Greg Combet Lies Again

In “We have a head start on low-carbon revolution”, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and smug thickhead, Greg Combet, as we might expect, emits lies and silliness.

The decision by the UN climate change conference in Durban to pursue a new global agreement for reducing greenhouse gas emissions has profound economic significance for Australia. For the first time, all of the world’s major emitters—including Australia’s two biggest trading partners, the US and China—have committed to take on legal obligations to reduce carbon pollution.  This new agreement, which is to be negotiated by 2015 and come into effect from 2020, will create a new international legal architecture for tackling climate change.

The US and China are about as likely to agree to a new agreement by 2015 as our hearing of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s invitation to President Shimon Peres to fly to Tassy in order to enjoy some nice roast-pork rolls and a few Boag’s Premium lagers for Christmas lunch with the ayatollahs.  By “emitters” the inept dullard refers, I warrant, to producers of carbon dioxide—that gas essential for life on earth—; by “carbon pollution” he means industrially-produced carbon dioxide; by “tackling climate change” he seems to mean what the current federal government means by “tackling climate change”, which is doing nothing to mitigate any adverse affects which might develop from more or less warmth or coolth but, instead, endangering the economy and raising the costs of living by, inter alia stulta, the imposition of a foolish new tax on industries.

The Durban outcome leaves no doubt that all major emitters will be part of a new legal pact on climate change.

Actually, there is much doubt, but the numbskull clearly believes in the “utter a lie often enough and people will believe it” theory.

Some people have claimed that the 2020 timeframe for a new international legal agreement is too far off and that this will be a “do nothing decade”.  This could not be further from the truth.

For “This could not be further from the truth” read “This is quite likely”.

All countries now have a clear signal that there will be a new legal framework to reduce global emissions.  The fact that this framework will be backed by legal force cannot be underestimated. It means that all countries will be legally bound to implement measures to reduce carbon pollution.

All countries which have leaders of sufficient criminal stupidity to sign new agreements to impose such a legal framework, and which also have sufficient wealth to attract the spiteful envy of poorer countries, will be legally bound to hand over even more money to the corrupt thieves of the UN whilst ruinously taxing themselves.  Note that Combet approves of unelected, arbitrarily appointed outsiders applying extrajudicial force to supposedly independent, sovereign nations.

Those countries with strong domestic climate change policies already in place—from Europe to China—have a head start on the low-carbon revolution that will occur this decade and beyond.

Those countries (including, apparently, “Europe”) which have already been conned by propagandists of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, and by China’s self-serving claims, will buy even more giant whirligigs and solar panels from China and will therefore impoverish their own industries and make electricity even more unaffordable for their citizens.  (However, the carbon-fibre blades of the whirligigs will, we trust, be of a low-carbon carbon-fibre.)

The Gillard government’s carbon price ensures Australia is ready to meet our domestic and international commitments.

The Government’s ‘carbon’ tax impresses the corrupt governments and organisations which will extract millions of dollars from the Australian economy.

Just imagine if we had waited until 2020 before taking action.

Not only would we miss out on valuable opportunities this decade to build the jobs and industries of the future, we would face a significant economic shock when the new legal framework came into place and we had to achieve emissions cuts overnight. 

Just imagine, instead of buying more inefficient wind-turbines we could be developing our own cheaper forms of energy which this obstructionist and stupid minister refuses to countenance.

The Durban outcome builds on climate action already under way including the pledges of 90 countries to reduce emissions by 2020.

Ah, pledges from ninety countries, that must be worth something surely; after all, the Kyoto agreements have worked so very well.

The outcome in Durban confirms that by moving ahead with these reforms we are moving in step with global action on climate change.

Yes, Australia must keep “moving in step” with those countries which have demonstrated a sterling commitment to sound economics and a pursuit of scientific progress such as, say, Namibia, Nigeria or North Korea.
Within Combet’s column, the halfwit provides no details of the legal obligations and “new international legal architecture” he supports; the twit furnishes no proof that any other country will do anything at all “to tackle climate change”; the lamebrain supplies no evidence but silly assertions based on his ignorantly credulous acceptance of the fraudulent conjecture of CAGW.  The man is worse than a chump:  he is a criminally incompetent, malfeasant dupe.

See Andrew Orlowski’s “Durban failed: Relax, everyone”:

At Durban, no successor emerged, and the conference attendees have simply agreed to carry on attending climate conferences.  As the UNFCC reminds us:

The 18th Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC, plus the 8th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol), will take place in Qatar from 26 November to 7 December 2012.

Kyoto’s targets, which have been missed by almost every signatory, will be extended to 2017.  The Durban signatories made the aspiration that something should be in place by 2020, and this something should be “a new protocol, another legal instrument or agreed outcome with legal force” to be agreed by 2015.

See also “The Future Is in Renewable Energy!”, “Green Energy Technologies Explained” and  “Australia the Highest Emitter of Carbon Dioxide?”

Decisions adopted by the seventeenth session of the “Conference of the Parties” and the seventh session of the “Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties” at Durban can be downloaded from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change homepage.

UPDATE I:  see “The Twelve Days of Durban”, by Peter C. Glover, at Energy Tribune:

Global CO₂ emissions have recently hit an all-time high.  While the climate modellers have done their level best to make it appear that global temperatures have risen, the fact is that they haven’t for almost a decade and a half.  The release of a further 5,000 reputation-junking e-mails (with, allegedly, another 220,000 still unreleased) only added to the pall of deep depression that settled over the array of delegates desperate to keep alive the golden goose of public cash which keep them in business.
In truth, the run up to the conference was strewn with alarmist ‘own goals’.  In November BBC programmers were exposed for selling news slots to green campaigners, especially via the BBC World international channel.  The BBC’s flagship Frozen Planet series too was sold overseas with a ‘take-it-or-leave it’ choice over whether the package should include its final doom-laden climate change episode.  Former UK Chancellor Nigel Lawson accused writer and presenter David Attenborough of gross “sensationalism” referring, among a litany of other things, to the broadcaster’s focus on an Arctic ice melt without referring and explaining why the ice on Antarctica is expanding.
Most damaging of all, the week before the summit it was revealed that an upcoming UN IPCC report due in February would state “climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variability”; for “natural variability” read “we haven’t a clue what the climate will do”.  Climate Bible heresy.  And things only got worse when Britain’s Prince Phillip blew forth that “wind farms are useless, dismissing “fairy-tale” green energy.
We also learned that where green jobs had demonstrably failed to appear, the shale gas phenomenon in the United States was now supporting 600,000 new jobs.  Also, the boom in U.S. shale oil is expanding faster than anyone predicted with yet another huge discovery recently in Colorado.  These developments augur well not only for the general reshaping of the global energy map, but in terms of massively boosting economic recovery and jobs.  It’s enough to ‘peak’ anti-oil and gas proponents.
Then, just as Durban-bound climate jetters were packing their suntan lotion, a new report by insurance giant Allianz warned how the “volatile” nature of wind and solar as sources of power creating “grid instabilities” are likely to cause “catastrophic” blackouts with multi-billion dollar consequences.

UPDATE II:  Canada has officially confirmed its withdrawal from Kyoto silliness:

Canada is formally withdrawing from the Kyoto accord, Environment Minister Peter Kent said Monday.
The decision to do so will save the government an estimated $14 billion in penalties, Kent said.  The Conservative government says it has no choice given the economic situation
Blaming an “incompetent Liberal government” who signed the accord and then took little action to make the necessary greenhouse gas emission cuts, Kent said he was formalizing what the Conservative government has been saying for weeks.
“Kyoto for Canada is in the past.  As such, we are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw,” Kent said.

Anthony Watts, at WUWT, reports that the UNFCCC won’t let Canada out of the Kyoto convention.  Of course, as much as he might want to impose his indomitable will, whilst polishing his ersatz Eisernes Kreuz, there’s not much any Gauleiter manqué of the UNFCCC can do—so far—; despite saying that Canada cannot cancel Kyoto collegiality, here’s the complete text of Article 27 of the Kyoto Protocol:

1.  At any time after three years from the date on which this Protocol has entered into force for a Party, that Party may withdraw from this Protocol by giving written notification to the Depositary.

2.  Any such withdrawal shall take effect upon expiry of one year from the date of receipt by the Depositary of the notification of withdrawal, or on such later date as may be specified in the notification of withdrawal.

3.  Any Party that withdraws from the Convention shall be considered as also having withdrawn from this Protocol.

UPDATE III:  Terry McCrann, in “The great climate change gravy train rolls on”, explains that enthusiasts for the Durban agreement are motivated by greed:

Faced with going down in history as the free-lunchers that betrayed not just this generation of climate change main-chancers, but the next free-lunching generation and indeed the generation after that, they resolutely put their snouts—sorry, their shoulders—to the wheel and ground out a deal.

Success!  Simply put, they ensured that the great climate gravy train would NOT come to a shuddering stop in Durban.  It was given a new head of steam to roll on to Qatar next year and who knows where else right through to at least 2015.  They’ve done themselves and their peer group proud.  It’s perhaps not well understood just how many billions of dollars and how many probably hundreds of thousands of main-chancers ride that gravy train.

It’s not just the billions of dollars that have been rescued for the ten thousand-plus people that most prominently ride the climate gravy train from one conference to the next.

But in the finest example of real trickle-down in action, all the people who feed off the climate hysteria and inanity beneath them.  [...]

All their dollars were at risk if the gravy train had ground to a stop in Durban.

Further, on top of all those tens of billions of wasted dollars, the single biggest prize at risk was the $US100 billion a year, EVERY YEAR, that the developed world is supposed to direct to developing nations from 2020.  [...]  For when and if the $100 billion starts flowing, precious little of it will actually end up where it is supposedly intended to go.  [...]  If the whole absurd global warming structure had come tumbling down in Durban, there was no road map to anywhere, even fictitious, the $100 billion would have evaporated like, well, any evidence of continued global warming.  [...]

Durban was not so much an exercise in re-arranging the chairs on the Titanic.  But ensuring the whisky, champagne and caviar continues to flow for those with a seat on the (very, very long) climate gravy train.  [...]

Climate Change Minister Greg Combet though, was quoted yesterday as saying Australia would not sign up to another binding target until all major emitters had also signed a legally binding treaty.

Oh yes?  Under prime minister Rudd, we made a great show of finally signing Kyoto and now, according to Combet, we are going to snub our noses at committing to cut more?  Read: increase the carbon tax.  When Europe commits to much bigger cuts in emissions, like 50% by 2025?

But in any event, that Combet cop-out would only get us to 2015.  Because that’s when Durban says we will have a binding treaty.  You must be able to “take that to the bank”, because according to Combet, Durban was a massively historic step.  It means, he was quoted as saying, “we are negotiating a legally binding agreement.”

This means that under the government’s policy when the agreement is signed in 2015, we will then have to commit to cutting our emissions not by 5% but by 25%.  And do so, in just five years, by 2020.

There are two ways of doing that.  By having such a massive carbon tax—many times the supposedly benign $23 a tonne starting point—that all our brown coal power stations close pretty much immediately and some of the black coal ones as well.  Or we cheat, by buying permits from overseas.  That is to say, we have our carbon dioxide-belching power stations and our carbon dioxide-cutting purity both.

According to Treasury, the 5% cut target would see us sending nearly $3 billion a year overseas by 2020—to buy bits of paper to give us permission to keep our lights on.  But if we aimed to cut by 25%, we would be sending more than $7 billion a year overseas.  Every year, from 2020. Just to buy meaningless bits of paper.

The carbon tax would also by then have tripled.  And these are all in today’s dollars; the actual dollars would be much higher.

Combet and Gillard can’t have it both ways.  Either we have signed on in Durban to a massive increase in our carbon tax and the virtual and very quick elimination of our cheap coal-fired power stations.  Or the whole thing is a disgraceful and very expensive charade.  There won’t be any real deal in 2015 and we will be left with a useless but punitive tax.

UPDATE IV:  Martin Nicholson, in The Australian, suggests that “Nuclear power can save billions”:

Do we really want to spend $700 billion on foreign carbon permits?  According to Treasury, this is the likeliest way for Australia to meet its emissions reduction target by 2050.
Treasury modelling concludes that we would have to invest more than $700bn in overseas abatement permits to reduce carbon emissions to 80% below 2000 levels by 2050.  This is money invested in foreign projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

UPDATE V:  see Sen. Cory Bernardi’s “The Deceit at Durban”:

Our own Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said the result was a “massively historic step that has not been achieved before”.
I seem to recall the previous government mouthpiece Senator Penny Wong said a very similar thing after the failed fiasco of the Copenhagen conference—and look what came of that.  Nothing, except the scheduling of more conferences to debate the need to have even more conferences to... I am sure you get the picture.
And a gloomy picture it is for Australians who have been lumbered with Labor’s carbon tax.
The ‘success’ of Durban is an agreement to negotiate by 2015 whether to reach an agreement by 2020 about emissions reduction.  This is a sure sign that there will be no international action on carbon dioxide emissions under a government led by Julia Gillard.
But that hasn’t stopped her team from signing up to an international ‘Carbon Fund’ run by unelected bureaucrats allocating taxpayers’ money to those it determines are the climate change oppressed.  At a time when our government continues to borrow in excess of $100 million every single day, we will now be mortgaging the future of the next generation so we can send billions of dollars to some contrived overseas organisation.  Given the track record of rorts and waste in the climate change space, one can hardly be optimistic about how this money will be utilised.

UPDATE VI:  in the “they would say that wouldn’t they” category is this comment, deploring Canada’s rational withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, from “Durban climate talks: Canada withdraws from Kyoto Protocol” in India Today:

The tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, one [of] those most at risk from rising sea levels caused by climate change, was more blunt.  For a vulnerable country like Tuvalu, it is an act of sabotage on our future, Ian Fry, its lead negotiator said.

Tuvalu is not at risk from rising sea levels caused by anthropogenic climate change, and any claim from the meretricious Ian Fry that richer countries have caused environmental problems in Tuvalu is motivated merely by venally opportunistic money-grubbing.  There is no noticeable, measurable rise in sea level near Tuvalu but, even if there were, as Charles Darwin shewed, and as Willis Eschenbach explains in “Floating Islands”, atolls rise along with any rise of sea level:

the idea that [atolls] will be buried by sea level rises is totally unfounded.  Despite never being more than a few metres tall, they have survived a sea level rise of up to three hundred plus feet (call it a hundred metres) within the last twenty thousand years.  Historically they have floated up higher than the peaks of drowned mountains.

UPDATE VII (15 December):  how does the Australian Government’s $23 for each tonne of pretend tulip-bulb certificates look now?  According to Reuters:

EU carbon prices fell to their lowest ever level on Wednesday as the euro currency and equities slid on renewed fears over the bloc’s debt crisis and oil prices tanked after producers promised to maintain high output.

The ICE ECX December 2011 EUA contract fell 73 cents to an all-time low of 6.30 euros, down 10.4 percent on Tuesday's 7.03-euro settlement.
By 16.30 GMT, the contract had recovered slightly to 6.41 euros on healthy turnover of around 15 million units.
The drop sends the contract into unchartered territory, falling well below its previous low of 6.77 euros on December 6 as market traders saw few signs of respite in the EU economy to boost demand for emission permits.

UPDATE VIII (15 December):  see the Climate Sceptics’ “Questions for a recalcitrant Prime Minister”.

UPDATE IX (15 December):  from Ben Pile at Spiked Online:

Just as with past COP meetings, despite the broad consensus on the need to save the planet and having all the best scientists available to them, the superheroes failed.  Once again, it was not climate-change deniers and secret PR campaigns funded by Big Oil companies that caused the failure.  Instead, it was the incoherence and conflicting agendas of those who wanted an agreement that made reaching one impossible.  The business of cutting CO₂ emissions to save the planet turns out to be more complex than simply agreeing that it’s a good idea to do so.
For instance, among the things considered by the world’s most important people who assembled in Durban were the propositions that the ‘rights of mother Earth’ should be recognised; that international courts be established to ‘ensure respect for the intrinsic laws of nature’ and ‘to ensure harmony between humanity and nature and that their [sic] will be no commodification of the functions of nature’.  With the stench of such nebulous eco-bullshit wafting around the negotiations, it’s no surprise that the fortnight-long session had to be extended in order desperately to find some areas of agreement.

UPDATE X (15 December):  see TWAKI’s “The Durban Disaster”:

It seems the climate communists at the global warming parade refuse to give up, like snake oil salesmen insisting their their fraud is legitimate.  As the world wakes up to their lies, their proliferating NGO’s (non-government organisations) continue to scam billions from sympathetic governments who in many cases get political donations in return.  It’s called the money go-round.  Not that different to charities who pay their directors obscene salaries whilst they publicly champion causes for the poor.  […]
Whilst our homeless die from cold in the streets, the ALP encourage boat people and then grants them luxuries many Australians could only dream of.  Whilst our elderly die from cold in their beds the ALP implements its warming taxes in a cooling world and hikes up the cost of power.  Whilst the ALP calls those who demonstrate against it “extremists”, it works to shut down free speech and criticism of the government.  […]
The disconnect between the people and their so-called representatives is nothing short of disgusting, appalling and criminal.  [...]  Those in power are guilty of the greatest crimes against our nation and really should be in prison cells instead of in parliament!

UPDATE XI (15 December):  see a measured “Cooling down global warming”, by Edward Hadas, at Canada’s Financial Post:

The “Climategate” emails show scientists so passionate about their beliefs that they are unwilling to brook opposition.  Fervour seems to have led to overconfidence.  The status of the claim that recent years have been by far the warmest in a millennium has been downgraded from certain in 2001 to likely or mistaken (depending on the expert consulted).  […]
Durban is history, but the debate on global warming can still be calmed down.  Activists need to admit that both their scientific analyses and their policy recommendations have been under the spell of this sorcerer’s apprentice-model.  Rather than telling a simple tale of good (themselves) and evil (unresponsive industry and anyone who disagrees with them), they should accept that possible man-made climate change is a complex topic which deserves dispassionate study.  True, delay might prove dangerous, but so too might hasty action.  Besides, in practice, the activists’ current approach has been tried and found wanting.

UPDATE XII (16 December):  see “The climate-change con artists”, by Leighton Stewart, at World Net Daily:

[Prof. Muller], like all climate-change con-artists, has avoided answering the following critical questions that are at the heart of climate change and CO₂:

Why can’t warming alarmists produce a single legitimate example of empirical evidence to support the man-made global-warming hypothesis?
Why has Earth been warming for 300 years when man has only emitted measurable amounts of CO₂ into the atmosphere for the last 150 years?
Why did Earth cool for 500 years before the recent 300 year warming and warm for several hundred years before that when even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says CO₂ levels did not change?
Why was the Mediæval Warm Period, a thousand years ago, warmer than today even though the CO₂ level was 38% lower than today?
Why did many of Earth's major glaciers in the Alps. Asia, New Zealand and Patagonia begin to retreat nearly half a century before the Industrial Revolution and man’s CO₂ emissions?
Of the last five interglacials, going back 400,000 years, why is our current interglacial the coolest of the five even though Earth’s CO₂ level is about 35% higher?
Why has our current 10,000-year-long Holocene epoch been warmer than today for 50% of the time when CO₂ levels were about 35% lower than today?
Why are correlations of Earth’s temperature with natural factors such as sunspot numbers, solar cycle lengths, solar magnetic variations and changes in major ocean currents all better than the correlation of Earth’s temperature with CO₂ levels?

Until the alarmists can adequately address these questions, their quest to destroy the economies of the world, while feeding at the trough filled with taxpayer subsidies and grants, will remain in jeopardy.

UPDATE XIII (16 December):  see Junk Science:

Canada recently announced it was pulling out of the Kyoto protocol, a treaty on climate change, the first phase of which expires next year.  By way of explanation, its environment minister pointed out that the protocol does not cover the world’s largest two emitters. Indeed, America, which did not ratify the agreement, and China, which as a developing country is exempt, are responsible for 41% of the world’s CO₂ emissions.  Between 1990 and 2009, China’s emissions increased by over 200% and America’s by 6.7%.  But Canada’s carbon emissions have also increased, by over 20% in the same period, far from its Kyoto target of a 6% reduction.

Throwing Money to the Winds

From the UK’s This Is Money comes “Energy giants want billions for back-up to windfarms”, by Tom Mcghie:

Britain’s richest energy companies want homeowners to subsidise billions of pounds worth of gas-powered stations that will stand idle for most of the time.  Talks have taken place between the Government, Centrica, owner of British Gas, and other energy companies on incentives to build the power stations needed as back-ups for the wind farms now being built around the country.

It is understood 17 gas-fired plants worth about £10 billion will be needed by 2020.

The Energy Department has been warned that without this massive back-up for the new generation of heavily subsidised giant wind farms, the lights could go out when the wind dies down.  Sam Laidlaw, chief executive of Centrica, said renewables, such as large-scale wind energy, were intermittent and required back-up generation, a role gas was uniquely qualified to fill.  But as power stations that operate only intermittently would not be financially viable, Laidlaw said:  “The building of new gas-fired capacity must be incentivised so that gas can fulfil its role as a bridging fuel.”

To that end, energy companies are asking the Government for “capacity payments”. This ensures firms are paid a fee all year round for keeping a plant on standby.  [...]

Industry sources insist the Government has no alternative but to agree to the “capacity payments” for standby generation if it wants wind power, which also receives huge subsidies, to provide one-third of Britain's energy needs.  In winter, when the most intense cold period coincides with a high pressure front, most wind turbines do not work.

One industry executive said:  “Why would we build a power station—costing about £600 million—that is guaranteed to make a loss because it is not used most of the year?”

Also from This Is Money comes an article,  “Why the £250bn wind power industry could be the greatest scam of our age – and here are the three lies that prove it”, by Christopher Booker:

Scarcely a day goes by without more evidence to show why the Government's obsession with wind turbines, now at the centre of our national energy policy, is one of the greatest political blunders of our time.  Under a target agreed with the EU, Britain is committed within ten years—at astronomic expense—to generating nearly a third of its electricity from renewable sources, mainly through building thousands more wind turbines.

But the penny is finally dropping for almost everyone—except our politicians—that to rely on windmills to keep our lights on is a colossal and very dangerous act of self-deception.

Take, for example, the 350ft monstrosity familiar to millions of motorists who drive past as it sluggishly revolves above the M4 outside Reading.

This wind turbine performed so poorly (working at only 15% of its capacity) that the £130,000 government subsidy given to its owners was more than the £100,000 worth of electricity it produced last year.

Meanwhile, official figures have confirmed that during those freezing, windless weeks around Christmas, when electricity demand was at record levels, the contribution made by Britain’s 3,500 turbines was minuscule.  [...]

The point about wind, of course, is that it is constantly varying in speed, so that the output of turbines averages out at barely a quarter of their capacity.

This means that the 1,000 megawatts all those 3,500 turbines sited around the country feed on average into the grid is derisory:  no more than the output of a single, medium-sized conventional power station.  [...]

The second great lie about wind power is the pretence that it is not a preposterously expensive way to produce electricity.  No one would dream of building wind-turbines unless they were guaranteed a huge government subsidy.  This comes in the form of the Renewables Obligation Certificate subsidy scheme, paid for through household bills, whereby owners of wind turbines earn an additional £49 for every “megawatt hour” they produce, and twice that sum for offshore turbines.  [...]

The third great lie of the wind propagandists is that this industry is somehow making a vital contribution to 'saving the planet' by cutting our emissions of CO₂.  Even if you believe that curbing our use of fossil fuels could change the Earth's climate, the CO₂ reduction achieved by wind turbines is so insignificant that one large windfarm saves considerably less in a year than is given off over the same period by a single jumbo jet flying daily between Britain and America.

In Australia, unfortunately, the incompetent Gillard Government and the misanthracist Greens are committed to wasting thousands of millions of dollars on all sorts of airy schemes because their idiotic acceptance of the fraudulent conjecture of CAGW and their myopic, misanthropic neo-Malthusianism.
(Thanks to the Global Warming Policy Foundation.)

UPDATE I (9 July):  see the Institute for Energy Research’s “Britain Evaluates Capacity Payments for Back-Up Generators to Wind Power”.

UPDATE II (12 July):  see David Derbyshire, in The Daily Mail, “The wind turbine backlash: Growing public opposition thwarts green energy drive”:

Plans to cover Britain with wind farms are being thwarted by a growing tide of public opposition.

Nearly half of all onshore wind farms in England and Wales are being refused planning permission, figures reveal.

The percentage of such developments being refused planning permission has risen sharply over the last five years.

UPDATE III (12 September):  see Christopher Booker, in The Daily Telegraph, “Wind farms: the monuments to lunacy that will be left to blot the landscape”:

Three separate news items on the same day last week reflected three different aspects of what is fast becoming a full-scale disaster bearing down on Britain.  The first item was a picture in The Daily Telegraph showing two little children forlornly holding a banner reading “E.On Hands Off Winwick”.
This concerned a battle to prevent a tiny Northamptonshire village from being dwarfed by seven 410-foot wind turbines, each higher than Salisbury Cathedral, to be built nearby by a giant German-owned electricity firm.  The 40 residents, it was reported, have raised £50,0000 from their savings to pay lawyers to argue their case when their village’s fate is decided at an inquiry by a Government inspector.
In the nine years since I began writing here about wind turbines, I have been approached by more than 100 such local campaigns in every part of Britain, trying to fight the rich and powerful companies that have been queuing up to cash in on the vast subsidy bonanza available to developers of wind farms.  Having been the chairman of one such group myself, I know just how time-consuming and costly such battles can be.  The campaigners are up against a system horribly rigged against them, because all too often – although they may win every battle locally (in our case we won unanimous support from our local council) – in the end an inspector may come down from London to rule that the wind farm must go ahead because it is “government policy”.

The Prime Minister’s Respect for Science

The Hon. Julia Gillard, yesterday, explained that she accepts expert, scientific advice:

“The science is in, climate-change is real.  The science is clear:  man-made carbon pollution is making a difference to our planet and our climate. [...]

“When I first met Ian Frazer, and he told me he had a cervical cancer vaccine that could cut the rates of cervical cancer for women and girls, I didn’t pretend to myself I knew enough about cancer to second-guess what he was telling me was right.

“He was right; he’s a scientist.  We’ve got climate scientists here who are telling us exactly the same about the nature of global warming and the climate of our planet.”

What admirable deference to expertise!

Similarly, when I met William McBride and he told me that he could prove that Debendox caused birth defects, I didn’t pretend to myself I knew enough about medicine or statistics to second-guess what he was telling me was right; he’s a renowned scientist, and wouldn’t manufacture data.
Likewise, when I met Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, and they told me that they had a method of producing power from table-top cold fusion, I didn’t pretend to myself I knew enough about physics or electromagnetism or low-energy nuclear reactions to second-guess what they were telling me was right; they’re scientists, and wouldn’t deceive.
Comparably, when I met William Farr, and he told me that cholera was transmitted by air, and that there was a deadly concentration of miasmata near the banks of the Thames, and intimated that John Snow was a dangerous, denialist crackpot in the pay of big tobacco, I didn’t pretend to myself I knew enough about epidemiology or the miasma theory to second-guess what he was telling me was right; he’s an assistant commissioner and a scientist, and couldn’t possibly be wrong.
Furthermore, when I met Tommaso Caccini, and he told me that he could prove that Galileo’s heretical letter on sunspots was demonstrably false, I didn’t pretend to myself I knew enough about logic or theology or observation to second-guess what he was telling me was right; he’s a qualified expert, and wouldn’t err.
So too, when I met Claudius Ptolemaeus and he told me that he could accurately represent our geocentric universe as a set of nested spheres, I didn’t pretend to myself I knew enough about astrology to second-guess what he was telling me was right; he’s a scientist, and couldn’t be mistaken.
They were all right.  They are scientists.  We have many experts here who are telling us exactly what we want to hear about the nature of things and the overwhelming necessity for the Government to heed only their expert advice.  Nothing can go wrong.

UPDATE (7 June, 2011):  Debendox, mentioned above was marketed in the US as Bendectin; see the comment by Tucci, below.

What Flannery Thinks

Disconnection between Climate Change & Reality

Terry McCrann, in his Herald Sun column*, writes, “When the wind doesn’t blow … which is nearly all the time”:

Eric Beecher’s Crikey, new media’s effort to make old media shock jocks look like voices of calm and reason, got it exactly and so deliciously right yesterday.
“There’s a bizarre disconnection between the climate change debate in Australia and reality,” was the email’s plaintive opening sentence.
Quite.  Collective warmenists like Crikey and its ‘intellectual’ peer The Age demonstrate the truth of that sentence every day—persistently, stridently and so totally unknowingly in their pompous condescending inanity.
If men are from Mars and women from Venus, generally speaking, then the Crikey people and their fellow warmenists are from a dark planet way outside our or indeed any solar system.
The first, biggest and all-encompassing disconnect from reality is their demand for a “price on carbon [sic] to tackle global warming”.  […]
Crikey & The Age & co. are the ones disconnected from reality.  […]
You want to see a disconnect from reality?  Look at the blithe belief of people like Crikey and The Age that we can close down our coal-fired plants and we’ll get the electricity from ‘something else’.[†]
Here’s another reality from which the debate has been very deliberately ‘disconnected’.
Analysis [by Tom Quirk] shows the carbon tax will have to be at least $50 a tonne, not the $20 a tonne soothingly and deceptively promoted by Combet, to begin to force a shift from coal to that ‘something else’.  Principally gas.
Try connecting that with the ‘reality’ of the higher prices you face for everything.
The reality is that there is one big difference between the carbon tax and the GST.  The carbon tax will force up the price of EVERYTHING—including health, education and fresh food excluded from the GST.
This is the reality that needs to be disconnected from the rubbish and outright lies spun by Combet, Gillard and their obliging mouthpieces at Crikey and The Age.

*  The version of the column in the Daily Telegraph is truncated; it ends with:  “Analysis by Quirk shows the carbon tax will have to be at least $50 a tonne, not the $20 a tonne promoted by Greg Combet, to begin to force a shift from coal to other sources.”  The editors of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph reckon that its readers are more easily vexed, perhaps, by offensive but accurate terminology (such as “deceptively” and “rubbish” and “outright lies”) than the readers of Melbourne’s Herald Sun are.

†  See also  “A lot of hot air: Wind farms ‘working at just 21% of capacity’”, by David Derbyshire:  “Britain’s wind farms produce far less electricity than their supporters claim – and cannot be relied upon to keep the lights on, a study from a conservation charity showed yesterday.”

UPDATE—from comments:  Official report says, “Wind-farms are totally useless.”

Australia the Highest Emitter of Carbon Dioxide?

The Hon. Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister of Australia (and, miserabile dictu, a proven liar), says that Australia is the highest emitter of carbon dioxide, per capita, in the developed world.  See, for instance, “Labor’s Tax Strategy” paper (p. 2):

 

The Hon. Greg Combet, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, echoes Julia Gillard’s claims; he refers those who question his rather silly, deceptive statistics to the “Garnaut Climate Change Review”, which cites the Department of Climate Change as the source:

Only five countries in the world rank higher—Bahrain, Bolivia, Brunei, Kuwait and Qatar. Australia’s per capita emissions are nearly twice the OECD average and more than four times the world average [...].
For the calculation of per capita greenhouse gas emissions illustrated in Figure 7.1, the data source used for Australia was the Department of Climate Change [...].

So, with an economy of effort (which will surely please all environmentalists), and with exemplary circular reasoning (which will assuredly impress proponents of perpetual motion machines, and compulsory renewable-energy targets), the Department of Climate Change uses Garnaut’s biassed Review, which uses figures supplied by the Department of Climate Change, to suggest that the figures from the Department of Climate Change are correct.

What, however, are the UN’s statistics on the highest emitters of carbon dioxide per capita?

	CO2 tonnes  per capita
Aruba	23.02
Australia	19.00
Bahrain	29.58
Brunei Darussalam	19.58
Falkland Islands	19.68
Kuwait	30.21
Luxembourg	24.93
Netherlands Antilles	32.47
Qatar	55.43
Trinidad and Tobago	27.88
United Arab Emirates	31.02
USA	19.74

Now, it’s fair enough that we consider Aruba and the Dutch Antilles outside the developed world for, after all, they constitute only part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but Luxembourg and the USA?  Aren’t those two countries generally considered to be within the developed world?

Bahrain ranks thirty-ninth, Qatar thirty-eighth, Brunei thirty-seventh, United Arab Emirates thirty-second, and little Luxembourg twenty-fourth on the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) – 2010 Rankings; they are thereby classified as developed countries.  Julia Gillard and her unprincipled parrots, however, still say Australia is the highest emitter of carbon dioxide, per capita, in the developed world.
So, Julia Gillard, Greg Combet, and other ministers of this egregiously incompetent Government—backed by the predominantly proskynetic lickspittles in the media—are either willfully and unpardonably ignorant of the facts or mischievously, deliberately, wickedly deceiving the people whom they have sworn to serve faithfully.

UPDATE I (28 March, 2012): I see from the site’s statistics that some visitors hither searched for a list of the Member States of the United Nations, which are as follows:

Afghanistan; Albania; Algeria; Andorra; Angola; Antigua and Barbuda; Armenia; Australia; Austria; Azerbaijan; Bahamas; Bahrain; Bangladesh; Barbados; Belarus; Belgium; Benin; Bhutan; Bolivia; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Botswana; Brazil; Brunei Darussalam; Bulgaria; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Cambodia; Cameroon; Canada; Cape Verde; Central African Republic; Chad; Chile; China; Colombia; Comoros; Congo; Democratic Republic of the Congo; Costa Rica; Côte d’Ivoire; Croatia; Cuba; Cyprus; Czech Republic; Denmark; Djibouti; Dominica; Dominican Republic; Ecuador; Egypt; El Salvador; Equatorial Guinea; Eritrea; Estonia; Ethiopia; Fiji; Finland; France; Gabon; Gambia; Georgia; Germany; Ghana; Greece; Grenada; Guatemala; Guinea; Guinea-Bissau; Guyana; Haiti; Honduras; Hungary; Iceland; India; Indonesia; Islamic Republic of Iran; Iraq; Ireland; Israel; Italy; Jamaica; Japan; Jordan; Kazakhstan; Kenya; Kiribati; Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; Republic of Korea; Kuwait; Kyrgyzstan; Lao People's Democratic Republic; Latvia; Lebanon; Lesotho; Liberia; Libya; Liechtenstein; Lithuania; Luxembourg; The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; Madagascar; Malawi; Malaysia; Maldives; Mali; Malta; Marshall Islands; Mauritania; Mauritius; Mexico; Federated States of Micronesia; Republic of Moldova; Monaco; Mongolia; Montenegro; Morocco; Mozambique; Myanmar; Namibia; Nauru; Nepal; Netherlands; New Zealand; Nicaragua; Niger; Nigeria; Norway; Oman; Pakistan; Palau; Panama; Papua New Guinea; Paraguay; Peru; Philippines; Poland; Portugal; Romania; Russian Federation; Rwanda; Saint Kitts and Nevis; Saint Lucia; Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; Samoa; San Marino; Sao Tome and Principe; Saudi Arabia; Senegal; Serbia; Seychelles; Sierra Leone; Singapore; Slovakia; Slovenia; Solomon Islands; Somalia; South Africa; South Sudan; Spain; Sri Lanka; Sudan; Suriname; Swaziland; Sweden; Switzerland; Syrian Arab Republic; Tajikistan; Tanzania; Thailand; Timor-Leste; Togo; Tonga; Trinidad and Tobago; Tunisia; Turkey; Turkmenistan; Tuvalu; Uganda; Ukraine; United Arab Emirates; United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; United States of America; Uruguay; Uzbekistan; Vanuatu; Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; Viet Nam; Yemen; Zambia; and Zimbabwe.  

UPDATE II (13 November, 2013):  even worse than the demonstrably false claim that Australia is the highest emitter of carbon dioxide “in the developed world” is the lie, repeated by members of the Australian Greens and the ALP in the last few days, that Australia is the highest emitter of carbon dioxide “in the world” (in an hysterical attempt to blame a recent tropical cyclone in Southeast Asia on the new federal government’s intention to repeal the previous government’s silly “carbon tax”).  You know, if the propagandists for CAGW have to lie with such easily disprovable claims, we can tell that they have no real evidence whereon they might support their silly conjecture.