CLEXIT after BREXIT!

Excellent Australian initiative:

CLEXIT after BREXIT!

Read more about the initiative to get rid of the horrendous Paris climate agreement here

Great news from Australia: The world´s most expensive carbon tax is gone!

Reason to celebrate:

As of today, Australia no longer has the most expensive “carbon” price in the world. The voters didn’t ask for a tax in 2010,  but it was forced on them in 2011. They rejected it wholeheartedly in 2013 but it still has taken months to start unwinding this completely pointless piece of symbolism which aimed to change the weather. The machinery of democracy may be slow, but this is a win for voters.
11:15am EST today: The Australian Senate passes the carbon tax repeal bill.

“Australia has become the first country in the world to abolish a price on carbon, with the Senate passing the Abbott government’s repeal bills 39 votes to 32.“ SMH

Now we need to turn off the tap to all the other green gravy rent-seekers who ignore the evidence.

Maybe the models were not so wrong after all? : First Australian climate refugees soon on their way to the US and Europe?

Finally, sanity prevails in Australia:

The budgetary facts are inescapably grim for researchers and scientists based in renewable energies and research. The funding for all government programs related to climate change is set to shrink at an alarming rate, going from $5.75 billion this year to a scant $500 million in the next four years. Additionally, the Emissions Reduction Fund which is meant to help lower greenhouse gas emissions in Australia is going to be reduced to only $1.14 billion. This was devastating news after Environment Minister Greg Hunt had gone on record promising to provide $2.55 billion to fund the program. Nevertheless, it is not only climate change programs that are feeling the pinch of the Abbott budget. The Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia’s national science agency, will have $111 million worth of funding slashed over the next four years, which will affect an uncertain number of programs and a loss of tenth of the CSIRO workforce.

The outlook is bleak from the standpoint of scientists and researchers in Australia, many of whom will probably leave the country in order to find work elsewhere.

Europe and the US, watch out, the first Australian climate refugees are coming! Maybe the alarmists' predictions about huge climate change migration were not so wrong, after all!

Most of the jobless Aussie surplus scientists will probably end up in the US, where the Obama administration no doubt will receive them with open arms ...

Australian PM Tony Abbott's adviser: "climate change establishment is now starting to look rather shaky because mother nature is not complying"

Fortunately there are people like Maurice Newman, chairman of PM Tony Abbott's Business Advisory Council, who dare to oppose the warmists' 97 per cent mantra:

EMMA ALBERICI: It's no secret that you don't agree that man-made CO2 is causing global warming. Given there is now consensus among 97 per cent or so of climate scientists across the world that the view - around the view that human activity is responsible for climate change, what would it take to convince you?

MAURICE NEWMAN: We know first of all that the survey which came out with the 97 per cent number was flawed in the first place. So we don't pay any attention to that. What we do look at...

EMMA ALBERICI: There have been roughly three that have come up with that.

MAURICE NEWMAN: They all come up with flawed methodologies. So we don't pay any attention to that. We know that there are a whole host of scientists out there who have a different point of view, who are highly respected, reputable scientists. So the 97 per cent doesn't mean anything in any event because science is not a consensus issue. Science is whatever the science is and the fact remains there is no empirical evidence to show that man-made CO2, man-made emissions are adding to the temperature on earth. We haven't had any measurable increase in temperature on earth for the last 17.5 years. If you look back over history, there's no evidence that CO2 has driven the climate either. So I know that this is a view which is peddled consistently, but I think that the edifice which is the climate change establishment is now starting to look rather shaky because mother nature is not complying.

PS

What Newman wrote about wind turbines some time ago is also worth reading:

The harmful health effects, despite peer-reviewed and anecdotal evidence, are dismissed as being unconfirmed, psychosomatic or the politics of envy. It’s true. Not everyone who lives near wind turbines experiences adverse health effects. But then not everyone who smokes contracts lung cancer. Unaffected residents are bought off with bribes of better roads, community improvements or offers of employment. But these are token gestures and lead to bitterness and deep divisions in the community.
There is clearly an imbalance when cash-poor local residents are pitted against governments and powerful corporations. Rather than listen to their constituents, politicians are lending their support to oligopolistic insiders and, in so doing, are destroying the property rights of the very people they have pledged to protect.
But don’t expect help from academia, mainstream media or the public service. They are members of the same establishment and worship together at the altar of global warming. By ruthlessly perpetuating the illusion that wind farms can somehow save the planet, they keep the money flowing. All the while the poor become poorer, ever more dependent on welfare and colder in winter.

Mark Steyn on the "Global warming's glorious ship of fools"

Mark Steyn reports on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition:

But still: you’d have to have a heart as cold and unmovable as Commonwealth Bay ice not to be howling with laughter at the exquisite symbolic perfection of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition ‘stuck in our own experiment’, as they put it. I confess I was hoping it might all drag on a bit longer and the cultists of the ecopalypse would find themselves drawing straws as to which of their number would be first on the roasting spit. On Douglas Mawson’s original voyage, he and his surviving comrade wound up having to eat their dogs. I’m not sure there were any on this expedition, so they’d probably have to make do with the Guardian reporters. Forced to wait a year to be rescued, Sir Douglas later recalled, ‘Several of my toes commenced to blacken and fester near the tips.’ Now there’s a man who’s serious about reducing his footprint.
But alas, eating one’s shipmates and watching one’s extremities drop off one by one is not a part of today’s high-end eco-doom tourism. Instead, the ice-locked warmists uploaded chipper selfies to YouTube, as well as a self-composed New Year singalong of such hearty un-self-awareness that it enraged even such party-line climate alarmists as Andrew Revkin, the plonkingly earnest enviro-blogger of the New York Times. A mere six weeks ago, pumping out the usual boosterism, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that, had Captain Scott picked his team as carefully as Professor Chris Turney, he would have survived. Sadly, we’ll never know — although I’ll bet Captain Oates would have been doing his ‘I am going out. I may be some time’ line about eight bars into that New Year number.

Unlike Scott, Amundsen and Mawson, Professor Turney took his wife and kids along for the ride. And his scientists were outnumbered by wealthy tourists paying top dollar for the privilege of cruising the end of the world. In today’s niche-market travel industry, the Antarctic is a veritable Club Dread for upscale ecopalyptics: think globally, cruise icily.

Read the entire article here

Ice trapped alarmist Australian climate change professor and his followers rescued - Australian taxpayers likely to foot the bill

Chris Turney ‏@ProfChrisTurney 1h

We've made it to the Aurora australis safe & sound. A huge thanks to the Chinese & @AusAntarctic for all their hard work! #spiritofmawson

Australian climate change alarmist, professor Christ Turney and his followers - scientists and tourists on a research ship trapped by Antarctic ice since Christmas Eve - have been airlifted to safety.

They were flown by helicopter from the MV Akademik Shokalskiy to an ice floe next to the Australian icebreaker the Aurora Australis, after which they were taken by a small boat to the vessel.

According to a posting on the expedition website by Dr. Turney on Dec. 31, the nearest open water from the ship was 16 nautical miles away across the ice:

It has been a sobering week. At the time we were initially caught by the sea ice, the Shokalskiy was just 2 to 4 nautical miles from open water. Now the sea ice distance has become even greater with the continued winds from the east, putting our nearest point of exit at some 16 nautical miles. The international effort has been extraordinary and we are incredibly grateful for all the hard work and effort everyone has provided to assist the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-14 in escaping from the ice – a big thanks in particular to the Chinese, French and Australians, co-ordinated by the Australian Maritime Rescue Centre.

It is of course fine that the alarmist professor and his followers have been rescued. But as so often, the bill for the huge rescue operation, probably running up to several million dollars, is likely to be footed by the Australian taxpayers - money that could be used for some more meaningful purposes.

Among the rescued climate change tourists, one was the BBC's Andrew Luck-Baker (Senior Producer, BBC Radio Science Unit, Brighton, UK). Why on earth does the BBC waste money on this kind of useless global warming tourism?

Australian PM Tony Abbott's chief financial adviser: Australia had became "hostage to climate-change madness"

AGW alarmists are not happy about what Australian PM Tony Abbot's chief business adviser Maurice Newman says about the previous government's climate change policies, but everyone else should be:

THE unprecedented cost of energy driven by the renewable energy target and the carbon tax had destroyed the nation's competitiveness, Tony Abbott's chief business adviser has declared.
Maurice Newman also says climate change policies driven by "scientific delusion" have been a major factor in the collapse of Australia's manufacturing sector. "The Australian dollar and industrial relations policies are blamed," Mr Newman said. "But, for some manufacturers, the strong dollar has been a benefit, while high relative wages have long been a feature of the Australian industrial landscape." --

Mr Newman said Australia had become "hostage to climate-change madness". "And for all the propaganda about 'green employment', Australia seems to be living the European experience, where, for every 'green' job created, two to three jobs are lost in the real economy," he said.
"The scientific delusion, the religion behind the climate crusade, is crumbling. Global temperatures have gone nowhere for 17 years. Now, credible German scientists claim that 'the global temperature will drop until 2100 to a value corresponding to the little ice age of 1870'."
Mr Newman said the climate change establishment, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, remained "intent on exploiting the masses and extracting more money".
"When necessary, the IPCC resorts to dishonesty and deceit," he said.
In Australia, Mr Newman said, Victorian Democratic Labour Party senator John Madigan had told parliament how politicians and bureaucrats were paying tens of millions of dollars annually to wind turbine operators that had not received final planning approval.
"It could be hundreds of millions of dollars and we have a government that is keen to rein in the budget deficit," he said. "If you can save a million dollars that should never have been spent, we should be doing it."

Climate change Professor Chris Turney and his followers ringing in the New Year in Antarctica

Australian climate change professor Christ Turney and his followers are still waiting to be rescued in Antarctica:

Passengers on a climate change research ship stranded in Antarctica are likely to ring in the New Year on the ice-trapped vessel – as a rescue helicopter on a nearby Chinese ship waits for the weather to clear.

The helicopter on board the Snow Dragon will be used after the Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis failed to reach the Russian ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said today.
But the rescue attempt is on hold due to ongoing blizzard conditions.
“Weather conditions are unlikely to start improving until tomorrow and decisions related to carrying out the rescue may be made at short notice,” AMSA said. --

The 74 passengers on board include scientists and tourists and the 22-strong Russian crew.
Expedition leader Chris Turney said the last week had been “sobering” but morale was good.

Happy New Year 2014 to you professor and your co-passengers! We hope you all will soon be safely back home - perhaps a little bit wiser.

Australian climate change professor who warned about melting East Antarctic remains trapped in thick ice

"there is an increasing body of evidence, including by the AAE members, that have identified parts of the East Antarctic which are highly susceptible to melting and collapse from ocean warming"

The Australasian Antarctic Expedition

The reality:

Chris Turney, the leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (and Professor of Climate Change at the University of New South Wales) who, together with 73 scientists, tourists and crew is trapped in thick Antarctic ice, is still waiting to be rescued.

This is the latest tweet from Turney:

Chris Turney @ProfChrisTurney

Still waiting. #spiritofmawson Alok Jha vine.co/v/h9tqx3bWgVx

about 1 hour ago 

 

 

Even the Chinese icebreaker which was supposed to rescue the professor and his team had to retreat:

 

Passengers aboard an ice-bound cruise ship trapped off the coast of Antarctica cheered Friday night when they spotted the Chinese ice-breaker Snow Dragon on the horizon.
"There's a lot of relief among the team and a lot of happy faces," said expedition leader Chris Turney in a video posted on YouTube.
However, the jubilance was short-lived.
The Snow Dragon icebreaker came within 7 miles of the stranded ship but had to retreat after the ice became too thick, expedition spokesman Alvin Stone told the Associated Press. France's L'Astrolabe made it to the edge of the sea ice surrounding the ship, too, but also called off its mission for the same reason.
Turney, professor of climate change at the University of New South Wales, Australia, has been tweeting and blogging the adventure, and has become a minor celebrity of sorts. Using tools unimaginable to adventurers who explored the frozen continent a century ago, his reports recorded in howling blizzard winds show the enthusiasm and nonchalance of a real-life Indiana Jones.

 

 

      

Australian warmist scaremongering: "Alice Springs would resemble the Sudan, Darwin will resemble like no place on earth"

"The world added roughly 100 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO2 put there by humanity since 1750."
"Over the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth's surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar" 
The Economist


No matter what happens in the real world, global warming alarmists are desperately trying to sell their scare stories. Here is an Associate Professor of Environmental Policy at Melbourne University peddling his message of doom and gloom:

" a book published today paints a terrifying picture of a world that's four degrees warmer and recommends a dramatic increase in Australia's carbon reduction target.*

The book's editor is Associate Professor of Environmental Policy at Melbourne University, Dr Peter Christoff.*
ELEANOR HALL: What is the most frightening aspect for you of a four degree warmer world?

PETER CHRISTOFF: Oh look, that's a terrible question to which one only has to give a terrible answer. There are a set of compounding problems that emerge when you start moving towards four degrees. You start to see a world in which there are substantial extinctions.

The oceans have become warmer, are becoming more acidic. So there's a very significant chance of the collapse of significant marine ecosystems like coral reefs, the Great Barrier Reef, for example, is probably doomed when you get to four degrees. There are very substantial problems with food availability planet-wide and in a country like Australia which used to be capable of producing a surplus of food, by four degrees, would probably be facing food security problems with a larger population, but also a hungrier population.

And then you have the issues of extreme weather events, floods, more intense storms, bushfires, all these things particularly in the Australian context, I think leave us with a shatteringly different sense of what Australian can and would be like.

ELEANOR HALL: The physical effects are one part of this. What could the changes in the resource availability then mean for security? Will it inevitably mean more wars?

PETER CHRISTOFF: The projections are at four degrees that you would have significant displacement of population. If you have mass hunger occurring, populations will move to try and find food. Most of those movements, and the projections go from 65 to 250 million people by the end of this century. Most of those movements are likely to occur with countries, but there would be also the prospect of people moving over their borders and looking for resources elsewhere.

And how the world begins to handle a problem of that magnitude I think is something that we can only begin to contemplate. One doesn't know whether it would lead to more conflict. It certainly would lead to problems. I don't think we can understand what a world that looks like the one that's being projected looks like or how we're going to react to it. It's beyond human experience.

ELEANOR HALL: This sounds like a doomsday scenario. Could humans adapt to a four degree warming of the planet?

PETER CHRISTOFF: Well, humans are an extraordinarily adaptable species but if you're looking at a population of seven billion people trying to adapt to a world in which there's less water and less food, one would have to say that the prospects for an adaptation that would leave life looking roughly like it does for many people at this point in time is virtually impossible.

So there are already billions of people living in poverty or in water-stressed and food-stressed circumstances. In a four degree world, their situation would only get extremely worse. And even in extremely wealthy countries like Australia, adaptation I think would be very, very difficult to countenance.

There would clearly be some form of adaptation, but it wouldn't be life as we understand it at this point in time.

ELEANOR HALL: You say that Australia could be one of the most vulnerable continents. Where do you expect to see the worst effects in Australia of a four degree warmer world?

PETER CHRISTOFF: There will be the extinctions of species. There'll be a very substantial impact on agricultural productivity. So the issues of food availability will change. We probably have the wealth and the resources to begin to deal with some of the issues of water availability and desalinisation plants and so on. Everyday life will be very substantially different. There are projections for example of what would happen to just average temperatures over time. So in Melbourne for example, we have something like nine or ten days over 35 degrees at the moment. By the time you get to 2070, that's about 26 days.

When you're looking at Alice Springs, the temperatures are 90 days over 35 degrees now, 180 by 2070. And then you get to places like Darwin, which would move from 11 days to 308. You end up with parts of Australia which are virtually unliveable. And the projections are for example, that while Alice Springs would resemble the Sudan, Darwin will resemble like no place on earth."

UK scientist: Australia's new PM Tony Abbott is like the politicians who claimed that HIV does not cause AIDS

Engineering professor Nilay Shah

Engineering professor Nilay Shah of Imperial College London, lead author of a new climate change report, says that politicians such as Australia's new Prime Minister Tony Abbott are like the South African leaders who contributed to thousands of unnecessary deaths by claiming that HIV did not cause AIDS:

POLITICIANS who dismiss the need for urgent action on climate change are like the South African leaders who contributed to thousands of unnecessary deaths by claiming that HIV did not cause AIDS, a scientist has said.
          
Nilay Shah, of Imperial College London, said that politicians such as Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who has raised doubts about the science behind climate change, would be judged as harshly by future generations as those who questioned the medical evidence on AIDS.
He made the remarks when launching a report saying that the world needed to be spending $2 trillion a year by 2050, or 1 per cent of GDP, to limit global warming to two degrees above pre-industrial levels.
Professor Shah, lead author of the report by Imperial College's Grantham Institute for Climate Change, said: "There's an interesting parallel with South Africa in the 90s, where political capital was being made out of HIV denial. Those people must now regret what they did. I suspect that some of the politicians [now arguing against rapid cuts in emissions] will still be around in the mid-2030s and will reflect that they didn't do enough on climate change."

Read the entire article here

If someone is going to be "judged harshly", it is this professor, who is spreading false information about (a growing number of) politicians who are brave enough to oppose the false religion of human induced global warming.

Great news from Australia: The new Prime Minister Tony Abbott set to axe the carbon tax

Great news from Australia:
Australia's opposition has crushed the governing Labor party in a general election that has returned the Liberal-National coalition to power for the first time in six years.

Tony Abbott, Australia's new Prime Minister, now has a excellent opportunity to lead the country for many years, because the losing Labor Party has de facto ruled itself out, if one is to believe Bill Shorten, who is the likely new party leader after Kevin Rudd:

Bill Shorten, the favourite to lead the Labor Party in opposition, said the party needed to recognise the electorate had told it to get its house in order.
But he said Labor should not give up on its principles, including the need to have a price on carbon.
“I don't believe anyone in Labor is going to walk away from the issue of putting a price on carbon pollution,” he told Network Ten, flagging a fight with the incoming Abbott government as it tries to axe the carbon tax.
“Because a failure to act on pollution is in fact just making the problem harder for our kids, and that's not the Labor way.”

Read the entire article here

The sooner Abbott manages to axe the tax, the better for Australia. A Labor party which still insists on "putting a price on carbon" must be prepared for a prolonged stay in opposition.

Australia´s warmist PM Rudd about to send thousands of refugees to sinking Nauru

"Nauru is just one of several ‘sinking nations’ that may very well vanish beneath the ocean if effective measures for restoring and preserving valuable coastline are not implemented. "
Wenger

"Climate Change is the biggest Moral Challenge of our lifetime"
Kevin Rudd

What a devious and cruel man Australia´s socialist PM Kevin Rudd must be. This man, who has said  that "climate change is the biggest moral challenge of our lifetime", has now decided to send thousands of refugees to the tiny island state of Nauru, which (according to Rudd´s global warming alarmist friends) is about to sink into the Pacific ocean:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, facing an imminent election, enlisted the help of the Pacific Island nation of Nauru in his hardline policy of denying asylum seekers arriving by boat the right to settle in Australia.

Rudd was reinstated in his job just over a month ago and has improved his Labour Party's previously dismal standing in opinion polls ahead of an election now due within weeks. His get-tough policy on asylum seekers is seen as a vote winner in poorer districts where immigrant numbers are high.

Rudd and the President of Nauru, Baron Waqa, signed a memorandum of understanding providing for asylum seekers arriving by boat to be sent to Nauru where they can opt for resettlement after their claims for refugee status are processed. --

Saturday's agreement denies genuine refugees arriving by boat the option of being resettled in Australia. Australia, in turn, will provide Nauru with A$29.9 million ($26.6 million) in aid.

Australia's former climate change minister derides opposition leader Tony Abbott for telling the truth about emission trading

Australia's socialist finance minister Penny Wong seems to think that opposition leader Tony Abbott is unfit for the job as Prime Minister because he said this:

“Just ask yourself what an emission trading scheme is all about”. “It’s a market, a so-called market, in the non-delivery of an invisible substance.”

This was "comrade" (that is how she used to address fellow Labor club members at the University of Adelaide)  Wong's response:

“Imagine Tony Abbott at an international meeting, talking to Barack Obama and David Cameron – both of whom believe in action on climate change – and telling them ‘look, this is just about the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one’.” 

Wong, Australia's first lesbian cabinet minister, is reported to be a practising Christian. But, as a former climate change minister, she is above all a member of the church of global warming, which explains her outburst against Abbott. 

One must hope that Australians are not yet so brainwashed by the global warming alarmists that they allow themselves to be misled by people like Wong. 

What a fresh breath of air it would be to hear an Aussie PM telling the politically correct climate hypocrates Obama and Cameron the truth about the emissions trading madness! 

Australian religious leaders jump on the alarmist global warming bandwagon

Religious leaders in Australia seem to be a credulous bunch of people. They do not realize that jumping on the alarmist global warming bandwagon will backfire:

MUSLIM, Uniting, Catholic and Hindu religious leaders are to write to the Federal Government and Opposition, urging quick climate change action to help avert a devastating 4C rise in global temperatures.

The religious leaders say they are as one on human-induced climate change and have called for bipartisan support for carbon pricing, the fast-tracking of renewable energy and the winding back of coal exports.

Carbon pricing is opposed by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott but supported by Labor.

The letter follows a prediction from scientists at a conference in Tasmania this week that sea level rises will likely be double the .5m forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the end of this century.

Professor Tim Naish, director of the Antarctic Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington, said the window was closing quickly on mitigation options in terms of a world response.

"Rises could be higher than what the upper bounds of IPCC would suggest," Prof Naish said. "We have got to prepare for a world with extreme climate. Wetter areas will be wetter and warmer places will get warmer."

CO2 levels have passed 400 ppm for the first time in 3 million years.

Weather bureau chief Rob Vertessy said humankind was changing the earth at a rapid pace and in a way that had never happened before.

"Change on the planet largely stems from population growth, growing consumption and that is going to accelerate all kinds of environmental processes," Dr Vertessy said.

"We are going to lose a lot more natural capital and the climate and earth will change with it."

Prominent religious leaders to sign the letter include the Grand Mufti Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammad; the Chair of Catholic Earthcare Australia, Archbishop Philip Wilson; the President of the Uniting Church Assembly, Rev Professor Andrew Dutney; and the Chair of the Hindu Council of Australia, Professor Nihal Agar.

Read the entire article here

Australian climatologist: Humans have been warming the planet "at the rate of four Hiroshima bombs of heat every second"

Down under, the global warming alarmists must be quite desperate, if they think that this kind of arguments will convince anybody:

The planet has been building up temperatures at the rate of four Hiroshima bombs of heat every second, and it's all our fault, say climate scientists.

Hurricane Katrina and superstorm Sandy are just two examples of how extreme weather will intensify, Australia's Climate Action Summit has heard.

Humans are emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other time in history, says John Cook, Climate Communication Fellow from the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland.

"All these heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere mean ... our planet has been building up heat at the rate of about four Hiroshima bombs every second - consider that going continuously for several decades.''

Read the entire article here

New Australian study: Marine algae species adapts to climate change, contrary to what was assumed until now

These algae have no problems adapting to possible global warming.
(image wikipedia)

A new Australian study shows that, contrary to what was assumed until now, marine organisms - in this case the algae commonly known as Neptune' s necklace - adapt well to possible climate change: 

Breakthrough research has shown a species of marine algae commonly found along Australia’s rocky shores may be able to adapt to increasing air and seawater temperatures, providing insight into the impacts of global warming on the future biodiversity of Australia’s coastline 

The ability of Hormosira banksii, commonly known as Neptune’s necklace, to tolerate higher temperatures suggests that this habitat-forming alga has an intrinsic capacity to cope with climate change. --

“Hormosira banksii makes an excellent model for examining the potential for marine organisms to adapt because it is an important intertidal species in Australia and New Zealand, providing habitat for many other species.

“These macroalgae cling to rock platforms and don’t have much ability to disperse, limiting the genetic diversity amongst populations. It was therefore assumed, until now, that they wouldn’t be able to adapt to changes in climate as they can’t move to avoid temperature changes and they are already living close to their thermal tolerances,” she said.

However, the research of Ms Clark and her C3 colleagues showed that temperature tolerance in this habitat-forming species can be passed on to the next generation, meaning they have the potential to adapt to rising temperatures. 

New plants may therefore be less sensitive to heat waves during the summer, or high temperature events during other seasons, giving the researchers some optimism that this iconic species will remain prominent on our rocky shores.

Read the entire article here

Australian state of Victoria leading the way in fight against wind energy madness

The Australian state of Victoria is leading the way in stopping ineffective, costly and bird killing taxpayer subsidized wind turbines:

Welcome to my home state of Victoria, Australia's hub of art and culture, lane-way cafes and wonderful coffee, Aussie Rules football, the miraculous leadbeater's possum, and magnificent forests.

And also, after law changes in 2011, one of the most difficult places in the world to build a wind farm.

Back in 2011, the then-premier of Victoria, Ted Baillieu, enacted laws that, according to The Conversation website, effectively imposes a blanket ban on wind farms in many parts of the state:

They effectively give the owners of any dwelling within 2km of a proposed wind farm the power to decide whether or not the development should proceed.

The laws were part of the conservative Liberal-National coalition's 2010 election platform to "restore fairness and certainty to the planning process for wind farms". The laws have definitely provided certainty. --

The chilling effect of these planning laws is plain. Only one application to build a new wind farm has been made since the new laws came into effect.

The warmist Alexander White, writing in the Guardian, is of course whining, but the rest of us have reason to celebrate. May Victoria serve as a model for other regions, states and countries all over the world! It's time to stop the stupidity! 

Andrew Bolt about the death of the global warming scare

Australian climate realist Andrew Bolt's account of the death of the global warming scare is worth reading:

The 10 signs of the death of the scare are unmistakable. Now it's time to hold the guilty to account.

Just why did we spend the past year paying the world's biggest carbon tax, which drove our power bills through the roof?

Why were our children forced to sit through multiple screenings of Al Gore's dodgy scare-flick An Inconvenient Truth?

Why did we scar the most beautiful parts of our coast with ludicrously expensive windfarms?

And why did so many people swallow such bull, from the British Climatic Research Unit's prediction that "children just aren't going to know what snow is" to ABC science presenter Robyn Williams' claim that 100m rises in sea levels this century were "possible, yes".

Yes, we may yet see some warming resume one day.

But we will be wiser. We have learned not to fall so fast for the end-of-the-world sermons of salvation-seekers and the tin-rattling of green carpetbaggers.

Read the entire article here.

Greenpeace set on destroying the Australian coal industry

The envirofundamentalist Greenpeace is now set on destroying the Australian coal industry, one of the backbones of the country's economy: 

Greenpeace activists boarded a coal ship heading out of Australian waters in an effort to curb coal exports.

Using inflatable boats from Greenpeace’s ship the Rainbow Warrior, six activists boarded the Korean-owned coal ship MV Meister at dawn on Wednesday and presented a letter to the ship’s captain explaining why they were there. The activists set up camp on the ship’s bow.

“Our leaders are failing us so it’s up to us to take civil disobedience and to slow down and stop these coal ships. We are set to stay here as long as it takes,” she added.

“We are calling on the rest of Australia to take whatever action is possible to ensure that we do not double our coal exports. We cannot deal with the climate change that will result from that,” said a Greenpeace spokesman on the Rainbow Warrior.

What the Greenpeace people are engaged in is nothing but a criminal activity, that should be dealt with accordingly. It goes without saying that people unlawfully boarding a ship and setting up camp on it should be arrested and prosecuted. 

And, as economists Sinclair Davidson and Ashton de Silva point out in an article in The Australian, the meddling by Greenpeace and people like American anti-coal activist  Bill McKibben in the Australian coal economy could have a massive negative impact in Australia: 

The new Rainbow Warrior is on an Australian tour campaigning against the coal industry and its "reckless" expansion. Writing in these pages Greenpeace activist David Ritter would have us believe that Australia faces a stark choice between coalmining and tourism or agriculture.

Mining creates upstream and downstream economic activity. Mining itself generated about 11.5 per cent of gross value added in 2011-12 and the spillovers created another 6.5 per cent of economic activity. So nearly one-fifth of our economy is reliant on mining. But the Reserve Bank looked only at the supply side of the economy. When you add the demand side, mining makes up nearly a quarter of our economy. We shouldn't give that up lightly.

Using the same method as the Reserve Bank we estimated the size of the coal economy -- coalmining plus the spillovers from coal into the broader economy -- to be about 3.1 per cent of gross value added in 2011-12, about $43 billion. Including the demand side, that increases to 4.2 per cent of gross value added, and nearly $60bn. The coal economy provides 181,000 jobs. For every coalmining job 3.7 jobs are created in the broader economy.

It is highly likely that the benefits and spillovers of those jobs are concentrated in the coal-mining states of NSW, Queensland and Victoria. . The challenge for critics of the coal industry is to articulate alternative economic activity for those engaged in mining and mining-related activity, which can be as diverse as construction services and wholesale trade.

Most important, coal keeps our electricity generators going. Phasing out coalmining means turning off the lights, while phasing out coal exports means turning off other people's lights and economic growth.

That is probably not the message Greenpeace wishes to promote but it highlights the paucity of its argument.

Australian coal doesn't just benefit the Australian economy, it benefits the world economy. Despite that, the Australian coalmining industry recently was labelled a "rogue industry" that must be phased out by American anti-coal activist Bill McKibben from non-governmental organisation 350.org who is coming to Australia in June to campaign against coal exports.

The consequences of ill-informed meddling in the coal economy would have a massive negative impact in Australia, especially in the most populous states along the east coast.

Foreigners coming to Australia to campaign against our national economy can do a lot of damage if their claims go unchallenged. So too will "uncivil" disobedience campaigns designed to sabotage local economies and cause property destruction. Coalmining and exports provide benefits to Australia and the world well beyond mining itself.