Agmates

Todays Agamtes “Rooted” Article on Crikey

Greens Working to Help Farmers, Rural & Regional Communities Survive and Thrive.

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In todays article we thank Greens Senator Christine Milne for working for Farmers, Rural and Regional Australians. Having said that, have a look at what “Raving Alarmist” Bob Brown is saying in todays media.

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“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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Read the whole article on Crikey

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Have your say!

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Got a tip off, article or have you seen a video or item you’d like to be seen by the Agmates Community? If so please email it to us at news@agmates.com

If you still have doubts about whether man made climate change is real, stop it because according to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd:

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We must prepare for a low-carbon economy, to delay any longer, to stay in denial as the climate change skeptics and some members opposite would have us do, is reckless and irresponsible.

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The Prime Minister made that statement in an unexpected and impassioned speech yesterday near the end of a long parliamentary debate on a government bill that clears the way for millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide to be stored under the sea.

Throughout the speech Rudd emphasized the need for URGENT action:

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Expert analysis points to severe global and national consequences including rising sea levels, more severe weather events, water shortages, large-scale migration, increased threats to border security, loss of infrastructure and regional conflict over increasingly scarce resources.

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He finished up with the following emotion call to action (more about this later):

“For our generation, for our kids and future generations, we must act now.”

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The Prime Minister has continually maintained that he takes his advise from the IPCC science on this matter.

But who are these expert analysis?

From the Prime Minister’s agenda and language it would appear that his adviser on the science is none other than James Hansen. Hansen is the father of the Global warming alarmist movement since the 1980’s and just happens to be AlGore’s science adviser.

A personal letter written from James Hansen written to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on the 27th of March 2008 is most revealing. You can click through and read the letter in full at the Crikey web site, but here are some extract that show Rudd parroting what Hansen has written:

In the letter Hansen urges Rudd to act - just notice how he plays to Rudd’s ego and his ambition to be a major player on the world stage. Hansen lays it on with a trowel.

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I recognize that for years you have been a strong supporter of aggressive forward-looking actions to mitigate dangerous climate change. Also, since your election as Prime Minister of Australia, your government has been active in pressing the international community to take appropriate actions.

We are now at a point that bold leadership is needed, leadership that could change the course of human history.

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Hansen then goes on to say the situation is URGENT, NEAR critical tipping points and then spells out what COULD happen:

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“Global climate is near critical tipping points that could lead to …. progressive, unstoppable global sea level rise, shifting of climatic zones with extermination of many animal and plant species, reduction of freshwater supplies for hundreds of millions of people, and a more intense hydrologic cycle with stronger droughts and forest fires, but also heavier rains and floods, and stronger storms driven by latent heat, including tropical storms, tornados and thunderstorms.

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Funny that’s exactly what Rudd has been telling the Australian Public, almost word for word. Then Hansen goes on to chronicle the dangers of coal and recommend the development of the very thing that Rudd unexpectantly spoke so passionately about in Parliament yesterday, carbon capture. -

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“Due to the dominant role of coal, solution to global warming must include phase-out of coal except for uses where the CO2 is captured and sequestered.

Yet there are plans for continuing mining of coal, export of coal, and construction of new coal-fired power plants around the world, including in Australia, plants that would have a lifetime of half a century or more.”

Then Hansen lays it on with a trowel again. Note the word COULD

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Your leadership in halting these plans COULD seed a transition that is needed to solve the global warming problem.

If Australia halted construction of coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester the CO2, it could be a tipping point for the world. There is still time to find that tipping point, but just barely.

I hope that you will give these considerations your attention in setting your national policies. You have the potential to influence the future of the planet.

Prime Minister Rudd, we cannot avert our eyes from the basic fossil fuel facts, or the consequences for life on our planet of ignoring these fossil fuel facts.

If we continue to build coal-fired power plants without carbon capture, we will lock in future climate disasters associated with passing climate tipping points. We must solve the coal problem now.

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To finish Hansen recommends 7 Australian scientist who are his disciples, for further reference.

I commend to you the following Australian climate, paleoclimate and Earth scientists to provide further elaboration of the science reported in my attached paper (Hansen et al., 2008):
Professor Barry Brook, Professor of climate change, University of Adelaide
Dr Andrew Glikson, Australian National University
Professor Janette Lindesay, Australian National University
Dr Graeme Pearman, Monash University
Dr Barrie Pittock, CSIRO
Dr Michael Raupach, CSIRO
Professor Will Steffen, Australian National University
Sincerely,
James E. Hansen
Kintnersville, Pennsylvania
United States of America

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Oh don’t forget the references to the little children.

Hansen said:

Prospects for today’s children, and especially the world’s poor, hinge upon our success in stabilizing climate.

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Or here from Hansen’s report on his lobbying trips to the UK, Germany & Japan in July

If we continue to ignore obvious geophysical facts about the magnitude of fossil fuel reservoirs, our children and grandchildren will have little reason to forgive our obtuseness.

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Kevin Rudd in Parliament yesterday:

“For our generation, for our kids and future generations, we must act now.”

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Or Here from his appearance on 60 minutes.

Look at your kids in the eye tonight and ask yourself this question - “If we have this much evidence available to us now “on climate change and just refuse to act, “then what are the consequences for them?”

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It’s comforting to know that an American NASA professor who cannot convince his own government to sign the Kyoto protocol is driving Australia to leading the world into a carbon constrained future.

It appears that on the advice of a one US professor Kevin Rudd is about to launch Australia into the greatest shake up of our economy the nation has ever seen. By the time the Kevin Rudd / James Hansen agenda is in place we will be poorer as a nation, but at least we’ll be cleaner.

Oh sorry I forgot because we only represent 1.3% of world CO2 emissions, cutting our Greenhouse gas emission will actually have zero impact on world emissions.

But its important to be seen on the world stage as a visionary leader and savior of the planet, when you spend as much time overseas as Kevin Rudd does. Isn’t it Kevin?

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Have Your say!

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Got a tip off, article or have you seen a video or item you’d like to be seen by the Agmates Community? If so please email it to us at news@agmates.com

Have you ever noticed that the champions of global warming are not scientists. Al Gore (ex politician), Nicholas Stern (economist), Ross Garnaut (economist) Kevin Rudd (diplomat / politician).

Oh it’s it a fact that 2,500 ICCP scientist have formed a consensus that humans are causing global warming. However Arthur B. Robinson, president and professor of chemistry at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, is one of 31,000 scientists who have signed a petition to disagree. Click on link to read the whole article.

“Robinson said that in recent years the U.N. and a group of 600 scientists, representing less than one percent of the scientific population, reached a “consensus” that global warming is happening. This has never been done before, Robinson insists.

Dennis Avery, Director for the Center of Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, agrees with Robinson. “Nobody can do science by a committee. You do science by testing,” said Avery. “To me it is appalling that an international organization of the stature of the U.N. would ignore the evidence of past climate changing.”

The signers of Robinson’s petition, including 9,000 Ph.Ds, all have one thing in common. They believe that human rights are being taken away.

Thats an interesting proposition and one that Australian Farmers have already experienced first hand.

Arthur Herman a historian and author in a great article in todays Australian agrees:

“IT has been a tough year for the high priests of global warming in the US. First, NASA had to correct its earlier claim that the hottest year on record in the contiguous US had been 1998, which seemed to prove that global warming was on the march. It was actually 1934. Then it turned out the world’s oceans have been growing steadily cooler, not hotter, since 2003. Meanwhile, the winter of 2007 was the coldest in the US in decades, after Al Gore warned us that we were about to see the end of winter as we know it.

Yet believers in man-made global warming demand more and more money to combat climate change and still more drastic changes in our economic output and lifestyle.

The reason is that precisely that they are believers, not scientists. No amount of empirical evidence will overturn what has become not a scientific theory but a form of religion.

Of Superstition and Enthusiasm, describes how even in civilised societies the mind of man is subject to certain unaccountable terrors and apprehensions when real worries are missing.

As these enemies are entirely invisible and unknown, like today’s greenhouse gases, people try to propitiate them by ceremonies, observations, mortifications, sacrifices such as Earth Day and banning plastic bags and petrol-driven lawnmowers.

Fear and ignorance, Hume concludes, are the true source of superstition. They lead a blind and terrified public to embrace any practice, however absurd or frivolous, which either folly or knavery recommends.”

Now think about the Australian farmers who have had their property rights taken from them with the tree clearing bans so Australia could meet its Kyoto obligations, without a cent of compensation!

Both articles go into detail how human rights will be sacrificed to the alter of the climate change religion. Well worth a read. It will make you THINK.

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Have Your Say!

John Mikkelsen (pictured) Columnist and former editor of the Gladstone Observer writes:

Thought you might be interested, (my column in today’s Gladstone Observer).

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THERE’s an email joke going the rounds, which would be pretty funny if the topic wasn’t so serious.
It comes complete with a cartoon of Garfield the feline philosopher in a sour mood, muttering,

“A lot of people can’t understand why Australia is running short of oil.
“There’s a very simple answer, nobody bothered to check the levels.
“Our oil supplies are located in Bass Strait, the East Queensland shale fields, the Canning Basin and the North West Continental Shelf.
“Our dipsticks are located in Canberra… Any Questions?
“I didn’t think so.”

Garfield certainly knows a thing or two, and there’s nothing wrong with his logic.

But while we are certainly paying for fuel as if it is running out fast, that’s not about to happen any time soon. I don’t pretend to understand the politics behind world oil crises but I’ve been around long enough to know they seem to be cyclical.

Back in the late 1970’s we were also told oil was running low, prices rose sharply (although compared to today’s levels, fuel was still very cheap), and surprise surprise, people even started downsizing their cars.

Sound familiar? It was all so serious that Ford, the father of V8 family cars, ceased producing V8’s in Australia for several years, and if you owned a V8 of that era you had to practically give it away to get rid of it.

Now days some of the most powerful and thirsty are fetching huge prices as collector items (think over $700,000 for a 1971 Phase 3 Falcon and you’re in the ball park. One was advertised several months back for a cool million).

But suddenly the oil started flowing again, former State Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen forgot his dream turned nightmare of providing Queenslanders with a hydrogen powered car and life returned to normal.

Around the same time, some climate scientists were predicting we were on the verge of another ice age and one eminent Norwegian expert even suggested the world needed to produce more carbon dioxide to offset this.

Fast forward to the present enlightened century.

Climate change is the new religion but the cry is now global warming, with oil and other fossil fuels the bad guys. But don’t worry, supplies are running low so huge prices are justified and if fuel excise plus GST aren’t enough to rake in billions, er, sorry, save the planet, let’s add a carbon tax to really make Aussies change their driving habits.

Sorry if I sound a little cynical but the plot seems as synthetic as some of the new green energy ideas being promoted.

And while I’m on the topic, guess which car was recently voted “Green Car of the Year” by major motoring group, Carsguide. No, it wasn’t a hybrid of the type which the Federal Government plans to subsidise, it was the diesel Hyundai i30 CRDi, with a rated fuel economy of just 4.7l/ 100km, combined with very low emissions.

Hang on, don’t the government, the ACCC and the new fuel commissioner apparently think it’s okay for the oil companies to charge a premium of about 25 cents a litre on distillate compared to unleaded?

Shouldn’t they be encouraging its greater use as a more economical, greener fuel by lowering its price and helping reduce food prices, as well as saving our farmers, fishing and transport industries at the same time?

If you find this all a bit confusing, I think Garfield has the answer.

National Transport Shutdown

Meanwhile, while the pollies and bureaucrats twiddle their thumbs, there is a nationwide transport shutdown looming, which could rival or surpass anything seen in Europe in recent months.

In case you haven’t heard, a north Queensland road transport operator, Mick Pattel (pictured below), is organising a meeting to discuss a national shutdown starting on July 28. He claims Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese is doing nothing to prevent this happening.

“When there is no food in the shops and fuel in the servos, the Minister will have to answer to the Australian public, not transport operators,” Pattel is quoted as saying in the latest edition of on-line rural newsletter, Agmates News.

“I’ve tried to speak to the minister but can’t get past his bureaucrats who told us he will never speak to me,” the truckie says.

He claims the minister’s view is that rising operating costs should be passed on, but when customers were farmers who were also going broke, this was not possible.

Farmers have also claimed they are unable to recoup rising costs from the major supermarkets, which increasingly favour cheap overseas produce.

Expect to see less “Australian product”, more ” contains Australian and overseas product” and even more ” product of China (or Malaysia)” on the food shelves, Garfield….

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Have Your Say!

South East QLD Farmer Viv Forbes writes:

As a farmer & chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition I am accusing the big farming lobby groups, government departments, politicians and Ministers representing agriculture of ignoring science and abandoning farmers to unjustified carbon taxation.

We believe there was no justification whatsoever for including emissions from farm animals in any carbon emissions tax scheme.

Every intelligent farmer can understand the carbon food cycle whereby every bit of carbon dioxide released by farm animals or plants into the atmosphere has previously been removed from the same atmosphere.

This simple process is surely not beyond the understanding of all the lobbyists, bureaucrats, researchers and media living off farmers?

In the farm sector carbon balance, apart from any fossil fuel used, it is a zero sum game, and all farm animals have ZERO NET CARBON EMISSIONS.

Grazing animals have not yet learned to live on coal or diesel fuel, and they cannot create carbon out of rocks, soil or water. Therefore they must extract it, via grasses and grains, from that marvellous gas of life in our atmosphere, carbon dioxide.

All foods and organic matter represent carbon that has been sequestered by life processes into living bodies.

Farm plants and animals are every bit as green as forests.

Both farms and forests extract carbon from the air and store it in organic life forms until that organic matter is burnt or decays in the open air, thus returning their borrowed carbon to the atmospheric storehouse.

Why then does growing forests attract a carbon credit and but growing cattle and sheep cops a carbon tax?

Australia and New Zealand lead the world in harvesting solar energy and carbon dioxide to produce an abundance of clean green food. Why then are both the New Zealand and the Australian governments proposing to force farm animals into their emissions trading quagmire?

And why are they subsidising the conversion of farmland producing food into forests producing nothing but carbon credits or crops producing ethanol motor fuel? What are future generations going to eat?

We are saying that farmers need to start agitating now or they risk being the only bunnies still paying carbon taxes.

Motorists who vote and use petrol will escape the carbon tax by sleight of hand - petrol excise will in future be called “carbon tax”.

Exporters will get an exemption to enable them to compete with more sensible regimes with no carbon taxes. Other protected species like working families in marginal electorates will get subsidies to cover carbon taxes on electricity bills.

Truckies will blockade the roads if politicians add carbon tax to diesel prices. That leaves farmers as the only big group with so few votes and such incompetent leadership that they will pay the carbon tax.

Farmers have been abandoned by Ag Force, the Meat and Livestock Authority, CSIRO, the National Party, and most of the similar organisations in New Zealand. It is not clear whether this is because of a lack of scientific logic or cowardice in the face of electoral hysteria on global warming.

But the politicians representing the treasured “working families” in the battling suburbs had better start taking notice of rising food prices or a more soundly based hysteria about the growing shortage of food will sweep emissions trading nonsense from the political landscape.

Viv Forbes, Farmer, BScApp, FAusIMM, FSIA

Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition

Agmates Editor Steve Truman writes:

This is a joke right - the latest report from the Office of Climate Change says:

“QUEENSLAND faces more intense monsoonal rains and cyclones in the north, lasting droughts in the central region, and heatwaves that may force people out of the west, according to a new report that finds the state “particularly vulnerable” to climate change”.

Read the Full article as it appeared in the Australian Newspaper Today.

Come back here after you have read it and tell us what you think?

Oh please - give us a break. The Multi million dollar funded Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) with all of the Satellites, Radars and computing power can’t even accurately predict the weather a week out. Yet this crew expects us to believe it knows what it’s going to to be in 2030, 2050 & 2070.

Again I’m reminded of a Bob Dylan Song - Idiot Wind. In my opinion the chorus of this song and the parable “The Emperors New Cloths” sum up this whole global warming / climate change sham that is “the idiot wind’ sweeping the globe.

The Chorus:

Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats,
Blowing through the letters that we wrote.
Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves,
We’re idiots, babe.
It’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves.

Here’s a video of Dylan singing Idiot Wind in 1976 for all you Dylan tragics (like me).

Note - If Video stops and starts while playing - let it run through once then click the Play arrow and it will run through without stopping the second time. Its your connection speed thats the trouble. This may not work if your on dial up.

Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they’d cut it out but when they will I can only guess.
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy,
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me.
I can’t help it if I’m lucky.

People see me all the time and they just can’t remember how to act
Their minds are filled with big ideas, images and distorted facts.
Even you, yesterday you had to ask me where it was at,
I couldn’t believe after all these years, you didn’t know me better than that
Sweet lady.

Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth,
Blowing down the backroads headin’ south.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
You’re an idiot, babe.
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

I ran into the fortune-teller, who said beware of lightning that might strike
I haven’t known peace and quiet for so long I can’t remember what it’s like.
There’s a lone soldier on the cross, smoke pourin’ out of a boxcar door,
You didn’t know it, you didn’t think it could be done, in the final end he won the wars
After losin’ every battle.

I woke up on the roadside, daydreamin’ ’bout the way things sometimes are
Visions of your chestnut mare shoot through my head and are makin’ me see stars.
You hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies.
One day you’ll be in the ditch, flies buzzin’ around your eyes,
Blood on your saddle.

Idiot wind, blowing through the flowers on your tomb,
Blowing through the curtains in your room.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
You’re an idiot, babe.
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny which broke us apart
You tamed the lion in my cage but it just wasn’t enough to change my heart.
Now everything’s a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped,
What’s good is bad, what’s bad is good, you’ll find out when you reach the top
You’re on the bottom.

I noticed at the ceremony, your corrupt ways had finally made you blind
I can’t remember your face anymore, your mouth has changed, your eyes
don’t look into mine.
The priest wore black on the seventh day and sat stone-faced while the building
burned.
I waited for you on the running boards, near the cypress trees, while the springtime
turned Slowly into autumn.

Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull,
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
You’re an idiot, babe.
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe.

I can’t feel you anymore, I can’t even touch the books you’ve read
Every time I crawl past your door, I been wishin’ I was somebody else instead.
Down the highway, down the tracks, down the road to ecstasy,
I followed you beneath the stars, hounded by your memory
And all your ragin’ glory.

I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I’m finally free,
I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me.
You’ll never know the hurt I suffered nor the pain I rise above,
And I’ll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love,
And it makes me feel so sorry.

Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats,
Blowing through the letters that we wrote.
Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves,
We’re idiots, babe.
It’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves.

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Tell us what you think?