AUSTRALIA CHANGES TACK ON CLIMATE ?

[marchesarosa]

Newsnight
Thursday 5th Feb 2010

Since Climategate and Copenhagan Australia’s climate consciousness has changed dramatically.
The Labour Party's Emissions Trading scheme, formerly considered a foregone conclusion is now increasingly challenged.

Australia’s changing climate politics.
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qnxlr/Newsnight_04_02_2010/

[marchesarosa]

www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/27/2883282.htm

Labor shelves emissions scheme

By Alexandra Kirk
27 April 2010

ETS on ice: Senator Wong says the Government remains committed to the scheme as the best way of reducing carbon pollution.
It was once a centrepiece of the Federal Government's election strategy, but now the emissions trading scheme (ETS) has been relegated to the shelf until at least 2013.

Delaying the scheme means the Government could save $2.5 billion from its budget over the next three years, because it would not be paying compensation to households and industries.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently said climate change remained a fundamental economic, environmental and moral challenge, whether it was popular or not.

But Government sources say it was decided last week to remove the scheme from next month's budget, bowing to the political reality that the Senate is unlikely to pass the ETS any time soon.

The Upper House has already blocked the ETS legislation twice.

[marchesarosa]

30 June 2010

Sydney recorded its coldest June morning today since 1949, with temperatures diving to 4.3 degrees just before 6:00am (AEST).

[marchesarosa]

Have a read of this poem written in 1907 those of you who think Australian droughts are caused by "global warming".

My Country
by
Dorothea Mackellar
(1885 - 1968)



The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die-
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold-
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land-
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand-
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Dorothea Mackellar

[marchesarosa]

Australians' Views Shift on Climate Change

Gallup Poll August 7th 2010

www.gallup.com/poll/141782/Australians-Views-Shift-Climate-Change.aspx

A reduction in the proportion who believe warming is down to man's activity and an increase of 50% in those who think it's natural causes.

Those who think its a bit of both remain at about one fifth of respondents.



It was only a matter of time before the Australian public started to see through their Government's hysterical AGW propaganda. Pretty steady folk, the aussies.

[rsmith77]

Hi Mary,
I know it's a waste of time, but could you remind Ashley on the BBC board that we didn't scream climate change during the severely cold winter so could he stop worrying about a few hot days in Russia.

p.s. Cold, damp and overcast in the Orkney Islands.
Coldest water temperature I've ever seen in the Pentland Firth (in March) 6C
Lobster season very late stating due to depressed water temperature.
Velvet crab price 50% higher due to short supply because of severly cold water.

RSPB reporting severe downturn in sea bird numbers because of climate change.
I'll be looking for an apology since for the last 20 years it's been because of over-fishing.
More money in AGW I guess.

Fecking communists

Really happy you're keeping the torch of reason burning on the BBC board.

Keep it up babe

[marchesarosa]

Hi, Mr Smith.

I've already argued the weatherisnotclimate argument cuts both ways and requires consistent application here
www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio4/F2766781?thread=7672346&skip=20&show=20#p99230638

I think ashley is mentally ill, (or a nutcase, as I called him more colloquially last time I addressed him). It is very hard to have a reasonable exchange of views with him. He is obsessed with portraying sceptics as "creationists". I would rather not talk to him if you don't mind. But I will find a way of introducing what you have said about conditions in Scotland and at sea and with the birds.

Thanks for your encouragement.

[marchesarosa]

Mr Smith.

I've just looked at this article
www.rspb.org.uk/news/details.asp?id=tcm:9-257630
about Scottish seabirds from the RSPB and I don't understand it.

By what mechanism is "climate change" supposed to be responsible for reduced breeding success amongst seabirds?

I can understand how over-fishing can cause a dearth of food but not climate change as such. It's just an easy catch-all. Any advice to offer?

[rsmith77]

Overfishing is actually the catch-all. Even you are prepared to believe it!
It isn't as simple as that.
Most seabirds eat sand eels and they aren't fished commercialy (or on a tiny scale) in the UK.
The fish thing's quite complex.
Any perceived over-fishing is of demersal species - cod, haddock etc - that seabirds never eat. The type of fish available for seabirds - near the surface and within their easy range - are abundant. Coley(aka saith/black/harbons/cuddings/cuithes), mostly.
And I mean very abundant - solid on the sonar all around the islands.

I actually believe the minor, insignificant and normal fluctuation in climate has altered the range of feed and the birds have simply followed it. I'm sure that you'll find an abundance of seabirds further north.
I'd have expected them to return during the last winter but I guess they're not as fickle as us humans.
There is another possibility.
Every young boy, when I was running around the cliffs, knew that if you disturbed a kittywake on it's nest, it would never return. I have witnessed the RSPB destroy several kittywake colonies...sometimes with the help of abseiling gear.
They have been running around, beards aflap, disturbing and interfering with these poor things for the last 40 years. What effect has this had on the nest sites?

There has been a huge reduction in seabirds on the cliffs around here. I clearly remember, in the seventies, being deafened by the noise and my nostrills filled with the smell of the mass of birds on the cliffs. I can still see the constant stream of guillimots and razorbills coming and going. I'd say there may be 20% left.

There is yet another factor.
When the climate was a bit cooler in the 70's, trawlers fished quite close by - probably because they were allowed to catch the smaller fish that teemed in inshore waters.(Cod haddock - not bird prey) One by-product of trawling is a constant stream of highly nutritious fish guts and livers being thrown over the side. This has gone due to regulation. Have the birds followed this fine food source?
I don't know the answer...partly because I'm on my second bottle of Claret but mostly because there are too many variables.

[sinistral]

First.....
Marchesa,if this is,as far as your climate blog is concerned,too far off-topic,feel free to move it.
But as the accusations are here I felt this was the place for my reply.

Aug 7, 2010 21:41:49 GMT rsmith77 said:

I have witnessed the RSPB destroy several kittywake colonies...sometimes with the help of abseiling gear.
They have been running around, beards aflap, disturbing and interfering with these poor things for the last 40 years. What effect has this had on the nest sites?

rsmith.....As I am a member of the RSPB(though happily unbearded)I would be most obliged if you could supply details of the kittiwake colonies that have been destroyed.Precise locations and approximate dates please.
I can then pass these details on to the society and try to get to the bottom of the matter.
In my experience the RSPB take the greatest care in causing as little disturbance as possible to nesting birds,but if you have evidence to the contrary then I think it should be passed on.

[rsmith77]

Sinistral,
The colonies were to be found on the South East side of Swona Island in Orkney.

"In my experience the RSPB take the greatest care in causing as little disturbance as possible to nesting birds"

Not my experience.
At the height of the breeding season, I watched the RSPB people with 10 foot long butterfly nets and abseil gear, gouging kittiwakes out of their nests.
Over the past 15 years they have systematically destroyed ever harder to reach nest sites. There now remains a handful of pairs in the most difficult to reach places.
I have told them to stop many times but just get a bemused look. Difficult to communicate when I'm on a boat.
I got a call from these idiots a few years back asking me to land them on Swona since their usual guy was out of action. I refused and gave the guy a detailed account of why.
He just prattled on with the usual "no evidence to suggest" crap.

Yet the perception is fishermen bad - eco twerps good.

Another falshood propogated by the massive eco-propaganda machine.

Despicable.

[marchesarosa]

I don't have a hypothesis one way or the other about sea-bird numbers, Mr Smith. I'm totally ignorant of the sea and fishing but I always have time for the views of people who do have such experience.

I can perfectly understand that seabirds do not eat what commercial fishermen fish for so there is no "competition" there. And I take the point about nest site disturbance. There is also the matter of them feeding on the guts thrown overboard and when that stops what do they do to replace it?

But what is the "climate change" argument for reduction in seabird numbers, if you know it, please?

[rsmith77]

The argument goes that the "unprecedented" warming has changed the distribution and depth of seabirds prey resulting in "collapse" of their numbers.
I agree - except that it isn't un-precedented and it isn't serious. They've just moved.

[marchesarosa]

Thanks for the explanation, Mr Smith

[sinistral]

Mr Smith,thank you for your reply,though I can't say that I agree with your views.
The RSPB does much to protect both wild birds and their habitats so it seems such a shame to label us all as "idiots,eco twerps and fecking communists."
And actually,for what it's worth(and despite your comments)I don't think "fishermen bad"

Sorry for my interuption,Marchesa.....I'll leave your climate blog in peace now.