It will not have an impact on Labors loss.
But it may well impact on the margin.
It too could just bring about leadership change in the Liberal party!
As we get nearer and as right or wrong,as it is, public perception , that man made change is real, just maybe A switch from Abbott becomes possible.
Would the Liberals want to see a certain win turn to a close run race?
Or take the easy way out , ensure the easy win by switching leaders.
Well aware detractors will say I am trying to pick the Liberals leader.
But I promise it is just not true.
What is true is polling that says, shouts rather, most Australians see a need for action.
Now the detractors get the heavy weapons out, big boots to get me in line.
But surely they know? Abbott,s plan is to reduce emissions by the very same targeted amount.
Those denialists should under stand, while many in the coalition are non believers, official policy,s as they present it, is to take action, same target different way of getting there.
Every day adds to the concerns of some.
Great Britons extra long winter, and its extra coldness.
Hurricanes/cyclones in parts of our country that have not been seen in living memory.
Climate change can not resurrect, Labor but it can impact on who leads the Liberals.

Belly, "Well aware detractors will say I am trying to pick the Liberals leader.
But I promise it is just not true."

You will grow a nose like Julia's.

The subject has many sides, all have supporters.
Is man having an impact on climate change.
Is it just a normal cycle.
Is climate change its self taking place.
Most but not all, know while Some Liberals and many National party members believe it is crap, their own words.
Current coalition policy is yes we need to take action against climate change.
Then if we see both party,s want to reduce the emissions by the same target, a hard ask for most here who in such threads target the truth of climate change, what then is left.
Then the proposed methods of reducing come in to play,and under the spotlight of truth.
Polling in this country while firmly against Labor, is even more firmly for action against climate change.
So it is possible, imo, that increasing concerns, between now and September, for it to impact.
Again, it will not stop Gillards team from being removed, but will it impaction the margin?

A photo of Julia Gillard's nose,

http://digitaljournal.com/article/293776

You may need to monitor your own.

Belly, "Well aware detractors will say I am trying to pick the Liberals leader.
But I promise it is just not true."

That is priceless :)

Dear Belly,

The election will not be a referendum on
carbon pricing. The anger with the carbon tax has
faded as the PM said it would.

Carbon was not the Opposition's best lever against
the PM's credibility. We've all heard all the
lines ad nauseum - "This toxic tax is based on a lie,"
all of it in itself is a falsehood, made even more
brazen given Mr Abbott's "weather vane" stance on the
issue.

I doubt whether anyone really believes that
the PM is somehow deserving of the tag of
untrustworthiness for change on the carbon-pricing
issue (circumstances had changed), then what of Mr
Abbott's telling SkyNews in 2009 that"

"If you want to put a price on carbon why not just do it
with a simple tax?"

Or is that another of the Opposition leader's -
and this is the same man who admitted on national television
that he has trouble with the "gospel truth" - inconvenient
truths? Like claiming that the cost of a lamb roast will
soar to $100, that whole towns and industries will
disappear and that our entire economy will be laid to
waste.

Thinking people realise that in politics a degree of
rhetorical flourish, and a pinch of hyperbole is to
be expected - but when the Opposition bases its
campaign on a lie about a lie, then the bar is not being
set very high.

Thinking people also realise that repealing carbon pricing
like Mr Abbott promises should he get elected is not
going to be easy. Firslty it will be rejected by a
hostile Senate. Secondly, repealing the carbon tax
comes at a cost to the budget - a very big cost -
as a time when the incoming treasurer will be working
desperately to get the budget in balance. So all
decisions will be made in a very different frame,
especially if Joe Hockey is treasurer.

Hockey calls for an end of the "age of entitlement."
He contends that government can no longer afford the
vanity of middle-class welfare. A vision potentially
at odds with Mr Abbott's conservative political
formula.

Dear onthebeach,

Talking about noses...

"One has a nose,
The other big ears,
But one gets things done,
While the other builds fears!"

The fact remains that Belly was not being entirely honest in the quote given.

As for Julia, the Nos will have it and the nose goes. Tick, tick..

One could add that the 'ears have it, but that is better the 'ear, 'ears.

But Julia was once very keen, flirting with the man she now calls Mr Rabbit,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNZ3a843aIg

LOL

Lexi my sweet we realise a very nasty woman has intentionally made it hard to get rid of the carbon tax, she is punishing us in advance for chucking her out on her butt, at the election.

However don't kid yourself about the anger fading. It is not about to fade when we get electricity bills like the one I got yesterday. $639 is $200 higher than my last one, & I had no power for 5 days of this one, thanks to our flood. We will be reminded of why to dump this lot every quarter. Having to run pumps electric fences & the like is expensive, but not that expensive.

You only have to look at the major news outlets in Europe to see the global warming fraud is dead. It is now like the chicken with it's head cut off, just running around squawking, before rolling over. Yes there is a lot of squawking, but the gravy train riders would not have switched to ocean acidification, yet another furphy, if the warming bit had any real evidence to promote.

The investigation they will have, after the election, will show it never had legs to stand on, & the whole thing will be chucked. They will have to get rid of that clean energy bill too, or many will end up with no power, due to the cross subsidies pricing it out of reach.

It may interest some at election time, but only the faithful in academia, who want the research grant money, & the chattering inner city class, who vote left regardless, & the other gravy train riders.

Given another year or so, it will be just as dead as the Y2K bug, & good riders.

The ALP supporters continually advocate Turnbull as a leader of the Liberal Party. They also suggest that the Carbon Tax and the climate will not be issues in the coming election.

THEY WISH!

If you want Turnbull, you can have him. When he was the Liberal leader he behaved like a mini Rudd. He supported Rudd on Climate Change and the Libs wallowed in the polls, no better under Turnbull than under the previous leader, Dr Nelson. I would never vote Liberal if Turnbull was the leader. In my opinion Turnbull is a Labor mole.

The Liberal voters still see the Carbon Tax as a very big bad tax. The Liberal voters don't believe that the Carbon Tax does anything to change the environment. We are OVER climate change and the silly ravings of loony left, such as the ABC scientists and Flannery.

The issues that will be prominent at next election will be the Carbon Tax, the high cost of electricity, fiscal responsibility, border integrity and the personal failings of this prime minister.

Naturally the Labor Voters will have a different perspective, just as mine differs so markedly from theirs.

But it must be painfully obvious to the thinking Labor supporter that Abbott is a better performer than Gillard and that his policies have more support from the electorate. That is why the last poll showed 55:45 support for the conservatives!

Geoffrey Kelley

Hasbeen

If you're trying to blame your electricity charge increase on the carbon tax, Tony Abbott has already tried that stunt:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-10/abbott-caught-out-on-use-of-pensioner27s-power-bill/4305908

You may instead like to look at state government hikes or your own increased usage.

Perhaps you could get back to us on that : )

Since there is no such thing as what you call climate change (but probably mean anthropological climate change), it clearly can't affect the election.

What will affect the election is the mistake JG made when she decided to tell two different groups two different things about how she'd respond to the fears some have about AGW.

She told the electorate at large that she'd do nothing until there was a broad consensus. Although the electorate, when asked, will say that the 'gubermint' should do something about AGW, that something shouldn't involve extra costs to the electorate. So JG told them what they wanted to hear in order to hang onto power.

But after the 2010 election, she needed to tell the Greens something entirely different in order to hang onto power. Since JG is a principle-free zone, she told the Greens what they wanted to hear. She didn't see a problem in breaking her promise to the electorate since the next election was 3 yrs hence, and those dills in werstern Sydney wouldn't remember any of this by then.

The common thread of course is JG and her craving for power. Not the power to do something mind you, just power for its own sake.

Unfortunately for JG and the ALP, the plebs have remembered her unprincipled lies. And they just can't wait to let her know what they think of it.

Dear Hasbeen,

Humans are very bad preparing for change but they
are very good at adapting to it when it arrives.
We all have to realise that there may be no
return to the old days of reckless plenty. We have
to change our lifestyles. Electricity, oil, et cetera
will become more expensive and we shall have to look
at using something else - like the ability of technology
to transofrm the way energy is consumed and supplied.
Tough times demand creative solutions.

The free market has made electricity more expensive.
It has slowed growth in renewables and rewarded the
country's biggest polluters. We have privatised our
power stations. Privatisation has given us an ongoing
legacy of increased and extended use of our dirtiest
power stations - and we have ensured that they remain
immensely profitable to their owners. This has also
kept prices high and has deterred investment in new
clean energy sources.

We need investments to
make this country more competitive - we need to increase
our capacity to find new ways of doing business. That is
the key to building a modern economy based on advanced skills
and technologies.

Doom is not Labor losing the election.
Doom is Mr Abbott as PM.

The fact that some people can't see this is a massive
indictment of those people and their judgement of
character.

mhaze,

"...craving for power...just power for its own sake."

Seems to be a bit of that about.

You may well remember Tony Abbott's immortal words to Tony Windsor when he was attempting to woo him (according to Tony Windsor):

"I will do anything, Tony, to get this job; the only thing I wouldn't do is sell my arse."

(Well that's something I suppose:)

Dear Hasbeen,

In simple terms - from earliest days prices rose,
salaries increased, businesses wanted more profit,
prices rose, profits rose, salaries increased,
and the cycle continued.

In the 1960s people were happy with a few thousand
dollars of salary. Today, one hundred thousand isn't
enough for some.

There was no carbon tax sixty years ago and the prices
were rising.

Dear Poirot,

Mr Abbott may not have been prepared to
"sell his ar*e" but he was prepared to sell
whatever else he could:

Taken from The Australian:

"Independent Andrew Wilkie angered senior Coalition
powerbrokers who felt betrayed after Mr Wilkie rejected
an offer from Tony Abbott that would see the
Tasmanian MPs local hospital receive $1 billion.
Coalition frontbenchers were furious that they had been
snookered by Mr Wilkie who labelled the Opposition
leader's offer as over the top and irresponsible."

Poirot Lexi, perhaps you had not heard, it's a national body that sets the price of power, not the state governments, whether or not they own the generator companies.

It is time to catch up girls, all Europe, except perhaps for the silly poms, are shouting it was all a con. Global warming is dead, dead, dead. It will never rise again. When they couldn't find enough shovels to dig themselves out of the ice, for the fifth year running, it has kind of opened their eyes.

In the very near future you will see that fool Obama forced to stop lining the pockets of his alternative energy financiers. Yes they have bought & paid for him, along with the radical ratbag greenies, but if he's not careful he'll end up in the slammer. Even a president can only go so far.

So girls, forsake the dark side. Come & join us on the clean side, & smell the fresh air. Hell it might even renew your optimism for a great future, with the lights on.

<Labor swamped by that sinking feeling

When a senior minister was asked a few days ago to nominate any circumstances that could rescue the Gillard government from catastrophe in September, he offered up one scenario that might offer some hope.

"If the Liberal Party stages a coup and replaces Malcolm Turnbull with Tony Abbott. And that ain't gonna happen." Pretty funny, hey?>

There is no chance that random threads posted on OLO speculating change will further that vain wish. Try the Tooth Fairy.

onthebeach, your rude comments tell me you know little about the issues I highlighted.
Keep your pet dog well chained up, if it leaves home the average IQ drops steeply in your home.
Lexi I am well aware my posts stretch our friendship.
But too that you are having trouble seeing a truth, we are a well beaten side, thanks to Gillard, sad? yes but truth will out.
Now look at the category,s I put us in, before many posts had been made.
Ignore them if you must.
But each category has its believers, the anti global warming is in last place.
Polls here in the only country we live in,holding an election this year, tell us, most want action.
Now will Abbott,s plan work, we are not seeing a vote to do nothing.
Both sides claim in policy,s marked out, they seek the same reduction.
Will Abbott,s work, will tax payers after the next cyclone or weather event, look closer at it.
Liberals are going to win this election.
Those saying I am trying to pick a leader are better reviewing their own understanding, not mine.
I am putting this point, Turnbull wants the free enterprise trading system.
Most of those places, increasing every year, acting against emissions, are using that system.
If we get a late cyclone , east coast low, extreme weather before the election, will voters right or wrong , if the believe it is true for them, see Turnbull lead to a massive victory not Abbott to a just past the post one.
The fact is informed readers will understand, just as they have views, quite different to most or the same voters do too.
The Gillard is a lier mob here fail to grasp the intent of the thread.

I need to say, apart from onthebeach, after all he/she called me a teller of untruths, I need not get cranky.
In fact some posts are quite fun.
John Winston Howard, via his boss, his loverly if dominating wife, believes in climate change, and wanted to control it!
Steruth! not the God like John boy! yes indeed.
I put the deniers last, out of a list of views we hold between us, because the polls show it to be true.
I openly admit Labor is gone.
But put for review the thought, what if?
What if climate change becomes an issue, by that day.
Haters of Turnbull should know I understand he will be no friend of mine!
He is from the liberal side of Liberalism.
But, if we think about it, it need not be true, but what if extreme climate events come at a time that sees impacts on the election.
How easy to fix, in an instant, put Turnbull in the chair, Labors true believers believe me are best served by Abbott staying right there.

Its either very funny or very sad. When I point out that their dear leader is a principle-free zone whose sole concern is power, the rusted on Laborites don't even bother trying to defend her. They just launch into the normal memes that AbbottAbbottAbbott is just as bad. The left used to pride (or kid) themselves that they were highly ethical and principled. Now they're just pathetic. Still they have to find some reason to salve their conscious when they vote to re-elect the worst government this nation has seen.

Belly,

Where you're 'reasoning' fails is that you assume the populace will link the next cyclone or whatever with climate change. Unlike you, most people who have even a passing knowledge of the issue know that no single weather event can be connected to AGW and that cyclone activity can't, historically, be linked to AGW.

Demonstrating your complete lack of understanding on this rather simple point whilst, concurrently, telling others they are dumber than their pet, certainly takes an admirable degree of chutzpah (or a monumental lack of self-awareness).

Dear Hasbeen,

I won't go into arguing with you about climate
change. Atmospheric pollution is not an
inevitable outcome of industrial technology;
it derives also from political decisions to
tolerate pollution rather than bear the costs.
Control of pollution is politically difficult,
however, for the economic interests behind
"smokestack" industries are a powerful lobby
that is reluctant to commit the necessary
resources to the task. However, if world
population continues to grow rapidly, if
industrialisation spreads around the world, and
if pollution and resource depletion continues at
an increasing rate - and all these things happen
where is human society headed?
The most optimistic answer would be that one way
or another, sweeping changes await us all.

Dear onthebeach,

As I've stated to you on another thread -
the tooth fairy might make a better choice.
At least it gives money and makes no cuts.

Dear Belly,

I fully accept your point of view and I
understand where you're coming from and why.
It doesn't stretch out friendship at all.

Dear mhaze,

Talking about self-awareness and chutzpah...

I guess that calling people you don't know
"rusted on Laborites," and using labels
such as "Leftists," and the like, doesn't
display any signs of chutzpah, or a lack
of self-awareness does it?

While the focus has been on Labor's self immolation, there has not been as much focus on the boats and carbon tax, but make no mistake, they have not gone away.

http://essentialvision.com.au/carbon-pricing-3

That Gillard blatantly lied when she said there would be no carbon tax, has also not been forgotten. Trying to pass it off as rhetorical flourish is delusional.

That the coalition has made a promise to remove the unpopular tax would make it difficult not to remove the tax. As the hand outs to sweeten the tax cost more than the revenue it generates, removing them would improve the budget position.

I personally don't see Labor forcing a DD election on such an unpopular issue.

mhaze good morning.
I have noted your posts, failed to agree.
I said it does not matter if it is true, it being the publics view, opinions are formed for all reasons, including actual events, bad weather.
You proudly push your *I do not believe in global warming barrow*
Yet some posts here, from all sides, prove evidence is the last thing some require to make an opinion.
I challenge those who think the thread is an attempt by me, to commit political suicide!
Every time I here and in other threads say Turnbull may return, I am told I am promoting him.
Comment and opinion, need not be a personal wish.
Can any one not understand it was *THIS ISSUE, ALONE* that saw him removed.
Again, for reference to those who think only their view is true, I put the issue as seen by others.
Is GW man made.
Can man reduce it.
How.
Is it just a cycle.
Is it a fraud.
Is it natural.
Like it or not those are only some of the things people are debating.
Will we pre election, talk about Abbott,s reduction plan vs Gillards? both waste the air they breath, but if they are the choice then who has the best plan to reach the very same target.
And can extreme weather events contribute to that debate,here or worldwide.

Belly, "Every time I here and in other threads say Turnbull may return, I am told I am promoting him"

No, you are always reminded that you are an avowed Labor supporter come hell or high water, who has no interest in assisting the LNP except with malice aforethought. As you have always assured the forum, you would much prefer for the LNP to be buried in a pit.

Your sole interest in mentioning Turnbull is to pretend some leadership woes for the Opposition as constantly affect Labor. To be blunt you wish the LNP every ill imaginable and you are trying to divert attention away from old barge *rse's sinking ship.

Swinging voters are not stupid. They know their cost of living has increased and their quality of life is down. To be blunt, who cares to listen to the party spin anyhow?

Dear shadow
The carbon tax can not be removed because then all the small businesses will have to find a new excuse to raise their costs. My local mechanic blames all price increases he makes on the carbon tax. He and other small businesses will be stuffed if the tax is removed. In the past all price rises could be blamed inflation but some fools got rid of that excuse. They can't blame the unions any more, because there are hardly any left, the few that are left are on the verge of bankruptcy anyway due to the actions of unscrupulous officials.

No removing the carbon tax would be a serious problem for far too many small businesses seriously damaging their ability to increase profits. I suggest the liberals bury the idea before it is too late.

Seriously I don't believe the average Joe blow is concerned about the carbon tax one way or another and considering it actually achieves what it set out to do, it would be a dumb idea to remove it, just because of some misconceived ideology of the liberals. From the liberal view point it has already achieved the most useful aim of being being able to label Julia as a liar, not that the libs will be short of ammunition come the election.

It also has the potential to blow up in the face of the liberals because of the treat to pensioners potentially losing their clean energy supplement.

Shadow
As for the garbage that goes on about people coming here on boats. I suggest that those people who are so critical of them try living in a war zone. The views expressed by the libs and labour are disgrace, besides being re markedly stupid. They are trying to deter people from coming here on unseaworthy boats by locking them up on arrival, and at the same time telling them if they are persecuted, they have the right come here.
We need to be honest, and say to them either you can not come here regardless of your reasons, and will be deported to your point of departure, or we allow the refuges in, which case they need only be detained for a very short period while their claim is accessed. I would say that would be days rather weeks.
In the end if you are prepared to risk your life on a leaky boat to get here, no disincentive that we can put in place at this end, is going to much of a difference apart from wasting vast amounts of money.

Dear Shadow Minister,

You continue to sing the same song from your
Party's song book. So once again I shall repeat
the facts for your benefit. There is a gulf of
difference between a broken promise in the context
of altered circumstances and a deliberate decision
to mislead. As such to continue to accuse the PM
of lying, to argue that the carbon pricing scheme
is based on a deliberate pre-meditated lie in itself
displays some towering mendacity.

That it has persisted for so long and spawned the meme
"Juliar" (a term used only by the ignorant, boorish,
and spiteful) says more about Tony Abbott's guile and
ability to manipulate the facts for his own
ends than it does about the PM's trustworthiness.

Predicting the future is a risky business at the best
of times but especially so in politics. Elections have
not always resulted as predicted.

Dear Belly,

Wishing you and everyone on this Forum a most enjoyable
Easter Sunday.

Take care.

Talking of lies:

Greg Combet writing in The Australian, Feb26, 2011

<Every dollar raised by the carbon price will be dedicated to supporting households with any price impacts, and supporting businesses through the transition to a clean energy economy>

From The Drum, Apr21, 2011

<Combet boasts that “Every dollar raised by the carbon price will be dedicated to supporting households with any price impacts, and supporting businesses through the transition to a clean energy economy.”

This is impossible. Under the “Fast Start Finance” commitment from Cancun, which Combet announced, $599 million will be given to the IPCC under Australia’s combating AGW obligations. This $599 million is on top of the commitment made by Australia at Cancun to give 10% of revenue raised from a carbon tax to the IPCC. Then there will be the bureaucratic expansion to run the tax, checking compliance and eligibility criteria; these administration costs apparently run at 50% for the Australian government. All this probably explains why Combet’s boss, PM Gillard, is saying “more than 50 per cent of money raised [from the carbon pricing scheme] will go to assisting households.”>
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/113676.html

Dear onthebeach,

Speaking of ...

Since tha PM announced the Sept 14 election date, the
man who once wanted cameras to follow his every move
has noticeably reduced his media commitments. He
abruptly walks away from press conferences and is
keeping tight-lipped in Parliament Question-Time
(except for the odd interjection he seems unable
to restrain). It looks like now that the scrutiny is
being applied, Mr Abbott has nothing to say.

The Libs spruik a supposedly "ready to go" set of
policies, yet we have no idea what they are. No details
have been provided on substance, how much they'll cost
or how they'll be paid for. Their strategy for electoral
success is to make policies a policy-free zone.

Will Climate Change Impact on the Election?

As always with climate change we must rely on the models. These tell us that there is “consensus” by “97% “of the experts in this field. These models predict that CAGW (Catastrophic Australian Gillard Wipeout) will occur on or before September 14, 2013.

This is also confirmed by “rising opposition levels” that threaten waterfront properties owned by ALP MP’s. Severe “Melting” support for the ALP is accelerating whilst the extinction of many ALP political life forms is also predicted.

The “end of the world as we know it” projection from Tim Flannery is “forecast” to produce “droughts” of ALP votes, “severe storms” for the Trade Unions as the “mean surface temperature” for a Royal Commission rises.

Professor Phil Jones believes that ALP has no “statistically significant” probability of support increasing, he points out that the ALP’s chance of retaining office are “indistinguishable from zero” and asserts that it may need “30 to 40 years” in political exile to confirm this.

The ABC, much of the MSM, academics, NGO’s continue to support the “resurrection” theory of continued political “warming” for the ALP. Meanwhile the “experts” that predicted the ALP warming have now confirmed that their “models” no longer reflect the “empirical evidence” provided by the Australian electorates and the Bookies”.

Some of the greatest difficulties faced by the ALP are exaggeration, lies, failed policies and enormous waste of public funds spent to mitigate “their” change in climate.

It is clear therefore, that the “Change of Climate” will most certainly impact upon the upcoming election and not at all favorably for the ALP. We can also expect the “commentariat” to insist that “consensus” exists and that everyone except them is of course, wrong.

Gillard did not say

"We have no intention of implementing a carbon tax" or

"We promise not to have a carbon tax" she said

"There WILL be no carbon tax under the government I LEAD"

This was a stone cold promise to guarantee that there would be no carbon tax. Breaking this promise 3 weeks later meant that she lied about her intentions.

Only a handful of airheads are sufficiently self delusional to think that her iron clad guarantee can be passed off as an election puff piece.

If she can lie about this then there is nothing that comes out of her mouth that can be trusted.

Dear Shadow Minister,

Once again we need to state the facts.

In a pre-selection interview with The Australian's
Paul Kelly, the PM stated quite clearly that,

"I don't rule out the possibility of legislating a
Carbon polution Reduction Scheme, a market-based
mechanism. I rule out a carbon tax."

Labor's carbon pricing scheme is arguable NOT a tax
at all. However it has become the iconic political
lie of all times.

It's ruthless exploitation by the Abbott Opposition
has spawned a political craze in trying to expose
so called opponent's lies even if one has to stretch
the truth to do it.

But what about the Opposition's penchant for stretching
the truth on the impacts of the carbon pricing scheme?

George Brandis's assertion that the carbon tax was
responsible for 1,900 job cuts at Fairfax was a cracker,
but only a national extension of dubious claims that
the carbon tax would wipe towns off the map, spark
mass shut downs of industry and send families to the wall
under crippling power prices.

The collapse in trust in politics is a defining feature
of our current political culture driven largely by the
kind of negative politics that have characterised the carbon
debate.

Worse than a liar is a liar who's also a hypocrite and the
Opposition slots into that description very well.

The answer to this thread is simple: JOHN HOWARD IS A CLIMATE CHANGE SKEPTIC.

But besides that, people will be voting for Liberal in order to get rid of the carbon tax. The carbon tax is top of the agenda for voters in the September election.

Apart from that, most people have lost interest in the debate on global warming. So let's just keep overpopulating the world, eating every other species into extinction, and driving cars to keep warming the atmosphere. The gig's up: something could have been done 50 years ago but now the window of opportunity is lost.

Dear Mr Opinion,

We've certainly got a lot to complain about.

Imagine, Australia still pays high wages and has no
desire to head towards the cheapest wage levels of
Asia or even the US. We have one of the most
enviable lifestyles in the world - but we're still
not satisfied and want more. And as Nobel Laureate
economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote last week -
Australia escaped the global ravages of the GFC
so well - we barely registered a blip.
Therefore as Virginia Trioli points out in her
article in "The Weekly Review," perhaps
when we leave the supermarkets
this Easter
"We should make a note - that
the air we breathe is clean and no bombs fall."

What twaddle Mr O. Only an idiot could equate a sure knowledge that CO2 is not in any way harmful to life, & is critical to it, with some fool desire to increase either the Oz population, or the planets.

I guess that makes you an idiot, if that is your premiss.

I want all immigration stopped. I believe we should stop all aid to any country with an increasing population.

I guess that will make me a redneck to all these global warming fools, who think we should help all these people breed, but not use fuel.

God it will be nice, in just a few years, when all the global warmer nuts have slunk off to pretend they never believed the con. They can join the Y2K addicts in rehabilitation perhaps.

Poor Hasbeen. Oh, poor Hasbeen. You were never able to get into university to learn anything. But don't let it get you down there are billions of people just like you who don't know anything as well.

And one day, when the world can no longer support overpopulation, one of those billions might be the very cannibal who bites you on the bum! Oh poor Hasbeen ......poor Hasbeen.

The thread has turned in to a good laugh!
People saying silly things about others, who basically share their view.
Onthebeach! you did it did,nt you?
Let the dog off, when it returns let it post here for you, instant improvement/understanding.
I contend any one thinking my views will ever influence the Liberal Party, in the choice of leaders, needs help.
An opinion, some thing we all have, can not be spoken in the hearing of just a few, who jump on it to? put their opinion!
And no! SHOUTED NO! the world has not said global warming is not true.
Soon even the worlds worst emitter China, will act, not enough but watch this space.
This thread asks will climate change impact on the election.
Well for some yes- for sure.
But can events such as Briton's long cold winter extra tropical cyclones , our record of floods in the past year or years, maybe another one, before winter, impact.
I think minds are closed to the real chance it will, to the chance Turnbull could do what Hawk did to another leader, take a certain victory for him self, as a result of unrest with Abbott,s plan.
Can I ask the non believers to give their thoughts, understanding even of how Abbott intending to cut by the same figure works with their view its a fraud?
If you think he will not look for that in office is he lieing to us now?

very bad incompetent Government has left any number of issues that the voters hate. The massive debt, the drowning of the boat people, the changing of laws that worked, climate change fantasy, mining tax debacle, the communist plot to shut up the press. Emily's listers and emasculated males (such as independants) have proved a total diaster. The lie about the carbon tax by a power hungry PM who stabbed her leader in the back after talling him to drop it is just one of a litany of poor decisions. The PM's poor judgement over the last 30 years rolls on. r we down to 5 months yet?

Lexi,

"Labor's carbon pricing scheme is arguable NOT a tax at all. "

Rubbish! Perhaps the use of English eludes you?

A tax is defined as a non voluntary payment to the state. What we have now is a pure and simple tax on carbon emissions. What is intended after 2015 is a mixture between a carbon tax and an ETS. A pure ETS would have emission caps traded between businesses alone with no revenue going to the state.

Unemployment is creeping up slowly, largely due to the impact of the carbon tax on small businesses which receive almost zero compensation.

Dear Shadow Minister,

Let me again set the record straight.

No. it is not a tax on households or small business.
Australia's biggest polluters will be required to
pay for their pollution under the carbon pricing
mechanism.

As for the English language. It's been part of my
life every since I was born. My parents spoke eight
languages, English was one of them. My mother taught
English. And my father taught Latin. I majored in
English at Uni.

However, some people do find English somewhat confusing.
I'll grant you that. Here's a few quotes"

"If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe
would be an apostrophe with fur."

And:

"Why do we have noses that run and feet that smell?"

I'm sure others on this Forum can think of many more.

B Sc Mr O, what are you? Obviously nothing with any math, or you wouldn't be so easily conned, or quite so arrogant.

Of course I was lucky enough to get into an industry with real chemists & engineers, doing real work, & really start to learn.

Obviously you have not been as lucky.

Dear Hasbeen,

Please accept my sincere apologies for questioning your credibility.

I do not dare divulge my background because people will know who I am and the value of my pseudonym will be lost.

Let's just say that I have several more postgrad degrees than you have undergrad degrees.

Dear Mr Opinion,

That reminds me of the old adage:

Question: Do you know what BS is?

Answer: Yes I think I do.

Question: Well, how about an MS?

Answer: Yes, it's "More of the Same."

Question: What about a PhD?

Answer: That's easy. It's "Piled Higher and Deeper!"

Yes Lexi,

But I would always prefer to have than not to have.

Lexi,

Well at least you have stopped with that Tax is not a tax PhD.

However, if you claim to be so literate, you hide it very well. I never claimed that households or small businesses have the carbon tax levied directly. That the electricity and gas producers can simply pass the tax on to consumers means that the carbon tax is paid indirectly by the households and businesses, and the "only taxing the big polluters" line simply means that the government has s simpler way of levying the tax on everyone.

The carbon tax will not make 2015.

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/twenty-year-hiatus-in-rising-temperatures-has-climate-scientists-puzzled/story-e6frg12c-1226609140980

This article is interesting, in that it contains threatens to change the entire climate change debate.

"In a lengthy article this week, The Economist magazine said if climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, then climate sensitivity - the way climate reacts to changes in carbon-dioxide levels - would be on negative watch but not yet downgraded."

"The global temperature standstill shows that climate models are diverging from observations," says David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. "If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change," he says.

Whitehouse argues that whatever has happened to make temperatures remain constant requires an explanation because the pause in temperature rise has occurred despite a sharp increase in global carbon emissions.

The Economist says the world has added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010, about one-quarter of all the carbon dioxide put there by humans since 1750. This mismatch between rising greenhouse gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now, The Economist article says.

Death to the carbon tax!

Viva la revolucion!

Off with her head!

Long live global warming!

Hail Pancho Abbott!

"Mr Opinion", I guess is your latest pseudonym you have adopted after being banned so many times.

Your inability to extend yourself beyond childish prattle and school yard taunts is like a finger print. I don't believe you have an under graduate degree let alone a post graduate one.

Well I suppose OLO is a village, and every village has one.

Dear Shadow Minister,

Actually I have more than one undergrad degree.

So now you have one more reason to be even more jealous.

Dear Mr Opinion and Shadow Minister,

A big hug to you both and I wish you and your
families a very Happy and enjoyable Easter Sunday.

Mr Opinion - you're right. Having a qualification
is a good thing. Especially if you use it and it
makes you happy.

Shadow Minister, it will be interesting to see what
happens after the next election. If the Coalition
wins the election and if you're proven
wrong regarding Mr Abbott's repealing the carbon
pricing scheme - then you'll have to make a public
apology on this Forum. And I'll do likewise, if he
does repeal it - OK?

Both of you - Enjoy your day.

SM,

You trot out an article quoting a spokesman for the Global Warming Policy Foundation...which is a denialist group.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation

David Whitehouse....here is a list of his peer-reviewed skeptic papers on climate change:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/peerreviewedskeptics.php?s=80

What's a "not-rising" temperature?

It's a set of "record" temperatures for this century.

Does a "not rising" temperature explain trends like this?

http://haveland.com/share/arctic-death-spiral-1979-201301.png

Or this?

http://climatecrocks.com/2013/03/10/you-can-fool-climate-deniers-but-you-cant-fool-mother-nature-plants-pack-up-and-move-north/

The funny side of this thread continues in some posts.
Some very clearly from remarks they made, think it, carbon pricing, is an Australia/Labor only issue.
Other are clearly not aware the tax is to change, to what Labor/Turnbull/and most of the world action against emissions, to a trading scheme not a tax.
The fact some, try to blame my partys idiot leader for the whole thing is amusing.
And too, the very thought we can have both party,s looking for the same targeted reductions, and still claim Labor is the problem.
Enjoy! the humor unintended but still fun.
IF this thread was about, well lets say driving as others do on the opposite side of the road.
And I said it was silly and dangerous, some here would without thought jump on me for suggesting such a thing.
Scream it was a hidden Labor policy.
And some are, from the ivory towers they live in, doing that here.
Ignoring the threads thought, that just maybe this heated subject may impact on the federal election.

There are some on OLO who object to being labeled as socialists, Labor voters or Left Wing, yet those objectors firmly nail their colours to the mast of the ‘Good Ship Labor Party’. I think they are being a little bit precious and I am not at all worried being described as a right-winged capitalist because I an not ashamed of my political philosophy. Neither do I hide behind a nom-de-plume!

These people also confuse ‘science’ with ‘politics’ and only quote or read comments, articles or papers that are from one side of the Climate Change argument. They denigrate comments from the ‘denier’ side of the argument as being biased. They are politicizing the arguments rather that assessing the science on its merits.

I am not interested in the politics, only the science, so I am open minded to all comments, unlike the IPCC.
Furthermore, I detest plagiarism of any kind. I offer this comment from Wikipedia, “Plagiarism is the "wrongful appropriation" and "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work.[1][2] The idea remains problematic with unclear definitions and unclear rules.[3][4][5][6] The modern concept of plagiarism as immoral and originality as an ideal emerged in Europe only in the 18th century, particularly with the Romantic movement.
Plagiarism is considered academic dishonesty and a breach of journalistic ethics. It is subject to sanctions like expulsion.
Plagiarism is not a crime per se but in academia and industry it is a serious moral offence,[7][8] and cases of plagiarism can constitute copyright infringement.
It appalls me to read comments on OLO by those who claim to be well educated, even claim to have university degrees majoring in English, who practise the moral offence of academic dishonesty.

Geoffrey Kelley

GK,

"...they only quote, or read articles or papers that are from one side of the Climate Change argument...."

How remiss of us to only quote articles and papers from people who are actually qualified and have expertise in the disciplines associated with climate science.

I see you are advocating that we expand our repertoire to include the myriad hacks who have merely a smattering of knowledge and no formal training in the area.

Would you advise people go to their florist to have their teeth attended to?

Na Belly old mate. It won't effect the election.

All those who still believe in global warming are all ready Labor voters, or Green voters giving their preference to labor.

When you think about that, there is an interesting thread in why Labor/green voters still "believe" when the rest have woken up.

I suppose we have those who have spent too much time & public money in universities, gathering letters after their name, they'll believe anything they're told to, as we often see here.

Apart from them, it is an interesting question.

Dear geoffreykelley,

In a nutshell, plagiarism is STEALING.

I'm sure no one on OLO would steal someone else's ideas and pass them off as their own. Or would they? So come on all you plagiarists, own up now and we will forgive you. (Actually I stole that promise from a plagiarist I once knew. So please don't hold me to it because it really isn't mine to give away.)

GK,

You appear to be inordinately fond of "politicising" the climate debate. You regularly prefix your comments with a few lines extolling your penchant for right-wing politics.

You're the guy who luxuriates in the political aspect of the debate.

Why are you banging on about plagarisation?

99.9 percent of commenters here acknowledge or link to their sources.

Poirot, there are many scientists who do not believe the science of the pro AGW. Would you discount their evidence because of your political beliefs? There are commentators on both sides of the argument who are not trained scientists who actually contribute to the debate. On your side you have luminaries such as Flannery, and dare I mention the Nobel Prize winning idiotic former US Vice-President Al Gore, who among other things once claimed to have invented the Internet?

A non-scientist I applaud is Christopher Monckton who has been a political adviser to the UK gov't on climate change, so is equally well versed in the debate, as well as some science. He only comments on science he has evaluated.

Whilst you are at it, do you have any views on plagiarism? Are you ‘for it’ or ‘against it’? Where is your moral compass set on this question?

Geoffrey Kelley

Dear GK,

Christopher Monckton is a crackpot!

If there was a Land of Crackpots he would be the King of Crackpots.

The question we need to explore is why people like him are in denial. It's sort of like a doctor telling someone they have cancer and they refuse to accept it.

By the way, did you know that John Howard is a climate change skeptic?

Poirot, you said above, "Why are you banging on about plagarisation?

99.9 percent of commenters here acknowledge or link to their sources."

Sorry, you are WRONG. There are some serial offenders. They know who they are. They read the left-wing blogs and cut-and-paste paragraphs without attempting to identify their posts as quotations, nor offering attribution. Do you need me to identify them publicly, or can you work it out for yourself?

Geoffrey Kelley

Here is a comment from "The Galileo Movement" on FB; ""Since Sir David’s exhortations, some 250,000 Brits have died from the cold, and 10,000 from the heat. It is horribly clear that we have been focusing on the wrong enemy. Instead of making sure energy was affordable, ministers have been trying to make it more expensive, with carbon price floors and emissions trading schemes. Fuel prices have doubled over seven years, forcing millions to choose between heat and food – and government has found itself a major part of the problem."

See https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Galileo-Movement/101728306584541

Poirot, how do you feel about this comment? It is not only opinionated but it is factual, is it not?

Geoffrey Kelley

Nice one Parrot,

When geoffreykelly points out "...they only quote, or read articles or papers that are from one side of the Climate Change argument...."

You parrot back that this is not so, then proceed to further justify your narrow reading sources by suggesting that you select only those who you judge are sufficiently qualified.

Then you add that the rest are just << the myriad hacks who have merely a smattering of knowledge and no formal training in the area>>.

Parrot, thats what he asserted you did, you filter your sources by your own criteria. So why didn’t you just say, yes geoffreykelly you are spot on instead of dressing up your confirmation of it as something else?

In the end you confirmed precisely the assertion made by geoffreykelly in general terms, you then personalized it and made it specific to you and in the process made a right royal public Macaw of yourself.

More millet for the bird in the corner. Pieces of eight, pieces of eight, skwwaaaawk!

spindork,

"You parrot back that this is not so..."

No I didn't.

"...filter your sources by your own criteria..."

Woe is me that "my criteria" happens to adhere to those I cite possessing qualified knowledge in their area....as opposed to the likes of Lord Monckton with his degree in classical architecture or Anthony Watts, the weather caster - and many more of the same ilk who display this particular effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Geoffrey,

I noticed that from "one" individual on the AGW side, because the passages he quoted displayed markedly superior grammar and rhetoric than his usual efforts.

That is "one" poster......it must get right up your nose that the overwhelming majority of us have a superior grasp of exposition and language.

I know the example to which you refer.

Don't paste the rest of us with it - and if you do, you had better provide examples as evidence.

In responding to SM, Poirot writes:"You trot out an article quoting a spokesman for the Global Warming Policy Foundation...which is a denialist group."

And there you have it. The article and all it contains can be ignored because it has a quote from someone who works for someone who might be partially funded by people Poirot doesn't like.

The article mentions that even Hanson (high-priest of the AGW movement)(Poirot will now obfuscate by talking about religious analogies)..that even Hanson acknowledges that temps aren't rising. The article mentions the increasing information and studies showing that climate models have exaggerated potential warming from increases in CO2. The referenced Economist article talks about how new information is suggesting that natural factors may be twice as important as the IPCC has claimed with aerosols much less important than claimed by the IPCC and the various AGW spruikers.

But alas and alack, all this can be safely ignored because the article has a quote from someone who works for someone who might be partially funded by people Poirot doesn't like.

And then they call others 'deniers'.

I used to get worried by this. But these days, when it is so patently obvious that the whole AGW scare is on the wane and those who've been saying for over a decade that it was all smoke a mirrors were right, it is just fun to sit back and observe the ways those who refuse to see the nose on their face perform mental gymnastics in order to maintain their fondly held beliefs.

In terms of the election, AGW will have no effect because most people have come to realise it is not a concern.

Mr Opinion,

You have more than one undergraduate degree so I should be jealous of you? How sad, I was hoping for a witty riposte or some inkling of an IQ, not such a juvenile retort.

I don't believe you have any undergraduate degree. I question whether you have finished school.

Poirot,

I have always acknowledged the part played by humans in AGW, however, as coming from a science background I find the certainty presented by alarmists in the news in stark contrast to the more cautious approach in scientific journals such as scientific American and new scientist.

Perhaps I could have chosen a better source, but it is not the only place I have seen this. Also I have seen that sea level rises are far lower than predicted.

Similarly, Labor's claims that the carbon tax will do anything for global warming without international action is complete BS. So far Aus has the most extreme carbon tax, and almost no one else is doing more than tokenism.

My Dear Poirot,

Try not to be so sensitive! I did not "....... paste the rest of us with it - and if you do, you had better provide examples as evidence."

I made a general point. You are very quick to defend "the 'hood' (the sisterhood) so you intimated your prime candidate was male, but I was not gender specific. I simply commented that many posts have plagiarised quotes that constitute most of the post and I think it is immoral. The prime candidate I am referring to is a prolific poster.

Furthermore, you do not have to warn me that I had better be prepared to give examples of evidence. I have already offered to do so but have desisted to give the guilty party an opportunity to reform without me embarrassing her.

Poirot, you really should read my posts more carefully, or be more analytical in your assessment of my statements. You said in an earlier post, “You appear to be inordinately fond of "politicising" the climate debate. You regularly prefix your comments with a few lines extolling your penchant for right-wing politics.” In my opinion the debate is highly politicised, especially by the Labor supporters. Your side labels me a ‘denier’ and a ‘skeptic’, often uttered with all the bile spewed at a child molester! I don’t mind these labels because show a general ignorance of scientific method. But the labels are clearly politically motivated.

As a Liberal voter I am content that Abbott and his team do not take AGW as seriously as the ALP. After all, that is why I will vote for Abbott. I could not tolerate Turnbull as the leader of the Liberal Party. Since I am commenting on the politics I always state my own position politically. I find it laughable that ALP supporters and rabid socialists don’t like the labels they append to themselves! I am not ashamed of my position, so I make it clear where I stand. If I were ashamed I might also object to others labeling me a right-winger, LOL.

Geoffrey Kelley

Geoffrey Kelley

Earlier there was a discussion on Chutzpah. The definition I like the most is descriptive. A man found guilty of murdering his parents throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan!

Recently I saw a comment made by an alarmist intimating that wild weather events are caused by AGW and that is why it was so cold in the Northern Hemisphere this winter! I LUV IT!

Geoffrey Kelley

Dear Shadow Minister,

The less you know the better. And I'm sure you have a lifetime of experience in knowing less than everyone else.

Well it seems evident some are unaware of Liberals policy and intention on this issue.
Maybe Abbott too.
He is on record as saying climate change is crap.
And carry s in to this election a policy to reduce emissions by the same target as Labor.
We all see the remark? aimed at me? that climate change believers are all Labor voters in any case!
Not greens? not concerned conservatives? not all the country,s of the world acting now?
Such thought bogs the debate down, concerns are not party wide, even some Labor voters would think it is a fraud.
See poirot is being verballed , by a true Liberal who seems to hold opinions other than his party, proving my point.
This issue, in minor ways has impacted on how some will vote.
It if true, has forecast extreme weather, not just heat but cold, storm and tempest much more than a warming planet, the side effects of a warming planet.
Are we all aware one side of this debate has got it badly wrong.
I can not yet say for sure what side but it is my view ignoring the science weakens the anti global warming sides view.

Dear Shadow
Quote
"Similarly, Labor's claims that the carbon tax will do anything for global warming without international action is complete BS. So far Aus has the most extreme carbon tax, and almost no one else is doing more than tokenism."
End quote

As a country Australia emissions are among the worst of the worst. It is not true that the rest of the world is doing nothing see the map at the link below.

http://globalclimateactionmap.climateinstitute.com.au/#/criteria

China is taking some serious steps to reduce its emissions as proportion of GDP, and are on track to reduce this figure by a significant amount. They are also in the process of introducing a carbon trading scheme, which is to be fully operational by 2018.
The USA has reduced its emissions by around 19% recently and the situation in Europe is quite encouraging

Geoffrey,

Being that you are a dentist and that you aren't a climate scientist explains your little aside on cold winters in the northern hemisphere.

http://rabett.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/melting-ice-and-cold-weather.html

(a little bit on the subject for your perusal - he's not a dentist, but he may be able to shed some light on anomalies in that region:)

Btw, your quote "from the Galileo Movement" is actually from Fraser Nelson, the editor of The Spectator (I note you who are so fanatical about sources, didn't bother to go to the original source)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/elderhealth/9959856/Its-the-cold-not-global-warming-that-we-should-be-worried-about.html

But your admiration of the clown Christopher Monckton sums up well where you are on climate change. So he was adviser to Margaret Thatcher - next you'll tell me he is an esteemed expert reviewer for AR5 as if it's a distinguished appointment and not something anyone can sign up for...but I do like the insignia that he uses as a header for his blather - http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/05/monckton-caught-making-things/ - it looks so much like the one that represents those who really do have the right to sit in the House of Lords (comic relief:) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/14/condensed-monckton/

Finally, I hear you squeaking about being referred to as a denier or a "skeptic"...but I note that you are quite happy to bandy about the term "alarmist". Those who tend to trust climate scientists on climate science are also referred to as warmists and climate extremists, etc...so it's pretty well even on that score.

Dear, Dear Poirot,

Take a grip.

I have never claimed to be a Climate Scientist. Neither have you.

Have you ever claimed to be anything?

You defend the ALP and the socialist movements and the darlings of the socialist left, so when I try to get a handle on your persona I classify you as a Labor supporter. You are perfectly satisfied to define me as a rabid right-winger, and for once I agree with you :-)

Perhaps you mighty define a climate scientist? I cannot be done.

If you are stuck, try brushing up on Prof. Bob Carter’s comments. It is like trying to define a ‘Health Specialist”. Are we talking about a haematologist, a forensic medical specialist or a paediatrician?

I have claimed to have been trained as a scientist. I have B.Sc double major, and one of those majors was in environmental physiology. Why you seem to hone into the fact I am a dentist is beyond me, but at least I practise an applied science. I would be far more impressed if you understood what I am saying, but it is obviously way beyond you. It was called COMPREHENSION when I was a t school.

And, once more for the record, I do trust climate scientists; just not the ones you trust!

I quoted The Galileo Movement to you to wind you up. If you had bothered to check my reference you would have found that the Galileo Movement was reporting the exact reference you mention, the Fraser Nelson article! So, in future cross your ‘t’s’ and dot your ‘i’s’ and check your references! Take your time before going in for the kill and try and get it right. That way you don’t leave yourself wide open to ridicule.

Geoffrey Kelley

Warmair,

"China is taking some serious steps to reduce its emissions as proportion of GDP, and are on track to reduce this figure by a significant amount. They are also in the process of introducing a carbon trading scheme, which is to be fully operational by 2018.
The USA has reduced its emissions by around 19% recently and the situation in Europe is quite encouraging"

This is another of those fudges so beloved of 'consensus'. Sure China is reducing its emission/GDP ratio. But then so is every other industrial or advanced economy. As economies become more efficent and/or move to more service based activities, the ratio falls. For example, in Aust our emission/GDP ratio has halved since 1993. The US is even better. China isn't "taking some serious steps", its just allowing the natural coarse of events to occur. But the warmists, so keen to find something to suggest Australia isn't alone in its economically suicidal tax, come up with these totally bogus numbers.
And yes, China is talking about a CO2 tax...at the equivilent of $1.00 /tonne!!

The US has reduced its emissions without a CO2 tax. How? About half the reduction is due to the recession. The other half is due to the conversion to gas following the fracking revolution.

But, true to form, the left is opposed to fracking even though it is a proven way to reduce emissions.

Its all smoke and mirrors. Irrelevant numbers, picked to argue a case. It just proves how weak the case is.

Geoffrey,

Sorry about that. It was just that you seemed uncommonly fussy about sources, so I thought you might care to go to the original source.

You say:..."You defend the ALP and the socialist movements and the darlings of the socialist left..."

I think you'll find that in spite of the fact that I'm a lefty, I've been reasonably critical of Labor under Gillard (and I note you are the one who's politicising the debate again)

Sorry mate, you tell me you admire Christopher Monckton and then tell me you admire climate scientists. I can't take the "Lord" seriously at all. He's a publicity seeking personality with a degree in classical architecture. He's not an atmospheric physicist or an oceanographer or a glaciologist. He's an unremarkable peer with a penchant for creative "science", conspiracy theory and the courting of gullible "skeptics"...he's a bit of a giggle, but he ain't a scientist.

"...don't leave yourself wide open to ridicule."

On the contrary, I wear ridicule from deniers as a badge of honour.

Christopher Monckton is just another crackpot who thinks being in public denial will bring him prestige.

Remember that Brit who went around pretending to be an historian and telling everyone that the Holocaust never happened.

People who have the training and knowledge just ignore these crackpots and get on with their job.

Dear Poirot,

It has been a long and good day. I have enjoyed Easter Sunday surrounded by my entire immediate family consisting of my wife, three children, two children-in-law, seven grandchildren and six dogs and piles of Easter Eggs!

We have enjoyed some superb wines, red and white, so I am at peace with the world.

I am about to toddle off to bed, so let us part, agreeing to disagree.

Thank you for the stimulating arguments. The status quo is preserved and we can sleep a good sleep to wake refreshed to fight another day :-)

Good night,

Geoffrey Kelley

Fair enough, Geoffrey - we had a nice gathering here too : )

Seem,s we represent many of the views held on this issue.
I liked the description of that fool Mockdon, and the comparison, maybe not meant that way to the other infamous denier.
Yet we have,from first post, found it hard to separate our opinions from the question the thread asks.
And that question has every chance of becoming more important as we near the election.
I see fixed minds, silly but not unexpected uttering,s about Socialist left, a sign those posters never owned an open mind, and that weakens any opinion they have.
Remember, Abbott has a plan,why not consider it?
It will not work.
It rewards polluters.
It sees us pay them rewarded.
IF Abbott changed,aid again it is crap. my question would be answered.
How,please tell me, can deniers trash Labors tax but ignore, seemingly not even understand, Abbott,s method to get the same reduction.
In truth avoiding talking about Abbott,s plan is defense, see it is truly silly, maybe its uncovering will be the impact 14/9 or more likely before

Dear Belly,

Here's an interesting article that's worth a read:

http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/01/24/will-abbotts-axe-really-kill-carbon-trading-in-australia/?wpmp_switcher=mobile

See you on another thread.

Belly and Lexi,

Perhaps you could enlighten us as to the % drop in GHG emissions that Australia's carbon tax will make. I guess you won't as zero is pretty embarrassing.

As for Labor's costed policies, how is the budget surplus in 2012/13 going?

"Gillard will seek to paint herself as the hero of education. Again, realistically, she just cannot deliver. She has neither the money nor the likelihood of having the power. I think the electorate will be very unforgiving of a Prime Minister who appears to think she can fool most of the people most of the time.

As the budget approaches, voters will no doubt recall the promises last year of, finally, producing a surplus. Various financial houses are predicting a deficit of $10 billion, $15 billion or even $20 billion.

It's a confusing message from an apparently confused government. We are told the economy is in great shape. That leaves many voters wondering why we can't balance the books. Every voter and every family understands that every now and then money has to be borrowed. What they don't understand is why this government keeps borrowing and borrowing and spending and spending.

From Treasurer Wayne Swan there will be the same tired excuses. He might suggest commodity prices have fallen and appear oblivious to the fact everyone else has understood from day one the reality of commodity price fluctuations. It is as if the Treasurer expects us to believe that price fluctuations, unexpected natural disasters and all the other variables that might affect the budget are somehow new-found difficulties that he is managing masterfully."

Dear Shadow Minister,

Try the following websites:

1) http://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/?q=node/462

And:

2) http://www.climatechange.gov.au/climate-change/emissions.aspx

If you need more information you can always contact the
various agencies and they will provide you with all the
necessary fact sheets to bring you up to date.

As far as the Treasurer and the May budget is concerned -
let's wait and see what the outcome will be. Afterall it's
not long to wait now. And who knows, after the May budget
perhaps we shall hear from the Coalition and how they
will pay for things?

Lexi instead of reading the propaganda sheets, do read what is happening in Europe.

Those not already bankrupted by climate policy, [remember when Spain was the warmists poster boy], are running like hell to get away from their former stupidity. Unfortunately many are now too broken to run.

Oh that doesn't include the UK politicians. The UK public want out, but like Obama, their pollys have too many debts to repay to their election backers.

Payola reigns supreme.

Belly,
Although you originally asked what effect AGW would have on the election (answer - nil because people aren't concerned about it any more), it seems what you really wanted to ask is, if people started comparing Abbott's and JG's plans, would it change their vote.

Answer - no. Firstly because, even if they found Abbott's policy to be faulty, they are much more concerned about other issues. Second, I think most people know that Abbott's policy is not going to be implemented. Its very design allows the government to increase or decrease funding at will, unlike the ALP's tax. When Abbott wins, he'll simply say that (1)there's no money to pay for the scheme and (2) since the rest of the world isn't doing anything, we should wait.

SM asks: "...enlighten us as to the % drop in GHG emissions that Australia's carbon tax will make."

1. In Australia we will be told it reduced emissions by 5%. Whether that's true no one will ever know because the calculations are so much guess work that you can come up with any answer you want.
2. In the world we are responsible for around 1.5% of emissions. So worldwide the CO2 tax will reduce emissions by 5% of 1.5% ie 0.075%.
This translates to a decrease of temps in the year 2100 of about 0.002 degrees centigrade. I'm sure your great grandkids will be grateful for the sacrifice.

Lexi,

I was asking about global emissions not just Aus. There has been no global drop in emissions, in fact quite the contrary.

The emissions drop figures for the last half of 2012 is due to a number of factors,

These figures were compiled by Greg Combet's office, known for being economical with the truth,

The electricity consumption has been dropping steadily since 2008 (a prime marker of the non mining sector economy) The Aluminium smelters closing is a prime example of the cost of the carbon tax with CO2 emissions moving overseas. (a net increase in emissions)

The start of the carbon tax would give industries cause to reevaluate their reporting standards (less CO2 reported = less tax)

Dear Hasbeen,

I really don't have much more to add on this subject.

Friends of ours who have recently visited Los Angeles
have told us how as a result of auto-emission controls
have reduced the amount of carbon monoxide in the air
by quite a great deal. This is just one small step.
However it apparently has made a difference to the quality
of air in Los Angeles.

I've briefly Googled what Europe is doing - and
the following website may be of some interest to you:

http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/brief/eu/index_en.htm

Dear Shadow Miister,

The following website may explain things to you:

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/24712

According to the libs current plan
Quote
3. We will help families get ahead by freeing them from the burdens of the carbon tax-to protect Australian jobs and reduce cost-of-living pressures, especially rising electricity and gas prices.
End quote

How is this supposed to work? The various supplements and tax breaks, currently mean that the majority of families are ahead or have broken out even under the current carbon tax, but should the tax be removed, logically that includes the rebates and supplements, and therefore the majority of Aussie families would be behind. I know I would.

https://www.cleanenergyfuture.gov.au/helping-households/household-assistance-estimator/

Note average single weekly earnings are around $55,000 per annum. couples $80,000 ?

The real problem with high electricity prices have hardly anything to do with the carbon tax, and has been caused by the supply companies and the costs of maintaining their infrastructure.

Shadow is right the libs current policy on greenhouse emissions is pure tokenism, whereas the direct action plan that the libs went to the last election with at least had some positive aspects to it.

Warmair,

You are right, the Labor policy is expensive tokenism. And while a large portion of Household electricity costs are due to changes in government regulatory requirements forcing suppliers to gold plate infrastructure, the carbon tax has added a significant portion on top of this.

Considering that actual energy costs to consumers was originally about 12% of the total cost the 10% is huge. For larger consumers for whom infrastructure costs are a smaller proportion, costs have increased between 15% and 50%. Hence the closure of several heavy industries.

SM your question to me and Lexi, proves your lack of understanding this issue.
Not needed by a conservative bound to think more like a southern American Tea Party member.
Tell you what, give me your view on Abbott,s target and the method he intends to use to get it.
Then a quick look at the over all costs his method has, and who pays for it.
I hazard a guess you will not try the task may be too informative for you.
But this I think is true, anti global warming folk, such as you, are over represented here when national polls are considedred.
And, with little doubt, if Abbott took your line, publicly pre election my impacts would be assured.
No party, with any chance of winning, is taking a take no action plan to this election.

Dear Shadow Minister,

Talking about questions...

Here's a few for you - found on the web
and posted by someone looking for answers.
I thought it appropriate to put them to you
because of all the accusations you've been
making about the carbon "tax.":

1) You keep pointing out how much the carbon
pricing scheme will cost but you don't say
how much it will raise. You also neglected
to tell us that it converts to an ETS in 2015.

2) You talk about the inefficiency of the government
regarding this issue but forgot to mention the
inefficient national electricity grid which all
governments including the Howard government neglected.

3) You don't make allowances for rising electricity
costs due to transmission maintenance and improvement
(like poles and wires).

4) Can you tell us what is the carbon tax element in
our electricity bills?

5) Is it less than the percentage increase levied by
our states?

6) How much it is going to cost if we do nothing?

7) How much will emissions grow without any action?

Lexi,

To answer your questions:

1 - What the tax raises is a lot less than the compensation paid out. Repealing the tax and compensation will improve the budget. As a tax on production inputs it is particularly damaging. Actually I did discuss the conversion to a partial ETS in 2015, you obviously didn't read it.

2 - What grid inefficiency? Did you power losses or something else?. I did discuss that networks are upgrading their supply systems to meet gold plated new standards imposed by the government.

3 - Actually I did, but as the topic was on the carbon tax I focused on the tax.

4 - Yes I can and I did, read my posts.

5 - Fuzzy question, you need to be more specific. Are you talking tax or RETs? Read this.
http://www.bigpondmoney.com.au/why-power-bills-are-rising

6 - Nothing

7 - Emissions typically grow with economic growth at a slightly lower rate

Shadow Minister, but it could be most of us, proves any change in thoughts on this matter ,will come from others.
Every election has its swingers/undecided voters.
And it is those voters, along with a few who are willing to change views who may impaction on this election.
Not claiming to be an Anthony Green but just maybe we need to look at that group.
We too, should not think the dysfunctional group known as the ALP ,will not learn to sell its message before the axe falls.
That message cannot turn Gillard from a frog to Cinderella, but it could focus on Abbotts plan, in detail, it could, unlike Shadow Minister address the method, and targeted reduction.
It seems from here, many even posters here, do not understand Abbotts target, and it is my view, few want to.
Few too want to consider the method,so strange it looks like a Gillard policy, or Greens,and is unworkable in my view.
Again take no action is not the policy of any side.

Quote Shadow
"Considering that actual energy costs to consumers was originally about 12% of the total cost the 10% is huge. For larger consumers for whom infrastructure costs are a smaller proportion, costs have increased between 15% and 50%. Hence the closure of several heavy industries."
End quote

I don't understand what you are trying to say above, but the reason a number of heavy industries in this country have closed has far more to do with the high Aussie dollar, high wages for skilled workers and shortages of skilled people. These issues have all been exacerbated by the mining boom.

Shadow I can give you one piece of good advice politicians should never believe their own spin doctors.

Shadow Minister,

Before I leave this thread (because I don't see the point
in continuing). Here are three more websites for you.
You had asked earlier about carbon globally:

1) http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/australia-needs-the-carbon-tax-20120629-21867.html

2) http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2012/8/23/interest-rates/carbon-tax-groundhog-day

3)http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1492651/Factbox-Carbon-taxes-around-the-world

See you on another thread.
This one for me has now run its course.

I have just discovered this forum and had a quick browse of the various topics. This one caught my attention because the question is a curious one. Will Climate Change impact on the election? It seems that by and large this was interpreted to mean, will the carbox tax as an issue affect the outcome of the election.

Have we arrived at any sort of consensus on that? I am actually curious about that. What is the general public's view about the carbon tax? Or is the feeling simply the tribal one where greens and Labor supporters will see it as a Good Thing and the Liberal voters see it as an agent for the destruction of our society?

Or have people given the matter of the carbon some serious thought? My suspicion is that most have not and will simply wear an ideological heart on their sleeve.

On the whole, I don't think it'll have a dramatic outcome in its own right, however the fact that it is seen by many as another one of a litany of failed policies or broken promises may be its greatest influence in terms of electoral results. I think the ALP is well on the nose everywhere.

Or did the question really want to know whether it'll be too hot/too cold/too wet/too dry/too windy/too snowy/too damned climatey to get out there and vote?

Warmair,

Review these:

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/4/2/policy-politics/carbon-tax-cost-jobs-rusal-ceo

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victorian-hospitals-hurting-as-carbon-tax-bites/story-fnevi7ax-1226610491042

So your argument is that because businesses are already struggling with the effect of the high dollar, an additional input cost has no effect on the businesses closing? Really.

Some businesses have a low energy input, others have a huge energy input. For example Aluminium smelting has electricity as the single biggest cost, and while the direct carbon tax is small, the indirect tax via the electricity price is huge and effectively killed the smelting industry in Aus.

The effect of this is that GHG emissions in Aus drop as these industries close, but as production is taken up in less efficient smelters elsewhere, the net change in GHG emissions is an increase.

This is why Labor's go it alone policy harms industry and does nothing for the environment.

Jack Benny was a big deal when I was young. One of his routines:

Holdup man: Your money or your life!

[silence]

Holdup man: Well?

Benny: I'm thinking.

People who something think climate change isn't real are like Benny. Abbot called it crap. Abbott has said he wants abortion rare and safe. I can agree with that. Yet when he was Health Minister he banned the morning after pill. Possibly he equates masturbation with abortion. As bad as the Labor Party is it doesn't seem as heedless of the interests of the workingman as the Libs. Our Commonwealth Representative is a Lib and a former cop. One of his positions is to restrict double jeopardy. I am horrified by that as dj is a curb on the power of the state. I can expect the Libs to try to dismantle what Burke has done for the environment. Although I certainly would like to see an alternative to the party in power the Libs aren't it.

As far as noses go, and having allergies mine often runs:

You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose. But you can't pick your friend's nose.

Lexi,
The co2 tax is like a very light shower of rain.
You say to yourself, oh its not hard, I'll finish mowing before I go in.
When you do go in you find you are sopping wet !

It is like that, it trickles down, a little bit here and there and you
do not notice it until you go to the bank.

As the IPCC has said that there has been no temperature rise for 17 years
perhaps we should call a halt to everything and wait and see which way it goes.

Even James Hanson of NASA says the same except he says 15 years.

We should keep using our coal and gas to build the infrastructure
that will be needed to make the energy transition, otherwise we will
not be able to make the transition.
It is cheap energy that is keeping our head above water for now and
it is a very silly thing to be flogging it of overseas for a pottage of Chinese rubbish.

GK you aimed a shot at me long ago up the thread.
It was the uninformed smirk about my linking extreme weather with the cold long winter up north.
Well it amused me.
We, well some of us know, extremes, ALL WEATHER EXTREMES are spoken of in the science.
You could go out side and look around, one of the strongest anti climate change posters does that.
What say we ALL leave our biases in the bucket at the door.
And thinking of the question the thread asked, look at current and recent past comment about this issue.
Seems to me we will find most in this country at least, are concerned.
Has it struck posters yet?
My question, unlike some of my posts, does not need under standing, even evidence, my question is.
Can extreme weather, or added information, China/America taking action, impact on the election.
Impacts I mention so far are Turnbull take back his spot.
But what if changed circumstances see Abbott,s policy,s change?
Again both side seek the same reduction target, so it is crap will not be on the ballot paper.
I however invite some to write that, it makes the vote invalid.

Dear Belly,

Yes, I described your comment as good chutzpah, and I still think it is!

You see you are a “BELIEVER” of the Labor Party’s policy. I also have labeled your belief in political terms. It is universally the socialists such as the UNFCC that promulgate the science that you believe. I can understand your position and know you are an ALP and union man to your bootstraps. I respect you for it. My fundamental belief systems are probably the opposite of yours.

Back in 1965 I studied Botany at the ANU under Prof Lindsay Prior, and he was adamant that the rain forests are “the lungs of the earth.” He predicted that the clearing of the rainforests would cause the CO2 levels to rise. He was right, but the “scientists” you believe in say it is caused by human activity burning fossil fuel.

Like Abbott, I think that is “crap”, especially if your scientists don’t factor in the loss of rainforest. In the 2007 election Howard had a policy of buying up the Indonesian rainforest and stopping them from being harvested. He was ridiculed! The ALP and their scientists proclaimed it was a rubbish idea.

Belly, you must realise that I see these differences between you and me in political terms because the ALP has made it a political issue. That is why the party dumped Turnbull and chose Abbott. That is why Abbott has such support, both at the party level and at the personal level. I am a Liberal “BELIEVER”.

(Continued)

The average Australian voter can see through the nonsense science offered up by the ALP. They can see that it is a n excuse, a ruse to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor nations and they think it is madness to send money to Colonel Gadhafi and to Robert Mugabe (in Copenhagen, 2009).

Of course the Minister for Energy, Combet, has twice mentioned in addresses to the National Press Club that an important part of the CO2 Tax is to redress the wealth imbalance. At least he is honest!

I enjoy your posts Belly, but you are living in fairy-land if you think enough Liberals believe in the Carbon Tax to force a change in leadership in the Liberal Party.

Regards, Geoffrey Kelley

Belly,

Geoffrey Kelly says:

“scientists” you believe in say it is caused by human activity burning fossil fuel."

Another deliberate lie by a political ideologue or an inadvertent misrepresentation to what the scientists actually say - take your pick.

What the science says is:

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/figure-spm-3.html

Belly, Mr Kelly has got blinkers on (but so do you).

qanda,

Here we go again. You claim to be an environmental scientist, but you continually misrepresent what I say. The graph you show is under the heading, “Global anthropogenic GHG emissions“. The graphs you present show the contributions to the environment of GHGs and group deforestation in with the detritus industry. The detritus industry is that part of the biomass that breaks down dead and dying vegetable and animal matter. It is the insects, molds, etc. that exist on the floor of the ecosystem. It is hard at work in our back yards and lawns, paddocks and woodlands, forests and beaches. It is immense compared to the husbandry of domestic animals. The IPCC 2007 report shows that forestry is responsible for the equivalent of 17.3% of the anthropogenic CO2 production.

Qanda, perhaps you can educate us here? Does this 17.3% contribution from forestry only apply to the detritus industry resulting from the wastage from the forestry? If so, can you show Belly and me the contribution of all the anthropogenic CO2 as a percentage of all the natural CO2 entering the atmosphere each year? For instance, CO2 is released from volcanoes, both on land and under the sea; it is also released all over the world from bushfires. It is also released from the beasts of the fields, the birds and especially from the insects.

Given that you measure the resultant CO2 levels in the atmosphere, how much is actually due to man?

But all the above pales into insignificance when you consider that I was actually referring to the deforestation of the rainforest that has been carried out on a massive scale over the last 60 years and the resultant lack of vegetation (reduction of the capacity of the lungs of the earth to convert CO2 to oxygen!)

Belly, qanda is the one wearing blinkers! He cannot follow the arguments and leaps in with irrelevant data. If he was a scientist he would be able to follow the argument and not get confused. Furthermore he would produce data that is relevant to the discussion.

Geoffrey Kelley

No Geoffrey, there you go again.

You say scientists “say it (GW) is caused by human activity burning fossil fuel.”

I showed you the part you (deliberately) left out, including land use management practices.

You say I “claim to be an environmental scientist.”

Please Geoffrey, refresh my memory – where and when did I claim that?

From your last post, it appears you haven’t even read the AR4 report on ‘attribution’.

Really Geoffrey, it is not that hard – or would you prefer to wait for AR5?

As to providing stuff irrelevant to the discussion, you are the one talking detritus.

--

Belly,

‘Climate change’ has been politicised – it’s not about the science anymore, it’s been contaminated by political ideologues.

qanda please explain?
GK do not bother to try, but thanks for the grin.
I am a believer, but base my thoughts on science.
This morning either goggle news or SMH has a related story.
GK and others will discard it, comes from Australia's top climate scientists/fraudsters [according to non believers].
And adds to the list I created, Had thought about it but slipped my lay mans mind.
Says our climate has already changed, and in some places for the better.
There is a truth, some parts of our country and the world, will be better others far worse.
Near daily, but say weekly, subjects like that appear in print.
Can we agree while not every one, some folk are clearly wrong?
I see a few here who impose personal bias on the subject, and refuse to look at the science.

Shadow
The funding for Victorian hospitals is around the $4000 million mark
accepting the claim that hospital energy costs have increased by $6.7 million (dubious), it means that the net extra cost to Vic hospitals is 0.17%. The labor government claim they will increase funding to cover this short fall, anyway in the scheme of things this is not a significant amount.

This is just another example of spin without substance lets quote large scary figures to fit our agenda. Sometimes politicians take the general public for fools.

The aluminium industry in this country has enjoyed some massive subsidies, and now they are winging because they might have to pay a small amount extra for electricity. In any event bauxite (aluminium ore) can be converted to aluminium at a lower monetary and environmental cost in parts of Africa and Iceland where they have cheap renewable energy. In this case let the market decide

Geoffrey,

Further reading:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/anthrocarbon-brief.html

Specifically...

http://www.skepticalscience.com/anthrocarbon-brief.html#biomass

WA,

Firstly the 6.7m is only the increased energy cost in the first 6 months which is an instantaneous increase of 0.34% which does not include increased costs from suppliers. The point of the article is that this has not been compensated for by the federal government.

As for the Aluminium smelting, whilst you are so happy to throw these employees onto the streets, the emission savings will be minimal. The excess capacity will probably be taken up by South Africa which has the lowest energy cost and massive smelters.

These smelters are powered by the vast reserves of poor quality coal, similar to our brown coal generators. NOT renewables.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-03/combet-on-climate-change-report/4607734
The link should not be confronting.
Yet it is, for those who believe no change is taking place.
Let us read it and think yet again, here in this thread!, some have expressed the view the whole thing is a Labor plot.
Few, if any, who brand believers alarmists, bother to consider Liberals, even in this link, again except the science.
The FABRICATION/LIE, that carbon tax has put power prices up by as much, for some, as 45% is laughable! but still a lie.
NSW under its Liberal government, will retrieve a BILLION dollars from its impost on power bills, not related to carbon tax.
After putting the price up, to make it easier to sell, NSW Labor sold it, and us, we are in the hands of pirates who now own power distribution.
Put , in a strange way a price on power, linking it untruly to carbon tax, makes the lie stand out.
Consider this, if the science mentioned in that link is wrong, and it is not, we are indeed in trouble.

Belly, on the matter of the science, I am sceptical. I have read a fair bit but nowhere near enough and so while I have a basic grasp of the matter, it's not deep enough to be certain one way or the other. But I am somewhat convinced that CO2 does not contribute substantially to a warming atmosphere. And I am somewhat convinced that even if it does, the feedbacks are net negative rather than positive.

Regardless, one of my major concerns regarding the whole AGW thing is how people's minds have been influenced by inaccurate or even alarmist reporting. To the extent where every minor change in climate or extreme weather event is painted as being caused by AGW. And that is most certainly the case with the report you refer to.

I see for example they claim that record high temps have been achieved recently, however I think that when we have no more than 100-150 years of recorded temps, it's a long bow to draw to imagine that recent temps are especially out of the ordinary. And I think there is evidence to support the conjecture that they are not especially out of the ordinary for even the past 100 years.

To add to this is the fact that so many young people seem to fee that we are living in a time of unusual weather or other events. For example I have seen someone claim in print that AGW causes earthquakes! To say nothing of those who point to events like Sandy or the recent Qld floods when of course none of these are outside the range of extremes previously recorded.

So I am afraid I will have to take your science with a grain of salt...

Graeme M,

"So I'm afraid I will have to take your science with a grain of salt."

Sounds like you'll fit right in on OLO.

Oh come on Poirot, you quote a propaganda site as if anything on there was likely to be anything but rubbish, then knock a bloke who has given sound & considered reasoning for his thinking, & his opinion

Time you took a few grains of salt to those sites you so love unless you like being a useful idiot.

Come off it, Hasbeen,

You, who frequents all the denier sites, wouldn't know a peer-reviewed paper if jumped up and bit you on the ....

Skeptical Science takes it's material from climate scientists, as in:

http://radioviceonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/knorr2009_co2_sequestration.pdf

http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gallery/mauna_loa_record/mauna_loa_seas_adj_fossil_fuel_trend.html

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef200914u

http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/6862/

...to take a tiny example of the papers that were referenced in the article to which I linked.

As I said, Graeme will find a lot of like minds here.

Well Poirot I'm glad that there are a few fellow sceptics here.

I can accept that mainstream science is confident anthropogenic climate change is occurring, and to be honest I agree to an extent. Mankind has made a lot of changes to the environment that are likely to impact climate. For example a recent paper proposes significant changes to rainfall patterns due to deforestation. I am simply maintaining scepticism around matters of extreme change through the agency of CO2.

I believe I have every right to develop my own opinion on the matter and I freely acknowledge I may turn out to be wrong. Doubt it though :) That said, I do not find fault with governments for taking action - it would be irresponsible of them not to. Although I do think we should be more prudent and I am of the opinion we should not have moved so quickly into the carbon tax.

As for 'denier' sites, well my own experience is that most are far more tolerant of different viewpoints than such as RealClimate and Deltoid and SKS. I far prefer the broader range of opinions and ideas on the denier sites although I agree that their science is usually pretty light. But some host quite in-depth and intriguing discussions rather than the closed minded and hyper critical approach of the 'warmist' sites. And after all, science hardly has a track record of total infallibility, nicht wahr?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/climate-chiefs-face-abbott-axe/story-e6frg6xf-1226612076744
The link challenges what I focused on,Abbott haveing the same target.
I can be forgiven for that.
He has every possible view on many things
Welcome to Graham M but in your own words, you are not well read on this subject.
Science, long ago,learned how to tell much about climate and its changes many more years ago than your quote.
Try researching results from ice coreing.
Explore the reading of growth rings in trees both living and dead, hundreds of years there.
A question, well two.
Can anyone claiming this is just an Australian political issue claim any understanding AT ALL of the issue?
Second do we, any of us, truly think the whole issue is bought about by deliberate lies from the worlds science, if so then why?

Hmmm... I don't think I said i wasn't well read - I have read an awful lot. What I do admit is that I am not a scientist and hence do not have an in-depth understanding. But that would be true of most of us for most issues, for example commenting on say Labor's economic policies without being either a qualified economist or having practical experience at developing economic policy for government.

That said, I have enough knowledge for me to have an opinion. Do I think science is deliberately misleading the world? Not in a conspiracy sense, no. But I think the major players are environmental advocates and have an axe to grind and thus we have a strong case of groupthink happening.

As for tree rings, ice cores and the like, the latest controversy surrounding the Marcott paper is a case in point. Trumpeted from the rooftops because it showed a major uptick in the modern period, thus echoing the Mannian 'hockey stick'. But how much trumpeting will we see now that Marcott has admitted that the later part of the record is not statistically robust? A couple of 'deniers' seem to have done a pretty good job of deconstructing that matter.

For all the cries of denialism and the scathing criticism of blogger science, I think we have to accept that the Net has made broadscale review of science possible. Sure many of the sceptical sites are full of crap and nut cases, but there is actually some decent evaluation and insightful investigation going on as well. And some quite notable successes.

I think I'll put my money in the 'science is not settled' camp, and further suggest Belly that your own reading is sorely lacking.

I'll try to get a moment to read your link though...

Graeme M,

Yes, it's interesting that the "skeptic" sites have taken up that Marcott quote, seemingly assuming that it debunks the veracity of the graph...(the show's over, folks)

The weight of the graph to my way of thinking, is that it highlights the incredible "rate" of warming in modern times. It's the rate that is of concern - and the unknown territory Earth's climate may be entering because of it.

One of OLO's chief "skeptics" mentioned on another thread that Marcott simply smoother out all the nasty warm bits over the 11,300 years...

Perhaps you'd like to read this response (from a climate scientist) to that:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/smearing-climate-data/

Where did you get the idea that scientists think "the science is settled"?

As the IPCC itself has said there has been no temperature increase for
17 years, it seems to prudent to put everything on hold and see what
happens.
One of the worries I have about the science community is that many
seem to have gone out on a limb and are committed so strongly and
publically that to reverse their belief would be traumatic.

I know, I know that's the way science is supposed to work but they are after all human.

We have plenty of things to do with the money in the meantime.

Yes, yes, yes, Bazz...yada, yada, yada

Graham Lloyd didn't actually quote Pachauri in that particular piece in the article.

Nevertheless, pointing out that surface air temperatures have plateaued at "record levels" still points to warming. This century has hosted record levels of warming.

However, I know it's easy to trot out that "the IPCC says it hasn't warmed for 15/16/17/whatever years"...cliches are rather useful, aren't they...

http://skepticalscience.com/australian-pachauri-global-warming.html

Oh come on Poirot. That post of Tamino's is a wretched attempt to overcome McKitrick and McIntyre's analysis. Even Marcott has admitted in his FAQ that the later parts of that graph aren't robust. But that's not the point. The paper, from my sketchy layperson's perspective, is fine on the whole and largely unremarkable. What IS remarkable is the unseemly haste with which that uptick was splashed across the world's media. My point is, now that we know that it is not robust, we are unlikely to see retractions, and that's my objection. Joe Blow in the street is never let into just how unsettled the science actually.

Who said it's settled? If I had the time to search I am pretty sure I can find the quote. But it too was once everywhere, parroted by politicians and hangers on like Flannery. I think it may have been an IPCC quote which gives people like yourself that slimey get out of jail card - No scientists ever claimed the science was settled. No, but no scientist ever went out of his or her way to correct it, did they now?

As for the levels of warming, the bottom line is that it has slowed dramatically in the past decade, and it has not been anything like Hansen's scenarios A or B which is what would be expected given the rate of CO2 emissions. And you know very well that the current graphs of IPCC projections that show the low trend since 2000 but a close match prior to that includes hindcasting. The truth is that warming rates have NOT matched projections.

Now isn't all that interesting,
For years people have been saying "The IPCC tells us this & that "
But now, well the that is no, not quite this or that, mumble, mumble.

Oh by the way James Hanson of NASA, does not agree, he says it has only
been unchanged for 15 years !

I think it was Hanson that said even when rising resumes it cannot now
get to the expected 2050 temperature because of the pause.

Surely it is just sensible to put things on hold for a while.

Wow, Graeme M...here was I thinking that we had ourselves a new skeptic who was at least courteous in his representations - but...

"...which gives people like yourself a slimey get out of jail card..."

The bottom line, is that it has plateaued at record levels - just like it did during all the other plateaus in modern times - before it continued its rise.

"...NOT matched predictions."

You reckon?

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044035/article

Of course, since its now clear that your are a "skeptic" as opposed to a skeptic, I assume you'd prefer Watts-style science (he even includes an April Fool's Day joke (cutting-edge stuff:)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/02/why-the-marcott-et-al-faq-was-published-on-easter-sunday/

Poirot, It has become q2uite clear you are a gravy train rider.

I would like to know how much your income depends on this scam, which became a con, to keep the gravy coming.

Only an absolute fool could be as one eyed as you unless being paid. You are obviously not worth talking to.

Shadow

Information From Wiki:-
Electric power represents about 20% to 40% of the cost of producing aluminium and uses 15±0.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce one kilogram of aluminium.

Quote wiki
Smelters tend to be situated where electric power is both plentiful and inexpensive, such as the United Arab Emirates with excess natural gas supplies and Iceland and Norway with energy generated from renewable sources. The world's largest smelters of alumina are People's Republic of China, Russia, and Quebec and British Columbia in Canada.
End Quote
_____________________________________________________________

Based on the lowest economic price of 10 cents per kilowatt hour (current domestic rate 20 cents+) the cost of power is $1.50 but using the range of 20% to 40% of the total cost, we end up with a price range for production of $7.50 to $3.75. The current world price for aluminium is $2 per kilogram. I would suggest that this is simply not economic, and is the primary reason why the aluminium smelting industry is in this country might wish to sack people. The carbon tax price is irrelevant to this discussion. The only reason this industry has has not gone broke in Australia is due to the massive subsides that it receives. According to the link below we are subsidizing these workers to the tune of $74,000 per worker. It makes far more sense to to find these workers something more economically productive to do.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/03/10/aluminium-smelting-the-best-bang-for-your-fossil-fuel-subsidy-buck/

Ho, Ho Ho...Hasbeen.

Gawd! - he's onto me....(egad!)

Just for the record - no I'm not the founder and President of CSWAOIIFTM.....(Climate Scientists Who Are Only In It For The Money)

It's fascinating that it's beyond your mentality to assume that scientists working in the disciplines associated with climate, work to the same ethics as scientists in other fields.

No wonder psychologists are having a field day investigating the processes involved in denialism.

Considering that the title of the thread is

"Will Climate change impact on the election?"

We are going into an election where the activists were warning of deadly droughts. This was followed by 3 years of the highest rainfall for years. Irrespective of the science, the scare campaign run by the activists has failed, and the only salient points in the voters' minds is the increase in cost of living, and Gillard's lie.

WA,

Well done on your research, however, the electrolysis is not the only power consumed in the factory, and there are emissions preparing the smelt. The total power consumption is closer to 18kWhrs.

With the carbon tax adding about 2.4c/kWhr this comes to 43c per kg. Considering that the international commodity price is about $2 per kg, this alone adds more than 20% to the cost.

As for the biggest producers, all would make up any additional power demand with fossil fuel, the majority ie China and India, would use coal. Net decrease in emissions is just about zero.

Sorry Poirot, completely the wrong word to use and I in no way meant that you are slimey. So far I have found your posts well informed and well spoken. I meant 'slippery', in the sense that it's easy to play dodge ball with a lot of these sorts of statements. Similarly the notion of how long a pause in the warming needs to be before we might re-evaluate the AGW idea, or the "98% of scientists" claim. Misleading and open to all sorts of evasion. Which again takes us to my central position.

As to whether I am skeptic or "skeptic", well I don't know. Personally I don't care but seeing as how it means something to you, what's your definition? I guess you're having a shot at me, but again it doesn't really matter I spose.

Graeme,

Just quickly, as I'm on my way out....

"skeptics" (in inverted comments), I tend to assign to people who consider climate scientists to be involved in a huge and intricate fraud. No matter what evidence you show them, they dismiss it - usually with a kicker that anyone who gives veracity to climate scientists must be on the payroll.

A good example is Hasbeen's latest post to me.

A "real" skeptic is one who realises that climate is a complicated system, and the vast majority of scientists are working with the ethics they were taught to work out what is going on. They're not always accurate, but they give it their best shot.

My example of a real skeptic is Richard Muller. My example of a fake skeptic is Anthony Watts.

...before Muller's BEST findings:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/06/briggs-on-berkeleys-best-plus-my-thoughts-from-my-visit-there/

After...well we all know what happened when a real skeptic found his investigations concurred with the majority of findings by climate scientists on AGW. Muller swiftly became persona non grata within the skeptic community.

Well I too read a lot and if only!
If only I and poirot could return to these pages in 50 years.
Do we all know? that one side is quite wrong?
I rather think we are all victims, my side of half wits who talked junk and had e mails picked up, to flog them with their own stupidity.
And the self interested, coal miners and a host more, petroleum sellers, creating a bait, the thought our fears are some ones invention.
And note the concentration on our country, its tree hugger,s, its tax.
And the ignorance!
Yes right word, to the actions of so many country,s, even the EU.
The inventiveness of putting the thought it is an Australian thought/invention!
Inventiveness too, saying most of the worlds scientist, in this AREA CLIMATE,are with deliberate forethought lieing to us!
Poirot remind this mob for me, please if you make it,it will not be 50 years, in fact this thread may be proved to have reason to ask its question answered soon.

whether climate change will impact the election is unknown. Thankfully the election however will impact the gravy train and get rid of many dud jobs. Hopefully they will be sent to pick up rubbish which will prove a lot more useful than flying off to religous (oops sorry scientific love fests) in order to dream up the latest scare. A campaign to stop people acting like pigs in littering highways would be useful.

Graeme M,

Just to bring you up to speed...

runner doesn't believe in the Theory of Evolution either.

Poirot

'runner doesn't believe in the Theory of Evolution either. '

congratulations you are becoming a little more open minded. At least you now acknowledge it as a theory unlike other deceived ones.

You do keep sticking your foot in it. You should try somewhere where there is not so much cr4p lying around Poirot.

Your quote, "No wonder psychologists are having a field day investigating the processes involved in denialism." Did you not notice that that lot had their paper chucked out, after that dreadful Watts man poked it so full of holes it sank. I don’t suppose that made it into the propaganda sheets.

I believe there is some consideration of misconduct with that lot.

You must try mixing, & reading, with a better class of people my dear

Well Poirot, I'm not sure I believe IN the theory of evolution either. As a theory it offers great explanatory power, but does that mean that I should consider it an article of faith? I think I could be readily persuaded of the veracity of an alternative theory should it show greater predictive and explanatory capacity. Remember, the theory of evolution is a human construct to explain observable physical phenomena. I'll accept it as a very close approximation and perhaps if I were a scientist in that field I'd accept it as almost fact. But believe IN it?

And that's where I come from with AGW. It's not a FACT, it's a theory. And so far, many of its predictions (at least as I understand them from the non-specialist media) have not performed as robustly as one would like for it to be treated with greater confidence. Add in examples of groupthink and coercive behaviour such as is evident from the climategate emails and my own observations of public debate and it encourages me to at least to investigate with a much more open mind to that which most 'warmists' display.

That said, bear in mind I am just an average Joe with a pretty basic education. One thing that I have enjoyed from my reading about AGW is that I have actually learned a LOT and been exposed to an amazing range of complexity. And regardless of the extent of any scientific malfeasance or misdirection, I admire their minds to be able to 'get' this stuff, right or wrong as they may be.

Hasbeen,

"Did you notice that that lot had their paper chucked out..."

What do the words "...The article has not been retracted or withdrawn..." mean to you?

http://www.frontiersin.org/Personality_Science_and_Individual_Differences/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00073/abstract

You're a hoot, Hasbeen.

Graeme M,

Very well, I don't expect you to believe "IN" the theory of evolution as an article of faith (I think you realise the point I was making about runner, in that he rejects evolutionary theory as an explanation of our origins)

It's useless me arguing the case, basing my view on science and linking to those who can explain it in layman's terms. You've raised just about everything that every other skeptic/"skeptic" I've ever encountered has raised. What say you? Mention climategate, or the hockey stick, the warming pause...and apparently AGW is skewered - regardless of exonerations or more complex scientific exlpanations.

You're right that the systems which dictate the Earth's climate are incredibly complex - which is why I tend to lend veracity to the people who are trained in the areas associated with climate science - and also why I shy away from conspiracy theories and blog sites run by people without those qualifications, who promote shonky science.

runner, "whether climate change will impact the election is unknown. Thankfully the election however will impact the gravy train and get rid of many dud jobs"

True and welcome to exasperated taxpayers.

Poirot your task is clear, you must train your self to laugh at your detractors, its that or cry, at the feeble nature of some.
Runner if you can cling to your God,who never existed, and ignore the thousands of others folk believe in, who too never existed, why can we not believe in truth?
Sorry but our new arrival lost me in that post.
To be honest my first thought was he is a bright and intelligent bloke.
But continuing to claim this science is unproved and what ever the other claim was questions my first thought.
Now back on thread, my question came about because of the growing concerns world wide.
And, in my view evidence world wide.
Any day we could post links,that question what truly is our fate.
Todays would link to floods in the northern part of this planet after record ice melts.
Linked to the report from our scientists?
What other science do we challenge? and why.

o Poirot, it's not "useless". But you must be prepared to counter the arguments of those who are skeptical. My guess is that you do not read nor consider the alternative arguments. Look, the truth is that many skeptical blogs have all sorts of fruitcakes posting. BUT. There are also some very smart people there as well. I have seen posts by, and comments by, scientists of all persuasions, including physicists, chemists, geologists and even climate scientists. There are also engineers, computer scientists and all sorts of professionals such as statisticians. Those blogs are not really the haven of simply the nutter fringe of sneaky subversives in the pay of big oil. That in itself is a misdirection by the consensus community and one of the reasons I prefer to read those sites.

They are NOT bereft of science, quite the contrary. I would rather that the consensus community accepted a legitimate alternative point of view and argued from the science than attempt to smear all opposition. It is that arrogance, amply on display at RealClimate and Taminos etc that make me shudder and reduces my empathy for 'real' scientists. And the Marcott paper is a great example of where suspect science has been embraced when it plays to the endorsed songsheet. Joe Average now believes that Marcott 'proves' the 20th century warming spike, when in fact it does no such nthing. And it was ip to skeptics to show that.

How can you honestly sit there and argue vehemently against the very core of scientific endeavour as you do? Peer reviewed does not mean peer proven, you know. Else we would not have made the progress in science that we have so far. By all means, be critical of skeptics and their proposition, but don't dismiss them because they don't do 'real science'.

By the way Poirot,I do NOT think that all of those skeptical points you raised have skewered AGW. But I think they DO call into question some of the more extreme projections. As I said, I cannot evaluate the various propositions with an expert's eye, but I CAN learn and use my critical faculties.

On the whole, the alarmist version of AGW shows all the hallmarks of faddish thinking. My view is that the majority of those who push dangerous AGW have a particular ideological outlook. And they are so convinced they are right that they will both bend the truth to suit their own ends and actively denounce any opposition. It's not a conspiracy, it's a worldview. And I am rather sympathetic too. But...

I can accept that CO2 slows the radiation of heat to space and that positive feedbacks could exacerbate the effect. But I am skeptical that it happens as posited. I think that CO2s effect is on the low side and that feedbacks are net negative. So while fossil fuel use needs to be curtailed and we ARE affecting the environment, I DON'T think it is anything like at the level being pushed and i would rather we took more measaured steps to both mitigate what effects there are and transition to more sustainable energy sources. But WITHOUT covering the land in bloody windmills.

Belly: “qanda please explain?”

>> ‘Climate change’ has been politicised – it’s not about the science anymore, it’s been contaminated by political ideologues. <<

Apologies for the delay Belly, been busy.
Thing is, Online Opinion is just that – a place to air one’s opinion and, as research has shown – most ‘joe blows’ who have an opinion (on ‘climate change’ for example) base it on their political persuasion.

I’m sure you are aware of one certain political ideologue here on OLO – a solicitor, secretary of a political party and a renown ‘fake sceptic’ that supports the extreme ‘right wing’ policies of a regular visiting ‘Lord’ – he talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk. People like him have contaminated not only the science, but opinion sites such as this.

As far as the science goes, although we’ve learned a lot over the last couple of hundred years about this very complex process, it might be best to explain it in simple terms – based on scientific laws, (not just theories) – conservation of mass and energy for example.

If you add energy to a system (e.g. atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and terrestrial biosphere) it heats up.
However, the system reacts by trying to maintain its equilibrium (exemplified by a change in the frequency and extremity of weather events).
The system keeps reacting to this energy imbalance until a new equilibrium has been reached.

In the context Poirot has tried to explain, she is quite right:
>> it (GW) has plateaued just like it did during all the other plateaus in modern times - before it continued its rise <<

In other words, once the new equilibrium is reached, the long term warming trend will continue.

What we don't know is how long can we expect the current hiatus to last or how extreme these predicted weather events would get.

cont'd

cont'd Belly

Of course, simplifying the science is open to abusive criticism from scientists and non-scientists alike. Let me just say this: we understand the enhanced greenhouse effect quite well - not absolute, but extremely well. Therefore, to keep pumping billions of tons of heat trapping gases (reflecting energy back) in to the system is not conducive to logical or rational thought, imho.

Indeed, the effect of doing so somewhat lags the current political election cycle – that is why climate change won’t impact the next election – the general population is not conducive to logical or rational thought, especially for the longer term. No offense intended.

Thanks qanda,

Graeme,

A couple of points:

On the subject of "belief", this article by Met Office senior science, Vicky Pope, sums it up.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/23/climate-change-believe-in-it

"...The first point to make is that it's not something you should believe or not believe in - this is a matter of science, and therefore of evidence - and there's lots of it out there..."

Another point:

Can you explain why "skeptic" sites, if they're so interested in "the science" spend half their time abusing climate scientists, who have undertaken years of training and devoted much of their working lives to studying various aspects of climate?

Every second day on the likes of Watts and Nova, there appears a post abusing and ridiculing scientists....Watts appears to delight in attempting to provoke Michael Mann, for instance. Perusing Nova's site, one is struck by the almost constant abuse and ridicule of anything that smacks of a legit climate scientist who is not a "skeptic".

Yes, I realise that some scientists like Mann and Hansen have decided to give as good as they get.....but really, where else in science are scientists delivered the treatment (including threats and abuse) that climate scientists receive?

The difference as I see it is that the findings of climate scientists have the capacity to influence the status quo...much easier to cast aspersions on their characters, motives and their expertise, than to actually deal with their findings.

Btw, if you check out Marcott on Realclimate, don't forget to read the comment's section - Jeremy Shakun commented as well.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/03/response-by-marcott-et-al/comment-page-3/#comment-327407

And then there's this:

http://hot-topic.co.nz/monckton-in-nz-tells-lies-on-radio-threatens-academics-and-journalists/?fb_source=pubv1

He's just finished doing all the same things in OZ.

This man is highly revered in "skeptic" circles.

I think he's an attention seeking joke....

How could anyone quote the met office, or any of their people?

They have not got a forecast even anywhere near right in years, not since they started using their warmist model.

Can't get the next 100 minutes right, but some idiots believe they can get the next 100 years. God help us.

Poirot, it's an interesting question you raise and maybe not so easy to answer. especially if you personally haven't spent much time immersed in skeptic sites. The first thing I'd tackle is that notion that skeptics are somehow motivated by a desire to retain the status quo or are ultimately selfish or purely from the right of politics. I think there is an element of truth to the ideological perspective, but as I noted above, that holds for the 'warmist' side as much as the 'skeptic' side. As an example, a greenie mate and I frequently argue about this stuff. He has a certain outlook I have often run into with greenies - I call it the 'catastrophist' worldview. Everything is always going to hell in a handbasket and it's always because of human beings and their need for money. Yes, there is some truth to that, but it is rarely as bad as they make out. What is always missed is the human capacity to adapt and overcome.

However, many skeptics are simply motivated by a suspicion that all is not what it seems. For me, it was when I started to see my kids come home from school full of nonsense about what was happening to climate. As I read more - in the general media - I read more and more statements attributed to scientists and organisations like the IPCC. And I started to note inconsistencies. So I dug further and found more of the same. So I don't think it's a simple as it's painted, Skeptics are not necessarily motivated by evil desire.

(contd)

(contd)

Abuse of scientists... Welll... yes, I tend to agree. I often cringe at some of the outbursts by the resident long time denizens of some blogs. But to be perfectly frank, I have yet to find a blog or forum hosted by one of the luminaries in the pro AGW camp that isn't far more abusive. Honestly, while the skeptic sites may have some anti-science stuff going on, the pro sites are astoundingly vicious in their attacks. I was recently arguing the toss about SLR over at Deltoid and some of the usual suspects there were using four letter words like it was their mother tongue. The worst behaviours as I see it are at those sites - they are just so closed minded, arrogant, vicious and dismissive that I wonder if that is how scientists all behave.

And that sort of thing, together with things like Climategate, point to a community with a very entrenched perspective. A rigidly entrenched perspective. I've seen that elsewhere too, just check out how Miles Mathis' stuff is received at some of the physics blogs and forums. Yet I find his ideas refreshing for their breadth and sheer insightfulness. He may very well be wrong, but man does he have a mind.

As for Mann and Hansen, those guys are activists. And I suspect happy to use their not inconsiderable abilities to further their causes. That's up to them, but that's not science in action.

Just a further point re the attitudes of the scientific community. Read Irene Pepperbergs book about her research with animal cognition, in particular Alex the parrot. She ran into some very strong opposition from entrenched attitudes and closed minds in trying to further that research and show something about animal minds that was not part of the accepted status quo.

So I don't think science as an institution is especially flexible or accommodating of ideas that buck the status quo... And it's not necessarily always right at all points in time either. Regardless of how many people might think something well proven.

qanda thanks , I hold my hand up, no way I know as much as you.
As a kid who left school before the age of 13 I admit my education only started then.
And as a politically involved person, I claim no bias as a result of my ALP membership, and fall back on my current thread fast finding friends gone, as evidence.
I see, time and again,scientists not from this field, being quoted to rebuke those of us who think we have a problem.
I read international press daily, sifting for links on this and other subjects.
I have few doubts we must act and that acting, cleaner fuels ext has benefits our side climate change.
Here we are confronted by folk who get their thoughts from shock jocks!

I think that the single biggest lie perpetrated by Labor, is that Australia's carbon tax will have any effect on the environment without global consensus.

The thread is read
While thought's not dead
And monolith rambles onward,
But come September hark the call
From far and wide to rally,
Will Red or Green or Yellow thrill
The gaping grappling masses
As strident Ms or jolly monk
Bestride the bucking jackass?
The gas released twixt now and then
Will surely warm the planet
And grinning sure
Our bold Quixote
Will hail the matter settled.

Saltpeter be assured sadly Liberals have won the race before it starts.
Too that this subject is international not ours alone.
SM beg to differ and just maybe in time your party,s last 4 leaders policy,s, not just the mad monk and his daffy duck team, wants,a price on carbon will again be policy for your lost tribe.
Bet on it!
Bet too you will then agree with them.

Hey QANDA, you said earlier:
"If you add energy to a system (e.g. atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and terrestrial biosphere) it heats up.
However, the system reacts by trying to maintain its equilibrium (exemplified by a change in the frequency and extremity of weather events)."

This is a genuine question about that, because I heard Flannery say it the other day. I think I generally understand the GHE, but maybe I missed something. "If you add energy". Where is this extra energy coming from? I thought the energy was solar insolation which varies only a little. I understood the GHE to mean that outgoing radiation is absorbed and re-radiated, slowing the transmission to space. There is no 'extra' energy as such is there?

GraemeM, don't be so obtuse.

That "extra" energy has been "locked up" for millions of years - but you knew that.

Like I said:

"simplifying the science is open to abusive criticism from scientists and non-scientists alike."

You have just demonstrated the latter - you will fit in well with your fellow OLO travellers.

Graeme M,

Further reading:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Second-law-of-thermodynamics-greenhouse-theory-basic.htm

No QANDA I am not being obtuse. I'll read your link when I get a moment Poirot but I honestly have never heard of 'locked up' energy being released and increasing temps.

The GHE as I understand it requires GHGs to absorb and re-radiate LWR. Burning fossil fuels releases CO2 which increases the concentration of GHGs, thereby absorbing and re-radiating more OLR. In effect, that is blocking outgoing radiation which means the atmosphere has to heat up to get back to equilibrium at TOA.

What is this extra energy?

Graeme,

If the planet is currently building up heat - that amounts to adding energy to our climate systems. That is "extra energy" that the planet is holding on to, because of a slowing down of the rate at which heat is lost into space.

I actually think you get that.

(I know qanda gets frustrated when he switches to layman's terms for us. There's always a skeptic waiting in the wings to give his words a pedantic once over:)

SM : "I think that the single biggest lie perpetrated by Labor, is that Australia's carbon tax will have any effect on the environment without global consensus."

Please provide a link to Labor's official position supporting your statement, or does the word "perpetration" cover your (usual) slight of hand?

Off this point, for what it's worth, "global warming" has become "climate change" as it is clearer that not everywhere gets hotter. That, for example, increasing arctic winds bring extreme snow and cold to Canada and the US is caused by warming, not a coming ice-age. I raise this because Flannery gets flogged on OLO for apparently changing the subject whereas he has simply moved on to the consequences of warming. Be happy, deniers, that he will be gone as a public servant come the election, if Abbott gets up. http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1753044/Flannery-defends-Climate-Commissions-work

Well Poirot I do think I 'get it'. But I have never before seen any mention of 'extra energy'. Now, I have no physics education so a lot of this stuff I struggle to get my head around. Remember, I am skeptical - I have an OPINION. I am not suggesting I KNOW better.

As for temps increasing, does that mean there is extra energy in the system? I can't see how this energy is being created. Yes there is extra heat, but that is not the same as energy is it? I don't mean to be pedantic, but that's a strong statement. I read your link Poirot and it's a very basic explanation of what I said above. No mention of extra energy.

qanda,

You made a couple of informed and informative posts earlier in this thread, and that is appreciated I'm sure, but, much as we would miss your informed contributions, why, if you have such a poor opinion of we 'OLO travellers', do you bother?

Impatience and derisory insinuation appear out of character, and, while such may have been responsible for starting a few wars, I doubt it has ever resolved an honest argument.

Proceeding from Graeme M's comment, I take it you subscribe to a view that 'Greenhouse' inhibits the additional heat energy being released from the combustion of fossil fuels being simply radiated out into space, and thereby contributing to the restoration of 'equilibrium' - an undefined state of equilibrium of course, and one which appears to have oscillated variously throughout Earth's long history?

I don't suppose the whole of our solar system, or even the entire universe, is warming significantly due to our activities on Earth (nuclear energy production and nuclear explosions included), OR due perhaps to an even broader form of 'Greenhouse', but it must be intriguing to contemplate the 'Universal Equilibrium', don't you think, and the possible role of dark matter and dark energy in the resultant equation(s)?

Since energy can supposedly neither be created nor destroyed (and hence the 'big bang' could hardly have come from 'nothing') there would have to be a universe-wide energy quotient, a universe-wide energy 'equilibrium' of sorts - unless there be an interchange between multiple universes?

Earth's core cooling, tectonic plates shifting, Sun's radiation fluctuating, black holes roaming the universe, perhaps even our own galaxy (or solar system perhaps?), more people consuming and more buildings constructed, forests cleared and crops planted, ice forming and melting, pollution killing plankton and numerous marine/aquatic species, Japan whaling and people keeping pets - such a complex 'equilibrium'.

Graeme,

I understand that you have an opinion and that you are skeptical.

The fact that you appear quite familiar with skeptic sites (not a criticism) and that you have referred to people who support the AGW explanation as "alarmists" tells me that your mind is a little more made up on this issue than you're inclined to let on.

Remember that this forum abounds with "skeptics" (like Hasbeen, for instance) who reckon it's all a con and resort to abuse when conversing about it. So if I'm a little trigger happy, perhaps you can understand why : )

Saltpetre,

qanda, as a scientist (along with a few other scientists) drops in here occasionally to offer a little information and clarification in layman's terms for those of us who are interested.

What he normally receives for his trouble is either ridicule or abuse.

If he sounds a little wary, it's understandable.

(actually, I'm a little peeved that these people, who really do understand science, are chased away by the abuse)

Yes Poirot, this is becoming rather tedious.

-

Graeme, you said to Poirot you have never before seen any mention of 'extra energy'.

Now, you really are being obtuse – you were the one who mentioned it:

“Where is this extra energy coming from?”

What I said was:

>> "If you add energy to a system (e.g. atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and terrestrial biosphere) it heats up. <<

Please, if you want to quote me, please do so accurately – don’t make stuff up.

Graeme, coal is a ‘store of energy’ – this energy has been “locked” up for millions of years. When it is burnt it ‘releases energy’ in the form you know as CO2. Over the last 2 hundred years, we have been releasing into the Earth System this ‘stored energy’ at an ever increasing rate.

You say you generally understand the (enhanced) greenhouse effect, but maybe you missed something. Yes, I think you have.

You may struggle with this, Albert Einstein over a hundred years ago postulated what was to become a very robust theory – the equivalence of mass and energy, generally known as E = mc^2

You say you don’t have any physics education – ok, that might explain a few things. However, you really can’t expect to be taken seriously when you want to engage with scientists when you haven’t even done some basic homework that even a high school student would be aware of.

-

Saltpetre

Sometimes I wonder why too.

In the context of ‘global warming’, we can treat the planet as a ‘closed system’ (please don't abuse this simplicity). However, you are right, the universe is not warming. Look up entropy and where the Universe is heading – but that is hardly the point.

Errr, question;
Is a gas like co2 energy or is it a material ?
Heat I understand as energy, but not a substance.
Is a rock energy ?
Is a piece of steel energy ?
So in fact what is energy ?

Bazz! thought you knew that!
When smoke comes out of the wires on your ham radio, that is energy.
When it stops working, radio, you are out of energy.

Bazz,

qanda has already answered you question in reply to Graeme M...but here you go anyway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence

....Just thought I include this from the book I'm reading "The Goldilocks Planet":

"Within this long-term phase of geophysical turbulence, we as a human society have just happened to have found ourselves on the most stable climate plateau for at least four hundred thousand years. This precarious stability has allowed us as a species to expand tremendously, and to colonise and to grow our food on most of the habitable areas of the planet. Even within this interval of stability, the modest climate fluctuations that have occurred have proved catastrophic for some cultures.

In the last two hundred years, our numbers have expanded enormously; our energy use (and hence carbon emissions) have skyrocketed to the extent that the atmosphere now almost certainly holds more greenhouse gases than it has done since before the Quaternary, and there have been wholesale changes to the landscape and its reflective properties, and to the particulate properties of the atmosphere. We are vigorously rocking a boat that has shown a marked tendency to capsize..."

(Belly - thanks for your contributions:)

Interestingly, none of that deters Julia Gillard, her ministers and the Greens from laying down jet trails at every opportunity. Yes, the opposition too.

Likewise Julia, pollies and senior bureaucrats enjoy the large engined vehicles for status.

But Aussie taxpayers are up for another tax and a large slice of it will be going to a useless bureaucracy of the UN forever more.

The electorate will compare the rhetoric with behaviour. Like when Julia pares away at (say) pharmaceutical benefits, but rewards herself with a remuneration that outpaces the US President and the UK PM. Soon Julia will be on her rather grand ex-PM golden handshake, a large properly indexed superannuation for life and more jet travel. She will expect more gravy, maybe a guvvy appointment? Good if you can get it, while small business tries to survive the mess she left behind.

Thank you Poirot, I get that qanda has more than a few 'clues', and it's good of him to share them with we mere 'travellers', I just don't take to intellectual browbeating (or condescension) and much prefer to see Mano-a-mano (no sexism intended) honest discussion of the issues.

Also, though I appreciate his argument regarding restoration of 'equilibrium', and accept this as a principle, I regard it as a rather vague proposition - given the complexities of climate and of the biospheric vectors operating.

Equilibrium can be as simple as two equal weights suspended over a pulley, or as complex as a balanced ecosystem (or universe) (or the human mind) - but an ecosystem is not static, is constantly in flux, and my understanding is that problems with balance ('equilibrium') and sustainability occur when influences beyond the resilience and adaptability of a system are introduced - either internally (say by genetic mutation) or externally (say by pollution).

Sometimes 'simplification' (with the best of intentions) can be misleading, or can ignore the underlying causation for events.

Of course Graeme M should understand that fossil fuels represent a form of concentrated energy - derived in reality from the accumulation of solar energy over eons (ain't photosynthesis marvellous!), and burning it releases that accumulated energy (and residuals like CO2) into the surrounding environment.

Climate variability (or change) is a reality - whether 'natural' or man-made (or influenced) - but the continued wholesale burning (consumption) of eons of accumulated fossil fuels in the blink of a geophysical eye, and without any timely replacement plan, is arrogant and wasteful frittering away of otherwise enormous possibility, and can not do otherwise than contribute a significant external impact on the viability and resilience of Earth's multitudinous ecosystems.

Too smart, or too dumb for our own good? We ain't seen nothin' yet.

QANDA and Poirot, I don't want to derail this thread into physics 101. I think some of the issue here is just a misunderstanding of terminology on my part. And of course my lack of background in the sciences. Don't think I am a complete dill as I understand the matter of matter/energy equivalence etc. And I think I broadly understand the GHE. Heck I can throw around terms like TOA and column and radiation and thermal equilibrium and almost know what they mean.

But what throws me is your suggestion that adding energy heats the system up. As you said:

"If you add energy to a system (e.g. atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and terrestrial biosphere) it heats up."

So, just for a moment indulge me. Liberating CO2 into the atmosphere is not liberating energy as far as the GHE goes, surely? Burning fossil fuels and generating CO2 is converting matter from one form to another. There is energy produced in the form of heat and electricity and mechanical work but I didn't think that was relevant as far as the GHE is concerned.

The GHE as I understood it involves outgoing longwave radiation being absorbed and re-radiated by the GHG molecules. Incoming SWR from the sun heats the earth, it radiates back LWR and equilibrium is reached with the incoming and outgoing the same at TOA.

Increasing the mass of GHGs by liberating CO2 affects that process. So in terms of energy budget, there is no more or less energy. Rather it is that the emission of LWR back to space is impeded meaning an imbalance at TOA. So to get back to equilibrium, the atmosphere heats up until the energy of OLWR again equals incoming solar radiation.

So, there is no added energy is there? Yes there is increased heat, but isn't that just a rearrangement of energy balances?

Graeme M,

"....In terms of the energy budget, there is no more or less energy...."

So are you saying that if some of the heat from the sun (that would otherwise be radiated back out into space under a regime of less CO2 in the atmosphere) is "amassed" within a 'closed system' - then that 'closed system' somehow hosts the same amount of energy as it did before it amassed the "extra heat/energy"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy#Distinction_of_thermal_energy_and_heat

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GL048794/abstract

Poirot I am not saying anything beyond what my understanding of the GHE is. My understanding may be incorrect. Your wiki article is beyond my paygrade, I'd need a few days thinking to figure that out. :)

I *think* though that you are stating that in essence, the increase in heat of the atmosphere represents an increase in the thermal energy of the atmosphere.

However, that seems to me to be a different thing to claiming, as QANDA did, that burning fossil fuels and liberating CO2 is to add energy that has been locked up in the earth's crust... As he/she said:

"When (coal) is burnt it ‘releases energy’ in the form you know as CO2."

But the CO2 is not adding the energy directly. Rather as you yourself observe when you talk of amassing energy, CO2 is simply increasing the thermal energy of the atmosphere by allowing more heat to accumulate. Or is QANDA's description some kind of strangely worded simplification?

And now you've set me off and I have to go worry at the question of whether heat is accumulating or amassing until I can 'see' how that actually works. Damn you Poirot! :)

Belly, your thread has gone off on a tangent.

At least the physics ain't being politicised :-)

Seeyaround

Sorry belly for going off on a tangent.

For what it's worth I think the average Joe in the street doesn't give two hoots about voting according to either major party's climate policy....and they won't unless they experience palpably negative effects from climate change.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/polar-melt-shakes-up-food-chain-20130406-2hdlx.html
This link, end less others such reports, about both polls.
And too About other climate change happenings, has me stumped.
As the layman I am, like all my learning, my opinions come from reading, very much about every thing.
Am I to discard this? its is not a theory, it is reported scientists views.
How can my fellow travelers laymen, ,armed with little more than shock jocks and Abbott,s views, some of his, know I am being deceived.

Belly,
Indeed, what is a layman to believe!

Below is a list of dud predictions made by scientists.

It is amazing the number of duds that were touted as 'conclusive evidence'.

http://notrickszone.com/2013/04/04/climate-science-humiliated-earlier-model-prognoses-of-warmer-winters-now-todays-laughingstocks/

Banjo,

The climate system is complicated, and as one book I read recently suggests, planetary climate conditions can "turn on a dime".

Why are scientists bagged to the extent they are for making projections, many of which eventuate.

I was roundly bagged on another thread for posting this from 2004:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/05mar_arctic/

Yest I find this from 1999...

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/19990602/

The study of climate is a work in progress. Our enormous contribution of CO2 throws even more questions into the conundrum.

More on the Northern Hemisphere chill and the negative phase of Arctic oscillation.

Deliciously complicated....

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/01/22/rain-in-the-arctic/#.UWDvlGdaf9E

Poirot,
I'll stick to being a sceptic and relying on my own common sense.

I rest in the sound knowledge that there are a lot of things humans have no influence over. I consider the worlds climate to be one such.

Being a sceptic, if contrary evidence comes to light, I can change my mind.

Those that think humans influence the worlds climate have a lot of faith in our importance in the natural scheme of things.

In the absence of evidence, faith seems the appropriate word.

Banjo,

Perhaps it's difficult for you to imagine that the activities of a certain organism interacting with the physical properties of the planet could affect its chemistry, and therefore its climate.

That's an awful lot of CO2 that we've unlocked and dispersed into the atmosphere in a stunningly short time-frame.

I don't find it so difficult to reason.

Re my last post, SM responds on another thread: "As for your infantile challenge..........insisting that I can only reference "Labor's official position" whilst commenting on their communication with the public is pathetic. Perhaps you would care to re frame your challenge so as not to look like a dunce.

Keeping SM accountable for his sleight of hand with the truth is always enjoyable, but it does bring squirming and abuse. Ho-hum. OK, SM, if "Labor" perpetrated a lie, which Labor spokesperson on behalf of his/her party was it? Where and when?

If you can't at least do that then you must have, yet again, simply been enjoying the aroma of your own flatulence

Luciferase, maybe I've misunderstood your challenge? SM claims that Labor's biggest lie is to suggest that "Australia's carbon tax will have any effect on the environment without global consensus." You challenge him to point to evidence for that as part of Labor's "official position".

Surely the only reason that Labor has introduced a price on carbon is due to the impact of climate change? Certainly their broader Clean Energy Future seeks to do a lot more towards transforming many aspects of Australian business and society, but the carbon tax is specifically about reducing CO2 'pollution' in order to mitigate climate change.

See here:
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/government/adapt.aspx where in the very first line it states "It is important that Australia reduce its carbon pollution to minimise the severity of climate change".

I think that states pretty clearly that the government expects that reducing carbon emissions is a key step to helping mitigate climate change, or more bluntly, have an effect on the environment.

Oh and lest you claim that that page doesn't necessarily mention the carbon tax, you might read this page from the same site:
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/government/Carbon%20Pricing%20Policy.aspx

I'm personally not critical of the government for acting although I do not agree with the strategy, but I think you are being disingenuous if you want to pretend that Labor is not pricing carbon as a mechanism for affecting the environment. That is EXACTLY why they are doing it.

Or am I just misunderstanding you?

Graeme M, to SM's statement: "I think that the single biggest lie perpetrated by Labor, is that Australia's carbon tax will have any effect on the environment without global consensus."

I'm not seeing anything in your references that supports this statement. See here on the same website to which you refer me, further clarification regarding the global environmental aspect where it says "Climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution." http://www.climatechange.gov.au/en/government/international.aspx

Furthermore, Flannery's Climate Commission also sets out why Australia should act on climate change mitigation without making silly claims (or perpetrating a lie as SM would have it). Even if it did baldly lie its report is introduced with, "IMPORTANT NOTICE – PLEASE READ
This document is produced for general information only and does not represent a statement of the policy of the Commonwealth of Australia."
http://climatecommission.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/climatecommission_internationalReport_20120821.pdf

Australia's carbon footprint reduction may only affect AGW in a very small way. There is the presumption, in setting a carbon tax, that countries not already doing something about AGW will follow in time with similar carbon mitigation measures (as is happening).

Who would logically support an Australian CT on the basis it alone can affect the global environment? It's about doing our part while setting an example for/guiding others.

No Graeme Y, this is about SM occasionally being held accountable, just so he doesn't smugly think he's getting away with it all the time. His sleight of hand is legendary and if he wants to chant the LNP mantra on OLO, he has to accept inevitable challenges forced by its inherent flaws. I await his response to my challenge other than squirming and abuse.

See LF,

Graeme M has nailed you in one.

The way Labor talks continuously is that Climate change is here and that a carbon tax is needed to save Australia. The reality that without a global accord, this will happen even with a carbon tax is airbrushed from their rhetoric. So LF, to hold your BS to account I challenge you to provide a references where labor have discussed the net contribution that the carbon tax makes to the global emissions in real terms nor in airy "we will show the way" terms.

Labor pollies have been frequently asked the question of what difference the Australian carbon tax will have on the global environment, and not one of them will even answer the question, because the answer is zero, or so small that it cannot be measured. The argument that others will follow our lead has been shown to be false.

Or even explain while Australia needs the world's biggest, most encompassing carbon tax to do "our part" noting that Australia's carbon tax has already raised more revenue than the EU's has ever.

LF well said, but you are up against it.
Are you aware some left this place because of the bloke.
I left 3 times but came back because it is the best site.
Others never did,or changed names on return.
I have a question, one on first sight looks silly.
*What impact has the present government had on public opinion on climate change*
While it looks silly, how could an international problem be put down to Labor.
Judging only by many posts, some base posts on pure anti Labor thoughts

Stop squirming SM. You say a "lie" has been told, I say it hasn't. It's not up to me to prove you right.

A further quote from Graeme M's website which he used to "nail" me:

"Climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution. All countries will experience climate change impacts, and have an interest in preventing rising temperatures and taking action to better cope with any impacts. Australia is the world's 15th largest emitter of greenhouse gases, producing more greenhouse gas emissions than at least 170 other countries. Australia also produces more emissions per person than other developed countries. **Australia generates 1.5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions so our actions alone cannot avert the worst consequences of climate change.** Helping to shape a global climate change solution is one of the Australian Government's highest priorities.**It is one of the three pillars of Australia's comprehensive response to climate change along with efforts to reduce domestic emissions and adapt to climate change impacts."

Stop squirming, SM and say what Labor spokesperson has said Australia alone can avert/mitigate climate change or what official Government website claims this?

Well LF I think if I spent a little time on the challenge I could probably find such a statement but it's largely irrelevant. Labor has chosen to act strongly in favour of taking action on climate change. I do not fault them for that - governments must act on the best advice to hand.

However I DO think it's grandstanding to make Australia a leader in the game. This simply exposes Australia - a small nation and hardly influential in the broader stakes - to all of the risk for none of the return. As you clearly accept, Australia acting alone will make no difference to the climate.

Yet the carbon tax IS sold very strongly in terms of its necessity to combat climate change. SM is right - without global action we will see little mitigation of the projected impact of climate change.

Really, much of Labor's policy is about getting Australia ahead of the game in an economic and business sense so that when the rest of the world follows suit, we will be already there and hence in a much better position to compete in the world market.

But... what if the rest of the world DOESN'T move so quickly or effectively? And this is a question I'd like to see answered objectively because I find it hard to establish the truth. From my reading, it isn't really happening. The European carbon market is almost dead in the water, Germany is pulling back from its deep investment in green technology, the Eurozone's real concern is just staying solvent, America is making noises but hasn't really committed and China is paying lip service whilst engineering a huge boom in manufacturing and energy production to fuel its massive social migration into the 21st century. To say nothing of India.

Is the carbon tax and the Clean Energy Future really a bold step or will it be a foolishly naiive error of judgement? I suspect the latter.

Good Lord LF "Australia is the world's 15th largest emitter of greenhouse gases, producing more greenhouse gas emissions than at least 170 other countries. "

So we are worse than say Fiji? Can you post some figures around what exactly the tonnage per annum for Australia is when compared to the other 15? Geez, the other 14 would be nearly every other major industrialised nation!

Serious question because I've never actually seen Australia's output directly compared to the other 14...

LF,

I said a lie has been "perpetrated" I did not say a lie has been "told".

Before you get your knickers in a twist and start tilting at windmills, perhaps you should pick up a dictionary and look at the deliberately broad definition included in the statement. Then perhaps you will understand the irrelevance of your request for documentary proof.

For those illiterates, labor is deliberately trying to create the false impression that there is a direct link between controlling Australia's emissions and impacting climate change in Australia. To see what I am saying you only need to listen to any Labor MP being interviewed on the carbon tax.

I made a statement, if you challenge it, the onus of proof is on you.

Hmmm... just toddled off and had a look at the figures. As that quote of LF's says, Australia proiduces around 1-1.5% of the world's CO2 emissions. The big players are (based on 2010 figures I found) China at around 25%, USA 16% and India at 6%.

Now I am sure many of you here already knew that, but I didn't. So clearly, without the other 14 countries not named in that quote - or more exactly, the top 5 countries - doing anything, Australia's CO2 tax will have no effect at all.

So the big question is - will Australia's lead play a substantial part in leading those countries to enact serious mitigation strategies? What evidence is there that China, the US and India are following our lead in any meaningful way?

What a huge problem for the left.

Russian scientists are warning, & the countries official position is that we are, right now, entering the next little or full ice age.

China is not about to say they agree, not while the west is stupid enough to keep shooting itself in the foot, buying their solar panels & windmills, but their policies show they do.

I wonder if some of these AGW fools will still be proclaiming it's getting hotter, as they chip the ice off their lives made so much harder by the waste of the carbon tax, & alternate non-generating systems.

Some who have posted here for a very long time seem ,truly, to think it is an Australian problem.
SM? well why bother as firm as a concrete road he has not intention of letting truth get him stranded.
BUT tell me this is not true, EVERY WORD.
CURRENT coalition policy is to reduce carbon by the very same amount as Labor.
AGAIN TELL ME I AM WRONG! every living Federal coalition leader, bar Abbott wanted the trading scheme the tax becomes in what 2015?
Truth dies when t5hose who value personal views more than it, but only for them.
Not Fraser, he may well however want it too, after all Abbott is no measure of leadership.

It appears that Hasbeen's report on the AGC, to invent an acronym
is now all over the media in Europe but appears to be a secret amongst
our media.
Here is a link to the Express newspaper in the UK.

http://tinyurl.com/bw9sjf5

Russian scientist Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov, of the St Petersburg Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory

Of course one swallow doesn't make a winter, but there may
well be some truth to the matter if you remember our conversation on
the Maunder minimum & sunspots recently.

I have got to admit I would relish the red faces that would be all
around if it turns out to be correct.

Hasbeen,

If the Northern Hemisphere is moving towards an ice-age, then I imagine the recycling of plastic is set to be a growth industry, and the price of oil and gas to skyrocket - as Russia and others get set to cover their massive wheat and grain fields with plastic sheeting;
while coal becomes more valuable than gold - as the major freely available fuel source to heat homes, greenhouses and all those wheat and grain fields.
(Though particulate pollution from burning coal would present major problems for health, unless 'scrubbing' mechanisms were also freely available.)

Unless:
a) Billions are allowed to starve or freeze; or
b) Solar PV and Solar Thermal technologies are rolled-out on a massive scale (all home, greenhouse and broad-acre fields roofed with solar panels); or
c) Technology X is developed to combat Climate Change? (To re-heat the planet?); or
d) Humanity can undertake a mass nomadic diaspora, ever-chasing warmer climes and diminishing food sources; or
e) Humanity can live under the sea, farming fish, etc; or
f) Humanity moves underground to live on mushrooms and other fungi - fertilized by poo (and limited by ever-diminishing returns), plus eking out consumption of ever-diminishing edible life-forms hunted and gathered; or
g) Combinations of the above possibilities; or
h) Nuclear Energy can save the day?

You appear to scoff at AGW, yet suggest Climate Change may be a reality.
The conclusion presents, that climate will change through the operation of natural systems, irrespective of what humanity may or may not do?
You may be right. So, where to from here?

Can carbon taxation and the concurrent subsidization of energy-intensive industry, mining and exploration (for mining purposes) have any net impact on maintenance of a balmy planetary environment? How so?
Or, may we need to find a truly effective alternative?
Or, shall we just accept that we are powerless to achieve long term sustainability and just start writing humanity's obituary to the fallen masses?
Labor's or Humanity's vision or folly - or mere political posturing?

'Sustainability' deserves a more realistic and innovative long-range global plan.

A squirming, writhing "fail" as my kids would say, SM. Best wishes as you continue to go about your porky perpetrations.

LF,

So after all this you have nothing, except an ad hominem. How pathetic.

http://www.skynews.com.au/eco/article.aspx?id=862681
Why do we see story's like this link every day?
Has the media been hood winked.
Can we agree one of the extremes, is wrong on this issue.
What impacts has Climate Change had to truthful understanding of science?

Bazz,

It is no secret that in geologic time, we are heading for another ice age. What we are seeing in our current time frame is somewhat different and a lot of people who gravitate here only believe in what they want to believe or see what they want to see.

The addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere caused by fossil fuel burning and other anthropogenic activity has caused temperatures at the surface of Earth to increase significantly over the past century and a half, and rapidly during the interval from around 1975 until the early years of the 21st century.

However, sea surface and surface-air temperatures have not risen significantly over most of the past decade, encouraging some ‘fake sceptics’ to question the continued reality of global warming, despite the fact that similar variability also can be seen in the instrumental records of the past century.

The real question, then, is not whether climate warming has stopped, but where in the earth system the heat resides that would have caused the expected warming? Naturally, the first place to look is in the ocean, because that is where most of the heat taken up due to global warming is stored.

A number of real ‘climate scientists’ conducted a reanalysis of changes in the global ocean heat content from 1958 through 2009 and found that much of the warming has occurred below depths of 700 m, rather than in the surface ocean, and that much of that redistribution is due to changes in surface winds over that period.

This helps to explain why air temperatures have not reflected this heating and shows that global warming is continuing, but out of our daily reach.

Geophys. Res. Lett. 10.1002/grl.50382 (2013)

It would be too late to relish the red faces when it turns out that the 'fake sceptics' here and elsewhere are wrong.

That's pretty amusing Q&A, Pity the Argo buoys can't find any evidence of it, but then these global warming "scientists" are pretty good at spruiking theories they can't back up with evidence.

Like the one just 5 years or so back, that "it ain't gunna snow no more" due to global warming, with 99% certainty.

Now they don't have enough shovels to dig themselves out of the ice in the northern hemisphere, they have a new one.

This one says when it is hotter, it makes it colder. They even have a pretty computer generated diagram to prove it, just like they did with the story of no more snow. Hell if we could get a synthetic worm on our fishing hook to wriggle like these clowns, we would catch every fool fish in the sea.

Well we would until the fish got sick of being conned.

Today even green Europe have got sick of being conned. Conned by plastic scientists, living in their synthetic worlds, only seen in their computers.

It's over buddy. Just fold up the banner, turn your computer off & go join the dole que. First in will beat the rush.

Belly
That's a nice picture of those pretty girls in your reference. Really sweet of the warmists to give the poor oldies something to look at, as they freeze to death in their global warming frozen homes, they are unable to heat, since global warming induced fool alternate electricity generation systems have made electricity too damned expensive for then to buy.

I'm sure they will be grateful.

Qanda, is it possible that the warming since the early 19th century is
because the Maunder Minimum cold period ended and we are getting back the previous normal ?

Hasbeen old mate! do you consider your self well schooled in this area?
Better say the all those lieing scientists?
Why are the beggar,s telling lie,s?
Next they will tell us that cow never jumped over the moon.

Hasbeen

Like I said, some people only see what they want to see - you included.

"Pity the Argo buoys can't find any evidence of it, but then these global warming "scientists" are pretty good at spruiking theories they can't back up with evidence."

That is either a lie or a deliberate distortion or misrepresentation, Hasbeen.

Almost 1200 scientific papers based on or incorporating Argo data have been generated since the start of the program. Prominent findings include:

... Analysis of ocean salinity patterns indicate that a substantial (16 to 24%) intensification of the global water cycle will occur in a future 2° to 3° warmer world.

... A more detailed view of the world’s largest ocean current, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.

... An insight into changing bodies of water in the Southern Ocean and the way in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere.

... Isolating the effect of ocean warming and thermal expansion on the global energy and sea level budget.

I suggest you read real science, not distorted science spruiked on 'sceptic' blog sites, as you are known to do.

You said you were a scientist, Hasbeen. No you are not, you just have a tendency to make stuff up.

.

Bazz

No, we are creating a 'new normal' - it is becoming commonly known as the Anthropocene.

No Belly I don't think that a reasonable sceptic believes the scientists are telling lies. However it is possible that the paradigm is not as clear cut as QANDA would have us believe. My personal view is that science works within paradigms and our good old nervous system works very well at identifying patterns within a particular context - that is, we can often choose to see what we want to see. Of course we like to think that science is suitably objective but that is often not the case. At the end of the day, it is people doing science, not omniscient gods.

Now this is personal opinion, but so often the papers used as evidence that AGW is indeed happening are informed by the paradigm. In other words, it is a self perpetuating mechanism driven by human social constructs. If a scientist accepts that AGW is true, he is likely to seek patterns in the data that confirm that bias. Given that weather and climate are essentially chaotic systems, it is possible that identifying past trends does not necessarily inform us well about future trends.

cont...

contd

I am not a scientist so I cannot say the scientists are wrong. What I do say is that based on my own reading and thinking, AGW as a theory is proving lacking. I have read plenty of information that shows flaws in the idea. And I observe no shortage of 'predictions' that have failed or have been later modified now "that the science is clearer". Clearer? Or just wrong and now adjusted to suit?

Is QANDA quite confident that Nikolov and Zeller's proposal holds no water? Is he/she quite certain that present day warming is not in response to solar insolation driven cloud cover variability? Personally as I've said before, I like their proposal as it is just a tidier theory. can I judge it scientifically? No.

So it's just my opinion. As indeed is that of most sceptics. The big question of course is to whom should government listen? And there's only one answer to that.

Let's just hope the sceptics aren't right eh? Although I think on balance, I would prefer that they are...

"Let's just hope the sceptics aren't right eh?"

No, Graeme M, let's hope more that the non-skeptics are wrong, because if they are right the world is not doing nearly enough. If you had to bet your children's lives, which is the pragmatic position?

I must say, for a person who keeps claiming to have no scientific bent, you seem to have quite a bent.

PS, re my challenge to SM, which he failed quite as expected, you wrote "Well LF I think if I spent a little time on the challenge I could probably find such a statement....". Well please do. People who make statements are responsible for backing them up when challenged, not the challenger.

I didn't say I don't have a scientific bent LF. I love inquiry, especially scientific enquiry. But I'm just an average guy without a degree so am no intellectual heavyweight.

The pragmatic position? Surely pragmatism suggests taking a more measured approach. After all, we can't affect the environment on our own, so why not wait until the big players have actually moved? In any case, the A in AGW depends on there being significant positive feedbacks and I don't think the case has been made well enough for that.

The challenge... OK, I might have a go at it. I have a bit of spare time this weekend so will see what I can do! You may be right in that it has never been stated so categorically but I think it is most certainly implicit in all I hear and read. Still, the challenge is to find it explicit, so I'll see what I can find.

Graeme M, it should be easy to find as it is "the single biggest lie perpetrated by Labor". I would start my search here https://www.liberal.org.au/labor-tells-lies

What are we to do?
I have stopped posting links about faster wind speeds and any thing that points to change in our climate.
Because they are invisible to some.
Content to charge the worlds science with fraud, yet unable to think *did interested folk*
Oil and such, start a theory? every bit as believable to me, more so, than saying science lies

WHY?
What then is behind half the world lie ing ?

Graeme,

Don't worry LF is no intellectual heavyweight either, after getting whipped, the best he can do is deny it. We are still waiting for you to provide one interview with one Labor Polie where he admits that climate change in Australia is not directly affected by the Australian carbon tax.

Writhing, squirming, wriggling trying everything. Now he re-frames my challenge. Oh well, see how you go with his challenge, Graeme M.

PS. Here's a further helping hand, Graeme M, to help you in meeting SM's challenge (not mine, you can read mine again further up). Alan Jones of "died of shame" fame thought he was onto a scoop when pointing out Australia alone could not mitigate AGW. He swooned with pride at his no brainer when challenging Labor spokespersons he interviewed a few years back. Perhaps you can find a spokesperson from this time being forced to an "admission" that Australia alone cannot save itself.

Let it be your guide as you toil on behalf of SM that people acknowledge 2 plus 2 equals 4, no "admission" necessary.

Oh, and PS, please pass on a thank you to SM for insulting my intellectual capacity. I'll keep it proudly in my trophy cupboard along with all the other insults I've collected over time for challenging his BS. One must admire his arrogance when he addresses his fellow OLO'ers with "For those illiterates,....." as if in intellectual command of the waves. Wow!

LF,

I apologise if I underestimated your intellectual capability. Perhaps you come from a culture where dictionaries are banned, and jumping to conclusions is a sport, or maybe you left school after year 6, even possibly are dyslexic or were having a stroke at the time.

Your frequent use of the Socratic method of logic where facts get in the way of logic, has been out of date for centuries, and I suggest that if you want to make a point, offering more than your opinion would be a good start.

Shadow Minister,what a gentleman you are.
NOT.

SM, your superciliousness is boundless. You think people who fail to accept your statements as axiomatic deserve abuse, when they really deserve to know what backs them up. On this occasion it appears you have nothing, so I'll just accept your apology and stash the rest in my trophy cupboard.

http://www.skynews.com.au/eco/article.aspx?id=863649
On talking about evidence that is found in ice cores early in this thread, I thought the idea was not excepted.
Again this may prove that climate change is taking place.
On the quite separate issue, is it man made, we can have differing opinions, but can we continue to ignore the truth.
I remain convinced man has already changed the climate, as he has with from now gone animal life and polluted sea,s and land.