Piers Akerman
WITH Australia in the midst of a perfect economic storm brought on by global factors beyond his power, and local factors well within his control, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has opted to plough ahead with a climate change plan that cannot possibly affect the state of the planet.
It will further hobble the struggling economy, guarantee an increase in the numbers of unemployed (already expected to rise rapidly when post-Christmas lay-offs take effect), and provide a new income stream for the same group of bankers and financiers whose policies contributed to the global fiscal meltdown.
There will be more wealth sharing, too, as taxes are redistributed to those on benefits and low incomes to compensate them for their higher energy costs.
For all of Rudd’s bold talk, and that of Climate Minister Penny Wong and the all-but irrelevant Environment Minister Peter Garrett, there will also be handouts to industry (including $4 billion to coal miners), and a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of between 5 per cent and 15 per cent by 2020, depending on whether a global agreement can be reached.
Prospects for that agreement are receding rapidly though as more and more scientists speak out against the lack of science behind the IPCC’s doomsday report and its Australian counterpart, the Garnaut report.
While global and national pollution reduction is a worthy goal, hammering industry on the basis of Mickey Mouse modelling that is, at best, contradictory, is foolishness in the extreme. Cutting Australia’s economic throat while the economies of nations such as China and India proceed to grow at an incomparable rate to our own makes no sense at all. As one businessman noted yesterday: “It’s like China setting fire to the world and Australia running forward with a garden hose . . . but China charging us for the water!” - One thing you seem to ignore is that there are many many more tons of carbon (plant food) pumped into the atmosphere than there used to be. I agree that this is not an immediate problem, but it will be a problem in the future for those of us that are not plants. I have a plan that I think is better than Rudd's. I propose that we expand industry .. and pump more plant food .. while at the same time researching ways of effecively tackling the problem. I feel that with increased wealth, less poverty, we, and the world will be better able to tackle the issue when we are able. - ed.
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Why more ice if we’re warming?
Andrew Bolt
Jeff Id crunches the numbers on not just the Arctic:
... the earth in 28 years has added 177,000 sq kilometers of ice…
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The one business he couldn’t save
Andrew Bolt
It’s never been the same since he left:
FOR evidence that nothing is recession-proof, look no further than the imminent demise of that Manhattan landmark and one-time host to the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, the Scores strip club on Upper East Side.
Police saw more at Scores than Rudd says he did:
The Scores chain took a big hit this year when its West Side club lost its liquor licence after a police raid resulted in prostitution charges.
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Cold reception to Rudd’s warming plan
Andrew Bolt
Here’s a round-up of climate news over the past 24 hours:
* Kevin Rudd will unveil the carbon pollution reduction scheme in Canberra today, committing Australia to cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of between 5 and 25 per cent by 2020.
* MELBOURNE received its average rainfall for the month, rainwater run-off is rushing into water storages and thousands of Victorian farmers will not need to water crops for days after much of the state was drenched at the weekend.
* The wintry start to summer follows Perth’s wettest and coldest November in 17 years—the seventh-wettest on record.
* The torrential rain comes as Britain is shivering through the coldest start to winter for more than 30 years, the Met Office has revealed… Bookmakers, who have slashed odds on a white Christmas to 4/1 in London and 2/1 in Aberdeen, are now receiving bets on the Thames freezing over.
* HEAVY snowfall and rainstorms across southern France cut power lines and trapped people in cars and trains overnight.
* “It will be the coldest (in Washington state) it’s been in the last 10 or 20 years,” said Mike McFarland with the National Weather Service in Seattle.
* Unusually large amounts of Alaskan snow last winter were followed by unusually chilly temperatures this summer. “In general, the weather this summer was the worst I have seen in at least 20 years,” says Bruce Molnia of the U.S. Geological Survey. “It’s been a long time on most glaciers (since) they’ve actually had positive mass balance (added thickness).”
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A dam would have been less deadly
Andrew Bolt
A crime of the green times:
A man has admitted killing a neighbour who he wrongly accused of ignoring water restrictions.
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Stealing them back
Andrew Bolt
”Never, never” again must we “steal” Aboriginal children, vowed Kevin Rudd. And so…
SALLY was a 15-year-old street child with a drug habit when she gave birth to a son, Daniel. Not surprisingly, he was taken into foster care. Two years later, she gave birth to a daughter, Janelle, who was placed with a different carer.
Now 21, Sally has won a court battle for the return of the two children. They will soon join their mother and her partner in the early 30s - who is not their father - in a home that already holds seven children under 13…
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News from the front
Andrew Bolt
How much longer can we deny that we’re becoming a more brutalised society, lacking respect even for the law?
VICTORIA’S front-line police are being assaulted at a rate of almost 50 a week, with paramedics also suffering regular attacks. Attacks have soared by more than 25 per cent in eight years but the true number may be even higher.
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Never mind a rise in joblessness
Andrew Bolt
Heaven forbid that we’d have a bad image:
AUSTRALIA’S record high migrant intakes look likely to continue, with Immigration Minister Chris Evans indicating the global financial crisis would result in only modest cuts to next year’s program.
As the fallout from the economic crisis continues to spread, Senator Evans is understood to be sympathetic to fears by business groups that drastic cuts could ruin Australia’s image in the global skills marketplace…
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Ideology, not recession, is hurting The Age
Andrew Bolt
Max Suich, a former Fairfax editor-in-chief, says the crisis threatening newspapers isn’t a lack of revenue:
The severe financial problems the industry face are problems for only some of the major media companies — and they are debt-driven, not the result of drastically falling revenues…
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Gore on ice
Andrew Bolt
Add Al Gore’s name to the list of people we need to hold accountable in five years’ time. He’s told an audience in Germany this week that the North Pole ice cap will vanish in summer months in five years.
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Palin’s church burned
Andrew Bolt
Sarah Palin’s church has been burned down.
Power Line:
Authorities described the fire as “suspicious and as potential arson.” The Bible Church’s head minister said, “Someone intentionally did it, but we don’t know who and why.” He declined to say whether the church has received threats. Governor Palin stopped by the church this morning and “told an assistant pastor that she apologizes if the incident is in any way connected to the undeserved negative attention the church has received since she became a vice presidential candidate.”
Given the insane hatred that Democrats directed toward Palin during the recent campaign, it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that the arson is the work of a liberal Democrat.
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Arctic doomed again and again
Andrew Bolt
Take down their names and addresses. In six years we will need them:
Scientists warn climate change is causing ice in the Canadian Arctic to melt so quickly, the region will have an ice-free season in six years… Dr. David Barber, one of the scientists on the expedition, says “the Arctic is telling us that climate change is coming quicker and stronger.”
Hmm. Barber? Wasn’t he warning us early this year that the Arctic could be ice free this northern summer? Why, yes:
We’re actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history],” David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker.”
So how did that last prediction of his work out? Here’s the ice at the Arctic after the summer had melted it most (left) and how it’s rebounded nicely since:
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