Moment of truth
Miranda Devine – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (02:59 pm)
Wearing out the shoe leather doesn’t get much more awkward than this or this:
“Why did you lie to us?”
“And why are you continuing to lie and say, ‘Well, I didn’t really mean to lie’?...”
“I’ve listened to you for months, I’ve watched Parliament - and you are still lying"…
“I heard you on Q and A. I heard you for over a year. The thing that sticks in my craw is that you stood up and said there will be no carbon tax. And a few months later.,. you’ve changed your mind.”
Toll on teens lost in sexual Cyberia
Miranda Devine – Saturday, July 09, 11 (08:00 pm)
WHEN Facebook pages rating the sexual prowess of teenagers at schools came to light last month, parents were shocked by the malicious sexual slander.
But for teens in the know, Rootrater and dozens of other gossip sites are just the everyday cyber-reality of our toxic hyper-sexualised culture.
“Chunky thighs, huge arse ... always available for a root for those who are hard up,” was an example of a Rootrater slur against one girl and there was much more, too graphic to print in a family newspaper.
I feel adults and teachers have a duty to extend their community to include teens online, not be entirely separate from them. I loved the movie and play Grease as a child but something that was obvious to me,when highlighted, was the lack of reality of Grease, being a world without parents. Such a world would in reality not have children. Yet our modern day world has a way of taking adults away from children in their daily life.
It isn’t up to children to include adults, it has to be the other way around. Children want to be part of community, and also want independence too, but they want to achieve independence, to fight for it, and the surrender they experience in todays world is frustrating for them.
Of course education authorities are scared silly of the idea of children and adults being in contact online. But the worst aspects of it, the fringe of it, is what we see now. The healthy aspects we don’t see that much of because responsible people are taking too much care .. or don’t see the need.
Sat 09 Jul 11 (10:26pm)
Sun 10 Jul 11 (04:53pm)
I feel adults and teachers have a duty to extend their community to include teens online, not be entirely separate from them.
I’m sorry, but any teacher whose fantasies and/or delusions extend to imagining that they have not just a right but a “duty” to friend my kids on myspace or poke them on facebook just makes my stomach curdle and sends shivers up my spine.
You as a teacher are an adult. My children are children.
Normal schoolchildren do not want middle-aged men as “friends”, and normal middle-aged men do not want schoolchildren as “friends”.
Teach my kids to read, write, analyse and figure. Don’t you dare try to insinuate yourself into their personal lives. I check my childrens’ social networking accounts regularly and if I find a middle-aged man trying to insinuate himself into their circle of friends, I will report him.
It is not “healthy” as you claim..... it is creepy in the extreme and will land you and any other grown man who takes your “advice” in very hot water sooner or later.
Shut up and teach.
Mon 11 Jul 11 (04:55pm)
Teacher, you mistook what I wrote. Teachers are part of the community and their lives cross boundaries. I am not friends with most of my FB contacts. Nor am I friends with my students outside of school. I am their teacher, or a former teacher. The community is not as large as you imagine it. I would not seek out to relive my youth. But I am an example. Just as it is not a good idea at school to be drunk or not on task, I don’t have that luxury online or at a restaurant either. There is a fantasy, that many have and which is often endorsed by media, that we live our lives alone, and our actions or expressions as individuals are isolated. That isn’t true. I don’t care for the way you suggest adults relax. That just doesn’t sound like fun to me. Call me a wowser. But I must point out your children are aware of your hypocrisy and you are programming them expectations that will only disappoint them.
… is from the final sentence of Stanford University economist Gavin Wright‘s September 1990 American Economic Review article “The Origins of American Industrial Success, 1879-1940″ (reprinted as Chapter 13 in Robert Whaples and Dianne C. Betts, eds., Historical Perspectives on the American Economy: Selected Readings [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995], pp. 455-479; the following quotation is on page 476 of the Whaples-Betts reader):
[H]istorical resource abundance was itself largely an outgrowth of American industrial success.
Note carefully the direction of causality. Julian Simon, I fancy, nods approvingly
In preparing some of my letters-to-the-editor for publication in book form, I ran across this one, to the Washington Post, that I somehow failed to post here at the Cafe back when it was first written in February of last year:
Barry Lynn complains that Reagan-era easing of antitrust regulations has resulted in oppressive monopolies: “The seemingly endless variety of products in our stores is controlled by an ever smaller number of immense trading companies that, increasingly, charge us higher prices” (“American small businesses needn’t go extinct,” Feb. 21).
Mr. Lynn’s reasoning and facts are shaky.
First, true monopolists – having no need to attend carefully to consumers’ desires – don’t bother offering an “endless variety of products.”
Second, as a quick perusal of Table 3 in the attached document from the Bureau of Labor Statistics will show, inflation-adjusted prices of a great many goods and services are today lower than they were 25 years ago. The real price of household furniture, for example, is down 43 percent over the past quarter-century; that of household appliances is down 64 percent; that of tools and hardware is down 60 percent; that of new cars is down 36 percent; that of apparel is down 46 percent; that of nonprescription drugs is down 54 percent; and – get this! – the real price of information technology, hardware, and services is down a whopping 96 percent.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Here’s a letter to the New York Times:
New York Farm Bureau president Dean Norton rightly seeks approval of free-trade pacts with countries such as South Korea (Letters, July 12). But he wrongly justifies freer trade by emphasizing that “Without approval, the United States could lose nearly $2.3 billion a year in additional agriculture exports.”
Protectionism does reduce U.S. exports. The resulting loss to Americans, though, isn’t the valuable goods and services that Americans don’t ship to foreigners; instead, it’s the valuable goods and services that foreigners don’t ship to Americans.
Consider the U.S. exports that Mr. Norton mentions. Directly or indirectly, South Koreans purchase these exports with South Korean won. Of what use are won to Americans except as currency for purchasing goods and services from South Korea? If South Koreans refuse to pay for exports received from America – or insist on paying for these exports only with Monopoly money – no one would regard Americans’ failure to export to South Korea as a loss to America.
Americans’ losses from protectionist policies are measured exclusively in the value of the imports that those policies prevent us from receiving.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
… is from Matt Ridley’s May 22, 2010, Wall Street Journal article entitled “Humans: Why They Triumphed.” (HT Jim Dorn, editor of the Cato Journal):
The story of the human race has been a gradual spread of specialization and exchange…. Prosperity consists of getting more and more narrow in what you make and more and more diverse in what you buy. Self-sufficiency – subsistence – is poverty.
355 DAYS UNTIL LABOR’S CATELESS CARBON TAX
Tim Blair – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (03:23 am)
Previously shot on a bus, Cate Blanchett is now thrown under one:
The group behind the Cate Blanchett pro-carbon tax ads will launch a new campaign – minus celebrities.
The Say Yes group, which includes the WWF, Get Up, the ACTU and the Climate Institute, says it wants to use “average” Australians this time.
Bring on Julia Gillard, shown here in John Tiedemann’s Blanchett-evoking illustration for Monday’s column:
THE END OF VERTEBRATE POLITICS
Tim Blair – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (02:55 am)
George Monbiot foresees our jellyfish future:
Last year I began to wonder, this year doubt is seeping away, to be replaced with a rising fear. Could it really have happened …?
Jellyfish. Unimaginable numbers of them …
Is this the moment? Have I just witnessed the beginning of the end of vertebrate ecology here …?
A combination of overfishing and ocean acidification (caused by rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) has created the perfect conditions for this shift from a system dominated by fish to a system dominated by jellyfish …
If this is indeed what we’re seeing, the end of vertebrate ecology is a direct result of the end of vertebrate politics.
(Via Haunting the Library, which also presents historical coverage of Monbiot’s 2012 meat apocalypse)
SOMEONE PLEASE ALERT BOB BROWN
Tim Blair – Tuesday, July 12, 11 (12:38 pm)
The Great Hegemonster is interfering in Australian politics!
The US overdrawn at the bank
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (03:39 pm)
The US is in desperate financial strife that may yet rock us, too - and you can be rock certain that cutting emissions and growth is of zero priority:
President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.
“I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News.
The Obama administration and many economists have warned of economic catastrophe if the United States does not raise the amount it is legally allowed to borrow by August 2.
Lawmakers from both parties want to use the threat of that deadline to work out a broader package on long-term deficit reduction, with Republicans looking to cut trillions of dollars in federal spending, while Democrats are pushing for a more “balanced approach,” which would include both spending cuts and increased revenue through taxes.
Telling them yet again will just make them crosser
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (03:13 pm)
Labor has convinced itself of a monumental fantasy - that if it just explained its carbon dioxide tax more often, or more simply or more vividly, more voters would change their minds.
False.
People aren’t stupid. They’ve heard, considered and decided - decided that Gillard is wrong:
Meanwhile, tempers flared at Brisbane’s Fairfield shopping centre as the Prime Minister tried to convince voters of the merits of her climate plan.
“Why did you lie to us and why are you continuing to lie?” one woman said.
Gillard: “I can give you an answer right now if you’ll let me. What I want to do is put a price on carbon pollution. The big polluters are going to pay.
Woman: ”I understand that. I’m not stupid.”
The black hole in Gillard’s plan
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (12:18 pm)
Here’s a great, fatal hole in the Gillard Government’s carbon dioxide plan, as conceded by its own documents.
Half the emission cuts are going to come from buying credits overseas.
Let’s overlook the basic fact that a proper overseas market in credits barely exists and is ripe for rorting, as the European Union has already found.
Assume, very conservatively, that those credits will trade at $30 a tonne. That means that the 160 million tonnes of emissions Gillard promises to be cutting by 2020 will see Australia send more than $3 billion a year out of the country to places such as China - or Nigeria.
That’s money the Government will not have to use as compensation for the prices rises.
That’s money gone, for nothing.
China stalling on the wind power Gillard claims it’s installing
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (09:34 am)
Julia Gillard wants us to think the world’s biggest emitter is matching the sacrifice she’s demanding from us:
The rest of the world is moving… China, closing down a dirty coal-fired power generation facility at the rate of one every one to two weeks, putting up a wind turbine at the rate of one every hour...
We’ve already shown that half that statement is a constructive lie - that China is closing down small, uneconomic coal-fired power stations only to replace them with huge ones that will add to its total emissions.
But now to the second half of Gillard’s claim, about China’s building all those lovely green wind turbines. The world’s only English language newsletter on “alternative energy” in China, China New Energy Bulletin reports in its June issue (no link):
After a 5-year rapid growth, the Chinese wind sector which was mostly represented by wind turbine manufacturers, is now experiencing chill winds.
Starting from early 2011, the central government has changed the direction of the development of wind farm investment. Instead of building more wind farms, the government has decided to focus more on solving the grid connection problem. Following this plan, a series of blows were delivered in the 1st half this year.
Firstly, it was reported that National Energy Bureau was discussing tightening approvals of wind farm projects. Under the proposed new policy all wind farm projects would be required to get a so-called “Official Feedback” from National Energy Bureau. Current policy only requires projects with over 50MW installed capacity to be registered with NDRC (National Development and Reform Committee), the top economic governmental body in China. Projects under this size can be approved by local government. ..
In a second shock to the industry, according to China’s top brokerage firm CICC, SGCC (State Grid Company) has declined to connect any new wind farm since May 5th, as China enters the power demand peak season…
SGCC complains that wind farms are fragile and break down frequently, threatening grid safety. This has always been a big problem with wind power, which largely explains why only 70% of the installed capacity is connected to state grid. Although this disconnection is temporary, it highlights the serious problem of integrating wind power into the state power system.
It is also reported that a total of 1,346 wind turbines were disconnected from the power grid on April 17 in Gansu and Hebei provinces for safety reasons.
UPDATE
Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt:
Let me begin then with the simple fact that according to the 3rd Garnaut Update Paper, between 2005 and 2020 Chinese emissions will increase from approximately 5 billion tonnes of CO2 per annum to over 12 billion tonnes of CO2 per annum.
This growth of over 7 billion tonnes a year compares with an Australian decline of approximately 70 million tonnes on 2005 levels by 2020. In short, our decrease in emissions is likely to be eclipsed by growth in one country alone, that is 100 times or more greater than our cuts.
(Thanks to reader T.)
Greens bought off with $10 billion and a licence for blackouts
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (08:11 am)
The Greens demonstrate the folly of giving politicians billions for their pet projects - especially when they’re irrational ideologues:
THE Gillard government has been accused of distorting its $10 billion clean energy fund to favour the Greens’ pet projects after Bob Brown confirmed he insisted on the exclusion of carbon capture and storage from the fund.
The International Energy Agency estimates CCS - the capture of carbon dioxide in smoke stacks and its storage underground - can deliver almost 20 per cent of the global greenhouse gas abatement needed by 2050.
However, the $10bn Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which Labor negotiated with the Greens as part of gaining their support for the carbon tax, excludes funding for CCS.
The Rudd government had heavily backed CCS technology, helping to establish trials in Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland.
The Greens leader said yesterday his party had insisted on the exclusion of CCS from the fund.
“We didn’t want it in there because . . . the coal industry is making tens of millions of dollars each year and exporting most of that money overseas - its pockets are bulging,” Senator Brown said…
The concentration of the $10bn Clean Energy Finance Corporation on Greens-favoured projects such as wind, solar and geothermal follows last month’s finding by the Productivity Commission that government subsidies of renewable energy schemes - from commercial-sized wind farms to solar panels on houses - were an expensive and inefficient form of abatement that obstructed deeper cuts to emissions.
The Greens have a religious aversion to coal. The result: the Gillard Government is giving them billions to waste on the most expensive and unreliable forms of alternative energy that will never give us the baseload power we need.
In fact, almost all major forms of baseload power are now banned by the Greens:
- No coal-fired power, with even carbon sequestration technology denied funding
- No nuclear power
- No new dams for hydroelectricity.
And these people now drive the Government’s energy policy.
Australia is being ruined by a party not even in Government, yet dominating an utterly weak and incompetent one that is.
And always remember: all this is being done without any chance of changing the climate by a flicker.
UPDATE
And six brand new green bureaucracies to strangle us:
o Clean Energy Finance Corporation
o Climate Change Authority
o Energy Security Council
o Clean Energy Regulator
o Land Sector Carbon and Biodiversity Advisory Board
o Australian Renewable Energy Authority
Here we go again with another Arctic scare
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (07:11 am)
It’s like they expect us to have forgotten their last dud scare:
SEA ice in the Arctic is melting at a record pace this year, suggesting warming at the north pole is speeding up and a largely ice-free Arctic can be expected in summer months within 30 years.
The area of the Arctic ocean at least 15 per cent covered in ice is this week about 8.5 million square kilometres - lower than the previous record low set in 2007 - according to satellite monitoring by the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado.
As well, data from the University of Washington Polar Science Centre shows that the thickness of Arctic ice this year is also the lowest on record. In the past 10 days, the Arctic ocean has been losing as much as 150,000 square kilometres of sea ice a day, NSIDC director Mark Serreze said....
‘’There will be ups and downs, but we are on track to see an ice-free summer by 2030. It is an overall downward spiral.’’
By 2030?
But this same Serreze in 2007 was warning of an ice melt by as early as .. 2013 - just two years from now:
Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.
Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.
Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss. ...
“Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,” the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC.
“So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.” ...
Dr Mark Serreze ... added: “I think Wieslaw is probably a little aggressive in his projections, simply because the luck of the draw means natural variability can kick in to give you a few years in which the ice loss is a little less than you’ve had in previous years. But Wieslaw is a smart guy and it would not surprise me if his projections came out.”
So what happened to all those earlier predictions, of a total ice-melt by possibly 2012 - as aired on the ABC’s Four Corners?
The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre once even claimed the North Pole could be ice-free in 2008.
Al Gore believed it, and then had to readjust his own prediction to 2013, when the ice refused to do what the climate models predicted. But then, after yet another refusal of the Arctic to behave as predicted, he adjusted again,predicting the ice could vanish by 2014.
And now we must panic again?
(Original post rewritten for better examples.)
Green cure is deadlier than the disease
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (06:55 am)
Greens leader Bob Brown claimed global warming threatened the jobs of tourism operators on the Great Barrier Reef:
It threatens death of the Great Barrier Reef with 67,000 jobs, a $6 billion economy, that’s coming back into the Australian economy.
In fact, it’s the Greens-backed tax to stop global warming that threatens the jobs of tourism operators on the Great Barrier Reef:
As Julia Gillard yesterday began selling her tax as being vital to save Australia’s world heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, cruise businesses in north Queensland, already reeling under the high Australian dollar, recoiled at the promise of cost hikes, particularly for fuel.
Col McKenzie, from the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators, said the cost of marine diesel fuel would rise by 6c a litre from next July under the tax, as the existing fuel tax credits scheme was rolled back.
“For one of our big operators, that’s an additional (cost of) $270,000 a year, with no additional profits and no compensation. Tourism is already on its knees and we’re in diabolical trouble, looking at a cost like that.”
(Thanks to reader the Great Waisuli.)
Ludwig was warned
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (06:43 am)
Anyone surprised?
The departmental briefing also warned that the treatment of exported animals in “destination countries” continued to cause community concern.
The warnings, contained in the “Red Book” prepared for incoming ministers, were handed to Senator Ludwig eight months before ABC’s Four Corners screened footage of animal cruelty at Indonesian abattoirs, sparking the live cattle export crisis. The Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Department told the minister that if animal welfare was not “appropriately handled” by both the domestic and export livestock industries, there was a “real risk” they would lose public support.
Howard rejects what Gillard says he’d back
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (06:40 am)
JOHN Howard wants Julia Gillard to stop using him as an excuse for her carbon dioxide tax, which he fears will cost Australian jobs.
“What is now being proposed is well ahead of the rest of the world,” the former prime minister warns.
Howard’s rebuke just confirms why not a word Gillard says in favour of her dangerous tax can be trusted.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Gillard misleadingly named just two people in her support as she unveiled her plans for a $23 a tonne price on carbon dioxide emissions.
“Another female leader, (former British prime minister) Margaret Thatcher, warned the planet about the effects of climate change,” said Gillard.
“John Howard, when he was prime minister, determined to put a price on carbon pollution.”
In her address to the nation and each day since, Gillard repeatedly named Howard as someone who agreed with “a price on carbon”, hoping by her pitch to win over conservatives and embarrass the Opposition.
But Howard has had enough. He won’t admit he was wrong on global warming or wrong to promise an emissions trading scheme in his last desperate bid to stave off defeat at the 2007 election.
Yes, says Howard, he did promise to bring in an ETS by 2012, but that was always conditional on the rest of the world moving to something similar.
“I indicated at the time we would act in concert with the rest of the world, and not ahead of it,” he says.
Otherwise, big Australian emitters would simply lose business to other countries without an ETS or carbon dioxide tax, costing us money and jobs, without cutting global emissions.
Howard concedes he did not always make this as clear as he should have, but points to his speech to the Liberal Party federal council in June 2007, in which he spelled out his caveat:
Poll: all pain, no gain. And an early election, please
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (06:02 am)
Dear Martin Ferguson and Simon Crean,
This madness must be stopped.
AUSTRALIANS have given the carbon tax the thumbs down, with 68 per cent saying it will leave them worse off and 63 per cent calling for Julia Gillard to bring on an early election.
Only 10 per cent of voters said they would be better off and only 28 per cent believe Ms Gillard has a mandate to introduce the tax without holding another election.
The poll reveals 62 per cent of people think the Greens, who negotiated the package with Labor and the independents, have too much influence over the Government…
It finds 81 per cent believe the carbon tax will have little or no impact on the environment and 67 per cent believe it will be bad for the economy ...
UPDATE
Janet Albrechtsen also wants to know what possible good all this pain will gain:
Australia is responsible for less than 2 per cent of global emissions. Isn’t it the height of political hubris to imagine that anything 22 million people - in a world of almost seven billion - do will lead to less global warming? After all, your Climate Change Commissioner, Tim Flannery, told us in March that “if the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow . . . the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop for several hundred years, perhaps over 1000 years”.
On Monday night you said that your policy will cut 160 million tonnes of carbon a year by 2020, the equivalent of taking 45 million cars off the road. Nice imagery, but here’s the reality. China’s annual emissions last year were 8.33 billion tonnes, up 10.4 per cent and growing. Treasury can work out how many millions of cars that is. Doesn’t this mean that your tax is environmental symbolism?
UPDATE
Paul Kelly says the Government’s deeply compromised package is bult on two huge assumptions:
The policy, above all, reflects two fundamental beliefs. First, that the science is right. For Labor and the Greens this is a no-brainer. They are contemptuous of doubts about the science… Labor’s policy is alarmist. Carbon pricing is essential because global temperatures “could rise” up to 6.4C by 2100… The only conclusion from this policy is that global warming has now become one of Labor’s deepest beliefs.
The second belief embedded in this policy is that the rest of the world is taking assertive action against global warming.
This theme underpins the entire policy and Treasury modelling. You may have thought Copenhagen was a setback for global action but this policy assumes the precise opposite. Australia is now taxing carbon on the basis that Copenhagen was a success. This follows pledges made at Copenhagen and affirmed later at Cancun…
Labor’s policy merrily asserts that “governments around the world” are acting on such commitments and, as a result, Australia’s price is its “fair share” in global terms.
These claims are heroic. They may be right. Yet such Cancun pledges are voluntary and non-binding… The truth is that real progress in each nation will be determined by domestic politics… The extent to which these ambitious pledges are realised remains highly uncertain and Labor’s assumption may be optimistic folly.
A giant national upheaval based on two huge and dubious assumptions is a monumental madness, and those responsible must be hounded from office.
UPDATE
The cost of Gillard’s package is at least $3 billion more than you were first told, and involve almost certainly the deliberate destruction a quarter of Victoria’s baseload power - with nothing certain or cheap to replace it:
TAXPAYERS face a slug of up to $3 billion to close the nation’s dirtiest coal-fired power stations in addition to the $4.3bn hit to the budget over the next four years to finance Julia Gillard’s clean energy plan…
Industry sources estimated last night the world’s biggest utility company, International Power-GDF Suez, would seek close to $3bn for Hazelwood, which was privatised in 1996 along with its associated mine for $2.35bn.
Alinta Energy has confirmed that it has had talks with the government about a controlled closure of its Playford power station at Port Augusta, north of Adelaide. Hazelwood has a capacity of about 1600MW and Playford has about 240MW capacity.
UPDATE
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet calls my question ”bullshit”, which is one way to avoid telling voters how much warming they will prevent by paying this new tax, slashing jobs, handing the greens $10 billion for pet projects, and splashing out billions in “compensation”.
“Bullshit” is to ask what we’ll gain from the Government’s pain.
You must not question. You must simply pay.
UPDATE
This question is finally being asked and Gillard has absolutely no answer to it:
Madonna King (ABC Brisbane): Alex and Joe ask a similar question: ‘To what extent will the carbon tax reduce average global temperatures?’
Julia Gillard: Well, this is a question first put into the public debate, I believe, by Andrew Bolt and it’s a question not capable of answer because it assumes other countries aren’t acting. Other countries are acting...
That answer is completely mendacious. Whether other countries are acting or not makes no difference to the calculation of how much a reduction in Australia’s emissions will affect the global temperature.
Gillard is deceiving voters, not giving them the facts.
If she cannot say what difference our sacrifice will make, then why are we making it?
Playing “the Andrew Bolt game” with Gillard
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (05:55 am)
SO HOW much will Julia Gillard’s tax change the temperature? What’s the gain for all this pain?
The Prime Minister yesterday once again refused to say, telling a Melbourne radio station: “I’m not going to play the Andrew Bolt game.”
But we can actually put a figure on it, thanks to a peer-reviewed paper published in Nature in 2009 by researchers led by Professor Damon Matthews, of Concordia University’s Department of Geography, Planning and the Environment.
As Matthews reported: “The new research shows that ... each emission of carbon dioxide results in the same global temperature increase, regardless of when or over what period of time the emission occurs.
“These findings mean that we can now say: if you emit that tonne of carbon dioxide, it will lead to 0.0000000000015 degrees of global temperature change.”
Yesterday Gillard again boasted: “What I want to do is reduce carbon pollution by 160 million tonnes in 2020.”
Let’s assume Gillard will in fact manage that cut, which will involve spending more than she’s announced so far. Let’s assume that the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature is as strong as global warming theory claims.
Now multiply that 160 million tonnes Gillard claims she will save by 0.0000000000015.
Answer: 0.00024 degrees.
Yes, Gillard’s tax-and-spend package - her gamble with the entire Australian economy - will at best save one-4000th of a degree of warming by 2020.
Think that’s worth it?
Costing you billions already
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (12:04 am)
Great vote of confidence in this truly appalling government and its destructive tax:
Australian stocks sank today to their lowest point for July amid concerns over the carbon tax and global debt. Almost $25 billion was wiped from the share market in the month’s worst trading day
A couple of billions Julia hadn’t exactly counted
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, July 13, 11 (12:03 am)
What’s two or three more uncosted billions to a government that’s spent so many of them already?
The government has refused to disclose how much it will pay to retire 2000 megawatts of brown coal generation capacity, warning it would up the price for taxpayers in an upcoming tender process.
The next time this lot demands costings from the Oppostion, laugh in their face.
And note again: first this government spends $11 billion shutting down Telstra’s perfectly good copper network. Now it will spend a couple of billion more to shut a perfectly good power station.
Never has a government spent so much on simply destroying infrastructure.
And, of course, you cannoty trust a single promise this lying government makes:
After The Australian reported on July 6 that the government would rely on the contingency fund to support power plants as they were slugged with the carbon price, opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey raised the issue in federal parliament with Wayne Swan.
Mr Hockey asked: “Is the government planning to use the contingency reserve of the budget to provide loans or to guarantee risk on behalf of power companies that cannot finance their debt as a result of the carbon tax?”
The Treasurer: “No.”
Once ministers resigned after misleading people so brazenly. For this government, it’s standard operating deception.
Nearly, nearly signed, swears the government
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 12, 11 (09:46 pm)
This is the second time the deal is announced before it’s actually signed:
ABC television today reported the two countries had struck a final agreement and would sign it by the end of the month.
Tomorrow must not belong to such people
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, July 12, 11 (05:57 pm)
GetUp, the organisation using threats to shut down debate, may play yet another trick that has nothing to do with countering arguments with reason.
Malcolm Farr tweets about the National Press Club debate between sceptic Lord Monckton and a warmist:
@farrm51
Malcolm Farr Hey wouldn’t it be funny if GetUp booked about 100 seats at the NPC for Monkton’s appearance Tuesday. Actually, I think they have.
There is something terribly familiar about these young extremists:
UPDATE
The IPA’s Tim Wilson is amazed that GetUp could produce, edit and release this video on Sunday, since it draws on information on Julia Gillard’s carbon dioxide tax that was embargoed until noon. Indeed, Wilson also had the impresion that GetUp boss Simon Sheikh was quoting from embargoed documents during their Sky News debate before noon.
What precisely are the links between this organisation and the government?
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