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Dr Jennifer Marohasy [pictured below], Chair of the Australian Environment Foundation writes.

GetUp’s global warming television ads are dishonest and inaccurate.

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For all sorts of reasons a number of groups, of which Internet campaigners GetUp.org.au are one, are pretending that the Rudd Government’s proposed Emissions Trading Scheme is a minor 5 to15 percent adjustment to our way of life.

In fact, the government’s ETS will reduce the amount of energy available to every man, woman and child currently living in the country by an extraordinary 35 percent, absent the discovery and implementation of an unknown source of carbon free energy in the next ten years.

This would be the equivalent of closing down all of Australia’s manufacturing and half its rural industries.

Or thought of another way, it is the equivalent of closing 72% of our current power generation capacity (stationary power).

Population growth masked the severity of the scheme. Our natural birth-rate plus immigration intake adds around 360,000 to the population every year, roughly the equivalent of another Brisbane every 5 years - 20 percent growth in 11 years - making 35% look like 15%.

It is understandable that groups like GetUp that stand for nothing and are opposed to everything would want to downplay the severity of the government’s proposals.

If GetUp has nothing to complain about they are out of business, so of course they want to portray the government’s decision in the ‘worst’ light.

The government also has a vested interest in downplaying the severity of their scheme. Kevin Rudd wants to convince Australians that it won’t hurt one little bit, so he’s happy for groups like GetUp to criticize him for being John Howard lite.

In fact, the proposed ETS will make Australians poorer; while it is richer, not poorer nations that are better able to protect their natural environment.

END
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I’m making a confession, I’m a watcher and lover of birds - the feathered variety that is.

I was just having a coffee with my princess and in the garden we saw a beautiful little dove. Foraging through my bird bible Photographic Field Guide Birds of Australia (second edition) that my princess gave me back in 2005 we identified it as the Spotted Turtle Dove.

Photo by Nickolay Tilcheff from Oz Animals web site

The Spotted Turtle dove - loves Agriculture & Industrial areas. That’s our kind of dove. Source

Victorian Farmer Peter Newman [pictured] , chairman of the Rivers and Red Gum Environment Alliance writes.

More dead red gum forests will be the outcome of creating new national parks under the current land management model according to those who live next to the forests.

Thousands of hectares of red gum forests are dead and dying now in the Murray Sunset and Hattah-Kulkyne National Parks on the Murray River. These forests in national parks were identified in a DSE funded study* in 2007 as being in the ‘worst condition of forests’ along the Murray, despite their ‘protected’ status for 20 and 48 years respectively.

This study shows the hypocrisy of the Brumby Government’s announcement that it must act to save red gum forests, these forests need water not national park status.

Four new national parks will be created in forests that are in relatively good condition, 250 kilometres upstream from this long running land management disaster.

This demonstrates what locals have been saying all through this flawed VEAC process:  This was a pre-ordained outcome, all to do with deals done at the last election between the Labor Party and city based, minority green groups.

If this had anything to do with the environment, more protection would have been given to the areas at greatest risk, as identified in the 2007 study.
Instead we have four new parks clustered around the Yorta Yorta native title claim area to satisfy agreements with indigenous people, after they lost their claim in the High Court and to satisfy commitments to Melbourne based green groups.

The tragedy with this announcement is that it offers no protection to red gum forests as we have seen with the degraded, unmanaged forests further downstream. Barmah forest has been actively managed for 26 years under the international Ramsar wetland convention and has come through the drought in much better condition than unmanaged forests concluded Mr Newman.

- ENDS -

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G’day Agmates. Welcome to the first Wednesday of 2009. Here is a rundown of what is happening today on the Agmates community site.

Enhanced Blogging Software | Thomas Multimedia : Sometime today we are expecting to launch a whole new software program to enhance your blogging experience. Agmate Steve Thomas is our IT guru come Hawke’s tragic [pictured]. He is in the throws of finishing his handy work off  for the launch. You will be able to do heaps of cool stuff like upload your own photos & videos and a whole raft of new features that will make your blogging even more enjoyable.

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200 Cows & Calves For sale | Agmates : Agmates members Glenn and Natalie Williams from up at Jericho in North west QLD listed 200 Santa cows and calves for sale last night. It’s good to see the community members using the Agmates Trader facility to let the community know what they have for sale.

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Today’s Weather | Weather Zone: A trough over QLD and NSW is causing isolated showers and storms. A tropical low and the monsoon are generating widespread rain and thunder over the Top End. Strong westerly winds are causing isolated showers for TAS and western VIC. Hot northwesterly winds in the east.

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More Later …..

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Oh boy I think we can all get a laugh out of this. Mind you he does use the F*word a bit, but in a fun way that comedians do.

But you have been warned.

George Carlin - Saving the Planet

(thanks to Agmate member Robyn)

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Global Warming Alarmist Al Gore and IPCC Chairman Dr. Rajendra Pachauri maintain that anyone who doubts the Global Warming science probably still believes the earth is flat.

So I’ve decided to introduce the community to a few of these ‘flat Earthers’. The second in our ‘flat earthers’ series is Jon Jenkins adjunct professor of virology specialising in computer modelling at Bond University QLD Australia.

In an opinion piece in today’s Australian Newspaper Jenkins starts out:

THE warmaholics are fond of using the phrase “official records going back to 1850″, but the simple facts are that prior to the 1970s, surface-based temperatures from a few indiscriminate, mostly backyard locations in Europe and the US are fatally corrupted and not in any sense a real record.

They are then further doctored by a secret algorithm to account for heat-island effects. Reconstructions such as the infamously fraudulent “hockey stick” are similarly unreliable.

The only precise and reliable temperature recording started with satellite measurements in the 1970s. They show minuscule warming, all in the northern hemisphere, which not only stopped in 2000 but had completely reversed by 2008 (see graph).

Graph Source: The University of Alabama in Huntsville

So you think that is a strong start, but no, the good professor is just getting ‘warmed’ up. Next he looks at those scary rising sea level predictions. Here is what  leader of the Australian Greens Bob Brown was spruking back on the 3rd of October 2008.

“The alternative-waiting for a lead from the rest of the world-will sacrifice the Great Barrier Reef, Ningaloo Reef, Kakadu and the Australian Alps in the short term, and threatens a 10-metre rise in sea levels, obliterating the Sydney Opera House foyer, Melbourne’s Docklands, Hobart’s Salamanca Place and the current habitat of millions of Australians.”

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Jon Jenkins writes:

The warmaholics also contend that global mean temperature and sea level rises are at the upper range of the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change’s projections. Well, no, actually they are not.

Sea level rises since 1900 are of the order of 1-2mm a year, which is indistinguishable from tectonic movement, and the IPCC computer projections are simply completely wrong.

Its a great articles as Jenkins gets stuck in, but I’ll leave you with one more gem,

So that’s the real consensus: about 44 scientist mates who have vested interests in supporting IPCC computer modelling agreed that “we did it”, and this has become the “consensus of thousands of the world’s meteorologists”. Compared with 31,000 (including 341 meteorologists) in the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine petition, the IPCC’s 44 have no right to claim consensus at all.

So which group here is actually the ‘flat earthers’ Gore and Pachauri are pointing at? My mum taught me the if you look closely at people pointing fingers and accusing, there is always 3 fingers pointing back.

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A month ago to the day I wrote an article asking Is Australia The Stupidest Nation On Earth.

Over the next 40 years Australia will convert a staggering 84 million acres of productive food producing agricultural land into tree plantations to fight climate change. That’s over 6,000 acres a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, every year for the next 40 years.

That’s the result of the ‘carbon sink’ legislation that the Labor government with the backing of the Liberal party passed into legislation in the Federal Parliament this week.

Today The Australian Newspapers John Stapleton writes - Farms Die for Rudds Trees

CATTLE farmer Neil Graham can see the landscape changing around him as his neighbours sell their properties for plantations, unable to compete against the Rudd Government’s generous tax concessions for forestry companies.”I’m angry,” Mr Graham said. “We’re seeing rural communities lost, schools and services closed down.

“The Government has tunnel vision: they think planting trees will solve everything. Both farms and native vegetation are being replaced by plantations, all driven by federally funded tax schemes. It’s wrong.”

… leading voices predict that dozens, if not hundreds, of rural communities will disappear.

The Australian Greens and The National Party in the Senate vigorously opposed the Labor Parties ‘carbon sink’ legislation but it passed with the support of the Liberals.

Nationals Leader in the Senate Barnaby Joyce said:

“We’re taking out the capacity of Australia to feed itself or to export food products,” he said.

Greens Senator Christine Milne is scathing in her criticism:

“Labour are talking about changing the entire face of rural Australia,” she said. “From northwest Tasmania to the Northern Territory, rural communities have suffered because the Government decided to give a greater tax advantage to Collins Street investors than to people who are trying to make their living from the land.

Rural Australia will revolt.”

Well no it won’t revolt Christine. Not when you have clowns running the supposed farmers peak lobby group the National Farmers Federation.

That’s right the very organization that is meant to be lobbying for farmers best interest did not lift a finger to oppose the legislation. I can tell you that I have been contacted by a number of major players within the rural industry who believe the entire board of the NFF should resign or be sack over this very issue.

It is outrageous that whilst the NFF was sitting mute on it’s hands that the four National Party Senators were virtually splitting the coalition in crossing the floor and vote against it.

What in the hell was Malcolm Turnbull and the entire Liberal party thinking when they voted for this legislation. As I wrote at the time:

If Malcolm Turnbull & his Liberal Front Bench are not capable of doing that as this weeks events have shown, then either the coalition is finished our they need to find another leader who understands that there is more to life in Australia than the Latte drinking, metro sexual Eastern Suburbs of Sydney.

After having the numbers to block the ‘carbon sink’ legislation and the appropriation of the $2 billion dollar bush telecommunications fund and choosing not to, the conservative voters of rural and regional Australia can never again trust Malcolm Turnbull as a coalition leader.

You can tell I’m bloody angry about the way that theses people (Labor, Liberal and NFF) have  sacrificed rural and regional Australians once again at the alter of political expediency and indifference. This has to be stopped whilst we still have a viable farming industry, not to mention rural & regional communities.

Yes we are indeed doing a fine job of  proving ourselves to be the stupidest nation on Earth.

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In light of the Australian governments $10.4 billion cash stimulus paid out pre Christmas this video from Dan Mitchell, from the Cato Institute posted on Canadian web site Frontier Centre For Public Policy makes interesting viewing.

Why Keynesian Economics Still Doesn’t Work

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G’day Agmates. Just got the latest newsletter out, so I thought I’d post this before getting a few hours sleep.

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Monsoon Rains in NQ | Ross Newman Mareeba : From yesteday Forum - The monsoon is defintely here on the Tablelands. Until this morning we have recorded 230mm for the first five days of the year, and we are getting another heavy down pour now. Hopefully this will lift the spirits of most northern producers. I saw photos from the Barkly Tableland with lakes everywhere, a massive constrast to the dust bowl it was only several months ago.

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BOM Releases Annual Climate Statement | The Australian : A LA Nina weather pattern pushed temperatures down in 2008, with the latest climate data showing it was the coldest year since 2001… was Australia’s 14th warmest year on record … the first year since 1995 when NSW didn’t get a temperature above 45C”. Sydney had its coolest year since 1995 … Rainfall was close to average for Australia,

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Today’s Weather | Weather Zone : A monsoon low and trough are causing heavy rain and storms in the tropics. Another trough in the east is causing storms in western QLD. A heat low in the WA Pilbara is drawing hot easterly winds to the west coast. A weak high is keeping skies mostly clear across southern states.

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More later ….

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… to blog on something in the links above or to start you own topic click on Comments.

To make a bold heading for your topic. - <strong> Your Topic </strong> will make it bold.

Some other code you can use -

“Quotes” - <backquote> Whatever it is your quoting </backquote>

Italics - <em> whatever it is your wanting as italic </em>

Have fun….

This is 20 years old but its still a great message. Happy New Year to each and every Agmate.

Happy New Year - ABBA

This is the version that most people just call: “ABBA around the piano”. This video has been shown on many New Years Eve’s in Sweden at midnight.

This video has been viewed 3.5 million times since it was posted two and a half years ago.

Agmates Music