Agmates

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is convinced the science on man made global warming is settled. In fact he’s so convinced that the science of the IPCC and NASA’s James Hansen is correct that his number 1 political priority is the introduction of an Emissions Trading Scheme by mid 2010.

The latest science shows that the IPCC’s Climate Change Modelling is grossly overstated..

Climate change may not be as severe as predicted, suggests an international study that shows current modelling of carbon dioxide emissions from soils are overestimated by as much as 20%.

The view, reported in the latest Nature Geoscience journal, is based on a study of Australian soils that finds the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released by Australian soils is much lower than previously believed.

The finding has major implications for climate change predictions as annual carbon emissions from soils are estimated to be more than all human-made CO2 emissions combined.

The incredibly ironic thing is that one of the reports Co_Authors Dr Evelyn Krull [pictured] , is a scientist at the Australian governments own CSIRO Land and Water. Dr Krull goes on to say:

For Australia, a proportion of 20% charcoal in soils would lead to a 135 teragram (135 billion kilograms) overestimation on a continental scale.

“On an annual basis, an inflated prediction from topsoils alone equates to … 84% of CO2 emissions associated with aviation for Australia using values obtained for 2006,” the paper says.

Surprise, Surprise the research has found that climate change modelling is grossly overstated.

…this means that current scenarios predicted by climate change modeling “are making it look worse than it actually would be”.

This highlights the need for a global initiative to analyse soils worldwide for charcoal content so that modeling can be more accurate, she says.

Beautiful - the climate models are overstated. All the while Rajendra Pachauri, James Hansen, Al Gore, Tim Flannery, Don Henry , Barry Brook & Clive Hamilton of the alarmist cause try to tell us Global Warming is happening faster than the models actually predicted.

The science on man made global warming is settled. Yes right.

Also published On Crikey’s Enviro Blog “Rooted”

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NSW State Labor governments have been so incompetent in managing the States finances that prominent business leader Heather Ridout is calling for the appointment of an administrator to run the State.

KEVIN Rudd has been urged to treat NSW as a local council and appoint an administrator to fix its economic mess, after incompetent management by Labor Premier Nathan Rees and his ministers.

Influential business leader Heather Ridout [pictured] said yesterday the NSW economy was lagging so badly it had become a national issue that needed separate attention.

Appointing an administrator would mean the sacking of the current government. If this was a Liberal government Labor PM Rudd may well take action. But despite his stern warning to the state earlier this month, the PM will not act against the Union controlled NSW Labor government.

NSW, which accounts for a third of the nation’s economy, has fallen behind national growth for seven years in a row. It was the only state to grow at less than 3 per cent in the past financial year. Mr Rudd issued a blunt warning to Mr Rees a fortnight ago, saying:

“I will say in loud and clear terms - the Government of NSW has to radically lift its game.”

The incompetence of the NSW Labor government is another example of why Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce’s call to abolish State Governments is the correct way forward for Australia.

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You don’t have to be a body language expert to work out whats going on between Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and US President George Bush.

Kevin is a foolish little man.

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My mum tried to teach me as a child that I should never say anything about someone that I would not not say if they were in ear shot.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is in Washington at the G-20 conference and has had an awkward and brief meeting with US president George Bush.

US PRESIDENT George W. Bush appeared standoffish as he greeted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at a G20 working dinner today.

It was the first time the pair have met in person since the controversial leaking of a phone conversation between the men last month.

The normally gregarious president gave Mr Rudd a very business-like greeting at the entry to the White House.

While other world leaders got big smiles and pats on the back from Mr Bush, the Australian prime minister had to make do with a brief handshake and a relatively stony face from the president as the pair posed for photographers and TV crews.

Rightly so, the PM no doubt feels a little embarrassed by having to front the US President after the leak that made out that Rudd had to explain to Bush what the G-20 was.

The Australian Newspaper is stringently maintaining today that the story is correct. They shoiuld know as the Editor Chris Mitchell was at the Kirribilli diner.

The contentious part of Franklin’s story revealed that during the 30-minute conversation, Mr Rudd was stunned to hear Mr Bush say: “What’s the G20?” We stand by the story with confidence.

I think our ‘wannabe world leader’ of a Prime Minister today in the hallowed halls of Washington is wishing his mum had given him the same advice as my mum gave me. Maybe Mrs Rudd did, but Kevin just didn’t listen.

Not only is fronting George Bush an uncomfortable situation for our PM to be in, its also politically dangerous. Australian culture has a very low tolerance of those who are ‘big noter’s’ especially at the expense of others even if they are the US president.

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Journalist Terry McCrann poses some serious questions about Australian Treasury’s modelling of the economic impact of the emissions trading scheme.

OH DEAR. Two weeks ago, I wrote that Treasury had shredded its credibility. It appears I was being too generous.

And one of his key right-hand men, David Gruen, revealed that the complex economic modelling, which has backed the Rudd Government’s aggressive greenhouse gas reduction strategy, was based on assumptions so simplistic — and arguably just wrong — that they would be embarrassing coming from a first-year undergraduate in economics.

McCrann goes on to question the ‘first mover’ principal so often touted by Treasury and the Rudd government.

The bigger worry in the “quality” of such fundamentally important treasury advice is Gruen’s contention — and therefore a core assumption in the modelling — is of a first-mover advantage.

“Economies that defer action face higher long-term costs. This is because more emission-intensive infrastructure is locked in place in the meantime,” he said.

I doubt that I’ve read a more naive unknowing sentence in years. It’s as if Gruen has travelled through the last three decades with his eyes and mind shut.

In a world of such rapid technological change, you are far more likely to see the exact opposite. Early movers locking-in inefficient early-stage infrastructure. Think the “new energy” version of IBM main-frame computers for example.

Hasn’t Gruen heard of the “free-rider principle”? Let others spend the billions of dollars developing the “new energy” — assuming the necessary can-opener can be found.

For a very contextual example look at those useless and inefficient wind farms. Does Gruen really believe his has seen the future in their lazy rotations?

The Emissions Trading scheme will give Australia ‘first mover’ advantage straight into the world of tariffs & import quotas.

He claims that the energy switch is analogous to the tariff experience. He’s right, but he gets it exactly wrong. Placing artificial restrictions on carbon energy is like quotas on imports. Artificially boosting the price of carbon energy is like a tariff on imports.

In effect, we have Treasury mindlessly proposing that we go back to the energy equivalent of our tariff and import quota past. And doesn’t even have a clue what it’s doing.

We, and I do mean we, should be worried, seriously worried.

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Our current Australian anti-farmer policies coupled with a population that grows by 1 person net each 1.3 seconds will lead us to a point within 40 years where we will be a net importer of food. As the world population grows by another 2.3 billion people, food in Australia will indeed become a scarce resource.

During the past 8 years just on 11,000 Australian farmers have left the land. Today just 130,000 farmers or 0.6% of the population not only feed 21.5 million Australians but export enough food to feed double that number.

Australia is one of the world’s major agriculture exporters not because we are a major producer on a world scale, but because we have a small population. Our population is exploding whilst each day our policy makers work hard at reducing the number of farmers and their capacity to produce, in the name of ‘free trade’ and the environment.

As the Australian anti-farmer Federal and State Labour governments continue with policies that shrink our farming sector, world experts are urging them to pour money into ag & water research to avoid world wide food shortages and civil unrest.

THE director-general of the International Water Management Institute, Colin Chartres, has warned that Australia, along with the other developed nations, needs to invest more in research into agriculture and water management and in international aid.

The Rudd government is doing the exact opposite with huge cuts to CSIRO ag research funding including the closing of a number of world renown research facilities.

One of the first things the new Ag Minister Tony Burke did in coming to power 12 months ago was to scrap the very successful Farmbiz program which subsidized training and ongoing resource management education for farmers.

The QLD Labor government has followed up with an announcement it will close more Department of Primary Industry research facilities in that state.

Chartres says the food crisis of the past year was an important warning sign. “We have to heed the warning. Otherwise the ultimate outcome is, if we have millions of people starving in the developing world, much more social unrest, much more fertile ground for terrorists and extremists and the whole world becomes a lot less safe.

There is whole lot standing on it in terms of social security, as well as food security.”

(more…)

Chairman of the IPCC Rajenda Pachauri [pictured] avoids the inconvenient truth. Sydney Morning Herald journalist Michael Duffy points this out,

Last month I witnessed something shocking. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was giving a talk at the University of NSW. The talk was accompanied by a slide presentation, and the most important graph showed average global temperatures. For the past decade it represented temperatures climbing sharply.

As this was shown on the screen, Pachauri told his large audience: “We’re at a stage where warming is taking place at a much faster rate [than before]“.

Now, this is completely wrong. For most of the past seven years, those temperatures have actually been on a plateau. For the past year, there’s been a sharp cooling.

These are facts, not opinion: the major sources of these figures, such as the Hadley Centre in Britain, agree on what has happened, and you can check for yourself by going to their websites. Sure, interpretations of the significance of this halt in global warming vary greatly, but the facts are clear.

Here, have a look at the graph yourself. It clearly shows its getting hotter and quicker than anyone thought?

Just as well Pachauri is a world leading scientist. I mean if he were a used car salesman and pulled a stunt like that in a sales presentation, would you buy from him?

So it’s disturbing that Rajendra Pachauri’s presentation was so erroneous, and would have misled everyone in the audience unaware of the real situation. This was particularly so because he was giving the talk on the occasion of receiving an honorary science degree from the university.

Remember, this is the Chairman of the IPCC and this is the science that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is relying on as the reason why Australia must embrace an emissions trading scheme to stop global warming?

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John Mikkelsen [pictured] writes:

EVER wonder who you should be pointing the finger of blame at over the world’s deepening economic crisis?

America, the world banks, stock market greed, all of the above? No.

According to so some Pommy journalists, you can blame our own Aussie hard rock exports, AC/DC.

Now you might think either I or these Poms writing in such highbrow publications as The Guardian, have been doing what mad dogs and Englishmen are famous for. But Angus, Malcolm, Brian and co have been linked to every economic downturn in the UK and other parts of the world since they first rose to fame way back in the 1970’s.

It’s true - whenever AC/DC have been Back in Black so to speak, with a hit riding high in the charts, the UK and many other world economies have been well and truly in the red.

Here’s what one recent report said:

“Financially, the country’s already on the Highway to Hell, but that has not stopped the British from pointing the finger of blame at AC/DC.

The ageing Aussie rockers have hit the top of the UK album charts for the first time in 28 years with their latest and 18th album Black Ice, outselling their nearest rival, Kaiser Chiefs, at a rate of two to one.

But the British press have analysed the last times the heavy rockers hit the spot and found a link to their big selling records and an economy teetering on the brink of recession.

When they formed in Australia in 1973, the economies of the Northern Hemisphere were being tested with the beginning of the oil crisis. AC/DC’s breakthrough Back in Black topped the charts in 1980 as inflation in the UK hit 20 percent and unemployment came close to the psychologically unsettling two million mark.

As the economy recovered, the band’s popularity diminished, but again they made a mark on the album charts in 1990 with Razor’s Edge, again before the worst recession in a decade.

Black Ice has already sold more than five million copies and the British economy is suffering negative growth for the first time in 16 years; expect to see two million people out of work and the sterling has crashed to a 20 year low…”

Well, it’s been a long way but Angus and the boys are also bound for the top again here in Australia and we all know what’s happening to our economy and our dwindling budget surplus as Treasurer Wayne Swan warns there could be worse to come.

Maybe he, Kevin Rudd, US President-elect Barack Obama and the heads of the other G20 nations should listen up and chart their economic strategies to AC/DC’s release schedules.

Maybe they should be invited to perform at the upcoming economic summit where they could inspire delegates by belting out some inspirational tunes such as Long Way to the Top and You Shook Me, with Back in Black as an encore.

Seriously folks, The Guardian article surmised that in tough economic times, people sought out culture that was uncomplicated and dependable,

“and rock music has never produced a band so uncomplicated and dependable as AC/DC.”

Amen.

And even better news, they are soon coming to a pub near you. Sorry, I made that bit up, but I see that tribute band Acca Dacca is indeed headed our way soon so I guess if you want to let off some steam, forget about your dwindling superannuation funds and the diving Aussie dollar, that could be your answer.

Just don’t ask the Angus, Brian and Malcolm clones when they expect the economic Hells Bells to stop ringing or you might cop more than a blank look.

******

Incidentally, even Queen Elizabeth has now asked why no world leaders foresaw the world’s escalating economic crisis. Heavens knows the warning signs were there and a couple of British comedians, John Bird and John Fortune, actually gave a very clear picture of what was about to happen in a video they made about the sub- prime loans crash around 12 months ago.

Already featured on Agmates and you can also find it on YouTube and other sites - hilarious if it wasn’t so true.

Back in Black live live at ‘No Bull’ in Spain.

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On Wednesday evenings TV news the big story was President Elect Barrack Obama. I saw Prime Minister Kevin Rudd being interviewed and offering his congratulations to Barack Obama. I heard him say.

“25 years ago Martin Luther King dreamed of an America where men and women will be judged not on the colour of their skin but on the content of their character,” the Prime Minister declared.

“Today what America has done is turn that dream into a reality.”

Now any student of history or in fact an Agmates reader on that day would have known that it was in fact 45 years ago. But when I read it in the Australian the next day, this is how it was quoted: -

“45 years ago Martin Luther King….”

So I thought oh I must have misheard it. But on the Crikey web site today (no link as its in the paid subcriber section). Crikey’s Bernard keane points out:

“If you google “Martin Luther King Rudd Obama” “and you can see that “25″ appears to have originally been used by The Age and The Australian, but click through to the actual stories either 45 is used or the quote is omitted.”

But a number of overseas media including the UK Telegraph and ABS/CBN that one assumes the Prime Ministers minders can’t influence have the PM as saying 25 years, which is what he actually said.

As Bernard Keane points out its not a major issue, just a slip of the tongue, by the PM. It is however concerning that the Australia’s mainstream newspapers would change what he actually said or leave it out all together. I would have thought their role as ‘independent media’ is to report the news as it happened. But apparently not in all cases.

But I guess following hot on the heals of the PM’s embarrassing George Bush G-20 ‘porky’ he hardly needs to be ‘off side’ with the new president elect - even before he gets to the White House. As Bernard Keane points out.

“But given Barack Obama wouldn’t have been overly impressed by an Australian Prime Minister who appeared not to know the basics about the man who was, until Wednesday, the most important African-American political figure in US history, a little hasty editing probably spared some blushes.”

Its a little sad when our main straem media has to start rewriting stories to ‘protect’ our Prime Minister’s international reputation.

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Prime Minister Kevin Rudd leadership is starting to sustain real collateral damage over his George Bush, G-20 gaffe.

“Mr Rudd’s embarrassment over the leaked discussion - in which he talked with Mr Bush about bringing together the G20 group of nations to deal with the international financial crisis - has increased, with reports now spreading in the media overseas, appearing in Britain and Asia, as well as in Washington.”

Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull is also starting to apply the blow torch:

Mr Turnbull said Mr Rudd had allowed a version of the call to get into the media, designed to make him “look like a diplomatic encyclopedia and make Mr Bush look stupid”.

“There is nothing that he could have done that could have done more damage to Australia’s reputation in Washington than that,” he said.

The Government has obviously been ignoring the incident hoping it would just fade away, but now even that strategy is backfiring :

Former diplomat Bruce Haig said the incident was a “silly thing to have happened”. But what was worse “is the slowness with which the Government has moved to distance itself from the statement”, Mr Haig said.

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