processes are too strict to be corrupted by such disgraceful practices, let Madhav Khandekar show how a mere typo had the IPCC predicting a melting away of glaciers in 30 years, rather than 350:

Predictably, the IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri reacted angrily [to Indian research denying warming was melting Himalayan glaciers] citing the IPCC 2007 climate change reports which asserted that the (Himalayan) glaciers are receding faster than in any other part of the world and if the present rate ( of melting) continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps even sooner is very high if the earth keeps warming at the current rate. ...

First, where did this number 2035 (the year when glaciers could vanish) come from?

According to Prof Graham Cogley (Trent University, Ontario), a short article on the future of glaciers by a Russian scientist (Kotlyakov, V.M., 1996...). estimates 2350 as the year for disappearance of glaciers, but the IPCC authors misread 2350 as 2035 in the Official IPCC documents, WGII 2007 p. 493!

The scale of this scandal grows greater and more bizarre by the day.
===
Rudd’s great green tax is verrückt
Andrew Bolt
I’m glad to see how much my German has improved since I was as Adelaide University:

Bolt argumentiert: ”Ich finde es verrückt, dass wir diese CO2-Steuer einführen, die es in keinem anderen Land gibt, die für das Klima nutzlos ist und das, obwohl führende Klimawissenschaftler inzwischen sagen, dass sich die Erde gar nicht erwärmt, sondern in Wahrheit abkühlt.”

How inspiring, to see Abbott’s win yesterday being reported around the world as a victory for global warming sceptics, and perhaps another reason for other political leaders to take heed. Another “but he’s naked” moment in this Emperor’s New Tax story.
===
Climategate: Keep spreading the news
Andrew Bolt
Finally, the Climategate scientists produces a real hockeystick.

Meanwhile, Google hits on ”Climategate” now top 13 million, as the outlets such as The Age and the ABC continue to run dead on the greatest scandal in modern science.
===
ETS ASSUMES ROOM TEMPERATURE
Tim Blair
The Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme has been defeated in the Senate. Hilariously, Labor is now trying to frame opposition to the ETS as a scare campaign; this would be the same mob that insists our children, grandchildren, coastlines, cities, wildlife, health and economy are all at risk from climate change.
===
Rudd’s great tax on everything is defeated
Andrew Bolt
How close was that bullet? A mad new tax is voted down, thanks only to Tony Abbott’s one-vote win over Malcolm Turnbull yesterday:

KEVIN Rudd has lost his bid to deliver an emissions trading scheme in Australia before talks in Copenhagen but won an early election trigger after the Senate formally rejected the laws again today.

Just two Liberal senators broke ranks with a clear mandate among Coalition MPs to delay an ETS and voted with Labor on an emissions trading scheme

So which two Liberal Senators voted against reason, against the party’s clear decision and against the national interest?

Queensland Liberal Senator Sue Boyce said she could not in good conscience abandon the amendments agreed to by Labor and the Coalition to improve the scheme.... Earlier, Liberal senator Judith Troeth said her experiences in the bush and in farming had convinced her climate change was real.

Troeth can’t even cite in her denial of global cooling anything more that anecdotes about “her experiences in the bush and in farming”.

Good heavens.

Poor Rudd, though. It’s a blow to his hopes of using Copenhagen to lobby for support for his bid to become the UN secretary general.
===
Howard made them lousy artists
Andrew Bolt
Playwright Louis Nowra checks 20 Australian films to see if they could really be as bad as people say:

Nowra writes that Australian films suffer a “monotonous bleakness” and are “so dispiriting that they make Leonard Cohen seem positively cheery” ...

”The consensus was that Australian films were boring, grim and unsatisfying. After watching over 20 films, I had to agree.”...

So far, so much sense. But then Nowra tries to explain this near-uniform grimness - this death of beauty - and either indulges in parody ... or lapses into astonishing stupidty:

Nowra asked himself why films including Last Ride, Lucky Country, Balibo, Beautiful Kate, Van Diemen’s Land and The Combination “suffer from a surfeit of glumness"…

He believes this year’s films are a legacy of the John Howard era. They were developed and financed in the last years of his government and all “express a sense of national impotence”.

“Howard never gave you the sense of enthusiasm and idealism and these films are the last cultural residue of the era… The film and literary people and intellectuals of Australia didn’t know how to deal with Howard so they came out with this bleakness, as if there was nothing they could do any more...”

If Nowra’s theory has any weight, next year’s Australian films will be all-dancing, all-singing festivals of joy unconfined. Can’t wait.

UPDATE

This is all Howard’s fault - script, acting, moaning music and above all that overpowering gloom:

And, of course, this must all be Howard’s doing, too - script, acting, thumping music and above all the overpowering ... gloom?

===
Combet’s angry eyes
Andrew Bolt
Psst. A tip to Labor. I get it that your message is to make sceptics seem like wild-eyed ideologues:

We ultimately sat down with the Opposition, negotiated in good faith, made significant concessions, reached an agreement that was endorsed by the shadow cabinet and the Coalition party room, only to have a bunch of extremists, conspiracy theorists and climate change sceptics undo their own party, pull down their own leader and install Mr Abbott, of course who’s quite an ideologue on many fronts.

But I think that message is better delivered by a Minister who isn’t a former far-Left union extremist whose own eyes are so disconcertingly intense:

===
Don’t mention the Climategate war
Andrew Bolt
A great effort at gatekeeping…

Warmist Tony Jones interviews fellow alarmist Lord Stern on Lateline for nearly 10 minutes without asking him a single question about Climategate, even though their main subject is the silliness of sceptics like Tony Abbott to doubt “the science”.

But if ABC presenters won’t bring up Climategate, Lord Stern discovers the angry public sure will:

EMMA ALBERICI: But Lord Nicholas Stern’s press conference was hijacked by questions about the underlying science of his assumptions after hackers broke into the computer systems of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit last month.

Hijacked? Alberici, another ABC employer, seems upset that the public is doing what should have been done by her colleagues, and asking questions about climate science that badly need answers.

Meanwhile Marian Wilkinson, whose ABC documentary last year predicted a possible loss of all Arctic ice by 2012, complains about Abbott’s rise:

There is no argument that Abbott’s leadership marks the triumphant return of the climate sceptics to the top of the federal Liberal Party.

Wilkinson missed the obvious analogy: Abbott’s rise marks a return of sceptics that’s as crushing to warmists as the return of Arctic ice.
===
Obama orders a fight-retreat in Afghanistan
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama will now have more soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan - 200,000 - than did that warmonger Bush:

US President Barack Obama has ordered 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan ....

Obama is ordering exactly the kind of surge he opposed in Iraq, when it was ordered by George Bush.

Still, good, yes, that Obama (belatedly) shows such determination to fight. But that show of strength is immediately undercut in Obama’s next breath:

After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.

Good grief. Setting such timetables was one sign of weakness that Bush had the courage to resist.
===
Running scared
Andrew Bolt
It’s astonishing how fast the climate is changing - the intellectual and political climate, that is.

Julia Gillard, Penny Wong and Greg Combet are holding a joint press conference to announce that the Government has backed down. There will be no immediate double dissolution election on their great green tax on everything.

What they actually said was that they will introduce into Parliament in February the emissions trading scheme bill - as just amended - to the Parliament next February to give the Liberals “one more chance” to change their minds. (They won’t.)

That means they are not calling a double dissolution election until next February at the very earliest, and probably could not for a while even then while the arguments are again fought out. Indeed:

Ms Gillard said the Government did not intend to call an early poll, even though Labor now has a trigger for a double-dissolution election.

Another clue: Gillard did not wait for Rudd’s return to make this messy call. Or rather, Rudd did not want to say all this himself.

And how did the journalists react? With questions about hollow threats and political theatre.

Abbott should be very pleased with the immediate impact he’s had, and the unmistakable signs of having called a Government bluff. Moreover, his success so far has shown how baseless were Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey’s arguments that the Liberals had no option but to back this great tax or face decimation in a double-dissolution election.
===
SERIOUS JOURNALIST AT WORK
Tim Blair
Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes is deep in conversation with a fake Twitter site.
===
HIJACKED BY QUESTIONS
Tim Blair
The ABC reports:

Nicholas Stern, whose 2006 climate review was like a call to action around the world, has told an audience in London that those who deny that the globe is warming and that human beings are responsible for it are muddled and confused.

Are they as muddled and confused as Stern himself? In the absence of any critical questions from timid journalists, who decline to challenge even his most ridiculous comments, Stern now finds himself confronted by “hijackers”:

Lord Nicholas Stern’s press conference was hijacked by questions about the underlying science of his assumptions after hackers broke into the computer systems of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit last month.

How inconvenient for him.
===
RAPID IS RELATIVE
Tim Blair
The widespread claim:

Most people following the climate change debate are aware that many sources claim that the Himalayan glaciers are disappearing “rapidly” – in fact, that they may disappear by 2035, a mere 25 years from now.

The misread report upon which that claim is based:

The extrapolar glaciation of the Earth will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates – its total area will shrink from 500,000 to 100,000 km² by the year 2350.

Congratulations Mr Abbott, Liberal Party Leader

Everyone was expecting a coronation for Joe Hockey, but instead Tony Abbott has emerged as the surprise winner of the Liberal leadership spill, ensuring the Government's climate plan will be blocked.

Tony Abbott is Liberal leader
TONY Abbott has beaten Malcolm Turnbull by just one vote to take over the Liberal party.

Abbott wins toughest job in town
Piers Akerman
Tony Abbott has confounded the Canberra pundits with his defeat of Malcolm Turnbull for the Liberal Party and Opposition leadership.
Joe Hockey, the favoured candidate was knocked out in the first round when the Liberals voted Abbott (35), Turnbull (26) and Hockey (23).
Hockey showed himself to be both reluctant to step up to the challenge and unable to formulate a clear policy on the flawed ETS.
Abbott and Turnbull stood for something, unlike Hockey who had nothing coherent to offer. Hockey has more to offer women’s television than politics.
That Abbott then defeated Turnbull shows that he has some major hurdles to clear before he can front a united party. A tough job but he matured in politics and may be able to rise to this challenge.
During his press conference, Abbott said he’s not frightened of fighting an election on the ETS and he pointed out it is just a giant new tax designed to be run by a vast new bureaucracy.
He has started his leadership by taking the fight to the Rudd government, exposing its lies, attacking its economic strategy. He pointed out that the Rudd government has already wasted more money than the Whitlam government - which was hitherto the most profligate in Australian history.
He hasn’t promised an election victory but he has promised to make the election a real contest. - I am very happy by the result. Mr Abbott has shown sound judgement which was starkly illustrated by the secret ballot immediately following his election to leader. I note the ABC commentator claimed that it wasn't a legitimate majority because of an informal vote (The spruiker gave the example of Mr Gortyn saying he would 'Take that as a no'). I also note an ABC commentator claimed that Lindsay Tanner prophesied this result. Then an ABC commentator asked if Mr Abbott would be like Mr Latham. Clearly the ABC don't get it, but their analysis has been consistently wrong so far, and it would spoil things for that to change.
Mr Abbott does not say everything I believe. He claims that his comment that Climate Change is crap was hyperbolic .. I feel the Climate Change debate is based on a hoax. But we agree the government should not pass the ETS bill right now. We agree the next election can be fought on this issue.
I respected Mr Turnbull and Mr Hockey, but I can not support an ETS. - ed.

IT’S ABBOTT
Tim Blair
Just:

Tony Abbott has won the Liberal Party federal leadership by one vote, replacing Malcolm Turnbull as leader.

Hit the road, ETS.

UPDATE. Or maybe not:

While Mr Abbott has pledged to deliver an anti-ETS policy as a condition of his leadership, up to eight Liberal MPs are threatening to cross the floor and vote with Labor.

Kevin Rudd only needs seven Liberal MPs to vote for an ETS in the Senate and it will become law.

Turnbull press conference in a few minutes. Stand by for mentions of children, grandchildren, planet etc.

UPDATE II. Turnbull faces the press. Not going to resign from Parliament. Undecided about next election, however. Won’t serve on front bench. Thanks colleagues who stuck with him in leadership ballot and “thousands of Australians” who’ve supported “the principled stand I’ve taken”. Disappointed about “dramatic change of policy” re ETS. Says “I’ve always had the courage of my convictions”.

UPDATE III. Abbott press conference. Tough day for some of his colleagues. Humbled and daunted by what’s ahead; also exhilarated. Wounds need to be healed. Will aim to be a “consultative and collegial” leader. Pays tribute to Turnbull: “We’ve mostly been friends.”

And now the important bit:

On the ETS: it’s an “energy taxation scheme.” The ETS is “a $120 billion tax on the Australian public, and that is just for starters.” Says “we can’t just wave it through the Parliament – it would be grossly irresponsible”.

Says that a secret ballot has “approved this course of action.” Will oppose ETS in the Senate this week. Oppositions are “not there to get legislation through.” Says he is not frightened of an election on ETS. Says this three times.

Defines ETS as a “great big tax to create a great big slush fund to finance bureaucracy” and characterises taxpayer waste under the Rudd government as “worse than Whitlam.” On broadband strategy: “Not even Gough Whitlam would be as crazy as that.” Promises to be “an alternative, not an echo.”

Abbott wins
Andrew Bolt
Tony Abbott wins - the only Liberal contender of the three that opposed Kevin Rudd’s great green tax. But the win over Turnbull was just 42 to 41, with Fran Bailey absent.

Abbott wins also because Turnbull split the vote. In the first round ballot, Hockey was knocked out, no doubt robbed of votes by support for Turnbull. But Abbott also wins because Hockey could not stand for anything.

It’s the best the Liberals could hope for in terms of candidate, perhaps. But the worst in the margin of the win.

UPDATE

If Sky News is the measure of the collective mood of the press gallery, and it usually is, the media assassination of Abbott now begins. Hockey was the gallery’s man.

UPDATE 2

This is a win for policy above all - a policy of delaying a vote for Rudd’s great green tax. But will enough hard-line Liberal warmists now defy Abbott in the Senate and give Labor its tax? I would hope and expect not, but who can predict anything these days? Sky News reports that the partyroom voted to delay the tax, or vote it down if they cannot delay it.

UPDATE 3

Another big winner is Julie Bishop, who remains deputy leader. Good for Abbott, because she is a delayer as well.

UPDATE 4

The first round votes went Abbott 35, Turnbull 26 and Hockey 23. Turnbull killed Hockey, and with it the passing of Rudd’s great green tax.

UPDATE 5

Sceptic Kevin Andrews says Kevin Rudd will not dare an early election over his great green tax, which the Liberals will now finally start attacking with an “effective” argument. The tax, not the need to do “something” about “climate change”, will be attacked. That might be all that Abbott dares do, given the split in the party, but it’s still less than what is needed.

UPDATE 6

And against everything that so many in the press gallery insisted - here is the Liberal verdict in a secret ballot on whether to back or defer Rudd’s great green tax. Defer 55, back 29. The fightback has at last begun.

UPDATE 7

Turnbull speaks. Wishes Abbott well. Won’t resign from Parliament. Will consider if he’ll run again at the next election. Won’t serve on the front bench. Won’t comment when asked if he’d run again as leader one day.

Can’t help himself though: he still insists the party must have a “credible policy on climate change”, by which be means his own policy. (Most journalist there will, sadly, agree with him.) Diminishes the meaning of the vote against backing Rudd’s tax, saying it was “inevitable” that many in the party would have decided to back the policy of the man they’d just made leader. On the man goes, saying Abbott’s position will put lots of jobs at risk. (Did Lachlan Harris write his lines?)

UPDATE 8

One Liberal just wrote “No” on their ballot paper. Now let’s see if the Liberal Left can find the seven Senators that Rudd needs to cross the floor and pass his green tax.

UPDATE 9

Hockey stays as shadow treasurer.

UPDATE 10

Abbott speaks. He will be a “consultative and collegial” leader. He is gracious to Turnbull, as Turnbull was not to him. “Malcolm has shone in adversity.”

Already the lines are potent - real fighting words from the Liberals at last: Rudd’s great green tax “is really an energy taxation scheme.” In fact, it is “a $120 billion tax on the Australian public, and that is just for starters.” Power prices will go up, for instance. “We just can’t wave that through the Parliament.”

To the public, Rudd’s scheme is “a great big tax to create a great big slush fund… run by a giant bureaucracy”. Already Rudd has overseen “a waste of money ... worse than Whitlam”.

(See how well the lines come together at last? Good God, why did it take the Liberals two years to nut out lines so clear and so informed by good sense? Does Rudd really want to call that early election now, fighting for a great green tax on everything?)

“I cannot promise victory ... but I can promise a contest.”

Right now the Liberals look like getting off the floor and standing at last for their values. They will fight under Abbott. They may not have the votes yet, but at last they have their pride.

The first media question is by a journalist seemingly astonished that the Liberals can defy the public mood on the emissions scheme. Let’s see where that mood is when the Liberals have finished arguing.

UPDATE 11

Abbott’s first mistake: to give deputy Julie Bishop a cuddle during the press conference and call her a “loyal girl”.

And already he’s facing that debate he’s still not daring to have. A journalist asks: Why did he say at a Liberal branch meeting of heated members that climate change is “crap”?

Answer: “It was a bit of hyperbole. It is not my considered position.... climate change is real.” Humans were contributing, he said, and there was an argument about how much. Which is essentially saying nothing, I guess, except to the ignorant.

And again, Rudd’s emissions scheme is “a great big tax”. Which it is, and which needs to be said again and again.

Reverend Who Witnessed Gladney Beatdown Cannot Believe Misdemeanor Charges Filed For Hate Crime

Harris Himes, the minister who witnessed Kenneth Gladney's beatdown, cannot believe that only misdemeanor charges were filed against the SEIU thugs who beat, stomped on and kicked black vendor Kenneth Gladney at the Russ Carnahan town hall meeting in August.

Headlines Tuesday 1st December 2009

===
First Day of Summer in Sydney
===
Tony Abbott is Liberal leader

TONY Abbott rolls Malcolm Turnbull, then reneges on the climate deal with the Government.

'Sex crime claim hushed up by school'
A 20-year cover up allowed a man to keep teaching after an alleged sex assault, court hears - this headline matches the experience of a Campbelltown based public school teacher - ed.


As Maurice Clemmons remains on the run in Washington state, questions are swirling as to how and why the suspect in the execution of four police officers — an ex-con who faced more than 100 years behind bars — was allowed to live free.

Climate Change Scientists Admit Dumping Data

Scientists at the University of East Anglia have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit CRU was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

Labor rebels risk the boot over a Rees ambush

SENIOR Labor figures are believed to have discussed expelling John Della Bosca and Ian Macdonald from the party if the anti-Rees campaign continues.

'Cocaine' death in doctor's luxury home
POLICE are investigating the death of a young woman, believed to be a prostitute, in a prominent doctor's upmarket apartment.

Generals Get Their Orders
Top military and diplomatic officials get marching orders from Obama ahead of a planned speech where he's expected to outline Afghan war strategy

Whose Job are We Spending to Save?
Many House Dems, facing elections and tough voters, back another round of jobs spending — but what's it bought, so far?

U.N. Green With Power Envy?
As Copenhagen climate change conference nears, reports reveal U.N.'s obsession with being world's primary environmental rules-maker


Bad news fellas but women are happier and more satisfied with their lives than you are - that's the latest theory in how much pleasure the sexes get out of each day. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Rocker hauled off stage for Nazi anthem
PETE Doherty has caused outrage for singing the Nazi anthem at a music festival.

Australians need better sex education
THE number of Australians newly diagnosed with HIV is about 40 per cent higher than it was four years ago, a report shows.
=== Journalists Corner ===

The President's Afghanistan Address!
From troop levels to our timetable for victory, Obama maps out his strategy for success!
===

Happy Holiday Hiring!
We're 'On the Job Hunt' -- Inside the ten companies bringing employment cheer.
===
Bill's Back!
Sex offenders, horrible judges and left-wing media watch out! The holiday's over and America's beat cop is back!
===
Selling His Strategy!
Will America buy the president's new plan for the war in Afghanistan or will a holiday hold up cripple the vote on Capitol Hill?
=== Comments ===
Challenge will leave Turnbull’s head in the sand
Piers Akerman
AS one who supported Malcolm Turnbull’s bid to oust Peter King in the electorate of Wentworth, and his subsequent deposing of former Opposition leader Brendan Nelson, I admit an error in judgment. - I too made those calls. I think my judgement was fine for the time, and I back my judgement now to tear down Mr Turnbull from the leadership for the same reasons I supported him. He was cognizant of current events, but now he seems totally out of touch. - ed.
===
Anger simmers in paradise lost - Life on Christmas Island
Piers Akerman
THE fictional Dr Moreau conducted his bizarre research with men and animals safe from prying eyes on a tropical hide-away. Kevin Rudd conducts his experiments behind secure barbed wire fences on the Australian territory of Christmas Island.
Just 360km from Java but 2600km from Perth, this beautiful islet is now the site of a human laboratory in which the Rudd Labor Government is running a huge social engineering exercise under the guise of the nation’s immigration policy. - Most journalists only find one point to examine, partly because government policy is near the mark, or massaged to appear to be. Instead, Piers, you have found many many good points, and shown how the corrupt government of Rudd has woven them together. I want more migrants to come to Australia, but not this way. Clearly Rudd needed more space when he got rid of those protections from the government of Mr Howard. Maybe Rudd could employ the space provided in those public school halls left empty by the Education Revolution. - ed.
===
FREEDOM LOVED
Tim Blair
Good news from Central America:

Today’s elections in Honduras was a huge victory for democracy and a huge embarrassment for the former leftist President Manuel Zelaya and the Obama White House.?Despite calls from Zelaya urging supporters to boycott and protest the vote, the freedom-loving Hondurans turned out in record numbers.

The elections included an event familiar to Australians:
There was a rupture in the Liberal Party …
===
HUCKABYE
Tim Blair
A former Republican governor is now unlikely to run for the White House in 2012.
===
COALITION OF THE SPILLING
Tim Blair
Following a week during which the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader joined hands to declare economic war on their own country, three candidates – Malcolm Turnbull, Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott – are expected this morning to seek leadership of the Liberal Party. Turnbull is almost certainly gone:

Malcolm Turnbull will offer himself as Australia’s first political martyr to the cause of climate change … Turnbull will go to his political death defending Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme.

He must be ever so proud. Yesterday, Mal Gore was still trying to reshape the party into something his Labor-inclined friends would admire:

“If it is going to be a relevant, credible political organisation, it has to be a progressive political movement.”

Expect similar lines from Turnbull in future Financial Review columns. So, this is where we’re at:

Abbott is the only pure anti-ETS candidate the Liberals have this morning and Turnbull is the only purely pro-ETS candidate. It’s Joe, not Malcolm, who’s in the middle.

That’s the essential formguide.
===
ROTTEN TO THE CORE
Tim Blair
Second thoughts on Warmergate from Clive Crook:

In my previous post on Climategate I blithely said that nothing in the climate science email dump surprised me much. Having waded more deeply over the weekend I take that back.

The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering. And, as Christopher Booker argues, this scandal is not at the margins of the politicised IPCC process. It is not tangential to the policy prescriptions emanating from what David Henderson called the environmental policy milieu. It goes to the core of that process ...

Can I read these emails and feel that the scientists involved deserve to be trusted? No, I cannot.

Read on.
===
Let the peasants walk
Andrew Bolt
A hairshirt lecture from above - as in 35,000 feet above, in business class:

Hotel guests should have their electricity monitored; hefty aviation taxes should be introduced to deter people from flying; and iced water in restaurants should be curtailed, the world’s leading climate scientist has told the Observer.

Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that western society must undergo a radical value shift if the worst effects of climate change were to be avoided. A new value system of “sustainable consumption” was now urgently required, he said.

Of course, this new asecetic lifestyle cannot possibly be imposed on a man as grand as Pachauri, with such crucial work to do to save us from the gases he belches out the back of his jet:

I recently examined a UN document entitled ”Details of Outreach Activities carried out by Chairman IPCC, Dr. R. K. Pachauri Jan ‘07 July ‘08?

Dr Rajendra Pachauri flew at least 443,243 miles on IPCC business in this 19 month period. This business included honorary degree ceremonies, a book launch and a Brookings Institute dinner, the latter involving a flight of 3500 miles.

Add to his business flights this example of “sustainable consumption”:

So strong is his love for cricket that his colleagues recall the time the Nobel winner took a break during a seminar in New York and flew in to Delhi over the weekend to attend a practice session for a match before flying back. Again, he flew in for a day, just to play that match.
===
The bad war was better for us
Andrew Bolt
The “bad” war was less deadly than the “good” one for America’s allies.

More British soldiers have now died in the fighting in Afghanistan than in Iraq. America’s other coalition partners, including Australia, have also had more soldiers die in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

Coalition fatalities in Afghanistan are this year likely to reach nearly double last year’s record high toll.

In contrast, total coalition fatalities in Iraq are likely to be half last year’s record low tolll.

Oddly, the media coverage of the fighting in Afghanistan has been nowhere near as apocalyptic as the coverage was of the fighting in Iraq. It’s almost like the journalists in Iraq had, you know, an agenda.
===
The ABC is told about Climategate
Andrew Bolt
Professor Aynsley Kellow, an Australian IPCC expert reviewer, tells the ABC’s Counterpoint just what a scandal Climategate really is, even if other ABC program refuse to cover it.
===
Just say sorry for your wind
Andrew Bolt
Terry McCrann says there’s a cheaper and more fashionable way to do exactly what Kevin Rudd’s great green tax on everything will do to global emmissions:

Simple, a National Apology on Climate Change. Same effect on global emissions as an ETS, but with zero cost.
===
Rudd is a denier
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s latest lie:

...further delay on climate change equals denial on climate change.

Yes, another disgraceful Rudd lie, unless he’s calling Barack Obama a denier:

Barack Obama acknowledged today that time has run out to secure a binding climate deal at Copenhagen and began moving towards a two-stage process that would delay a legal pact until next year at the earliest.

And unless he’s calling himself a denier, too:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the Government’s emissions trading scheme is being delayed until 2011.

How can anyone believe a single word this liar says?
===
WORKED FOR HIM
Tim Blair
In 1935, John Curtin won the Labor Party leadership by one vote over Frank Forde.
===
The Age declares war
Andrew Bolt
The Age can’t call Kevin Rudd a liar even after he tells the most shameless of his lies in three years of deceit. But it’s waited just four hour before calling Tony Abbott a liar for what is an arguable claim:

Well that didn’t take long: a few minutes into his first news conference Tony Abbott made his first big lie as Liberal Party leader, only to be called on it less than three hours later by no less an authority than the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Reader Brendan adds:

This paper has descended to a joke.

Yes.

A Global Warming Scare

Global Warming has now been revealed as a hoax. The question remains, is this perverse exploitation of young people by (Greenpeace, GetUp!, Australian Ethical, Greens, Amnesty International, AMWU, NSW Teacher's Federation et al) worse because Global warming has been disproved, or just abysmal even if the children were participating in something worthwhile? Note the notes were being handed out by well meaning yr 11 students at a public high school.

Andrew Bolt on exposed climate change emails

Thursday, 26 November 2009
Andrew Bolt from the Herald Sun talks to Alan Jones about the ETS vote and emails exposing the dubious science behind climate change.

Headlines Monday 30th November 2009

Joe Hockey has been a hard man to spot while the media pack has been urged to "leave Malcolm alone" - by Malcolm Turnbull himself. Follow the latest developments live @ The Punch

Hockey holds talks with Turnbull
A DEFIANT Malcolm Turnbull is refusing to step aside, saying he will contest a leadership spill. - pity he didn't contest the ALP that way - ed.

Man wanted over police coffee ambush

A "SCRUFFY" gunman has shot dead four policeman who met in a cafe to go over paperwork.

Operator's bad first day as trains cut
MELBOURNE'S new train operator has cancelled more than a dozen services in its first morning in the job.

Woman 'thrown on tracks' in rail nightmare
A TEENAGER has been charged with throwing a 19-year-old woman on to tracks after an argument allegedly exploded on an inner-Sydney train platform.


Germany prepares to try suspected Nazi guard John Demjanjuk, in what is expected to be the last time the Holocaust will be played out so fully in a courtroom — and, the last time survivors will testify against a man accused of being one of their families' willing executioners.

Joe Hockey ready to step up

LIBERAL MP Joe Hockey is expected to today announce his leadership ambitions.

Iran to Build 10 Nuke Plants
Tehran reportedly approves plan for 10 uranium facilities in direct defiance of U.N. demands that it cut enrichment

Child murderers to avoid jail
CHILDREN who kill will have their final sentence postponed, sometimes until they are adults, under a radical plan being considered by the State Government.

9,000 Marines to Afghanistan?
Obama's Afghan war strategy to reportedly start with 9,000 Marines being deployed to southern Afghanistan

Obama to push Rudd for more troops
Rudd could be asked to send more Australian troops to Afghanistan tomorrow.

Will Tiger Break His Silence?
Authorities hope to speak to golf star, wife today as reports swirl over what happened before Florida car crash

'Shameful' Schoolies to continue
QUEENSLAND Premier Anna Bligh will not scrap the controversial Schoolies festival.

Australians have the biggest homes
AUSTRALIANS have the world's largest houses, beating traditional champion the US.

Tribute to the fire dead
A MINUTE'S silence will be held for the 173 Black Saturday victims on next year's anniversary.

Egypt's Princess Ferial dead

PRINCESS Ferial, the daughter of Egypt's last reigning monarch, has died after a long cancer fight.
=== Comments ===
TV OR NOT TV
Tim Blair
Following their success with light globes, environmeddlers launch a new assault:

Last week, after two years of debate and study, California became the first state to challenge America’s heretofore unquestioned love affair with its TV set. A state panel established the nation’s first energy-consumption limits for TVs up to 58 inches wide. Regulations for larger sets will be phased in later …

At least three other states (Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts) and two national governments (Canada and Australia) then said they, too, would consider energy limits.

Just as well that Australians are buying watchable TVs while they still can:

Retailers and manufacturers are reporting unprecedented demand for flat-screen TVs. There are also forecasts that 2.4 million new TVs will have been sold this year.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,’’ says Lionel Lee, the chief executive at electronics retailer Bing Lee. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I’ve never seen anything like this sort of action. Unit sales are up at least 20 per cent.”

Sales will spike even further once consumers learn of government plans for CFL TV.
===
DECLINE UNHIDDEN
Tim Blair
More data for climate shriekers to discard:

The percentage of Americans who believe global warming is happening has dipped from 80 to 72 percent in the past year …

Among Republicans, belief has plunged from 76 to just 54 per cent. This is in line with global doubting trends, which may be driven by concern over stupid green taxes:

Electricity prices in NSW will soar by a staggering 60 per cent over the next three years, adding more than $400 to the average household power bill.

And Kevin Rudd’s plan to cut greenhouse gases would account for 50 per cent of the increase, according to a secret report with the State Government.

A rational, non-suckish federal opposition might find something useful in this.
===
BETTERMENT OF NATURE
Tim Blair
Tim Flannery – already in Copenhagen; that jet-beating solar canoe of his is one rapid conveyance – offers his view on business:

Many business leaders seem to think it’s enough to look after your employees and make a profit. That describes perfectly well a criminal syndicate, but not a business.

According to Flannery, business folk should ask themselves: “In my daily work do I contribute to the betterment of mankind and nature?” Ask yourself, mate. You’re the one with the local record for frequent flyer points. Readers who themselves run businesses are invited to answer Judge Flannery’s question in comments.
===
ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO TREACH
Tim Blair
Jim Treacher enjoys a friendly chat with the global warming evangelist who lives in his head. That chatty skull-dweller sounds much like the warmy who bailed me up at Saturday night’s party. Also from Treacher, tweets worth repeating:

• In the ‘80s, Tipper Gore wanted to tell us which music to listen to. 25 years later, her husband wants to tell us how to do everything else.

• So Tiger Woods’ wife found out he was cheating on her & went after him with a golf club? Good thing he’s not a baseball player.

• Scientists really can work miracles. They turned a javelin into a hockey stick and Al Gore into a superstar.

• Climategate is a story about computer hacking in much the same way Watergate was a story about parking garages.

• Remember when reporters provided their audience with news, not the other way around?

===
SOLDIER DRONED
Tim Blair
Professional war protester Cindy Sheehan demonstrates her famous support for the troops. The fun kicks in at about 1.50. These days Sheehan is opposed to unmanned drones, which would describe most of her Code Pink associates.
===
Hockey prepares. I’d guess it’s on
Andrew Bolt
Samantha Maiden:

IN a strong sign he is about to throw his hat into the Liberal leadership ring Joe Hockey is holding talks at his Sydney home with Peter Dutton.

Mr Dutton is viewed as a potential candidate for the deputy Liberal leader’s spot. The pair arrived in separate cars today and made no comment as they entered the Hockey family home.

===
SLOW TIMES
Tim Blair
“What should we make of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed 13 innocent people at Fort Hood?” asks Thomas Friedman. He’s a New York Times columnist, so he takes a while longer than most of us to work things out:

Here’s my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced — I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam,” and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric famous for using the Web to support jihadist violence against America — the more it seems that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by “The Narrative.”

By “The Narrative”, Friedman means the general anti-Western, anti-democratic sentiment clung to throughout the Arab-Muslim world:

This narrative suits Arab governments. It allows them to deflect onto America all of their people’s grievances over why their countries are falling behind. And it suits Al Qaeda, which doesn’t need much organization anymore — just push out The Narrative over the Web and satellite TV, let it heat up humiliated, frustrated or socially alienated Muslim males, and one or two will open fire on their own. See: Major Hasan.

So much for the “pre-traumatic shock” theory and other Islam-dodging excuses offered in the wake of Hasan’s slaughter. At the NYT, it takes nearly an entire month for a fellow’s blindingly obvious motives to become clear. Fog lifted, Friedman ends with a request that Barack Obama deliver this speech to an Islamic audience:

Why is it that a million Muslims will pour into the streets to protest Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, but not one will take to the streets to protest Muslim suicide bombers who blow up other Muslims, real people, created in the image of God? You need to explain that to us — and to yourselves.

The first of 688 reader responses to Friedman’s piece: “Pretty ironic that Tom Friedman would complain about The Narrative in a paper that is guilty as any other for promoting it.”
===
STARVED OF COVERAGE
Tim Blair
Fairfax environment writer Tom Arup reports:

On the lawns of Parliament house there has been a small tent where a man is fasting for climate change. I heard him on the radio early last week. He was described by the host as a 29-year old Melbourne University student. ‘‘29-year old student!’’ I proclaimed in my head at the time, following the thought up with something conservative about getting a job.

The faster’s marketing person has been hassling me about a story for two weeks. I am amazed that even fasters have media representation.

Paul Connor is putting the “star” into “starvation”. Our favourite Gaia zombie is now 23 days into his chompless protest:

Viewers may be concerned at Connor’s health, given how rambling and disjointed he seems (also, he’s reading Peter Singer). But he sounded exactly the same before he put the cutlery away.
===
Turnbull out by tomorrow
Andrew Bolt
Hockey will be the Opposition Leader tomorrow:

MALCOLM Turnbull has declared he will contest the Liberal leadership after Joe Hockey told him today he would seek the top job.
===
Swiss cut minarets down to size
Andrew Bolt
Europe is pushing back:

Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on minarets on Sunday, barring construction of the iconic mosque towers in a surprise vote that put Switzerland at the forefront of a European backlash against a growing Muslim population....

The referendum by the nationalist Swiss People’s Party labeled minarets as symbols of rising Muslim political power that could one day transform Switzerland into an Islamic nation. The initiative was approved 57.5 to 42.5 per cent by some 2.67 million voters. Only four of the 26 cantons or states opposed the initiative, granting the double approval that makes it part of the Swiss constitution.

Muslims comprise about six per cent of Switzerland’s 7.5 million people…

“The minaret is a sign of political power and demand, comparable with whole-body covering by the burqa, tolerance of forced marriage and genital mutilation of girls,” the sponsors said.

===
You’ll pay - and for what?
Andrew Bolt
Labor will pay for this great green tax on everything:

ELECTRICITY prices in NSW will soar by a staggering 60 per cent over the next three years, adding more than $400 to the average household power bill.

And Kevin Rudd’s plan to cut greenhouse gases would account for 50 per cent of the increase, according to a secret report with the State Government.

In alarming news for struggling families, the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal is recommending the hefty rise in power bills from next July… IPART is disputing Canberra’s forecast that an Emissions Trading Scheme will only add 7 per cent to electricity prices in 2011/12, rising to 12 per cent the following year. IPART expects the impact of the CPRS will be closer to 30 per cent by mid-2013.

Remember that this is just a downpayment on the true cost of this mad tax. You won’t just pay higher power prices. You will also pay more for everything that needed electricity, too - processed foods, clothes, cars, steel, concrete, train rides… You’ll need to pay more for the people who will lose their jobs because of this tax. You’ll pay more for the uneconomic “green” power we’ll be forced to use instead of cheap coal-fired power. You’ll pay for the gassy companies demanding compensation for going broke. You’ll pay for the billions Kevin Rudd is spending overseas to bribe pooer countries to cut gases, too.

You’ll pay. I suspect you’ll one day make Labor pay, too. And make the Liberals pay who said this great green tax on everything was a good idea - because they did not dare say no.
===
Climate Gate Corruption
Andrew Bolt
JR Dunn, in a brilliant anaylsis of Climategate and the corruption of the climate science, gives Hockey all the reasons he now desperately needs to change his mind on man-made global warming.

First Dunn lists just some of the incredible “mistakes” made the Climategate scientists and their allies that suggests not just atonishingly sloppy work, but an entire culture of exaggeration and evangelism that is utterly hostile to good science:
===
What’s burning is not the planet, but those eyes
Andrew Bolt

Green activist and actor Ed Begley Jr just can’t cope with the revelations in the Climategate emails. Facts meet faith and ... well, stand back, or be splattered by exploding brain matter.

Wait until these guys read the Climategate emails. They’ll sure have something to cry over then:

===
Making Sweden warmer
Andrew Bolt
We’ve already seen serious questions raised about the way a warming rise was calculated in New Zealand. Willis Eschenbach now describes how the Climategate scientists misled Sweden’s Professor Wibjorn Karlen about the temperatures over Nordic countries, too, when he asked how the IPCC had produced graphics like these for northern Europe:

What puzzled Karlen was that the data he was looking at for Nordic countries in fact showed no warming above what had been witnessed in the 1930s:

Wrote Karlen to the Climategate scientists:

It is hard to find evidence of a drastic warming of the Arctic. It is also difficult to find evidence of a drastic warming outside urban areas in a large part of the world outside Europe. However the increase in temperature in Central Europe may be because the whole area is urbanized (see e.g. Bidwell, T., 2004: Scotobiology – the biology of darkness. Global change News Letter No. 58 June, 2004).

So, I find it necessary to object to the talk about a scaring temperature increase because of increased human release of CO2. In fact, the warming seems to be limited to densely populated areas.

Eschenbach then describes the snow job.

UPDATE

Remember this graph produced by Climategate scientist Michael Mann - reproduced in the IPCC report that he and other Climategate scientists also co-authored - which claimed to prove it had never been hotter?

That, too, was a fake, first exposed not by peer review but by a retired mining executive, whose findings were confirned by an inquiry commissioned by a committee of the US Congress, as Bishop Hill describes in his brilliant history of the scandal.

But here is a fascinating interactive graph that summarises the overwhelming evidence that the world was hotter just 800 years ago. Click here for the mouseover interaction feature that calls up each graph:

UPDATE 2

London Imperial College researcher Michael Schrage in the Financial Times sums up the meaning of the scandal:

Dubbed “climate-gate” by global warming sceptics, the most outrageous East Anglia email excerpts appear to suggest respected scientists misleadingly manipulated data and suppressed legitimate argument in peer-reviewed journals.

These claims are forcefully denied, but the correspondents do little to enhance confidence in either the integrity or the professionalism of the university’s climatologists. What is more, there are no denials around the researchers’ repeated efforts to avoid meaningful compliance with several requests under the UK Freedom of Information Act to gain access to their working methods. Indeed, researchers were asked to delete and destroy emails. Secrecy, not privacy, is at the rotten heart of this bad behavior by ostensibly good scientists.

Why should research funding institutions and taxpayers fund scientists who deliberately delay, obfuscate and deny open access to their research? Why should scientific journals publish peer-reviewed research where the submitting scientists have not made every reasonable effort to make their work – from raw data to sophisticated computer simulations – as transparent and accessible as possible? Why should responsible policymakers in America, Europe, Asia and Latin America make decisions affecting people’s health, wealth and future based on opaque and inaccessible science?
===
Flannery drowns in contradictions
Andrew Bolt
Professional warming alarmist Tim Flannery is now in Copenhagen, having yet again taken a jet that belches the gases he wants the rest of us to slash. And he’s furious about Climategate:

Tim Flannery, chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, said the timing of the theft was suspicious. ‘’It reveals the depth to which climate sceptics will go to influence the course of events.’’

Speaking of the depths to which some people sink to influence others, how about Flannery’s record of trying to scare people with the most apocalyptic claims about global warming:

The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009.

So how has that scare panned out?

Hmm. About as accurate as his predictions that Sydney and Brisbane could be out of water, too, and the Arctic out of ice. Why do people believe a single word this shameless scare-merchant says?

If he had any honor he might heed the implications of his admission on the ABC last week:

In the last few years, were there hasn’t been a continuation of that warming trend, we don’t understand all of the factors that create earth’s climate, so there are some things we don’t understand… These people (climate scientists) work with models, computer modelling, when the computer modelling and the real world data disagrees you have a problem, that’s when science gets engaged. What Kevin Trenberth, one of the most respected climate scientist in the world, is saying is, “We have to get on our horses and find out what we don’t know about the system, we have to understand why the cooling is occurring, because the current modelling doesn’t reflect it”.

UPDATE

Christopher Booker explains the three greatest scandals so far in Climategate, and concludes:

Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age.

Tim Flannery, start backpedalling fast, because you will be one who will be held to account.

UPDATE 2

Dr David Evans matches the timing of the temperature rise - and then fall - against the timing of the rise in carbon dioxide emissions. The results immediately cast doubt, he says, on the theory that’s man’s gases cause global warming.

UPDATE 3

Remembering John Daly, the gifted and prescient Tasmanian sceptic whose death was such cheering news to Climategate ringleader Phil Jones.
===
Is all of her indigenous?
Andrew Bolt
Exactly what makes Cattermole “indigenous” and me not?

PERTH model Emily Cattermole is on the way to becoming Australia’s first indigenous supermodel after signing with elite American modelling agency Ford.

What makes all the difference is a grandparent:

A model since the age of 14, Cattermole is the granddaughter of former WA politician Ernie Bridge, who was the first Aboriginal political minister in Australia.

Here’s Ernie:

Could we stop obsessing about racial differences almost invisible to the naked eye, and almost washed out by generations of mixed ancestry? It makes us look a little bit, well, racist.

Oziur - Catch Me by o0o™

Artist: Oziur
Title: Catch Me
Album: Black Promisses
Lyrics and vocals by o0o™
Music by A. Riuz
Videoproductions o0o™
Photography by Hegel

All rights reserved © by o0o™

Headlines Sunday 29th November 2009

U.S., Afghan gov't launch initiative that offers jobs and protection to militants who choose to abandon their fight.


Three tiger sharks more than 4m long had been caught off Queensland this year, with more than 500 sharks snared in total.

Tiger 'in fight with wife over affair'

TIGER Woods crashed his car after allegedly fighting with his wife over reports of an affair.

Joe Hockey calls on Howard for advice
LIBERAL Joe Hockey visited John Howard at his home for advice on whether to run for party leader.

Schoolies week the worst ever - police
POLICE say this year's Schoolies was the most rowdy and drunken in the history of the event.

Make a change - reach out on RUOK? Day
THREE words may be all it takes. It's RUOK? Day, a national day of action for suicide prevention.

Guards fired shots to end riot at prison

PRISON wardens fired shots to quell a riot which was considered the "worst incident in 25 years". - what do you expect when the NSW Govt run jails like schools. - ed.

Mum elated to see Nigel Brennan
THE mother of freed kidnap victim Nigel Brennan has had an emotional and euphoric reunion with her son which has left them both speechless with hugs.

Bomb killed 39 on Russian train
A TERRORIST'S bomb derailed an elite passenger train speeding through the Russian forest.
=== Comments ===
Real grassroots fury putting heat on ETS
Piers Akerman
IT’S a matter of grave concern for stalwart rank-and-file Liberal Party members that Malcolm Turnbull’s number one supporter for his global-warming stance is now no less a figure than Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, while his number two supporter is the former union leader, Greg Combet. - I am very disappointed with Mr Turnbull for his support of the ETS. I want to hold him to his promise of not doing anything that is ineffective. I feel he should give the Australian economy a benefit of a doubt and reject the ETS. I get it that he is tethered to his constituents at Wentworth. Even so, leadership expresses itself, and Mr Turnbull is looking like Fraser or Hewson. I am very disappointed. - ed.
===
Reagan Still Points the Way for Republicans

By James Pinkerton
Today, conservatives and Republicans--not always one and the same, as we have seen recently in New York State--are feeling rightfully emboldened. Any notion that America had permanently shifted toward liberalism over the last few years was blown away on Election Day 2009. And yet it remains to be seen whether or not conservatives and Republicans (and also libertarians and independents) can work together, over the long haul, in the same partisan and ideological coalition.
===
A betrayal of science - and of you
Andrew Bolt
Frank J. Tipler, professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University, on the true significance of Climategate:
The now non-secret data prove what many of us had only strongly suspected — that most of the evidence of global warming was simply made up. That is, not only are the global warming computer models unreliable, the experimental data upon which these models are built are also unreliable. As Lord Monckton has emphasized here at Pajamas Media, this deliberate destruction of data and the making up of data out of whole cloth is the real crime — the real story of Climategate.

It is an act of treason against science. It is also an act of treason against humanity, since it has been used to justify an attempt to destroy the world economy.
===
Beware a Tiger’s mate with club in hand
Andrew Bolt
It did seem odd to read that Tiger Wood’s wife rescued him from his crashed car by smashing in the window with a golf club. Seems the chain of events may have been the other way around.
===
The death of beauty
Andrew Bolt
How many more years of failure before we have a cultural awakening?

Although this year has been hailed as a strong one for Australian films, that $65 million cut of the box office is just 6.5 per cent of the roughly $1 billion Australians spend each year at the cinema.

That’s better than the 10-year average of 4.4 per cent, but it’s a long way from the 41 per cent audience share French films enjoy at home or the 31 per cent UK films have in their own market....

If Australia ($38 million) and Mao’s Last Dancer ($14 million to date) are excluded from the take, the figures look decidedly anaemic - at best, about $20 million between all the other Australian films released.Only Samson & Delilah has made a profit at the local box office...

Once again there’s talk of better marketing and financing and the rest. But here’s the giveaway:

And even at the producers conference, there was much derisive talk of the Australian industry’s preference for ‘’depressing films about junkies in Darlingurst’’.

The fact is, for a start, that the writing on so many scripts is just plain clunky and affected. The same is true of so many Australian novels. That’s not just a question of lack of technical skill, although that’s clearly a big factor. We’re also talking self indulgence here: too often the desire to express seems to overwhelm the imperative of the need to entertain.

But there is as well a great self-protective conceit and a culture of anti-beauty that affects almost every branch of the arts.

It is no coincidence that five of the world’s 10 ugliest buildings, as rated this year by Virtual Tourist, are cultural institutions such as theatres and galleries, or are home to them. It is no coincidence that opera as a living art form was virtually killed off by atonality. It is a crime that modern theatres have been stripped down into stark, no-glamor, determinedly egalitarian work-spaces, rather than the glorious chocalate boxes of the typically 19th century boxes and galleries kind of theatre you see throughout Europe. It is a tragedy that “gritty” and “confronting” are now seen as the ultimate accolade in black-skivvy circles, when you know that this is precisely what is sure to drive away the paying public. It was a dereliction of duty for the board of the Melbourne International Arts Festival to allow for four years its then director, Kirsty Edmunds, to stage the most anti-beauty, anti-charm, anti-canonical, anti-narrative shows she could find, and drive the box office to depths not seen since Jacques Cousteau went diving (and how refreshing to see the recovery this year under Brett Sheehy).

It is no surprise that a disdain for the public’s preferences - and a failure to satisfy them - should match so closely the rise in the grants from arts adminstrators who apparently see the arts as a social marker rather than a socialising event, and thus insulate artists from their failure to please the uninitiated masses. And how comforting is it to an artist and their clique in the stalls to console themselves with the idea that mass rejection only confirms the superior tastes of the few.

Bring back beauty. Provoke, yes, but not without pleasing, too. All may die in Hamlet, but not before delivering the loveliest of lines.
===
Spin, spin and spin again
Andrew Bolt
Another small example of an overwhelming characteristic of this most bizarre Prime Minister:

THE mother of freed hostage Nigel Brennan says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was clueless about her son’s case when she asked him for assistance in freeing her son from his Somali captors earlier this year....

Mr Rudd told the media afterwards that he had devoted more personal attention to Mr Brennan’s predicament than any other case involving an Australian in trouble overseas.

But the reality, according to Mrs Brennan, was very different: ”He didn’t know my name, nor Nigel’s,” she told The Sunday Mail later, speaking on the basis that nothing would be published until her son was free
===
Rudd starts giving our our billions
Andrew Bolt
I’ve already revealed that the United Nations’s draft treaty at Copenhagen next month required Australia to pay $7 billion a year to the UN as its “climate debt”. Kevin Rudd still refuses to say how much he’ll actually hand over, but has already agreed this week to give away hundreds of millions of your dollars to countries such as South Africa, Jamaica, Kenya and Uganda:

The Commonwealth plan for the so-called “Fast Start” fund calls for developed countries in the 53-nation group to spend $10 billion a year until at least 2012.

How much did you just spend at CHOGM, Mr Rudd, and how many billions will you spend in Copenhagen?

He decline(d) to put a figure on the funding, saying it was still to be determined.

Such deceit. Be honest with the taxpayers whose money this really is, Prime Minister. Tell us how much of our money you’re giving away on this mad green crusade?
===
Why is this megalomaniac in charge of the Liberals?
Andrew Bolt
Malcolm Turnbull is clear on Channel 9 today: any Liberal Party not led by him is not worth voting for:

Now, if (Senate Liberal leader) Nick Minchin wins, if he wins this battle (to delay Rudd’s great green tax), he condemns our party to irrelevance, because what he is saying on one of the greatest issues and challenges of our time, one that will affect the future of the planet and the future of our children and their children, Nick Minchin is saying ‘do nothing’. He wants us to be the ‘do nothing on climate change’ party and he has been, he’s on the record about that, and when he talks about a delay or a deferral, what that means is denial…

Laurie, I will win on Tuesday and I am not interested in becoming a mouth piece or a Patsy or a tool for people whose views are completely wrong and are contrary to the best interests of our nation, our planet and indeed the Liberal Party…

Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott and Kevin Andrews for that matter, ,,,didn’t object (to John Howard’s emissions trading plan), they went along with it and now they say “We didn’t ever believe in it”. What does that say about their integrity…

Joe Hockey has told me as recently as last night that I have his complete support… Now, if Joe were to become leader but - so if he was the cuddly friendly face of the Liberal Party but spouting Nick Minchin’s lines, that would destroy him and the party…

Joe believes that if this bill is not passed nobody in our party, including him would have the capacity to present a credible alternative climate change policy. Because Rudd will say, look, you guys took an ETS to the last election with John Howard, we put up an ETS, you presented some amendments, we agreed to them in large part, you said that’s great, a deal is done, you had the support of your party room, it was confirmed within 24 hours by a second vote in the party room, he would say, now you’re ratting on it and you expect us to believe you’re fair dinkum with an alternative climate change policy when you have got people like Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott there saying that climate change is bunkum and we don’t have to do anything about it…

LO (Laurie Oakes): But this is not just about climate change, this is also about Turnbull, there are people in the party who loathe your style, they say you’re autocratic? You don’t …

MT: Compared to who? Compared to John (Howard),. John didn’t …

If we put the party, doesn’t matter if it’s Joe Hockey or Billy Bloggs as the leader, if we put the party back together, in accordance with Nick Minchin’s wishes, then we will end up becoming a fringe party of the far right…

LO: Final question, I suppose if you’re right and if you lose, are you saying that if Liberal Party is not worthy of winning the next election?

MT: Laurie, I’m not going to make a comment on that.

An utterly, utterly disgraceful performance by Turnbull. This prolongued rant cannot be dismissed as a mere slip of the tongue. Turnbull cannot even bring himself to endorse the Liberals if not led by him. He’d rather destroy the party than let it be led by anyone else.

The man always was more a creature of the Left than a genuine Liberal, and as leader suffers from an even more drastic flaw, that no stands starkly revealed.

He is a megalomaniac, who identifies his own interests with the party’s. As de Gaulle would has said: The party is me.

This interview alone should end what remnants of support Turnbull has left. This is a man who will never listen, and cannot lead.
===
Climate hype drowns in Tasmania’s rain
Andrew Bolt
I’m sorry, but I can’t keep up. Is too much rain in Tasmania - or too little - that’s proof of global warming?

Persistent rains have prompted the Weather Bureau to declare 2009 the 11th-wettest year on record in Tasmania.

I can’t say the Bureau predicted these past two months to be quite this wet:

The chances of exceeding the median rainfall for October to December are between 25 and 40% over northeast Queensland, parts of Victoria, southeast SA and Tasmania (see map).

Still, even though the Bureau can’t predict the weather three months ahead, we must believe it can predict the climate 100 years from now.

But back to the question: is the rain proof of global warming, or is a dry? After all, it wasn’t long ago that the Bureau thought it ominous that there was little rain:

Figures released today by the Bureau of Meteorology in its Tasmanian annual climate summary for 2006 show that many sites in northern, eastern and southeastern Tasmania have had their driest year on record. The summary gives many details for sites across the state, including summaries and extremes for the year.

But here’s what the CSIRO predicted Tasmania would get, thanks to global warming:

The research model predicted that annual rainfall in Tasmania will increase by seven to eleven percent in the west and central areas, and will decrease by around eight percent in the north-east. Increased rainfall is expected in all areas of Tasmania in winter and early spring.

That was three years ago. Yet the evidence until now is that Tasmania has been getting less rain, contrary to the CSIRO’s model - confirming a National Technical University of Athens study which concluded such models were in fact useless:

===
It’s not who you rape but who you know
Andrew Bolt
The President of France helps a child rapist on the reported grounds that his wife’s artistic friends liked him:

Polish director Roman Polanski’s family is thanking French President Nicolas Sarkozy for being “very effective” in helping to win his release from a Swiss prison.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it is thanks to the President that Roman has been freed, but he has been super,” Polanski’s sister-in-law, Mathilde Seigner, told Le Parisien newspaper. “The President has been very effective.”

The London Times speculated that Sarkozy’s wife, ex-model Carla Bruni, may have pressured her husband to intervene because she used to hob nob with Paris’ artistic community, which includes Polanski and wife Emmanuelle Seigner.

After initially balking at his release, Swiss authorities agreed to let Polanski move from a cell to his luxurious Alpine chalet once he puts up $4.5 million bail.

How to tell the public that there’s one law for them, and another for the President’s mates. Even the ones that would drug, rape and sodomise a protesting 13 year old.
===
Powdering the moll’s face
Andrew Bolt
A shockingly amoral line in novellist Adrian McGinty’s review of the alleged autobiography of gangster’s moll Roberta Williams:

Williams sees herself as a victim persecuted by the media and the criminal justice system and she portrays Carl as a gun-toting, loveable rogue. She shows no sign of remorse that Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro were shot in their car in front of five young children, including Moran’s twins. Indeed, she mocks the family members who appeared shocked and grief-stricken that night on the TV news.

There’s no denying Williams’ charisma or toughness or love for her own children, but a kinder editor might have made her temper such sociopathic statements.

McGinty is criticising the publisher for not disguising the fact that the sociopath who wrote this self-serving defence of a criminal career career is in fact, well, a sociopath.

This is not only mistaking the difference between fiction and autobiography, which purports (so often falsely) to give the reader a true insight into the mind of the storyteller - an insight McGinty apparently suggests should have been obscured.

It is also to become culpable in the glamorising - or at least normalising - of a criminal and the despicable crimes of her husband. Roberta Williams is a nasty person, and it’s dishonest and anti-social to wish her to appear otherwise. It’s terrible enough that she profits from her book.
===
The pain is whole idea of Rudd’s great green tax
Andrew Bolt
Terry McCrann says analysing the details of the “compromise” the Rudd Government made on its great green tax on everything is missing the big picture:

Getting lost in the detail is utterly pointless. All the compensation in the world can’t avoid the ETS destination: which stripped to its essentials is to close some at least of our power stations. When in the context of surging population we should be building more.

Further, the greater the compensation—in the short run—to some sectors of the economy like the power industry and minerals exporters, the greater the burden that will have to be borne by the un-compensated.

This in turn has led, as detailed by Alan Wood on Thursday, to the return of the rent-seekers: the greatest sucking at the taxpayer teat since the dismantling of tariffs. This was a week that will live in infamy and insanity.
===
Climategate is what it’s called - and called too often to ignore
Andrew Bolt
The news that many Left-wing journalists refuse to cover is now exploding all over the Internet. “Climategate” now gets 10.6 million mentions on Google, even though Google won’t offer the term on its auto-suggest.

The public is not just learning of Climategate, but learning of media censorship as well.

UPDATE

Google now has “Climategate” on autosuggest - and it returns more hits even than “global warming”. Ask your local media outlet why this scandal is not getting the coverage it deserves.

UPDATE 2

Via Watts Up With That, this video of who’s-who in Climategate:

UPDATE 3

If governments around the world weren’t punting trillions of dollars on the reliability of these scientists’ work, you’d laugh:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data.

In a statement on its website, the CRU said: “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past climate and temperatures. Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled. That is now impossible.

Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records. “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’. So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

No sane Government can now commit themselves to spending their national wealth on science so shady.

THAT ONE LINE

is the most important line anyway... People who always remember all the lyrics are freaks.
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/nata...
Hope you all are well and enjoy your weekends.
x
n

Climate change shouldn't be an excuse for global government

Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP for South East England, giving a speech in Strasbourg on 25 November 2009 on attempts to turn the climate change debate into a reason for greater global governance, ever more distant from national democracies.

Headlines Saturday 28th November 2009

Crowds have welcomed two new Panda bears to Australia who are here as part of a new joint research program, with Wang Wang and Funi even receiving a police escort to their new home

Rudd hoses down early election talk

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has hosed down speculation he will call an early federal election. - Rudd is used to lying. He might wish to see the fallout of the discovery that global warming is a con, but probably he wanted an election yesterday. ALP leaders are unanimous in being clever by calling surprise early elections - ed.


Watch the new chant dominating schoolies week (warning: adult content), plus hear what some schoolies think of the celebrations.

Australia braced for early election
VOTERS could go to the polls early next year after legislation was foiled in the Senate.

Man charged with murder of father, sister
A FUGITIVE was last night charged with the murders of his father and his sister.

Brennan's hostage hell a year too long
THE Australian Government cost photojournalist Nigel Brennan about a year in captivity.

Flu epidemic 'escaped from lab'
A REPORT suggests swine flu may have developed because of a lab error in making vaccines.

Too many drunks at hospitals
DRUNKS are overburdening the state's hospital emergency rooms, researchers have found. Each year about 3000 people die because of alcohol abuse.

Polanski to stay in jail
ROMAN Polanski will spend one more weekend in jail, because no bond had been received.

Philippine massacre suspect charged
A PHILIPPINE politician was charged with mass murder today after authorities accused him of ordering soldiers, police and other gunmen to kill at least 57 defenceless people in an organised slaughter.

Minister quits over Afghan air strike
GERMAN Labour Minister Franz Josef Jung has resigned over a deadly air strike in Afghanistan in September, when he was defence minister.


Transcripts show air traffic controllers asked Northwest pilots who overflew Minneapolis what happened — the response: 'cockpit distractions' were the issue.

Left Vows to 'Spank' Obama On Afghan Troop Decision
Obama may face battle within own party if he commits tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan

Stocks Slump on Dubai Debt News
U.S. markets, after being closed for Thanksgiving, fall on fears that problems will affect wider financial system

Lawyer: White House Cleared Crashers
White House denies attorney's claim that socialites who crashed state dinner were 'cleared' to attend - Obama understands how difficult it is for posers and social climbers. -ed.
=== Comments ===
AL’S RIDE
Tim Blair
A “peace and justice movement” apparently sworn to every cause on earth – the group includes 9/11 Truthers, new world order theorists, eugenics freakers and anti-warmers – confronts Al Gore at a Chicago book signing, leading to this caption:
Protester from the We Are Change group shout after chasing Al Gore’s SUV down State Street in the Chicago Loop on Tuesday.
Where are those sky bears when we need them?
===
BETTER TO DIE ON YOUR FEET
Tim Blair
Dense urban electorates remain in Malcolm Turnbull’s carbon corner:

Newspoll shows that 63 per cent of Coalition voters in the cities believe the government’s bill should be passed, while only 28 per cent think it should be opposed.

If one in 10 of those voters changed sides because of a Coalition decision to block action on climate change, it would cost the Liberal Party the 20 metropolitan seats that it holds with margins of less than 6.5 per cent.

Just a theory, but perhaps the fault for this lies with Liberal reluctance to attack emissions policies and expose the costs involved. Tony Abbott admitted yesterday:

On Wednesday, for instance, the opposition felt constrained not to question the government over newspaper headlines about the estimated $1100 a year extra costs for families because that was now its policy. It’s almost impossible to hold a government to account if you’ve just negotiated with it line-by-line to create the policy in contention.

Good point. Back to the poll story:

These findings are consistent with the Liberal Party’s internal research in marginal seats, which shows that between 75 and 80 per cent of swinging voters favour action on climate change.

Senior party officials say the research shows a triumph by climate change sceptics would be “the death of the party”.

Instead, the Liberal party is covering for the government and helping guide families towards a pointless $1100-per-year existence tax. As it stands, the party is already dead.
===
SNACK TIME
Tim Blair
There’s a whole hulk of tenderloin hidden inside Bingley’s intricate bacon weave:

Click for cooking instructions. As Bingley emails, this RareCowPig dish is “the perfect companion to your oyster steak.” Indeed, it’s possibly even better than a carpetbag. I’m currently working on a new steak design myself, featuring a three-beast accompaniment I call climate justice salad. Stay tuned.
===
CONCERNS HEEDED
Tim Blair
Connie turns against Turnbull and his ETS-lovin’ ways:

NSW senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells quit as parliamentary secretary for immigration, saying she was breaking ranks to vote against an ETS.

“This has been a very difficult time for the Liberal Party,” she said in a statement.

“I acknowledge the avalanche of correspondence and feedback conveyed to me from a wide cross-section of the community, most especially after the decision of the Joint Party Room to amend and support the legislation.

“It is also especially clear from the Liberal base in NSW that the mood is strongly against that decision. In all my years of involvement in the Party, I have never seen such an extraordinary reaction.

“As a person who owes much to the Liberal Party and to that grassroots base, as well as to the people of NSW who elected me, I feel compelled to heed their concerns.”

Australia’s anti-Copenhagenists will not be denied. As was mentioned several weeks ago: “Privately, a lot of people in the Liberal Party are a lot more sceptical than Mr Hockey would let on.” Now we’re discovering just how many – and also the potential electoral force of conservative opposition to emissions trading.
===
The Svengali of the Liberal revolt speaks
Andrew Bolt

The ABC’s PM, a player in the global warming debate, accuses me of being a player. We then start arguing when the interviewer shows no interest in the central fact which best explains this revolt by the Liberal sceptics - the failure of the world to actually warm. Listen here. Transcript here.

Actually, I kind of think Mark Colvin is blaming you, dear readers, for Turnbull’s fall. I think he feels you’ve caused this panic.

PS: Some other ABC broadcasters are players, too, of course, but their kind of playing is perfectly legitimate, for some reason..

Example: Jon Faine refuses to even discuss leaked emails revealing how leading global warming scientists conspired to rig results, censor sceptics and destroy data on the grounds that “it suits the conspiracy theorists beautifully”.

In fact, which ABC player endorsed and actually recorded TV ads for a political party?

UPDATE

Actually, which two ABC personalities recorded ads for a political party - and which even ran as a candidate:

===
SIGN OF THE TIMES
Tim Blair
Canada’s national broadcaster receives some viewer input:

===
ETERNAL MELTING
Tim Blair
From the New York Times, 128 years of looming polar doom:

• 1881: “This past Winter, both inside and outside the Arctic circle, appears to have been unusually mild. The ice is very light and rapidly melting …”

• 1932: “NEXT GREAT DELUGE FORECAST BY SCIENCE; Melting Polar Ice Caps to Raise the Level of Seas and Flood the Continents”

• 1934: “New Evidence Supports Geology’s View That the Arctic Is Growing Warmer”

• 1937: “Continued warm weather at the Pole, melting snow and ice.”

• 1954: “The particular point of inquiry concerns whether the ice is melting at such a rate as to imperil low-lying coastal areas through raising the level of the sea in the near future.”

• 1957: “U.S. Arctic Station Melting”

• 1958: “At present, the Arctic ice pack is melting away fast. Some estimates say that it is 40 per cent thinner and 12 per cent smaller than it was fifteen years [ago].”

• 1959: “Will the Arctic Ocean soon be free of ice?”

• 1971: “STUDY SAYS MAN ALTERS CLIMATE; U.N. Report Links Melting of Polar Ice to His Activities”

• 1979: “A puzzling haze over the Arctic ice packs has been identified as a byproduct of air pollution, a finding that may support predictions of a disastrous melting of the earth’s ice caps.”

• 1982: “Because of global heating attributed to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fuel burning, about 20,000 cubic miles of polar ice has melted in the past 40 years, apparently contributing to a rise in sea levels …”

• 1999: “Evidence continues to accumulate that the frozen world of the Arctic and sub-Arctic is thawing.”

• 2000: “The North Pole is melting. The thick ice that has for ages covered the Arctic Ocean at the pole has turned to water, recent visitors there reported yesterday.”

• 2002: “The melting of Greenland glaciers and Arctic Ocean sea ice this past summer reached levels not seen in decades, scientists reported today.”

• 2004: “There is an awful lot of Arctic and glacial ice melting.”

• 2005: “Another melancholy gathering of climate scientists presented evidence this month that the Antarctic ice shelf is melting - a prospect difficult to imagine a decade ago.”
===
THICK ATMOSPHERE
Tim Blair
Climate researcher and IPCC co-author Eduardo Zorita calls for Warmergate plumbers Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf to be barred from the IPCC process and muses on the “very troubling professional behavior” evident in those leaked emails:

I may confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files …

I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere – and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now – editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations, even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the ‘politically correct picture’.

Zorita is prepared for the consequences:

By writing these lines I will just probably achieve that a few of my future studies will, again, not see the light of publication.

If so, he’ll be a victim of climate tribalism, as identified by the University of East Anglia’s Professor Mike Hulme:

It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.

Iowahawk has more on that “social organization”.

UPDATE. Ahead of a possible congressional investigation, Senator James Inhofe warns scientists to “retain [related] documents.”
===
IPCC too “politicised” to survive
Andrew Bolt
Green journalists may ignore them, but scientists cannot. In fact, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change itself is threatened by the Climategate emails.

Professor Mike Hulme is of the University of East Anglia from which the emails were leaked, and is named by ScienceWatch as “the 10th most cited author in the world in the field of climate change, between 1999 and 2009”. The leaked emails of IPCC authors show an organisation corrupted by a clique of warmist evangelists, and even Hume now says the IPCC may have run its course:

(The UN’s Copenhagen summit) is about raw politics, not about the politics of science… It is possible that climate science has become too partisan, too centralized. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organization within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.

It is also possible that the institutional innovation that has been the I.P.C.C. has run its course. Yes, there will be an AR5 (fifth report) but for what purpose? The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production – just at a time when a globalizing and wired cosmopolitan culture is demanding of science something much more open and inclusive.

UPDATE

Climate researcher and IPCC co-author Eduardo Zorita calls for Climategate scientists Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf to be barred from the IPCC processes:

I may confirm what has been written in other places: research in some areas of climate science has been and is full of machination, conspiracies, and collusion, as any reader can interpret from the CRU-files …

I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere – and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now – editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations, even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the ‘politically correct picture’.

And what does it say about the disgraceful politicisation of climate science that Zorita warns:

By writing these lines I will just probably achieve that a few of my future studies will, again, not see the light of publication.

UPDATE 2

Peer review at the Climatic Research Unit:

===
The SMH can’t even see the column, let alone the scandal
Andrew Bolt
British warming crusader George Monbiot has written two recent columns on denialism.

The first, three weeks ago, castigated the alleged denialism of sceptics:

There is no point in denying it: we’re losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere which cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument; any attempt to draw attention to scientific findings is greeted with furious invective. This sphere is expanding with astonishing speed.

The second, just three days ago, castigated the alleged denialism of Monbiot’s fellow warmists:

I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, they say, are a storm in a tea cup, no big deal, exaggerated out of all recognition. It is true that climate change deniers have made wild claims which the material can’t possibly support (the end of global warming, the death of climate science). But it is also true that the emails are very damaging.

So which of those two columns do you think the Sydney Morning Herald chose to run today - the dated one attacking sceptics (again) or the new one attacking the warmists now refusing to confront the greatest scientific scandal of their faith?

This is not just denial but deceit. Monbiot is made to seem as if he’s reacting to the revolt of the Liberal sceptics against their warmist leader, when in fact that revolt was driven in (small) part by the very scandal that he accepts is genuine.

UPDATE

The mainstream media - with a handful of (conservative) exceptions - do not know what terrible damage they are doing to their credibility by ignoring or drastically downplaying the Climategate scandal. The story is out, a couple of million times over, on the Internet.

What do you think the people reading of this scandal there conclude when they then turn to, say, The Age or the ABC, and find there barely a word of coverage?

I’ll tell you: they’ll conclude that the media cannot be trusted to tell even the news, let alone the truth, when it conflicts with their agenda. Hear that from the ABC’s Melbourne talkback host Jon Faine himself when he explained why he would not even discuss the emails:

That was my assessment of whether this was actually of any significance or not, and I decided that it wasn’t and we wouldn’t spend time on it. It suits the conspiracy theorists beautifully…

The other thing these readers will conclude is that for news involving certain ideologies, they must of necessity turn to the Internet, and in particular to certain blogs they trust to speak freely. For all those in the ABC and Age who deplore the influence of my blog, my sincere thanks for your part this week in making it more essential reading than ever.

Fools. You cut your own throats.

(A PS for media monitoring services and self-Googlers who most need to read and reflect on the above: attention Mark Scott, Paul Ramadge, Angelo Frangopoulos, Jeremy Millar and David Koch.)
===
David Jones runs both hot and cold
Andrew Bolt
David Jones is the warmist preacher who heads the National Climate Centre at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Is all his work riddled with such contradictions?

Anthony - due to professional reasons - I am unable to comment on Bolt’s column. But as with most of his material it is rubbish.
===
New Zealand’s man-made warming
Andrew Bolt
New Zealand sceptics this week asked how New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research fiddled the data to create this iconic warming graph:

When in fact the raw data showed no such warming spike:

The spike was produced by adjustments made by an IPCC co-author who once worked with the Climatic Research Unit now at the centre of the Climategate scandal.

NIWA has responded saying those adjustments were made to account for changes in the siting of the measuring stations, but has released the reasoning for only one of those station adjustments.

Even that one defence (release the rest!) is now being picked apart in Investigate:

(NIWA’s) David Wratt told Investigate earlier there was international agreement on how to make temperature adjustments, and in the news release tonight he elaborates on that:

“Thus, if one measurement station is closed (or data missing for a period), it is acceptable to replace it with another nearby site provided an adjustment is made to the average temperature difference between the sites.”
Except, except, it all hinges on the quality of the reasoning that goes into making that adjustment. If it were me, I would have slung up a temperature station in the disused location (at Thorndon, where temperatures for Wellington were calculated until 1927) again and worked out over a year the average offset between Thorndon and Kelburn (a higher location from where they’ve been calculated since). It’s not perfect, after all we are talking about a switch in 1928, but it would be something. But NIWA didn’t do that.

Instead, as their news release records, they simply guessed that the readings taken at Wellington Airport would be similar to Thorndon, simply because both sites are only a few metres above sea level.

Airport records temps about 0.79C above Kelburn on average, so NIWA simply said to themselves, “that’ll do” and made the Airport/Kelburn offset the official offset for Thorndon/Kelburn as well, even though no comparison study of the latter scenario has ever been done....

What’s interesting is that if you leave Kelburn out of the equation, Thorndon in 1910 is not far below Airport 2010. Perhaps that gave NIWA some confidence that the two locations were equivalent, but I’m betting Thorndon a hundred years ago was very different from an international airport now…

Now, it may be that there was a good and obvious reason to adjust Wellington temps. My question remains, however: is applying a temperature example from 15km away in a different climate zone a valid way of rearranging historical data?

But Anthony Watts, who has uncovered the astonishing siting of many US weather stations, wonders how much reliance can be placed on a warming trend detected by a station mounted next to air conditioners on the roof of the NIWA headquarters:

UPDATE

Sceptic Willis Eschenbach tells the extraordinary tale of how the CRU blocked all his attempts to check its data - even before he’d asked for it.
===
Turnbull’s scientists
Andrew Bolt
Thre times I’ve heard Malcolm Turnbull cite three authorities - and just these three - for his belief that global warming is a threat that we must fight with a great green tax.

Those authorites are the famous climate scientists Margaret Thatcher, John Howard and Rupert Murdoch.
===
Boat people praise Rudd
Andrew Bolt
Yet another asylum seeker in Indonesia says Kevin Rudd has inspired him to try his luck:

‘’We heard that Australia recognised Hazara,’’ he said. ‘’The government has changed now. It’s good for refugees there.’’

Add him to the others:

An Iraqi told the ABC: “Kevin Rudd - he’s changed everything about refugee. If I go to Australia now, different.”

An Afghan told The Australian: “I know Kevin Rudd is the new PM ... he has tried to get more immigrants. I have heard that if someone arrives it is easy.”

Red marks the spot on the Immigration Department graph when Rudd last weakened our boat people laws:

===
Not a warming world, but warming friendships
Andrew Bolt
Tom Arup was The Age’s national political reporter and is now the environment correspondent for both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Do you get the idea from his latest column that he’s a whole lot too close to one side of the debate?

The call comes early in the morning this time. ‘‘I’ve got something that will solve the climate change problem,’’ an excited voice says.

I prop myself up in bed.... my clock says its is 7.36 AM.... ‘‘How did you get my number,’’ I shoot back. But feeling bad, I ask what the miracle solution is…

I tell the press secretary for Greens Senator Christine Milne, a thin good humoured fellow name Tim, about (another “miracle solution")…

On the lawns of Parliament house there has been a small tent where a man is fasting for climate change… The faster’s marketing person has been hassling me about a story for two weeks....

I have decided to ignore the whole thing… But there is no escape. My housemate has a friend staying at my place who has come to Canberra to ‘‘show solidarity’’ with the faster… ‘‘What you need to understand...’’ he says, setting off on to an indescribable rant as I open a beer which promises to be 100 per cent carbon offset…

A group running for climate change is also in town. They want to meet. We do...

Sadly, in all this dealing with green cranks, drinking of green beer, joshing with Greens, and sifting through Green dreams, Arup has simply run out of any time to write about the greatest green scandal in his lifetime.

WHICH again for me raises the question: do personal loyalities make it difficult to be as dispassionate about such a morally loaded topic? An important example:

Janet Rice, the Greens candidate for Steve Bracks’ seat of Williamstown..., is married to CSIRO climate change researcher, Dr Penelope Whetton...

Whetton is not just some “climate change reseacher”, but CSIRO’s Climate Change Impact and Risk group leader and a lead author of the 2007 IPCC report.

How dispassionate is she? Well, she endorsed the science in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth:

I was really quite moved, and given that this film was about a topic I deal with every day, this says something about how powerfully it communicates its message. Its scientific basis is very sound.” 4.75 out of 5

That, when, as a British judge later found, the film had at least nine severe scientific flaws and exaggerations, and also featured the discredited “hockey stick” of Michael Mann, falsely claiming the world hadn’t been hotter in thousands of years.

How could Whetton have endorsed anything so error-riddled? Is she as gullible in her work?

UPDATE

Reader soldier in comments today warns Climate Change Minister Penny Wong of an intimate connection she has, too:

Did you know that Penny Wong is 18% carbon? More importantly does Penny Wong know that she is 18% carbon and therefore she is loaded with what she insists is a pollutant?

UPDATE 2

Reader Ivory Tickler says The Age’s state political correspondent and former environment writer Melissa Fyfe also has more important journalistic work to be getting on with:

Fyfe is jogging in (Run For A Safe Climate) group and sending dispatches as she goes. Of course, while she was off running, Climeategate broke and she hasn’t written a word about it.

UPDATE 3

Green journalists, including the ABC’s Jon Faine, refuse to even discuss the emails which have prompted an official inquiry into what they say about the Climatic Research Unit and the warmist science:

Phil Willis MP said the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee - of which he is chair - had written to UEA asking for copies of the e-mails and an explanation. Depending on the response, the committee will decide whether to proceed further....

Details of a university inquiry ... are likely to be made public next week… One senior climate scientist told me that the chair would have to be a person accepted by both mainstream climate scientists and sceptics as a highly respected figure without strong connections to either group.

===
Hiding the European decline
Andrew Bolt
Did the Climatic Research Unit also “hide the decline” in Europe?

Phil Jones explains:

The global average temperature is calculated by climatologists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The temperature graph the CRU produces from its monthly averages is the main indicator of global temperature change used by the International Panel on Climate Change, and it shows a steady increase in global lower atmospheric temperature over the 20th century. Similar graphs for regions of the world, such as Europe and North America, show the same trend. This is consistent with increasing industrialization, growing use of fossil fuels, and rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide....

(C)ase closed: The Earth is warming. Except for one problem. CRU’s average temperature data doesn’t jive with that of Vincent Courtillot, a French geo-magneticist, director of the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris, and a former scientific advisor to the French Cabinet. Last year he and three colleagues plotted an average temperature chart for Europe that shows a surprisingly different trend. Aside from a very cold spell in 1940, temperatures were flat for most of the 20th century, showing no warming while fossil fuel use grew. Then in 1987 they shot up by about 1 C and have not shown any warming since. This pattern cannot be explained by rising carbon dioxide concentrations, unless some critical threshold was reached in 1987; nor can it be explained by climate models.

Why the difference?

CRU, in contrast, calculates average temperatures by month — rather than daily — over individual grid boxes on the Earth’s surface that are 5 degrees of latitude by 5 degrees of longitude, from 1850 to the present. First it makes hundreds of adjustments to the raw data, which sometimes require educated guesses, to try to correct for such things as changes in the type and location of thermometers. It also combines air temperatures and water temperatures from the sea. It uses fancy statistical techniques to fill in gaps of missing data in grid boxes with few or no temperature measurements. CRU then adjusts the averages to show changes in temperature since 1961-1990.

CRU calls the 1961-1990 the “normal” period and the average temperature of this period it calls the “normal.” It subtracts the normal from each monthly average and calls these the monthly “anomalies.” A positive anomaly means a temperature was warmer than CRU’s normal period. Finally CRU averages the grid box anomalies over regions such as Europe or over the entire surface of the globe for each month to get the European or global monthly average anomaly. You see the result in the IPCC graph nearby, which shows rising temperatures.

The decision to consider the 1961-1990 period as ‘normal’ was CRUs. Had CRU chosen a different period under consideration, the IPCC graph would have shown less warming, as discussed in one of the Climategate emails, from David Parker of the UK meteorological office. In it, Parker advised Jones not to select a different period, saying “anomalies will seem less positive than before if we change to newer normals, so the impression of global warming will be muted.” That’s hardly a compelling scientific justification!

Kenneth Gladney Gets Stomped By SEIU Thugs in Hate Crime-- St. Louis County Officials Blow Him Off

On August 6th Kenneth Gladney attended the Russ Carnahan town hall meeting in south St. Louis County. Kenneth was there to make some money selling freedom flags and buttons. After the meeting Kenneth was assaulted, beaten and stomped by angry SEIU thugs who were upset that a black man would be selling anti-Obama merchandize. Gladney was taken to the hospital followint the attack.

It's been over 3 months and still St. Louis county officials have not met with Kenneth Gladney to discuss the case nor have they press charges against the SEIU thugs. Today after Kenneth set up an appointment with the county officials-- they blew him off.
Kenneth made the appointment and they totally ignored it.
Later today Kenneth Gladney talked about the abuse he is receiving from the county officials.

Headlines Friday 27th November 2009

Touched by the tragic murder case of North Carolina 5-year-old Shaniya Davis, Cleveland Cavaliers star Shaquille O'Neal pays for her funeral.

Secret Service Slip-Up?
How DID two alleged high-society gate-crashers get past Secret Service agents and rub elbows with the VP and dignitaries at Obama's first state dinner?

IAEA: Iran Nuke Probe at 'Dead End'
Watchdog's chief says Tehran not cooperating with his probe into whether Iran is making nuclear arms

Thankful: $525G Mortgage Erased
New York couple home free after judge cancels debt to ruthless bankers trying to toss them on the street

John Della Bosca all loved-up in House
MP John Della Bosca has read a public love letter to his wife Belinda Neal in Parliament.

Dick Smith helped save photojournalist
MILLIONAIRE Dick Smith stepped in to help the family of kidnapped photojournalist Nigel Brennan.

Twins Trishna and Krishna in fine fettle
THE hospital room of Trishna and Krishna is filled with smiles as they adapt to separate lives.

Tenth man charged with boy sex
A TENTH man has been charged with sexually assaulting boys at a Central Western NSW boarding school, police said, with a 54-year-old man arrested at Milson's Point.

Meet the destructive Super Termites
A COUPLE'S first home will be sealed to kill an infestation of the world's most destructive termite.

One dead in university shoot-out
A UNI student has opened fire on his classmates, killing one person and wounding three.
=== Comments ===
Statistics con the final nail in Rudd’s climate change coffin
Piers Akerman
UNTIL last Friday, Wall Street’s scammer Bernard Madoff was considered the biggest fraud in world history, having taken his greedy clients for an estimated $US64.8 billion. - I am appalled at Mr Trnbull’s reasons for supporting the ETS. We know it will be ineffective and he promised not to support an ETS that wouldn’t achieve anything. We need to give the Australian economy the benefit of the doubt. We know that AGW is not happening and is merely a beat up of well meaning but duplicitous scientists linked with industry and anarchists. - ed.
===
IT’S ABOUT THE PLANET
Tim Blair
Malcolm Turnbull is more obsessed than any of us suspected:

This is about the future of our planet and the future of our children and their children …

We must retain our credibility on taking action on climate change. We cannot be seen as a party of climate sceptics and do-nothings on climate change.

Let it be recorded that Turnbull spent his final days as Liberal leader talking about the planet’s destruction. His time is up, as Dennis Shanahan notes:

Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership has been destroyed in a spectacular and unprecedented fashion.

For the first time, a grassroots revolt by local Liberal branches and members has brought down the leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party …

If the ETS passes in the Senate today, the Liberal Party could be led next week by an opponent of the ETS who will want to attack it all the way to the next election.

We can only hope.

UPDATE. “Australia is leading the revolt against Al Gore’s great big AGW conspiracy.”
===
CAUTION AGAINST LINKING
Tim Blair
The New York Times reports:

A flotilla of hundreds of icebergs that split off Antarctic ice shelves is drifting toward New Zealand and could pose a risk to ships in the south Pacific Ocean, officials said Tuesday.

The nearest one, measuring about 100 feet tall, was 160 miles southeast of New Zealand’s Stewart Island, Australian glaciologist Neal Young said …

But he cautioned against linking the appearance of the bergs in New Zealand waters to global warming.

Given that global warming is usually linked to everything, a variation of that final paragraph should really appear in every story. Reader challenge! Submit current news reports to which you’ve added the required global warming disclaimer. For example:

Delta Goodrem’s impromptu performance at the private birthday party of an international hitmaker has finally won her the big break she needs to put her career on the map in the US.

But she cautioned against linking her appearance at the private birthday party of an international hitmaker to global warming.
===
TURNBULL’S LEGACY
Tim Blair
An emissions trading scheme could be locked in place tonight:

The Rudd government is considering moving to guillotine debate on the emissions trading scheme tonight in a race against time to pass the legislation under Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership.

The Liberal leader is under siege tonight amid mass resignations from his frontbench. Tony Abbott, Senate leader Nick Minchin, Deputy leader Eric Abetz, Sophie Mirabella, Tony Smith are expected to quit the frontbench.

But the government could attempt to force a vote and it needs just six votes to pass the legislation.

Turnbull is toast, but could yet – if a rushed Rudd vote is successful – still deliver an ETS. Thanks for that, Malcolm.
===
Ouch: WWF vs a real climate expert
Andrew Bolt

Should happen more often that a professional alarmist is put up against a well-informed sceptic such as astrophysicist Piers Corbyn. We could do with the laughs.
===
How the Liberals snatched back their party
Andrew Bolt

MALCOLM Turnbull is gone and all but buried. In a stunning revolt, the Liberals grassroots are reclaiming a party hijacked by a leader of the Left.

Turnbull’s leadership was finally shot dead by frontbencher Tony Abbott and the Liberals’ Senator leader, Nick Minchin.

Both told Turnbull he had to reconsider the decision that he (falsely) claimed the party took on Wednesday - to back Rudd’s colossal emissions tax to “stop” global warming.

When Turnbull refused, Abbott quit. Minchin will, too, rather than vote for a tax he knows is a fraud.

That triggered a mass resignation of other frontbenchers, enraged not only by Turnbull’s deceit, but determined to overturn his decision as well.

What’s telling is how the collapse of Turnbull’s leadership has shocked most mainstream political commentators.

How could the Liberals split on global warming, where the public demanded action? How could the party be so stupid to listen to its sceptics?

And it’s true. If you read only The Age and listened only to the ABC, this split would strike you as utterly bizarre.

In fact, for too long the shell-shocked Liberals did listen too much to the media. In a way, this is the beginning of their recovery of their pride, their principles and their fight.

For too long they believed the public would not take them seriously if they questioned man-made global warming faith, or blocked Rudd’s great green tax.

They read media beat-ups on the droughts, floods, famine and diseases they’d unleash if they did not “act” - and trembled.

But over the past couple of months a great grassroots revolt, peaking this week, has given the nervous fresh heart.
===
Emperor Rudd’s new clothes
Andrew Bolt
JUST look at this astonishing farce in Canberra, is what I should have said.

You see, I was talking to a class of year 11 students this week and found - to my horror - that few of that Harry Potter generation had even heard of the children’s story that best explains this madness.

You know, the madness of Kevin Rudd’s colossal tax on everything, which couldn’t stop global warming even if that warming were real.

I mean, too, the madness of the Liberals’ collapse under Malcolm Turnbull, and the startling rise of Kevin Andrews, the man they said was crazy.

Anyway, there I was in this classroom, talking of daring to speak the truth. Who, I asked, knew Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes?

Not one hand went up. How we’ve failed today’s children.

Older readers will know this story and its terrible relevance.

An emperor as vain as, well, our Prime Minister, hires two weavers who promise to make him the best clothes from the best cloth. This fabric, the weavers say, is so fine that only the wise and moral can see it.

In fact, if you were shamefully stupid - like a Holocaust denier or climate sceptic - you’d swear it was invisible.
===
The Liberal heroes
Andrew Bolt
Those who resigned rather than vote for a bill that will cripple Australia for the sake of false green faith.

Families, housing, community services and indigenous affairs spokesman Tony Abbott:

I would like (Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull) to change his mind about the government’s emissions trading legislation; not necessarily to reconsider the merits of an emissions trading scheme but not to rush one through the parliament just so Kevin Rudd can look good at Copenhagen.

The long-term interests of the country should not be hostage to someone’s ego or, indeed, to pride in an opinion that once made sense but has been overtaken by events… Climate change certainly takes place. The issue is how much of it is due to man’s activity and what is the best response to it… At this point, though, the argument is not so much about the merits of an ETS as about whether it makes sense for Australia to have one before the US, Canada, China and India; and whether it’s good governance to have one designed in political horse-trading rushed through the parliament before its implications can really be digested. There’s no doubt that a go-it-alone ETS would export Australian jobs to countries where carbon emissions are taken less seriously.

Liberals Senate leader Nick Minchin:

This was in response to a groundswell of opposition from colleagues, the business community and constituents in relation to the position adopted by the coalition to support the passage of amended legislation over the coming days.

Senate deputy leader Eric Abetz:

I owe it to the households that will be hit with an extra $1100 per year cost for no environmental dividend...

Early childhood education spokeswoman Sophie Mirabella:

I am not prepared to vote in favour of a scheme that will change our economy forever . . . certainly not before the rest of the world makes a decision at Copenhagen.

Opposition whip Liberal Michael Johnson:

In the Party Room I expressed clearly and strongly my personal opposition to supporting the Labor Government’s ETS… The first reason being that the net outcome is not one that does anything whatsoever for reducing in any meaningful way Australia’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. The second reason is that the ETS, at its core, is a massive tax on the Australian people and the Australian economy. Substantial jobs will be lost and Australia’s international competitiveness will be severely compromised against the economies of China, India and Brazil.

Senate whip Stephen Parry

Shadow assistant Treasurer Tony Smith

Deputy whip Judith Adams

Deputy whip David Bushby

Shadow parliamentary secretaries Mathias Cormann, Brett Mason and Mitch Fifield:

We are opposed to the passage of Labor’s Emissions Trading Scheme prior to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and before any similar action by our major trading partners. Consequently, we are unable to support the Leader of the Opposition’s decision to support the passage of these bills.

We believe that Labor’s ETS risks Australian jobs and Australia’s standard of living for no environmental benefit. It is not in our national interest… In the absence of an appropriately comprehensive global agreement an Australian ETS will push up the price of everything, lead to job losses, place pressure on our economy and place our energy security at risk – for no environmental benefit.

The timeline on how it all unfolded here.

Honorable mentions:

BY MIDDAY yesterday it was apparent the climate change rebels had not accepted Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to back the amended emissions trading scheme.

They were openly running a campaign of defiance, designed to stir up anger among the Liberal Party’s grassroots in a bid to convince their colleagues who were supporting Turnbull to change their minds.

Senator Cory Bernardi was doing radio interviews to spread his call far and wide. His fellow climate change sceptic, Dennis Jensen, used Facebook.

‘’We have been getting unprecedented emails on the ETS, unprecedented in both volume and anger. Let your members and Senators know what you think, and get your friends and aquaintances to do likewise.’’

And, of course, there is Kevin Andrews, who had the courage to stand against Turnbull in protest at his deceit in deciding the party backed his stand on Rudd’s green tax on everything:

It was clear to me and to many of my colleagues ... that there was a majority who were in favour of either deferring consideration of it until next year or opposing it outright.
===
Climategate: a word of advice to the scientists
Andrew Bolt
The tide is turning. and fast. There will soon be an accounting - and the mood and the money for it. The reputation of science - and of many scientists - will be damaged severely.

Until now those scientists who knew the science behind global warming theory was weak or flawed largely kept their doubts to themselves, out of fear or other forms of self-interest. I’ve had the emails from some confessing to just that.

But self-interest should dictate they now make a stand. They need to show, for their own sake and for the sake of science, that they were on the right side of this debate, even if belatedly. Already I see some speaking - one even writing a book - who did not speak two years ago. There must be more now, to halt this madness before even more harm is done.

A decade from now, when scientists and the public look back at this extraordinary scandal, this great fit of collective madness, the question will be asked: on which side were you?

Now is the time to make sure you can answer with pride. Speak up. Reveal. Undo the damage.
===
Rudd tries to ram through his giant tax
Andrew Bolt
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/tony-abbott-poised-to-resign-from-shadow-cabinet-over-ets/story-e6frgczf-1225804240855So this is how the biggest single tax increase in modern history gets through Parliament - through a trick, avoiding proper scrutiny:

KEVIN Rudd will force the divided Liberal Party to vote on an emissions trading scheme by 3:45pm tomorrow amid leadership turmoil and mass resignations from the frontbench.

And Labor only needs seven votes from the divided Liberal Party to secure the passage of the legislation.

Let the new Liberal leader spell it out immediately. No one can bank on certainty from these laws. A new Liberal government will repeal it - and as early as next year. The slogan will be: Say no to a new tax.
===
VERDICT IN
Tim Blair
Do you believe that climate change is really happening?
YES - 38.69% (790 votes)
NO - 61.31% (1252 votes)
Click to vote. Meanwhile, other media outlets won’t ask questions.
===
Climategate: How Faine censored the sceptical news
Andrew Bolt
ABC radio host Jon Faine explains why he will not even discuss a story which has:

* caused an international controversy

* shocked world leaders in climate science

* triggered calls for an inquiry by a former British Chancellor of the Exchequer

* caused fellow Leftist and warmist crusader George Monbiot to call for the resignation of one of the warmist scientists, and complain that fellow Leftists who ignore it are in denial.

* helped to prompt a Liberal revolt against Malcolm Turnbull

* caused warmist crusader Tim Flannery to confess on ABC television for the first time that the world had indeed been cooling, and ”when the computer modelling and the real world data disagrees you have a problem” and “we have to understand why the cooling is occurring, because the current modelling doesn’t reflect it”.

* revealed that one of the co-authors of the IPCC report that Faine cites as gospel conceded ”we can’t account for the lack of warming, it’s a travesty that we can’t”.

So here’s Faine’s explanation for his censorship of what’s clearly a huge story with serious ramifications:

We make decisions every day [based] on our own opinions about what we think are the main stories. And what we leave out is often as important as what we put in, and that was my judgement of this issue..

That was my assessment of whether this was actually of any significance or not, and I decided that it wasn’t and we wouldn’t spend time on it. It suits the conspiracy theorists beautifully...
It was a small, even a tiny fragment of a sidebar of a secondary issue to the edge of the periphery of something people were talking about other than the main game. That’s how I saw it.

It suits the “conspiracy theorists beautifully”. In other words, it suits the sceptics - and that must not be allowed to happen.

Unprofessional doesn’t quite cover it. Scandalous is much closer.
===
How many boats before Rudd scraps his new laws?
Andrew Bolt
Yet another on Kevin Rudd’s welcome mat:

A navy patrol boat has gone to the aid of a vessel carrying 29 suspected asylum seekers and a crew of two about 150 nautical miles southwest of the Ashmore Islands… It is the 48th asylum seeker vessel to arrive in Australian waters this year.

“Gone to the aid”?

So I look up once more the Immigration Department’s on-line statistics:

Wow. The red dot I’ve added marks when Rudd announced he was about to weaken our laws against boat people. Draw your own conclusions.
===
When journalists thought it right to check the records
Andrew Bolt
Once upon a time, the Sydney Morning Herald dared to think that climate had its cycles, and the climate records should be studied. Now, when faced with just this kind of evidence, here’s how a Sydney Morning Herald journalists responds.

I’m afraid we’ve infantilised.
===
Climategate: that decline, now unhidden
Andrew Bolt
So when Climatic Research Unit head Phil Jones boasted privately he had used a “trick” to ”hide the decline” of temperatures as reconstructed from tree ring data, which decline was actually hidden?

Steve McIntyre demonstrates :

For now, here is a graphic showing the deleted data in red:

Figure 1. Two versions of Briffa MXD reconstruction, showing archived and climategate versions. The relevant IPCC 2001 graph, shown below, clearly does not show the decline in the Briffa MXD reconstruction.

The post-1960 data was deleted from the archived version of this reconstruction at NOAA here and not shown in the corresponding figure in Briffa et al 2001. Nor was the decline shown in the IPCC 2001 graph, one that Mann, Jones, Briffa, Folland and Karl were working in the two weeks prior to the “trick” email (or for that matter in the IPCC 2007 graph, an issue that I’ll return to.)…

Contrary to Gavin Schmidt’s claim that the decline is ”hidden in plain sight”, the inconvenient data has simply been deleted.

The reason, as explained on Sep 22, 1999 by Michael Mann to coauthors in 938018124.txt, was to avoid giving “fodder to the skeptics”. Reasonable people might well disagree with Gavin Schmidt as to whether this is a “a good way to deal with a problem” or simply a trick.

UPDATE

How Australia’s climate records were fixed to produce signs of a warming. Scientist Warwick Hughes explains.