The scary swindle is over...

...as we wake to the first day of a new electoral cycle here in NZ, we look to PM John Key's centre right government to address the herd of elephants that clutter up our living space. The king of the herd is the ETS. My last posts have mentioned the collapsing international carbon trading market and the recognition that the Durban environmental summit will be a waste of time. It is therefore inconceivable that an incoming government in NZ will continue to commit its citizens to hefty tax and commodity price rises to appease our masters within the UN. In Europe and in the UK in particular, the tide against carbon trading and climate alarmism is overwhelming. This, from the Telegraph's Christopher Booker...

"...The irony is, however, that just as the BBC adopted its new hard line on climate change, in the real world the story was beginning to shift. Ever more searching questions have come to be asked about the supposed “consensus” on man-made warming, and the BBC’s coverage has come to look ever more one-sidedly absurd. Last week, even Richard Black, another BBC proselytiser for man-made warming, was gloomily having to reveal the conclusion of a new IPCC report: that, over the next few decades, “climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variabilty”. In plain English, that means the great scare story is over. What a shame. But at what a price...more here... Hat tip Anon...

Inconvenient Truths...the NZ perspective...

...I have commented before that pragmatic southern hemisphere policies on climate change are likely to lead the world. I wouldn't have made that prediction 6 or 7 months ago, when Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's ETS was the only political option on the table for Australia. However, a lot has happened since then; most of those happenings ending in 'gate'. Exceptions to that terminology though are Copenhagen and Tony Abbott. Both have exploded into the debate and changed it forever.

Here in NZ, conscious of our size we like to think that internationally we "punch above our weight". And certainly with a look at the statistics of sport and child abuse we do a lot of punching. With regard to saving the planet though, our ex-PM Helen Clarke, now pulling levers at the UN, was a dutiful and obedient party liner, eager to destroy our economy if she could . Her successor, John Key has played a more cautious pragmatic line, leaving comment largely up to his Environment Minister Nick Smith. And Smith's most recent pronouncement was "I've had calls...to abandon or defer the ETS. That's not what the Government's going to do. It's a very important first step."Smith is also quoted as saying NZ would do its fair share (to cut emissions) but that "it would not be a world leader".The two sentiments seem very difficult to reconcile. In Australia, Kevin Rudd is now seen as "being alone and exposed" over his failure to maintain support for the ETS. If an Australian election dumps Rudd in favour of Tony Abbott, and the USA so-called 'cap and trade' bill fails, as seems likely, NZ and Europe will be the world's only champions of an ETS. Where I wonder would that leave Nick Smith ? Is he reading this, do you think ? Is anyone even asking ?

...The Business Council of Australia no longer considers the introduction of an ETS as providing business certainty and has put a caveat on support for an Australian scheme that cannot be met.
Given the fiasco of Copenhagen, the BCA has urged the government to change its scheme "in line with other international responses". Further, it has demanded the unconditional target of cutting greenhouse gases by 5 per cent by 2020, the same target as the Coalition's, not be lifted "before we have clear and credible commitments, and actions, from both developed and developing countries that are verifiable and monitored".
That's impossible for nations such as China and India to meet: the BCA may as well have urged an ETS be set up on the moon before Australia lifts its target...more here...

The Australian ETS is dead...

...and with it the hopes of Australian power hungry super statists. Two factors will have to unite to revive the dead beast, one of which is a renewed trust in the now discredited field of "climate science", the other an alarming upsurge in global temperatures with accompanying climate catastrophes. This morning's NZ Herald reports...

• ...since the Copenhagen summit, support for an ETS - previously steady at 66 per cent - had dived 10 points.
• ...45 per cent preferred Tony Abbott's alternative plan, with 39 per cent supporting Rudd's ETS.
• ...belief that CO2 was a greenhouse gas had slumped from 62 per cent to 54 per cent, the proportion of Australians believing there was a risk of catastrophic climate change had slipped from 55 to 49 per cent.
• ...(The Labor Government's) lead in the two-party preferred vote had narrowed by two points since November, with Labor at 54 per cent and the Coalition at 46.
• ...Preference for Rudd as Prime Minister had slumped from 68 per cent to 58 against Abbott's 31; 10 points ahead of Turnbull's rating when the last Neilsen poll was made in November...more here...

Which of course begs the question, where to for tiny NZ ? Apart from NZ and a limited European Union scheme, no other country has yet adopted an ETS, for many very good reasons, all of them detailed in this blog and many others...

...and from The Economist, H/T Anon. comments yesterday, news that the USA are considering an alternative to their ETS Cap and Trade bill, Cap-and-Dividend ...

...and a word of warning, with links to useful sites re the physics of global warming, from blogger CountingCats...It does sometimes feel now as if there’s not as much point in researching this any more – with Climategate and the turning of the tide in the British media, I almost feel as if it’s already all over. That we just need to sweep up the pieces. But it isn’t, and there are people over there thinking that if they can just ride out the storm until the public lose interest again, they can carry on with their schemes as before.
And we not only need to stop them, but we need to remember – to scorch the knowledge into society’s collective memory – so that when the next big scare comes along, which it will, it won’t have dropped down the memory hole again, like all the others, and we might actually have learned something useful from it all...more here...

...and Quote of the Day..."Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as unacceptable as Holocaust denial." George Monbiot, The Guardian, 21 September 2006