In many ways, Australia has been a leader on the rhetoric about climate change and now it may be leading the way to sanity. Australians are more concerned than most about climate change because they have recently experienced unusual warming and droughts. It’s very tempting to believe that something can be done to stop this so when “scientists” said it was man-caused, they were happy to agree and then convinced their politicians to “do something”. The Australian Government, like the U.S. government, has a Cap & Trade bill almost ready to be passed and this had been expected to pass in time for the Copenhagen talks.
But now the release of emails, now dubbed “climategate” (see previous post), has let the cat out of the bag and there is proof of cooking the data. The bill was to be supported by the main opposition party (the Liberal Party) but now news sources in Australia report that the Liberal Party is in turmoil with the resignations of five frontbenchers from their portfolios in protest against the emissions trading scheme. Tony Abbott, Sophie Mirabella, Tony Smith and Senators Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz have all quit their portfolios because they cannot vote for the legislation. Senate whip Stephen Parry has also relinquished his position.
And in the U.S., the climategate scandal is spreading like wildfire. Right-wing Fox news is taking delight in spreading the news since it is a vocal critic of President Obama. However, Fox is the most watched news network so the American Public is now becoming convinced it’s skepticism was well founded.
To help spread the word, Skeptic U.S. Senator James Inhofe has written to all the relevant US Government agencies, acquainting them with the nature of the e-mails. It is now widely believed on Capitol Hill that Obama’s Cap and Trade climate legislation is toast. The shoe is now on the other foot and it’s the turn of warming alarmists to be defensive.
In Canada, Jim Prentice (Minister of the Environment) is openly saying that the Copenhagen convention expects only to lead to “…a political agreement that can generate the momentum required to forge a broader, more specific and comprehensive document over the course of 2010″. He also said that Canada would follow the U.S. lead since our economies are so closely tied and that without a move by China and the U.S., the whole thing would not be effective. Hopefully he will soon see that the best course of action is to plan for mitigation, if required, and not impossible “prevention”.
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Tags: Australia, Canada, Climategate, US Politics
Climategate could not have happened at a more opportune time. The mainstream news media is doing their best to ignore the story but it’s spreading anyway and rightfully so. I hope Rudd tries to drive though Cap&Trade anyway and fails miserably. What I don’t understand is why would Rudd want to do this when the USA, China and India have no Cap&Trade? They are the big emitters, Australia barely emits enough CO2 to warm up a cup of coffee let alone the planet.
You say
“Australians have recently experienced unusual warming and droughts”.
Study the history of Australian climate and you will see that this is nothing new, it is normal weather/climate, historical fact.
Marble Bar heatwave, 1923-24
The world record for the longest sequence of days above 100°Fahrenheit (or 37.8° on the Celsius scale) is held by Marble Bar in the inland Pilbara district of Western Australia. The temperature, measured under standard exposure conditions, reached or exceeded the century mark every day from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924, a total of 160 days.
Phil Jones threatened in one of his emails to delete the primary data if the Freedom of Information inquiry ever came to fruition. Later he informed the world that due to a lack of storage space East Anglia CRU no longer possessed the primary raw temperature data.
Roger Pielke Sr points out in a recent blog post that NOAA, GISS, and HADCrut3 all overlap 90%-95% in their data.
All three temperature records track each other to an impossible degree of precision. If one is bad then they all are bad.
The skeptic mantra must be SHOW! ME! THE! DATA!
In every newspaper. Whenever there is a report on Copenhagen let the comment section fill with the rallying cry; SHOW! ME! THE! DATA!
Say it with me one time.
SHOW! ME! THE! DATA!
Don’t it make you feel good just saying it?