Beat the carbon tax before it gets here

Buy this book:

The CSIRO Home Energy Saving Handbook – How to save energy, save money and reduce your carbon footprint

The CSIRO Home Energy Saving Handbook is a practical guide designed to help Australian households reduce their carbon footprints and take action against climate change.

Click for a radio interview by one of the CSIRO authors, who talks about how we can save an average of 50% off our energy bills.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Andy Pitman mops up misinformation mess

The proposed Carbon Dioxide tax has caused big fossil fuel to put a lot of misinformation about carbon dioxide out into radio-land. Every shock-jock around the country is plugging denier talking points. It's clear Big Denial is in campaign mode, facilitating Tony Abbott's "people's revolt".

Luckily, we have Professor Andy Pitman, Centre director for ARC Centres of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of New South Wales, to help us with clean up some of the misinformation.

Professor Andy Pitman talks to Drive with Louise Maher:
666 ABC Radio, Canberra, 3:00pm - 6:00pm

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Tony Abbott supports a carbon tax

It's hard to believe than Tony Abbott ever endorsed a carbon tax, even tacitly, given the ferocity of his sustained attack on Julia Gillard for announcing her government's intention to set a carbon price next year in anticipation of an emission trading system.

But endorse it he did, on page 172 of Battlelines, the book he wrote after the Liberals lost office and before he took over leadership of the opposition in the spill that cost Malcolm Turnbull the top job by a singe vote. The issue was the ETS that Malcolm had fought so hard for.

Tony's words are cautious, but the meaning is clear:

"...many now think that a carbon charge scheme directed at the least environmentally efficient producers would be simpler and fairer than an emissions trading scheme."

The description, "carbon charge scheme" is hilarious, given that he battered Rudd's ETS with his "great big new tax" positioning. The guy means 'carbon tax'; he doesn't mean 'carbon price', as you need to have a price in order to have an ETS.

Given this, and the multiple positions that Abbott has held on climate change, it's quite obvious that Abbott's line of attack on Gillard is rank opportunism. Throw in the hard to ignore fact that the opposition does actually share the same emissions reductions objectives as the Gillard government, and one is left wondering about the Abbott's credibility. No wonder he has worked so hard to paint Julia as a liar. A case of projection, perhaps?

UPDATE:

Crikey has detailed Abbott's many stances on global warming, and included another example of Abbott's endorsement of a carbon tax:

Still, a new tax would be the intelligent skeptic’s way to deal with minimising emissions because it would be much easier than a property right to reduce or to abolish should the justification for it change.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Liberal's global warming history: fair weathered and fickle

Rod Tiffen is emeritus professor, government and international relations, at the University of Sydney.He catalogues the Australian Liberal party's shameful record on climate change and pens a devastating critique of their performance over time:

The Liberals were the first main party to wholeheartedly embrace the challenge of global warming. In 1990 Andrew Peacock, and again in 1993 John Hewson, went to the electorate with a commitment to cut Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by the year 2000.

In December 1997 the Howard government signed the Kyoto Protocol, which the prime minister described as an ''absolutely stunning diplomatic success''. He celebrated that Australia was able to ''make a massive contribution to the world environmental effort to cut greenhouse gases'' but had done so in a way that would protect Australian jobs.

Between 1997 and 2002 the Australian government, while trumpeting what a good bargain it had achieved, had no doubts about anthropogenic global warming and was committed to reducing it.

In 2002 the government reversed itself, refusing to ratify Kyoto, even though it argued it would still meet its commitments. Its rationale was diplomatic rather than scientific: it would only be part of an agreement that included the world's biggest polluters. It is unlikely it would have adopted this course if George W. Bush hadn't withdrawn the United States the year before. Neither leader had felt impelled to share their intentions with their electorates at the preceding election.

From late 2006 Howard realised that for political reasons the government needed to improve its credentials on global warming. (In his memoirs Howard declares himself agnostic on climate change, which is perhaps the reason all his discussions focus on the politics rather than the substance of the issue.) The government sprang into action, so much so that the environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull, claimed Australia led the world in policies on climate change. The government went to the 2007 election proposing an emissions trading scheme, apparently with unanimous internal support.

Under the first opposition leader, Brendan Nelson, the party adopted a classic harassment strategy. It did not question the need for an emissions trading scheme, but instead focused on any possible cost or inconvenience that would come with it.

Under the second opposition leader, Turnbull, there was more involvement in trying to frame a bipartisan policy, with detailed bargaining between government and opposition rarely seen in Australian politics.

But then a group of Coalition party members dramatically broke ranks. After the issue had been part of Australian politics for two decades, in 2009, probably for the first time, there were senior Liberals prepared to publicly deny the science. The factional chief Nick Minchin declared that climate change sceptics probably constituted a majority in the party. Suddenly, instead of conformism, there was a very public and uncompromising stance against Turnbull.

Tony Abbott won the leadership by a single vote, and the party had been split down the middle on the Rudd government's ETS. However, only Turnbull publicly signalled his difference from the new party policy, which was in direct contradiction to the previous position all had publicly adhered to.

Partly because his militant oppositionism unnerved Labor, bringing reversals from Kevin (greatest moral challenge of our time; let's put it off indefinitely) Rudd and Julia (public forum) Gillard, this stance served the Coalition well in the lead-up to last year's election. Abbott's ''Direct Action'' slogan remained largely uncosted and its environmental effectiveness unexamined, while the diplomatic isolation into which his stance would cast Australia also went unremarked.

From July on, there are likely to be majorities in both houses of Parliament supporting action to combat global warming, and the Prime Minister has committed herself - seemingly irreversibly - to introducing a carbon tax.

These mongrels should hang their head ground-zero low with shame:

We can expect loud and unanimous outrage from the Liberals on the perfidy of Labor and the Greens, but whenever the substance of global warming is discussed or the complexities of policy responses to mitigate it arise - Turnbull aside - they will seek to be as mute and inscrutable as their 1960 Laotian counterparts.

Turnbull aside... who is the stand-out Australian politician from the major parties in showing the conviction of his beliefs with respect to carbon mitigation. I believe this will stand him in good stead in the future. Gillard is on notice. Not from Tony "climate change is crap" Abbott, who has two conflicting positions. But from the Liberal who has not used up his moral capital.

Watch this space. Climate change politics is the most fascinating politics of all, including Australia's, as even the doyen of the local denier press has noted.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Ice sheets melting faster than predicted

... causing a greater rate of sea-level rise:

The pace at which the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting is "accelerating rapidly" and raising the global sea level, according to findings of a study financed by NASA.

The findings suggest that the ice sheets - more so than ice loss from earth's mountain glaciers and ice caps - have become "the dominant contributor to global sea level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted".

This study, published on Tuesday, the longest to date examining changes to polar ice sheet mass, combined two decades of monthly satellite measurements with regional atmospheric climate model data to study changes in mass.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Your blog is a load of crap

I received this in my comments section of my last post.

The Sciolist said...

since you are running this awesome blog.....maybe you can just read what i have to say on global warming and tell me wat u think......

http://desciolist.blogspot.com/2011/02/global-warming-really.html

12:07 AM EST

Thank god you are a denier, because I don't have time to guild the lily. I make no apologies if this is harsh; If you want my opinion, you'll get an honest one.

Firstly, you lose points for dishonesty. I like the fact that the title, "The Sciolist" is rare word, but don't expect everyone to look it up. I only bothered because you asked me to review it. But, it is a misrepresentation of the content of your one page blog:

sci·o·lism [sahy-uh-liz-uhm]
–noun
superficial knowledge.

Origin:
1810–20; Late Latin sciol ( us ) one who knows little (diminutive of scius knowing; see conscious, -ole1 ) + -ism

You don't have 'superficial knowledge'-- you indeed have no knowledge. You don't know little -- you know nothing but AGW denier talking points that are stuffed into your bloated denier brain from 20 year of fossil-fueled propaganda. No amount of cherry-picking from Shakespeare, in that sickeningly cheery, pleasant voice of yours, can save you:

Shakespeare wrote in Henry VIII: “Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.” By the way, didn’t he also write in Hamlet: “The air bites shrewdly, ‘Tis very cold”

"By the way, didn't he..." Save it, it's so transparently an attempt to project reasonableness. An attempt that is missing a question mark, though. Yes, I get it -- you are introducing a reasonable tone to present the denier's reasonable sounding premise that if global warming is happening, how come it gets hot and cold at the same time?

Well, I don't have time to waste pointing out how stupid that idea is. Suffice to say you do it yourself when you use Svante August Arrhenius' early identification of global warming:

...who in 1896 wrote on how the excessive carbon emission could result in an overall global rise in temperature

See, you know nothing. And painting James Hanson as Brutus? That's overreach, even for a Tea-Party denialist freak. OK, maybe not. Enough with the Bard, already.

But your main error of fact is this clanger of chauvinism:

Now, let’s go to the Northern Hemisphere where better part of the human civilization resides.

I would argue the opposite. There may be fewer in the Southern Hemisphere, but we all know we are better than you lot, particularly us Australians.

And, that is here I stopped reading. But, I'll pick up from where I left, last time. OK -- your blog has potential, even though you are a denier.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Dumb, dumber, and dumbed right down

I doubt my challenge to Andrew Bolt Blog's winged monkeys will be published in the readers' comments section following another post about Tim Flannery's alleged failed climate change "predictions". This time Bolt is piggy-backing off Clive James, a part time denier.

So here it is for posterity:

Except it's a lie, a denier's canard, a propagandist's fit-up. It’s a lousy deception that relies on an uncritical audience's poor brain-power and poorer prejudice to evade challenge.

Flannery never once said that a particular city would unconditionally and certainly run out of water by a certain date since passed, which is what he is regularly charged with. Tellingly, no one can produce a quote to this effect. Repeat: I predict with absolute certainty that no one will be able to produce this mythical quote that agitates deniers so.

What they will find are quotes about potential scenarios and probabilities, sometimes containing conditional logic. Quotes containing auxiliary verbs carefully used to express possibility, such as "may", and "could", but not the predictive "will" that Andrew Bolt and other deniers sadly waste much of their productive lives accusing Flannery of. Quotes with "if... then" statements of such pure logic that they can be understood by computers and children, but not by ABB readers. E.g., something like, "If Perth doesn't build a desalination plant soon, then the city could run out of water within XXX years." "If the drought continues for XXX years, then city Y will be a ghost-town by ZZZZ.

In these working examples, intelligent people would investigate whether the condition had been not met before declaring the 'prediction' wrong or right - did Perth build a desalination plant, or not? Did the drought break or not?

How insulting that these fossil-fuel pimps lie so brazenly to push their poisonous merchandise on us, our children and grandkids. How miserable that they gut language of its logic. There is a special place reserved in infamy for these failed human-beings, these manipulators, these doubt-merchants. And it is filling up fast.

Yes, I am stirring. But the highly respected Laurie Oakes is not stirring about the sad turn to US style politicking that scummier elements of the Australian polity are taking:

WINGNUTS are coming out of the woodwork. The mad and menacing phone calls to independent MP Tony Windsor are just one indication.

There are plenty of others, especially online. The carbon tax and Tony Abbott's call for a people's revolt have crazies foaming at the mouth.

You see it on the "Revolt Against the Carbon Tax" Facebook page, for example.

Like this message from a Gillard-hater about a rally in front of Parliament House being planned for March 23.

"Just like Egypt we stay there and protest continuously until she and her cronies, Bob Brown greens etc, are ousted! We have got to get rid of this Godless mistress of deceit."

Hosni Mubarak was a dictator while the Gillard Government is democratically elected, but it doesn't seem to matter to the fanatics.

Rather, he is worried. Personally, I don't think Australia is close to being that far gone yet. Mind you, Laurie is the guy with his finger on the national pulse and I'm just a stirrer in blog-land tilting at wind-bags.

UPDATE:

I did get my challenge published in comments (alias "Big Ted") and, as predicted, no one could provide evidence to support Andrew Bolt and Clive James. I, therefore, took the opportunity to stick the knife in further and deeper. I am starting to see how denial is such a fascinating condition where deniers know they are being lied to but are ok with it as long as their world-view is reinforced. We see this with religion, for example, where two or more internally logically contradictory positions may be held at the same time (e.g., homosexuality is asserted to be 'evil' yet homosexuals are also part of God's creation, so how could homosexuality be evil?), but the honesty here is that religion is premised on faith, or suspended disbelief.

But with climate change denial, it's the deniers themselves who charge their stated enemy with being part of a 'green faithful'. Why, even our esteemed Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, makes that charge. From his own website, in a speech against unions, he says: "...People who think that unions are just another sectional interest, who heed climate change science rather than green religion, "

As we have seen from our experiment on the denizens of Andrew Bolt Blog, deniers clearly are projecting, in the psychological sense of the word, when they fling accusations around against the alleged 'global warming religion'. It is their own irrational beliefs that they are refusing to countenance when they attack others. They should be called-out every single time, until this debate is characterised by common sense, and common courtesy. I know I do my bit ;-) even though I stirr.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Hidden carbon price: We already pay $170 a tonne

Every since Gillard's unsurprising statement a week ago that there will be a carbon price set by the end of next financial year (in preparation for an ETS in a few years) there has been Federal mayhem. Death-threats, comparisons of Gillard to Gaddafi, and shrieks of outrage as Tony Abbott marshals his "People's Revolt" via angry, right-wing shock-jockery and his Liberal troops hyperbolate the morning's talking point all over the MSM.

From all this noise, one fact stands out at me. It's why the Coalition's 'government-picked-winner' approach must be never be put into practice:

Australians are paying a hidden carbon price of about $170 a tonne through a range of inefficient renewable energy programs. Wouldn't it be more sensible for the community to pay an explicit one that creates the conditions to lower greenhouse gas emissions through a market-based scheme?

Set a carbon price to prepare the economy for an ETS that will let the market do all the hard work of pricing. Why is it that Labor/Greens are pushing a market approach to reduce emissions, while the Liberals are still planning to smuggle in their command-controlled model should they stymie the Government's plans? To quote Barnaby Joyce this week:

"Every day just gets weirder and weirder,"

It sure does.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

IPCC attack: US house Republicans win day, risk epoch

US Republicans may have won the day in the recent house vote to cut all their funds to the UN IPCC, the planet's leading climate science synthesis body, but they risk losing the Holocene. For everybody.

America is to cut off all funding to the United Nations climate science panel under sweeping Republican budget cuts that seek to gut spending on environmental protection.

The funding ban to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – stripping $2.3m (£1.31m) from an international organisation that relies heavily on volunteer scientists – was among some $61bn (£38bn) in cuts voted through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Saturday.

Driven by the mad-hatter Tea Party astroturf outfit who, as ignorant of their own history as of science, seemingly don't see the irony of taxing future generations without representation by burdening them with an increasingly dysfunctional global climate, let alone environment:

If enacted, the cuts package would reduce spending on environmental protection by nearly one-third, or about $3bn (£1.85bn), advancing a key objective of the conservative Tea Party of dismantling government regulation.

The cuts also exhibit the strong hostility to climate science among the Tea Party activists with funding bans on the IPCC and a newly created climate information service under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – a reorganisation which was to be funded out of existing budgets.

Instead of throwing crates of British East India tea overboard, the Tea Party of today plots to arrest knowledge, understanding and accumulating know-how and throw climate predictability overboard. All without a native American Indian costume in sight.

I'm not one to tell folks how to be, but that's not a good narrative for a proud nation to build on, going forward. What kind of example does it set to other nations in their funding decisions? What if all give up?

In proposing the ban on IPCC funding, Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Missouri Republican, called the UN panel "nefarious".

"The IPCC is an entity that is fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science, which is the last thing hard-working American taxpayers should be paying for," Luetkemeyer said in a statement.

He claimed the US funds to the IPCC were $13m, but Henry Waxman, the California Democrat, told Congress the figure was $2.3m. He argued that the contribution helped the US get access to global scientific body of work – that would not exist without American support.

This has to be stopped in the US senate. I'd like to think that, in a world where we see Wikileaks fanning freedom in Tunisia, Twitter toppling tyrants in Egypt, and Facebook defriending dictators in Libya, that we, the world, can find a way to get our say in decisions affecting our global climate, wherever they are held. Overseas friends and family of American citizens should encourage them to tell the flat-earthlings among their numbers not to impose their ignorance on the rest of us.

And to make their voices heard by their representatives. Can the US people marshal and overthrow the tyranny of big fossil-fueled ignorance? I am encouraged to think so when I look at the success of Wikileaks in promoting transparency, and Sea-Shepherd, in defeating the Japanese government-subsidised whaling industry. What Julian Assange and Capt. Watson have in common is that they are hard-core; all Davids need a bit of that to triumph over Goliath. Their results speak for themselves. It's hard not think that more of that is what is needed.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Fox News journos directed to promote AGW denial

While News Corp proudly advertised three years ago that it would be carbon neutral by now, Fox News can't even serve up a neutral report on the state of climate science.

Literally.

They are not simply not allowed to, as an email edict from Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon to all Fox News producers now proves:

From: Sammon, Bill
To: 169 -SPECIAL REPORT; 036 -FOX.WHU; 054 -FNSunday; 030 -Root (FoxNews.Com); 050 -Senior Producers; 051 -Producers; 069 -Politics; 005 -Washington
Cc: Clemente, Michael; Stack, John; Wallace, Jay; Smith, Sean
Sent: Tue Dec 08 12:49:51 2009
Subject: Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data...

...we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.

This happened during reporting on the pivotal climate change conference, COP15 Copenhagen, in December 2009. The "controversy over the veracity of climate change data" Bill was referring to here is the 'Climategate CRU hacked emails scandal' that was much puffed-up by biased media outfits like Fox News as evidenced of a disinformation conspiracy by climate scientists, and subsequently debunked all too late.

The catch-all "critics" turn out to be fossil-fuel funded think-tank spokesmen, such as American Enterprise Institute's Kenneth Green. Not peer-reviewed climate scientists.

And, the rest is rather depressing history.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Wikileaks, eat your heart out

I may soon have in my hands hot evidence that suggests The Climate Sceptic (TCS) party is not a political party, but a covert black-pr operation designed to influence the public into thinking there is more support for the denial of the science of climate change than there really is.

In the meantime, this morning I have been sent the following mass-broadcast email from my tame and obedient TCS leaker; it's self-explanatory, really:

Will the real TROLL stand up?

From:
To:

---

G'day all

There is a traitor in our midst.

Do you know that the people calling us deniers are to be despised. They are using a term to hint at Holocaust deniers. In fact, they are the deniers.

The AGW hypothesis has been falsified, but they deny it. They tried to eliminate the MWP and the LIA in a denial effort with their flawed hockeystick.

What cretins! And the idiot posting cannot even spell.

Now, one among their number is among this contact list. He is handing my emails on to the REAL DENIERS, the promoters of the flawed AGW hypothesis.

http://tinyurl.com/2fkabct

Not Happy.....

Geoff

I notice that Geoff seems not to be happy, but this is his own fault, and I hear that some people are just like that. If he wants to roll about in the stench of 'Holocaust denial' and complain that he is being linked to this disgusting phenomena when I call him and his ilk "AGW deniers", or "science-deniers", then that is his own victimisation at play here and I take no back-step.

I am only interested in the accuracy of my language, not the histrionics of the AGW denial movement and their shame at their own reason-adverse tactics. The Shoah stands in its own category and shouldn't be used as a gambit by AGW deniers.

Mr Brown and his winged monkeys, and his 'party' are AGW deniers, not sceptics, because a sceptic is one who comes to their conclusion after full consideration of all the facts. In this case the facts are found in the body of peer-reviewed, climate science journals. And we know that deniers go there like vampires go to church.

UPDATE

Geoff Brown replies on behalf of TCS, in comments. He's in a topsy-turvey upside-down space, where the cart pulls the horse when the sun rises in the west, at the moment:

Geoff Brown said...

Hey Ted, (or is it ShyTed?)

What makes you think I am not happy? If you want to illegally post my correspondence, go ahead.

All I opst is the TRUTH.

So, by posting my emails, you are spreading the TRUTH amongst your denialists. Is that not great, or what?

Spread ing the truth to your deniers makes me very happy.

Yhanks ShyTed~!

1:47 PM EST

Ted, huh? How did you know, Geoff? I realise you are lining-up for the standard ad hominem tactic favoured by professional AGW deniers and, pop - "ShyTed".

But you are in upside-down land at the moment so really it's "Bold". That is, "BoldTed"where the first 'd' is silent. You know... as in, "It's no use giving me your permission to publish your mass-broadcast emails, because that horse has BoldTed!"

As for why I think you are "not happy", why you say so yourself at the bottom of your 'traitor' email I posted above. I know you are not into evidence-based reasoning, but having said so, then reinforced it with the name-calling, "Troll", "cretin", "despised", "idiot", "ShyTed", etc., makes me think you are unhappy.

Either way, you are still RudeTed. With the first 'd' being silent of course.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

A professional climate denier replies

I have received a nice comment from Geoff Brown of the Climate Skeptic Party (TCS) astroturfing outfit in my comments section of my piece about their covert astroturfing campaign:

Geoff Brown said...

To the misguided individual who unfortunately does not seem to feel a need to put her/his name to this blog.

I invoke the time-honoured WWW (Woof Woof Woof) defence: On the Internet, know one knows you are a dog. It seems you are not up with the protocol, Geoff. What cave have you been living in?

So, what is your defence for siccing your winged monkeys onto websites and newspaper letters pages, and radio shows and telling them what to say? Do you think it's ethical?

Are you aware that to post some-one's private e-mail without permission of the author is an offence.

So, rather than name you as a criminal for this offence, I belatedly give you permission to reproduce the private e-mail that you have already published.

In future, if you receive and want to publish one of my private e-mails, please ask permission first.

1:36 PM EST

Pffft. Soft. So soft you would think it's double-ply.

I'm not sure that a broadcast email to your network of agitating winged monkeys, on behalf of the "political party", TCS, can be considered private, Geoff, when the intent is that the winged monkeys get your emails published multiple times.

Even if so, I am not worried about my legal position here.

I claim 'truth' and 'public interest' in my publishing the emails you sent on behalf of TCS, and all the ones from your organisation that I have been promised by my source. (Readers, please keep coming back).

Yep, all emails that you mass-broadcast in order to inspire (what I believe are activist winged monkeys) to republish in letters to the editors of newspapers.

I believe that all voting Australians should know that there is an organised, orchestrated attempt by AGW deniers to mislead the public into thinking there is a big support for anthropogenic climate denial. Particularly when the misleaders are entering state politics. That is, the beneficiaries of this campaign are not the grass-roots, but... well... you... and the other nine candidates of TSC. Tut, tut.

Talking about offence though, I do take offence at what I regard as cheap duplicity, hence my going public. Do you know that your behaviour is proscribed by every reputable public relations company and PR industry association? Do you realise the murky practice of Astroturfing has a been long-tarred with the pro-smoking brush, for example? You know, those proto-deniers whose actions you mimic.

So, thank you for your kind permission to publish your emails (and the long bow it came with) but I don't need it for the future.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

AGW deniers' astroturfing campaign underway

First it was picked up in the MSM by Andrew Bolt, climate denial's Don Quixote.

Why are schools promoting this deceitful film?
220 Comments
Andrew Bolt
Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 11:46am


The film is error-riddled and alarmist, and the work of a prize hypocrite and deceiver who dodges any attempt to hold him to account. Even an otherwise sympathetic British judge says the film contains so many errors that it should not be used in classrooms without a health warning.

But in Australia....

But in Australia, the Education Department is introducing 'An Inconvenient Truth' into the national curriculum to teach students about environmental sustainability across all subjects.

This is what has Andrew Bolt, and other activist AGW deniers, rather exercised.

Other activist AGW deniers include Geoffrey Brown of the Climate Skeptic Party. They are really an astroturf outfit. As I shall show.

I have in my hot little hands, a few emails, forwarded to me by someone on his mailing list.

Fw: Re Schools Curricula and Al Gore

From:	Add to Contacts
To:	<>
	2 Files Download All MPs.pdf (320KB); Senators.pdf (78KB)

---

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Geoffrey Brown
To: Geoff Brown
Sent: Wed, 27 October, 2010 10:04:04 AM
Subject: Re Schools Curricula and Al Gore

G'day All

I find it very disturbing to read today that AL Gore's Science Fiction Movie is to be included in Australian Schools Curricula. I sure that you will remember that the British High Court ruled that it was Alarmist and contained nine significant errors. Mr Justice Burton......said that some of the claims were wrong and had arisen in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration”. Quotes from The Times which goes on to detail errors.

Today we read in the MSM that it is going to be included in the curricula of schools around the country. The reports include:

The Herald-Sun (letters hsletters@heraldsun.com.au)

Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth included in school curriculum

There is an on-line poll on that Herald-Sun Page.

The Daily Telegraph (Letters letters@dailytelegraph.com.au )

Climate change film An Inconvenient Truth for Australian schools

I suggest that we all write to the newspapers, but I also suggest that we contact MPs (at least your own local MP) and Senators. Lists attached.

How dare they!

Geoff

How dare they educate the future's biggest stakeholders? Fancy that? So I am going to get all members of my AGW denial activist group to write to all and sundry pollies and complain, lists attached.

Then, I am going to get my winged monkeys to reverse newpaper polls:

TCS Thinkers and Writers

Hey all,

As Bill tells me: Another day another poll.

Do you think that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth should be shown to Australian school children?

http://www.smh.com.au/polls/environment/an-inconvenient-truth-for-schools/20101027-1732i.html#poll

It's going the wrong way at the moment.

Cheers

Geoff

The wrong way for Geoff's "TCS Thinkers and Writers" is where it ended. But, he tried:

Poll: An Inconvenient Truth for schools

Do you think that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth should be shown to Australian school children?

Yes

61%

No

39%

Total votes: 5133.

Poll closed 29 Oct, 2010

Share this poll:

• Email (opens in new window)
• Facebook (opens in new window)
• Twitter(opens in new window)

Disclaimer:

These polls are not scientific and reflect the opinion only of visitors who have chosen to participate.

Related coverage

MPs divided on educational value of An Inconvenient Truth

The Climate Skeptics Party has just been caught out attempting to manipulate public opinion. Not by engaging in debate, but by trying to deceive the public about that debate.

And the account of their underhandedness has been preserved on the Intertubes Memory forever, particularly for interested students of the future to wonder at the motivations of such miserable people.

Emissions down, interest up: Banking on a carbon neutral future

It's highly unlikely that the thing to bring me back out of my grumpy hiatus from blogging about climate change (after ex-PM Rudd stalled on the ETS), would be a press release. Particular one from a bank. Like most of Australia, I suspect, the only reason why I am still with my current bank is that they are the best of a bad lot.

But, when one of the big four are telling me they are now carbon neutral, and it doesn't smell of green-wash at first sniff, I'm encouraged to notice the real-world progress being made while certain political parties bugger around spoiling. I am reminded that procurement departments in large companies in Australian and globally are sending out forms to all of their suppliers, getting them to record what systems they have implemented to record and reduce their carbon footprints. Tendering offices are responding to requests of the same. Marketing departments are framing the triple bottom line. Supply-chains are greening.

Beavering on in the background of the busy commercial world, the biggest survey since Domesday is going on. Facilities managers are recording the savings in energy and recyclables and environmental performance now makes the annual report. Top 200 CEOs are proudly talking up their companies' newly declared carbon neutral pledges, as if they were hippies at a Stonehenge Solstice moon festival. It's not all puffery, these companies are now subscribing to rigid environmental management standards like the ISO14000+ series. Tangible, verifiable stuff - ETS-proof.

HR departments are running behavioural change programs. Photocopiers are being changed to print double sided, and idle out. Screen savers drop into energy saving mode after 30 seconds, down from 5 minutes. Cardboard boxes for paper waste are replacing the all purpose desk bins at employees cubicles and now the poor darlings have to make the trip to the communal recycling bins for any other waste disposal matters. Early grumblings soon becomes office chatter as the food and organic waste bin becomes the new water-cooler in my office.

Everywhere there is cause for optimism: Energy is being saved, emissions cut, cars are being taken off the road as far as the atmosphere is concerned.

About about 13,500 cars annually by the NAB alone, in fact. The NAB has announced that they are now proudly carbon neutral, savings of around 60,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per annum since 2006 through efficiency and effectively taking 13,500 cars, annually.

I checked out their website to find out more, and liked the new design -- it's bold and clean. In the equally bold headline they announce they're "proudly carbon neutral". Good on them, they deserve to be proud - they are the first bank to go carbon neutral. Not a bank of the future, but a bank for the future. Anyway, NAB have now given me something more to consider in a new bank, next time I get pissed off at my current bank's more opportunistic fees regime.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Limber up for the pre-election backflip season

The Australian Labor Government may have abandoned the ETS field in the lead up the election. Ironically leaving Malcolm Turnbull as the only pro-CPRS player left, but on his way out.

Not content with his Pyrrhic victory, he uses this for his very own backflip back into politics. Welcome back on entertainment value alone, given this:

Kevin Rudd blames an opposition backflip and slow global progress on climate change action for the delay of the federal government's carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS).

But the prime minister says the government is still committed to meeting greenhouse gas emissions targets.

Mr Rudd on Tuesday said the government would now wait until the end of 2012, when the current Kyoto commitment period ends, before implementing the CPRS.

Tim Dunlop is not impressed with the poor backbone action in Rudd's very own flip:

Kevin Rudd picks fights, but he doesn't want to take a punch. Maybe that's pragmatic and means he'll live to fight another day. But increasingly it looks like he has vacated the ring.

Can't say I am either. I can understand the reasons for vacating the ring for the election, but getting a bill through that is going to wrought massive changes on voters does need courage. might.

My problem with Rudd white-flagging the CPRS field is the signal it sends out to renewable energy investors and voters. And the potentially stalled progress on the issue.

Global Warning Climate Change Energy