How nuclear passed its toughest test
Miranda Devine – Wednesday, March 23, 11 (07:12 pm)
FUKUSHIMA is the world’s best advertisement for nuclear energy.
465 DAYS UNTIL LABOR’S MILLENNIUM TAX
Tim Blair – Friday, March 25, 11 (07:17 pm)
On his very first morning as Julia Gillard’s $720,000 carbon tax salesman, Tim Flannery blows the entire scam wide open:
If we cut emissions today, global temperatures are not likely to drop for about a thousand years.
Over to you, Ms Prime Minister. Defend your tax now.
Please - a new election
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, March 26, 11 (08:11 am)
Paul Kelly has had enough of this “new paradigm” of democracy:
Only another election can resolve the impasse and deliver a stable policy.
And he’s had enough of the ABC - not just of its bias, but of the smug condescension of its collective of ill-informed moralists, who can shame but not explain:
The ABC’s radio coverage (of the anti-carbon dioxide tax rally) the next day was focused overwhelmingly on criticism of Abbott from the position of patronising moralism. In a rare institutional reflection, the ABC’s Chris Uhlmann said later in his blog the ABC itself was an issue for the protesters and speculated that attendees watching its work that night might have had “all their fears confirmed”.The ABC, in fact, has departed from its charter obligations to the Australian people, with its popular radio programs now operating on a sustained basis as the cultural resistance to right-wing talkback led by the Macquarie network.
UPDATE
Reader Alan RM Jones says Kelly is wrong when he says this:
Gillard and Abbott are tearing each other apart with a desperation that shows the ugly unresolved reality of minority government. They are now fighting the next election, given the 2010 election left climate change unresolved.
Says Jones:
Kelly is wrong. Climate change was resolved at the last election: both parties pledged no carbon tax and neither party would introduce an emissions trading scheme until the country was ready.
Labor’s lie unresolved the resolved question.
What to watch out for in the slaughter
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, March 26, 11 (07:32 am)
The question isn’t whether today’s election will be a bloodbath:
The latest Newspoll predicts Labor will hold barely a third of its seats in the NSW parliament.
Primary support for the government sits at an equal all-time low of 23 per cent, while support for the Coalition is more than double this figure at 50 per cent.
And, in even worse news for Labor, 65 per cent of voters say there is absolutely nothing that could change their minds.
The questions, plural, are these:
- If today’s result turns out to be as cataclysmic as Newspoll suggests, does Premier Kristina Keneally really deserve this praise she’s getting of making the best of a bad lot? Are Labor’s hopes of relaunching her in federal politics just pie in the sky?
- With so much argument during the campaign about Julia Gillard’s carbon dioxide tax, will some Labor figures blame the Prime Minister for some of this disaster? Will there be a blowback?
- Will the state seats that lie in the federal seats held by Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott send these two independents a message about their support for Julia Gillard?
On that last point:
The Nationals are hoping that state voters will punish Mr Oakeshott and Mr Windsor for backing a Labor minority government by evicting their state counterparts.
The most likely election victim is Peter Besseling in Port Macquarie, which is within Mr Oakeshott’s seat of Lyne.
The other is Tamworth, held by Peter Draper, within Mr Windsor’s federal seat of New England.
Much is being done to add to Windsor’s and particularly Oakeshott’s pain:
Federal shadow treasurer Joe Hockey on Friday visited the mid-north coast seat of Port Macquarie to support Nationals candidate Leslie Williams.Mr Hockey warned that a vote for independent MP Peter Besseling was a vote for Labor.
Port Macquarie falls within the seat of federal Independent Rob Oakeshott…
“I think, for me, this is going to be the most important seat tomorrow night about whether there is a very clear message to be sent to Canberra,” Mr Hockey said.
Incidentally, this election may send another good signal, particularly when so few Australians of Asian descent choose to engage in politics, despite being so successful in other professions:
Among the startling predictions by Mr O’Shannessy is that Labor will narrowly lose the southwestern Sydney seat of Cabramatta, which it has held since it was first contested 30 years ago.The margin of 29.1 per cent at the 2007 election was reduced to 7.2 per cent by Liberal candidate Dai Le at a by-election in October 2008. If she is successful today Ms Le will become the first Vietnamese refugee to serve in an Australian parliament.
Gillard is the mother of scare campaigns
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, March 26, 11 (07:23 am)
The Sydney Morning Herald gets it completely wrong:
No, no, no.
The word “off” is inserted in error. The headline should instead be:
Gillard acts to head ETS scare campaign
And here’s why:
The latest talking points document distributed to Labor MPs, obtained by The Weekend Australian, exhorts MPs to accuse Tony Abbott of conducting a fear campaign about the carbon tax, but is liberally peppered with scary lines about the effects of not acting on climate change.
Proposed warnings to be offered include: “If we don’t act then we will see more extreme weather events like bushfires and droughts. We will have more days of extreme heat and we will see our coastline flooded as sea levels rise.
“People in northern NSW will feel like they live in Cairns. That will affect the crops we grow, it will affect our native animals, and it will affect our lifestyles.”
MPs are also urged to warn that extreme weather leads to associated additional deaths.
“Sea levels could rise by up to a metre and possibly even more by the end of the century,” the document says. “Up to 250,000 existing homes are at risk of inundation.
“Climate change will see the average snow season contract by between 85 per cent and 96 per cent by 2050, and disappear by the end of the century.”
These ludicrous scares turn Gillard’s warnings into a giant joke:
Actually, Julia, somewho who tells us to back her campaign or die seems a pretty strong believer in scare campaigns herself.
Flannery exposes the futility, and Lomborg explains it
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, March 26, 11 (07:17 am)
The news is getting out:
Chief Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery also said Julia Gillard was wrong in saying there were no respected climate-sceptic scientists.
At yesterday’s forum in Geelong:
MALE MEETING ATTENDEE: How much do you profit from all your scaremongering and alarmist false predictions? Thank you.TIM FLANNERY: Well, could I just ask you have you heard any, any sort of alarmist comments or false predictions this evening or what was scaremongering this evening?
UPDATE
Bjorn Lomborg makes the same point that I was extracting from Flannery yesterday - that all these billions spent on “stopping” global warming essentially make no difference. It’s just gesture politics - like today’s Earth Hour:
COPENHAGEN’S central square hardly competes with New York’s Times Square for glitz, but it is prime commercial space in my home, Denmark.
Now there’s a new advertiser among the neon signs: a brightly lit billboard exhorts everyone to participate in Earth Hour, the 60 minutes tonight in which the whole world is urged to dim the lights to cut greenhouse emissions. There is a certain irony in renting brightly lit advertising space to exhort us to save electricity for one hour, but this is apparently lost on the organisers....
The environmental effect of the past three annual lights-out hours has been negligible. If everyone in the world participated in this year’s Earth Hour, the result would be the same as turning off China’s carbon emissions for roughly 45 seconds.
When we switch off the electricity, many of us turn to candlelight.... Using one candle for each extinguished bulb cancels the CO2 reduction…
I fear the campaign is symptomatic of an environmental movement that is too focused on hollow, feel-good actions that at best only inch us in the right direction....
Germany is a good example. Despite being a fairly cloudy country, it has led the world in solar panel subsidies, spending $US75 billion putting inefficient, uncompetitive solar technology on rooftops.
This delivers a trivial 0.1 per cent of Germany’s total energy supply and will postpone the effects of global warming by just seven hours in 2100.
Hide two declines
Andrew Bolt – Friday, March 25, 11 (06:31 pm)
Climate Audit’s Steve McIntyre now discovers two declines have been hidden in the tree-ring data set which was so influential in IPCC claims that we’ve had unprecedented warming in the 20th century. Anthony Watts explains the background and significance.
(Thanks to reader Neville.)
The people who said boo to the geese
Andrew Bolt – Friday, March 25, 11 (05:54 pm)
Check the Australians above against the picture painted of their rally by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet:
“I think (Opposition Leader Tony Abbott) needs to apologise for being associated with it and completely dissociate himself from it,” Mr Combet said.
By Labor MP Nick Champion:
...oddballs and misfits ... extremists .... the far right ... an assorted collection of misfits and oddballs
By Labor MP Andrew Leigh:
.... these are groups that are on the far fringes of Australian politics...
Or by the West Australian’s warmist preacher and political correspondent Andrew Probyn:
When Labor and Canberra reporters can so casually misrepresent, insult and patronise such Australians, it suggests that neither lot understands their country.
UPDATE
One reporter only too aware about this sneering demonisation and the hypocrisy of those responsible is the ABC’s Chris Uhlmann. I urge you to read his sober, balance and reflective report - written after getting a free character assessment (aimed more at the ABC than him personally, I’d imagine) from some of the protests.
(Thanks to readers Michael and Anne.)
China is tackling real carbon pollution, not global warming
Andrew Bolt – Friday, March 25, 11 (04:15 pm)
Julia Gillard keeps pretending China is serious abiout cutting its greenhouse emissions too, even though it’s actually building a new coal fired plant or two every week:
You know, China [is] closing down a dirty coal-fired power generation facility at the rate of one every one or two weeks. Putting up a wind turbine at the rate of one every hour.
Here’s the real reason those small, very dirty coal-fired stations are being closed (to be replaced by bigger and cleaner ones) - and it’s got nothing to do with global warming:
Chinese leaders have been largely unwilling to engage in the global debate on climate change. But they have made a priority of reducing urban air pollution — which kills thousands of people every year and is largely caused by burning coal — and of improving mine safety.
(Thanks to reader Rob.)
Thinking globally, acting locally
Andrew Bolt – Friday, March 25, 11 (12:29 pm)
A metaphor for a movement, a time, a madness…
From reader Steve:
Hi Andrew,Yesterday while driving home I was stuck behind a very dirty, ill-maintained Suzuki that blew so much smoke I almost couldn’t breathe.
When I saw the stickers on the back I just had to take the attached photo’s, you can even see the smoke in one of them (if you put these on your blog feel free to cover up the number plate)
One says ‘Price on Pollution – Our Kids are worth it’ and another was a triangular sticker saying ‘The Greens’
They preach and take the moral high ground but cannot manage the upkeep on their vehicles to ensure they are being as environmentally friendly as possible.
We order you to be global warming believers
Andrew Bolt – Friday, March 25, 11 (11:11 am)
Our soldiers, sailors and airmen have been summonsed by an email from HQ to fight the real war. So park those gassy tanks, dock those oil-burning ships and ground those avgas-guzzling planes, if you really want to make a diffrerence, guys:
Defence has registered to participate in Earth Hour 2011 to demonstrate Defence’s commitment to reduce global warming and Combat Climate Change…
Please remember to turn off lights and other non-essential electrical equipment (except printers, copiers and Defence Secret Network CPUs) before you leave at the end of the week on Friday, 25 March 2011…
Please play a part in Defence’s ongoing commitment to Combat Climate Change by fully participating in this years Earth hour at work and at home.
How sweet. Defence now presumes to lecture its personnel even about how to run their own homes, and to participate in the most useless gesture politics.
(Thanks to several offended defence personnel.)
No comments:
Post a Comment