The Kiwi ETS...will it ever fly ?

...the goony bird is still in gestation. If it hatches it seems doomed to become an expensive and useless indulgence, and fated to degenerate into an embarassed, lonely abomination that ultimately vanishes down its own dollar sinkhole. Reviewing Climategate, its associated IPCC shortcomings and the Kiwi ETS, ex ACT MP Muriel Newman observes...

...What all of this means for New Zealanders is that we are a victim of a global warming scaremongering campaign. Our political leaders have imposed on the country a range of policies based on evidence provided by the IPCC. The problem is that...this so-called evidence has been found to be riddled with fraud and deceit. It is up to the government to extricate us from the consequences. With the disastrous emissions trading scheme ready to kick in later this year, surely the government must postpone it until it has investigated the veracity of the evidence on which this policy is based. With an estimated $1 billion cost, the ETS should be repealed once it is revealed that the evidence does not to stack up... more from Muriel Newman, here... AND meanwhile what's Helen Clark up to these days ?

...The head of the United Nation's Development Agency's, Helen Clark, has called for climate change to be put at the very centre of international development thinking, during her 2-day visit to Australia.While in Sydney, Ms Clark, who's the former New Zealand Prime Minister, used an address to the Lowy Insitute to set out a four-point strategy for moving the development agenda forward...more here...

...and Quote of the Week from the IPCC's Rajendra Pachauri, with H/T to WuWT...

Q: Has all that has happened this winter dented the credibility of IPCC?
R.K.P.: I don’t think the credibility of the IPCC can be dented. If the IPCC wasn’t there, why would anyone be worried about climate change?

...AND news that Kiwi Pete Bethune, skipper of the (late) Ady Gill (left) is being held by the Japanese and may face piracy charges, brought this very interesting article to my attention from Tim Blair in the Sydney Telegraph...Just who is telling tall tales of whales ?

...AND, how long will it be before ICBM's are obsolete technology ? This is great news, that for the first time an airborne laser has shot down a ballistic missile...more here...

...breaking news from the UK, re allegations of child abuse and very high level cover up, here...

Why the sceptics are winning...

...well it's always been a foregone conclusion that the green alarmists won't win THIS battle.
Here on the sceptical side of the fence we have had a massive ammount of funding from big oil, the tobacco industry, the Vatican and the estates of George Orwell and Ronald Reagan; none of us have proper day jobs so we have become a highly organised subversive cadre schooled in all the black arts of propaganda and disinformation; we have the backing of all the influential politicians, insurance companies, pop stars, actresses and Hollywood moguls, and in addition to all that - we have a total stranglehold on the major organs of the main stream media, so that we can limit green scare stories about climate change...

This anyway, is (my version of) the view of the green apologist Prof. Andy Pitman co-director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. As my friend at Australian Climate Madness observes, the good professor ignores the obvious reason sceptics are winning the climate change battle; that the so called "consensus" science of the IPCC... is riddled with errors, fudged data and spin, (and) is hugely politicised...the IPCC is starting to resemble a bunch of losers who will be so discredited that they won't be able to show their faces in polite society for decades...more from ACM here...

...AND from Dr Pachauri himself..."All of this is very bad timing, it is very unfortunate," he said on Saturday "...Climate sceptics have seized upon the errors as evidence the IPCC is biased or unreliable. At this point in time, things don't look very good at all. They look very bleak," Pachauri said about the status of climate talks...

...AND from Andrew Bolt of the Sun Herald...When wild and baseless scares are pushed by a man who makes serious money from them, it’s time to call in the auditors. Pachauri may be innocent of any wrong doing, but only a fool would be blind to the danger of corruption when so many millions are being thrown at pushers of the warming faith.
Question: could the Nobel Prize be withdrawn from the IPCC if more such revelations come to light?

Happy 2010 !

After a very happy, sunny and over-indulgent break let's survey what's in store for the doomsayers of the green left, and let's do some crystal ball gazing for the year ahead. 2010 looks to me like the year that "global warming" finally slinks away in shame to disgrace and irrelevance...here's why...

In the UK Telegraph, Christopher Booker and Richard North have accused Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the UN's climate change panel and Chairman of the IPCC - of conflict of interest leading to immense personal gain, thereby making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies. Pachauri's lawyers are threatening...note his response to it all, in The Guardian, including comments here...

...and also in the Telegraph from James Delingpole, this defiant warcry ...

...one of our jobs this year is to wipe the complacent smiles off the smug faces of the lobbyists, “experts”, “scientists”, politicians and activists pushing AGW. This is why I am so glad to report that Michael Mann – creator of the incredible Hockey Stick curve and one of the scientists most heavily implicated in the Climategate scandal – is about to get a very nasty shock. When he turns up to work on Monday, he’ll find that all 27 of his colleagues at the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University have received a rather tempting email inviting them to blow the whistle on anyone they know who may have been fraudulently misusing federal grant funds for climate research.
Under US law, regardless of whether or not a prosecution results, the whistleblower stands to make very large sums of money: it is based on a percentage of the total government funds which have been misused, in this case perhaps as much as $50 million...more here...

(H/T John O’Sullivan of www.climategate.com)

...in NZ, we can already see a subtle change in media attitude and approach to AGW. For example, Bill Ralston ex Chairman of TVNZ, writing in his weekly Listener column, calls "global warming" the bore story of the year. Not for me however, I think ongoing revelations of political manipulation and fraud and scientific corruption will keep the heat turned right up...