CAGW is back on the political agenda in Australia with the release of a 'scientific update' of sorts by Tim Flannery's Climate Change Commission.

From ABC Online

Time running out for climate action: report

By environment reporter Sarah Clarke, wires

The Federal Government's Climate Commission has warned the window for limiting future and costly climate change is rapidly closing.

In its first report, titled The Critical Decade, the commission says the evidence that the planet is warming is now even stronger.

It warns global warming could cause global sea levels to rise up to one metre by the end of the century, higher than previously thought.

Chief commissioner Tim Flannery says humanity is almost surely the primary cause of global warming.

"There's agreement that there's a temperature increase, there's an agreement that it's human-caused," he said.

But there is no agreement that anthropogenic global warming will cause a catastrophe, is there?

Meanwhile, Labor gets exactly what it wanted.

It gets the full political support of the climate doomsday cult and those scared witless and it gets the opposition to direct its fire on Tim Flannery's Climate Change Commission.

Labor comes out looking like an honest broker seeking the middle way. The tax passes at rates less than feared by the business, the budget deficit gets smaller, and Labor's electoral fortunes improve.

Should Labor lose the next election, however, Tim Flannery's Climate Change Commission will be kaput.

James Hansen's recent lecture at Victoria University in Wellington NZ is recorded here

LINK

It is about 100 mins long, and is a multi-media (audio/video and powerpoint presentation.)

http://www.climate-resistance.org/

The end of the world- Rapture or CAGW?

This is one reason why it is all bull****.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/25/carbon-cuts-developed-countries-cancelled

Carbon cuts by developed countries cancelled out by imported goods

Kyoto protocol means carbon footprints are calculated for the countries producing goods, not those consuming them

'In the same period, UK emissions fell by 28 million tonnes, but when imports and exports are taken into account, the domestic footprint has risen by more than 100 million tonnes. Europe achieved a 6% cut in CO2 emissions, but when outsourcing is considered that is reduced to 1%.'

A story from April that should be taken into account when looking at a single countrys carbon budget.

Interesting article about a book written in the 70's by Geoffrey Hoyle which predicted a lot of todays technology. Interviewed today Geoffrey has this to say about how we are governed, rings a few bells.

What have changed over the decades are the levels of bureaucracy, the control over our lives and the rise of the career politician with pop-star status. We live in a time where there's a huge amount of disinformation and facts can be twisted to alarm or control. The original draft of the US constitution is 20 pages long; Brussels turns out thousands and thousands of pages – which says to me that no one knows how to make law [any more]."

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/the-man-who-saw-the-future-how-the-scifi-writer-geoffrey-hoyle-predicted-2011s-technologies-in-1972-2285839.html

May 22, 2011 at 7:04 AM | matthu

That carbon budget: even the scientists aren't sure about global warming now- Analysis by David Rose

Was included in the Sunday Paper review on the Andrew Marr show by Max Hastings, had an omlete cooking so missed the comments.

Canada is the place to get your news these days isn't it.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/36664

The winds may be changing ...

http://rogerhelmermep.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/i-address-the-taiwanese-parliament-on-climate-change/

On May 16th, my colleague Charles Tannock was accorded the exceptional honour of addressing the Taiwanese parliament (“Legislative Yuan”) in Taipei, in his capacity as Chairman of the European parliament’s Taiwan Friendship Group. He became the first member of the European parliament ever to do so.
...
Then Charles got a very detailed question on climate change. He replied that he personally accepted the orthodox position shared by the Conservative Party and the European parliament, although he indicated that there was room for doubt, and that the science could not be described as “settled”. He then invited me to take the floor, first issuing a caveat that my views were not the official view of the EU institutions. So I found myself at the microphone in front of 100+ Taiwanese parliamentarians.

I was conscious that I could not abuse the privilege by speaking for more than say five minutes — and that a dense, technical speech might challenge the interpreter, excellent though she clearly was.

So I expressed my regret that in the available time I could not develop the arguments or the detail — I could do no more than state my position (but I offered to send my “Cool Thinking” book to anyone interested — and had several requests for it afterwards). I said that a large and increasing number of highly qualified scientists were challenging the orthodox view. I pointed out that by general agreement mean global temperatures in the last hundred years had risen less than one degree C — a very modest and normal sort of change. I said that many people thought that the small changes we had seen were entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate cycles. I briefly mentioned the Roman Optimum/Dark Ages/Mediaeval Warm Period cycle, and said that we appeared to be moving towards a new 21st century climate optimum.

I said there were sound scientific reasons to believe that CO2 was not a major factor in climate change — though sadly I had no time to develop that point.

I said that many of those scientists who accepted the CO2 theory still believed that the actions we propose to take, while vastly expensive, would make only a trivial difference to the trajectory of global temperatures. Renewable technologies like solar and wind delivered the most expensive and least reliable generating capacity on the planet. Our green policies in fact amounted to an economic suicide pact.

And I argued that many scientists and economists believed that adaptation — responding to changes if and when they occur — was a hugely better, cheaper and safer approach than futile attempts at mitigation — or preventing climate change. Had they been more familiar with British history, I might have mentioned King Canute’s futile attempt to hold back the tide.

On the whole, my remarks were well-received, and several parliamentarians discussed them with me later.

It would have been so easy for Charles to answer the question himself and carry on. His decision to give me the opportunity to express the alternative view, however briefly, was a generous and comradely action, and I thank him for it.

Article about crowd-sourcing scientific problems with open data. ClimateGate is mentioned in passing, but the obvious conclusions dare not be raised.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/may/22/open-science-shared-research-internet

Long article in the Daily Mail :

That carbon budget: even the scientists aren't sure about global warming now- Analysis by David Rose

Even if Chris Huhne does lose his job over allegedly persuading his ex-wife to take his penalty points for a speeding offence, he will have been in office long enough to leave a damaging legacy – last week’s Carbon Budget, which commits the UK to halving emissions of carbon dioxide by 2025.
...

The consequence for Britain would be a crippling double whammy: gigantic increases in energy bills and a simultaneous depletion of the means of generating the wealth required to fund them. Moreover, only two per cent of the world’s CO2 emissions emanate from Britain – far too little for our reduction to make a global impact.
...

But even as he claimed to be looking to the future, there was something strangely out of date about the Energy Secretary’s statement, just as there is about the 2008 Climate Change Act under whose rubric he made it.

Underlying them both is an assumption that remains widespread – at least in the Westminster policy-making bubble – that the science of man-made global warming is ‘settled’, as Mr Huhne’s predecessor and current Labour leader Ed Miliband put it before the last Election.
...
Earlier this month, I attended a remarkable conference at Downing College, Cambridge.
...

The day as a whole had shown that the scientific disputes are pressing, urgent and real. In the light of that, Mr Huhne’s determination to bankrupt Britain through unsustainable targets looks as ill-judged as his alleged attitude towards accepting responsibility for speeding.

Read the full article here.