Cycling to work, I emit hydrocarbons

Not me - my car that is sitting back at home. While I'm saving those co2 emissions, it is releasing hydrocarbons and contributing to smog:

Vehicles sitting in the sun for days at a time can spew out damaging hydrocarbons – one of the main ingredients in smog, a federal government study has found.

Hydrocarbons are in the vapour that escapes from petrol tanks on a warm day. Most newer cars have canisters that trap them before they are released but if cars are left sitting for longer than 24 hours the canisters can fill up and stop working until the vehicle is driven, the Second National In-Service Emissions Study found.

As many as 3 million Australian cars may not conform to Australian standards for evaporative emissions.

"The results indicate that when vehicles are parked in warm conditions for an extended period (more than a day), the evaporative emission control systems may not be able to effectively control the build-up of evaporative hydrocarbons, as even the latest systems are only designed to provide effective control for a continuous 24-hour period," the report said.

Ya know ya do ya best... At least this lets me off the cycling 5 days a week. Maybe I drive to the train station twice a week, and cycle the rest. And drive on rainy days.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Australia's carbon intensity begins to fall

While electricity use increased, emissions from electricity generation fell due to a shift to gas-fired and renewable generators from black coal plants, as Ben Cubby, environmental reporter for the SMH, writes:

AUSTRALIA'S greenhouse gas emissions may be reaching a plateau, even though demand for electricity is rising inexorably, new data suggests.

A slight trend towards burning gas instead of coal in power stations means that carbon emissions are beginning to be ''decoupled'' from power generation and economic growth, a report by energy consultants pitt&sherry found.

It is a crucial first step if national emissions are going to be reduced by between 5 and 25 per cent by the year 2020.

The news came as the federal government released its first report measuring the individual emissions of the nation's biggest companies.

While this would appear to be positive news, Hugh Saddler, the economics and sustainability adviser who helped prepare the report says it's too early to see whether this trend will take. The Department of Climate Change expects it to:

"From 2013 to 2020 emissions from the stationary energy sector are projected to grow at an average annual rate 0.5 per cent per annum, compared to the historical growth rate of 2.3 per cent per annum,'' a spokeswoman said. ''This is predominantly due to the projected slowdown in growth in electricity emissions mainly due to the increase in renewable generation associated with the expanded Renewable Energy Target."

Fine aspirations, yet the Government only narrowly avoided another climate scheme disaster that was on track to happen from their lumping solar water in with renewable energy generation for government incentives. Luckily, Penny Wong called in Mr Fix-it.

The Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, asked Mr Combet to fix the problem a few weeks ago and after intensive talks with the industry he finalised the changes in the nick of time.

The energy provider AGL yesterday said more than $1 billion in investments was on hold because of problems with the renewable energy market. It then quickly issued a statement to say the government's changes meant the investment was likely to go ahead.

Steve Garner, the managing director of the wind turbine maker Keppel Prince Engineering, had been preparing to sack 150 workers within days. His factory had been idle for a month because energy companies had stopped ordering turbines. "Greg Combet called me this week," Mr Garner said yesterday. "He suggested I hang on, that he was working on something."

Roaring 40s this week said construction of its $400 million Musselroe Bay wind farm in Tasmania had stopped. But yesterday it said the changes meant the project might be viable again.

The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, promised he would help the project if he won the election.

And Pacific Hydro said it would restart $1 billion worth of investments.

Energy retailers will buy certificates from a large-scale market and a separate fixed-price market covering small-scale domestic technologies.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

It's the quick and the dead in the climate wars with this killer iPhone app

Ever reached an impasse in an argument about climate change, for want of accurate knowledge?

Science's answers to the common climate deniers' talking-points, painstakingly assembled by John Cook over many years, are now available at the tips of your fingers and right before your opponent's lying eyes, right when you need them next:

The app, published by Skeptical Science and Shine Technologies, has been praised and promoted around the climate change blogosphere.

Deltoid's readers are amused at the responses of the seemingly less tech-savvy deniers, and iTunes perceived 'lack of balance', that set off a round of complaints. Crikey's Pure Poison is the same.

Eli of Rabbett Run has promoted it above footage of rabbits. That's got to say something.

And the Guardiancovers the reportedly panicked responses from skeptics blogs.

If you come across a new deniers' talking-point, you can upload it to skepticalscience.com to keep feeding John Cook's labour of love, and help him continue to set the record straight.

"How cool would it be to track the spread of the memes in real-time? And what's the hint from Shine Technologies about 'heatmaps'?", are my only two questions.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Garnaut's post-Copenhagen waiting game - Plan B

Professor Ross Garnaut, Australia's answer to Sir Nicholas Stern, tells Tony Jones where the emerging global emissions trading market finds itself post-Copenhagen - we have entered the "waiting game":

And my proposal is a proposal that was in the original report. I call the situation we're in after Copenhagen, the waiting game.

We're waiting for international agreement to provide a basis for international trade in permits. I suggested then, and I think it's the right case now, in the waiting game, to legislate the ETS and to fix the price over a period.

Given the "Government has great difficulty in the legislation of the ETS", Garnaut has a Plan B. He laid it out in his 2008 report, The Garnaut Climate Change Review.

TONY JONES: Tony Abbott says the Government doesn't have a Plan B, if the Emissions Trading Scheme fails at every hurdle to be passed as legislation.

The Greens say that you actually have a Plan B and that Plan B is for a carbon tax - $20 a tonne - on the thousand top polluters in the country and that they, the Greens, are prepared to support it.

Is that in fact your Plan B?

PROF ROSS GARNAUT: That's the waiting game to which I referred. And which was...

TONY JONES: It wasn't- it wasn't quite clear because you referred to it as Emissions Trading Scheme legislation, but in fact, it seems to be that what the Greens are saying is this wouldn't be an Emissions Trading Scheme but a transition towards one. It would begin with two years of, effectively, a carbon tax.

PROF ROSS GARNAUT: I think they were referring to my waiting game proposal, which puts in place the ETS but has the regulator making permits available at a fixed price.

So you don't have trade in permits, you don't have fluctuations in price, until you've got an international agreement that allows us to set our targets with confidence and allows a confident basis for international trade in permits.

TONY JONES: Are you encouraged that the Greens appear to be prepared to vote in the Senate for that kind of Plan B approach and should the Government take that on board and start negotiating with the cross bench senators on that basis?

PROF ROSS GARNAUT: I'm not going to get in the middle of these complex Senate negotiations, Tony.

I think that the proposals I described as the waiting game are the best way forward in the circumstances after Copenhagen and anyone who supports them, I think, is on the right tram.

I'm glad Garnaut has a Plan B, one that sounds like the Australian economy can start now to absorb the cost, and begin seriously thinking of ways to turn it into profit when we reach the end of the waiting game. The two year deadline for the Emissions Trading Scheme legislation to become an Emissions Trading Scheme gives certainty to business to invest and encouragement to those people, families, and communities who have personally invested in minimising their footprint.

It's worth watching the interview. Is it just me or does Garnaut have a passing resemblance to Ian Plimer?

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Where do we go from here?

The last three months or so has been somewhat depressing for those hoping for concerted global action on climate change (which is on reason why my blogging has been light). Yet, they have been heady months for what is becoming a powerful climate-skeptic movement.

The relentless amplification of allegations from 'climategate', the damp-squib Copenhagen conference, and the constant attacks on the professionalism of the IPCC have taken a toll on the public support for global warming mitigation measures.

In Australia, Newspoll is documenting that decline:

Good luck if you can read the fine-print. Clicking on the image should give you a bigger one, but not much clearer than The Australian version, from whence it came. But, the point is, while the community is still mostly aware that climate change is happening, a whopping 84% believed so in July 2008 but this figure is down by 11% a little over eighteen months later. The change in the percentage of those ascribing climate change to human influences has not been as great, nevertheless it is moving in the same direction - down.

All while certainty in the scientific community has moved in the opposite direction.

But, the biggest erosion has been in support for the CPRS, and it has been in a greater proportion to the change in belief that climate change is real. Fifteen percent fewer are in favour of a CPRS/ETS than were sixteen months ago, and 13% more are against it. To my mind, that is a consequence of the Rudd government not bothering with selling it to the public, preferring to let the Coalition's previous internal woes dominate the discourse.

Now the Coalition opposition have coalesced under the plain speaking Tony Abbott, and convoluted Kevin has to actually start selling.

While all of this is interesting to watch, the idea that the planet's climate salvation is going to come from the political arena, one that I held for years, grows weaker by the month for me.

I am starting to think that our necessary salvation is going to come from people themselves - from individuals doing what they have to do to reduce their impact. If the 73% of Australians who are concerned each reduced their annual co2 footprint by 1 tonne, the saving would roughly be 16 millions tonnes. Not shabby, when you consider that a coal-fired power station emits roughly about 1.2 million tones of co2 per annum.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

AGW debate: Lord Christopher Mockington vs Timothy Lambert

Have you heard the one about the amateur scientific genius who has been a member of the House of Lords? Apparently, it's not true:

For some time - Google “Monckton” and “Nobel Prize” and see for yourself - the great sceptic-in-chief has been passing himself off as a Nobel Laureate.

Cornered last month by the Sydney Morning Herald, he reportedly said it was “a joke, a joke.”

Anyhoo, said comedic Lord has had his invitation to debate accepted. He and his tribe have been banging the war drums like mad:

Good morning Mike,

I haven’t had a chance to read it but I understand that you had an article in today’s paper in which you claim to better informed on climate matters than Christopher Monckton.

Would you be prepared to exchange views on the matter face-to-face when Lord Moncton appears at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney on February 12th. It would be educational for the audience to have an expert on hand to point out where Monckton is misleading the public.

If you do not have the courage to do so, can you nominate someone else who might stand in for you?

Regards,

Case Smit

Joint organiser of Lord Monckton’s Tour of Australia

So, the nomination is made. The debate is so on at Tim Lambert's Deltoid. Let's hope he builds on George Monboit's win over Ian "Submarine Volcano" Plimer, last December.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

The last time co2 levels were this high, we dragged our knuckles around

If you were to believe global warming deniers, climate change is all right because the climate changes all the time.

True enough; but the last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were sustained at 387 parts per million (ppm) was 15 million years ago, during the Burdigalian stage of the Mioscene Epoc, according to XXXX of UCLA in his paper XXXX.

Unlike now, 15 million years ago CO2 levels were on their way down, allowing global temperatures to slowly cool and ice sheet to be formed on the poles. Grasslands underwent a major expansion; forests yielded to a generally cooler and drier climate overall.

There were evolutionary losers; the closest relatives to elephants and sea-cows, the Desmostylians, became extinct. But we early chimp-hominids did rather well out of having to stand on two feet at the edge of the forest to scan the savannah for the saber-toothed predators or the ruminant prey co-evolving with the greatly diversifying grasses. By the time our primate ancestors had evolved into early man, co2 levels were stabilising, the carbon cycle settled, the world’s temperate regions started to become established, and the climate started to follow the wobble in the axis of the earth as it travels around the sun.

Both human (Ardipithecus, Australopithecus and Homo) and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus) lineages diverged from a common ancestor about 5 to 6 million years ago and the climate became more benign, steadying into a pattern of ice-ages of low atmospheric CO2 punctuated with long interglacial periods.

Greenland started becoming covered in ice three million years ago when high atmospheric carbon dioxide levels dropped to levels closer to that of the pre-industrial era, and methane became trapped in the permafrost in the tundra of the high latitudes.

This suited Australopithecus, who lived, and could now follow the seasons that were forming as Africa’s climate started getting drier, making hunting and gathering predictable enough to develop stone tools. Their brain was 35% of the size of the modern man, big enough to help them exploit the forest and grassland habitats that got them their varied and seasonal diet.

Peak CO2 levels over the last 2.1 million years averaged only 280 ppm; today, CO2 is 38% higher.

Then a between 2.5 million years ago and 1.5 million, after Australopithecus evolved into Homo erectus, our brain grew from 600ccm to what it is now, about 1350ccm. The drying climate forced us to develop language to learn to get food in more adverse circumstances. We became serious tool makers and started wearing clothes as we headed out of Africa to Europe. Handily, we had tamed fire, so we were in good shape to tackle the next series of ice-ages. Pleased with ourselves, we developed jewelry, and then social hierarchy. In short, our current interglacial periods, called the Holocene, has been stable climatically and this has witnessed Homo sapiens explode into the Bronze Age, into agriculture, into civilisation, and into history. It’s been one wild ride, one that’s included a trip or two to the moon.

Not bad for that early chimp-hominids standing on two feet at the edge of the forest peering over the savannah grasses those fifteen million years ago, wondering what its chances of a good meal were.

But we really do owe our success to a stable climate.

Over the last 20,000 years our population has boomed from 6,000 to 6,000,000,000, most of that during the last 8,000 years of the 12,000 year Holocene, during which the average pre-industrial CO2 levels are 280 ppm. Now, instead of throwing rocks we got the bomb. We’ve played with remote control buggies on Mars, and we get pics from our probes pressing ever on into the reaches of our galaxy.

However, not without a cost; having poured enough CO2 into the atmosphere to change the climate since 1850, long-term temperature trends have been going up at a rate unprecedented in all geologic time. Today, we find CO2 concentrations at 387ccm again, only this time the trend is on the way up, not down, and we don’t have the same benign prognosis as faced us last time, over that savannah clearing. Biodiversity, on which a healthy and bountiful environment depends, is predicted to fall, not grow like it did last time. Variety of food available to us will shrink as food chains fall apart and ecosystems fail, and economies falter. We know from past experience that the great carbon sinks of the planet, the oceans, will become more acidic eating away at the calcified micro biology of the bottom of the ocean, wiping it out. Already we can see that the permafrost is not so permanent, belching methane as it warms up. You might have seen the famous farting ice on You Tube.

This time, despite the prognosis we face under a business-as-usual scenario, we do have one major advantage: We don’t drag our knuckles on the ground any more, and as we survey our future for risk and reward, we have an understanding of the world we face, and how we impact it, and what we have to do to reduce that impact to a sustainable one.

The moral of the story of man is that we are happiest when living in the predictable climate of our pre-industrial years.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

To watch in 2010: Tony Abbott vs Tony Abbott

Happy New Decade to you all... let's hope it is the decade when the world finally takes man-made climate change by the horns, and soothes the savage beast. Science tells us that we don't have much option but to do so.

Anyway, I'm back from brief but restful holidays, so that also means I'm back to watching the big game in town. I am not talking about the cricketing carnage that Pakistan is putting a discombobulated Australian Eleven through, but Tony Abbott's 'cost-free' formulation to gazump global warming, which he promised for February.

Paul Daley pings Abbott's dilemma in today's SMH :

It seems most unlikely at this stage that the Government will win sufficient support for the legislation when it is again presented to Parliament next month.

Between now and then Abbott must formulate a policy to reduce Australia's carbon production that is not based on the emissions trading model he so opposes.

It's no easy task. He must convince voters that the Liberals under a big-C conservative leader such as himself can be genuine advocates for “green” measures to reduce our carbon output. Such green measures, of course, depend largely on heavy regulation – and government regulation is the enemy of both progressive and conservative Liberal-ism.

On human-made climate change – about which Abbott is something of an avowed sceptic – he is proposing what one Liberal colleague describes as “a type of progressive conservatism”. The Government will come out all guns blazing to discredit whatever policy he unveils as an alternative to the carbon reduction scheme come February.

Abbott's climate change policy will, however, be primarily about contrasting himself with both Rudd and the Government.

So we see here how Abbott is his own worst intellectual enemy, a conundrum of confused contradictions:

He belittles the government's proposed emission trading system by wrongfully calling the proposed free-market mechanism a "Great Big New Tax". Yet the only other effective way to conceivably achieve carbon emissions containment is via a Great Big New Tax of the kind proposed by NASA's James Hansen in his letter to the Obamas.

As the article states, Abbot would need to impose onerous legislation on business and the general population in order to achieve his cost-free containment, in contradiction to the stated principles of the party of small government. To draw up his scheme, People Skills has already hinted that he intends to pilfer the green ideas from Malcolm Turnbull, the man he deposed... for his green ideas. The man who once considered joining the priesthood now reduces peer-review science to a "green religion", and reckons his salvation will come from our farmers who are going to bio-sequester carbon in their soils.

I am so confused that I can't decide whether Anthony Abbott is a clod or a sod.

Perhaps the pathology of Abbot's illogic helps us explain how he has now painted himself into his colourful corner as he waits for February's bell: if, as he claims, "climate change is crap", then wtf is he doing coining a policy to combat it?

No explanation there, unless you now see that Abbott's famed grasp merely extends to media grabs; that our pugilistic Mad Monk is the Pontiff of Populism, not sound policy.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

COP15 Copenhagen — What the...

Poorer nations walk out yesterday because they are afraid that Kyoto will be abandoned, India tell Kevin Rudd he is the ayatollah for his drive to abandon Kyoto in favour of a new deal; an African representative says his actions are those of a climate change sceptic. The US is balking at prematurely cutting emissions. Protesters clash outside. Two separate deals are now mooted. No takers. Chairperson of the conference, Connie Hedegaard of Denmark, resigns. Many complained there was no progress. She is also fighting with her prime minster. With time running out and little progress, the best headline the official website can come up with is "COP15 among the largest summits in the world ever" — Great, imagine the carbon footprint being the only outcome. Confusion reigns. There are no agreements on size of emissions cuts; and their is no real money on the table to help smaller nations mitigate this. Nor is there a plan. The money that is on the table has not moved the Nigerian representative. The Tuvalu representative, Stephen Fry, publicly cried for his beloved sinking country yesterday. Today he stood up and said that the Titanic is sinking, and it's time to deploy the lifeboats, not reconvene more meetings. China has said they won't take any money for mitigation from the developed world - it should go to poorer nations. Good on them. Danish PM has taken over the Chair to try and get things on track, but maybe that was the plan from the start as the heads of states start arriving. No journalist seems to know. Compromise deal keeping elements of Kyoto is now said to be waiting in the wings.

That's after nine days.

And there are only three days to go...

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Monboit vs Plimer: We've had the debate, finally

Watching Lateline on ABC tonight was a treat. Host Tony Jones has immersed himself in both the science and politics of climate change, and it is great to see a mainstream journo so well across the on-again, off-again, much threatened debate between Guardian science journalist, George Monboit and retired geologist turned avid AGW denial megaphone, Ian Plimer, that he managed to get them both on his show to bash it out in public.

I am always wary of reducing a complex area like climate-science to a televised debate format, so I settled into the debate with some apprehension.

So how did it go? More to the point, who won?

Jones opened asking Monboit to explain why he recently pessimistically claimed that AGW deniers are 'winning' ("There is no point in denying it: we're losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease..."), which he did by elucidating the profound irony that poll after poll shows that, as the scientific evidence hardens (e.g., the IPCC says that they are 90% confident that man is causing dangerous global warming), the public is more and more gripped by climate change doubt. He believes this is because people simply don't want to face "the writing that's now on the wall".

Jones made the interesting point that the very conference Monboit was joining the debate from, COP15 Copenhagen, shows that world leaders are out touch with their faltering public. Monboit agreed, and made the equally interesting point that this is because governments are taking their lead from their scientific advisors, so they know they have to do something.

Plimer parried this, claiming that it is because governments can't resist the idea of a tax, and went on to accuse their scientific advisors of being "dodgy", citing the recent University of East Anglia so called 'climategate' hack. Monboit agrees that he as been let down by what he says the emails show in terms of keeping certain papers out of the IPCC process. But he pointed out that this did not make the science a "hoax or a con". Not taking Plimer's bait, he made the fair point that Phil Jones' indiscretions (in private emails I might add) do not debunk the consistent message coming from tens of thousands of peer-reviewed scientists.

Plimer argued that the two or three CRU scientists involved in using "mafia-style tactics"were the main people the IPCC relied upon. Further cracks in Plimer's credibility appeared, when he claimed this is the "biggest scientific fraud in history". What about the work of your intellectual antecedents Ian, the pro-smoking, 'no link to cancer' lobby?

The rest of the debate was devoted to Monboit successfully taking Plimer to task over inaccuracies in his Plimer's book, Heaven + Earth, and his subsequent evasiveness over his real "scientific fraud". He mentioned two specifically — Plimer's claim that the world has cooled since 1998 (page 383 of Plimer's book referring to the Charles F.Keller paper), and that volcanoes emit more co2 than mankind.

Once presented with the the facts, that the WMO claims the last decade to be the hottest on record yet, and the US Geological Survey claim Pilmer to be wrong by an order of magnitude of 130 times, Plimer ducked and weaved. When asked to detract or stand by his claims, Plimer squirmed and distracted, obfuscated and attacked. But he just would not answer the question. Oh, look, a unicorn!

After it was clear that Monboit was not going to let him off his left-hook, Plimer jumped out of the ring to run away, and Tony Jones pulled him right back into it by his scruff. It was like watching an exorcism; his charm gave way to smarm, and viewers witnessed a denier being expertly dissected.

When Plimer accused Monboit of being rude for interjecting (when trying to get a straight answer out of Plimer), Monboit returned by pointing out it was rude to wittingly lie on television, and bad manners to not answer the question.

Monboit kicked Plimer's arse between Heaven + Earth, hell and high water. Deniers will pick on Monboit's aggression, but that's because they cannot fall back on Plimer's arguments. I was left with the impression that Plimer is aware and unconcerned about the irony of the full title of his book, "Heaven + Earth: The Missing Science of Global Warming" — it's clear that it's his book that is missing the science.

In short, Plimer got pwned.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Joyce hoist on his own petard

One of the most useful sayings that French, that fabulous language, has given us is 'hoist on his own petard' - to be blown up by your own bomb (pronounced 'bembh' for ze Pink Panther fans).

Petard also handily translates to 'fart' -- the same noise emanating from Malcolm Turnbull's opposition backbench whenever he tried to push the Coalition's promised bipartisan message on climate change action. One of the main culprits was the National's climate change denier-in-chief, Barnaby Joyce, and for his noisy efforts in the plot to install Tony Abbot as the new opposition leader in his recent climate denier coup, he has been promoted to the shadow cabinet.

You would think Barnaby would now conduct himself with polite restraint, but no. He wasted no time farting in the general direction of China, and America, only to be told by Abbot to now stop his public emissions.

Ironically, one of the best outcomes of promoting Barnaby to the front bench, is that he may finally prevented from airing his more off-tune, odorous odium.

UPDATE - it ain't gonna work out...

Phillip Coorey on the dillema facing the retail Liberal party:

Joyce rose with the full imprimatur of Minchin and Abbott but he drove a hard bargain. He wanted the key portfolio and demanded the shadow ministry be expanded by one so his entry did not result in a fellow National being punted. There are 14 Nationals in Parliament - nine MPs and five senators. Nationals make up 15 per cent of the Coalition caucus and 20 per cent of its shadow cabinet.

If the idea of promoting Joyce was to get him into the tent to curb his excesses, it failed miserably in week one.

....

There will be no reining in of Joyce. As he told the Herald on Tuesday: "It's not as though you have a personality transplant when you go into cabinet."

Being a practical peoples, I think Australians would just settle for a brain-transplant.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Andrew Bolt: liar, denier, and father

Andrew Bolt really is a piece of work, of the guilty, paranoid kind:

Today he is having a go at Clive Hamilton for trying to "trying to turn my children against me":

Leave my children alone, Hamilton

This is seriously creepy. Is Green extremist Clive Hamilton now trying to turn my children against me - and by warning them I’m a corrupt killer?

Hi there,

There’s something you need to know about your father.

Your dad’s job is to try to stop the government making laws to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution. He is paid a lot of money to do that by big companies who do not want to own up to the fact that their pollution is changing the world’s climate in very harmful ways.

Because of their pollution, lots of people, mostly poor people, are likely to die. They will die from floods, from diseases like dengue fever, and from starvation when their crops won’t grow anymore. The big companies are putting their profits before the lives of people.

And your dad is helping them.

There is something sick about a man who, having failed to convince the adults, feels his best option is to terrify their children

When you read all of Clive's piece, you realise that there is no mention of Andrew Bolt. But, Bolt is so convinced that Clive is specifically writing to his children, he dedicates his headline to the notion.

Wondering why he protests too much?

Maybe this can explain it--here is Andrew Bolt over a year ago:

ANOTHER week, and another student tells me of a teacher who’s turned preacher instead.

This student, a very honest boy, tells me he was asked on Tuesday to give a summary on global warming.

Naturally, he included one plain fact: the planet hadn’t warmed since 1998, according to satellite measurements.

Check with Britain’s Hadley Centre. Or with Dr Roy Spencer, US head of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

No, no, no, said the teacher, brought in by the school to give a few lessons on learning techniques. You mustn’t believe such a thing. That was just put out by that Andrew Bolt, and, ha!, he was in a room of his own.

“Really?” replied my son.

Putting aside the obvious deception of using atmospheric measurements to make claims about the entire planet, to me this is clear evidence that Bolt not only sees himself as an AGW denial propagandist, but he also propagandises same to his son.

That he takes such umbrage at Hamilton's piece, yet takes his foul future-eating work home with him, just shows me how rank a hypocrite he is. That he doesn't dispute "he is paid a lot of money to do that by big companies who do not want to own up to the fact that their pollution is changing the world’s climate in very harmful ways" is his loudest admission yet.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Ex-CIA director wants oil to go the way of salt

Over 100 years ago world powers fought over salt. True - salt preserves meat. Then they invented refrigeration, and the salt wars stopped.

Is refrigeration one reason why Gandhi dodged the British bullet for his salt satyagraha (not to take anything from the fact that he was a brilliant strategist)? Just a thought.

Anyhoo, that's what we need to happen with oil, say James Woolsey, ex-CIA director from 1993 to 1995, and now a partner in clean-energy group, VantagePoint. So goes the history lesson.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Opposition now opposes Australian people's will

How's that for an election strategy when staring down the barrel of an anytime-now double-dissolution election?

With 66 per cent of Australians supporting the emissions trading scheme, according to the Herald's Nielsen poll on Monday, and only 25 per cent supporting it, the Liberal party elects a hard-right, stem-cell research stopping, God-bothering wacko, preferred by only 25 per cent of Aussie voters. Did I already say he is against stem-cell research?

?

??

I just don't get the Liberals. Did big Fossil Fuel quietly promise to feather-bed the retirements of the ETS rejectors? Or did they have a communal brain-fart of frustration as a result of not being in power after countless years of having it?

To prove he is monkish mad when it comes to science, after Tony Abbott won the leadership by one vote (43 to Malcolm Turnbull's 42) he immediately called for a secret ballot on the fate of the ETS (CPRS) bill. Secret, I guess, so the electorate won't know who to take it out on come election time. Here is the verdict on whether to back or defer Rudd’s great green tax: Defer - 55, Back - 29. But we all know 'what' defer means. It means 'ship the CPRS bill off to a committee out the back and then put the bullet into it'.

Which, all in all, sounds like a recipe for a double-dissolution election, now that the Liberals have handed Labor a weapon, fully loaded. The same Nielsen poll shows that 57 per cent of voters, also support the Government calling an early election if the scheme is blocked. Let's hope Rudd throws off his conservative insticts about living out your full-term, and takes the opportunity to drive the stake thought he heart of this reality-avoiding Liberal opposition.

Bring it on. I really want to see these words of Tony Abbott come back to haunt him: "man-made climate change is crap". Yep, he said it, only to back peddle today after becoming leader, and claim that he was being hyperbolic at the time. Hyperbolic or hyper colic?

Anyway, if you want to know why the Liberal who spoiled their vote in the party room by writing "no" did so, Punch has just happened upon the secret diary of the offender.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

A pox on your house

The Liberal National Coalition of the Welching is in good form today, with "Mad Monk" Tony Abbott now reneging on his Friday pledge to not contest the leadership spill tomorrow if consensus-candidate, "cuddly" Joe Hockey, steps into the ring. Commentators are saying that Hockey will have made a Faustian pact to gain the loyalty of the brain hemorrhaging right wing of the Liberal party by sinking the CPRS bill in the senate.

But now it seems that Opposition Leader Hockey would allow a free vote on the CPRS bill, effectively getting the legislation through because all Labor need are seven votes. What a development, this story has more twists and turns than a cross-dressing snake.

So Abbott calls all bets of? This is the guy who is putting himself up for alternative PM, who is from the same party that welched on their deal to vote on the CPRS bill at 3:45 last Friday.

Electorally, the Liberals now are pink mist in-waiting. I honestly think Malcolm is their only chance to regain any credibility with the electorate, as he is their only guy who has shown he gets climate change, and has the strength of character to lead.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy