Well I reckon that Brother Number One knows his ETS will never get through the senate…

I think that we can be certain that both Brother Number One and his Climate change minister Penny W(r)ong now know that their emissions trading scheme is doomed to fail at the senate hurdle, as both the opposition and the minor parties will not let it pass.

THE Federal Government has quietly scrapped a multimillion-dollar advertising blitz to promote its controversial emissions trading scheme amid widespread criticism that its plan is too complex and will do little to tackle global warming.

Documents given to The Sunday Age reveal a taxpayer-funded climate change call centre was also canned, after receiving an average of just 16 calls a day at a cost of $52 each.

The Government’s campaign — “Think Climate, Think Change” — has already cost millions of dollars, with ads run on television and in magazines.

But documents from the Department of Climate Change show that a second phase of the campaign, which was to explain how emissions trading would work, has been dumped and “no further advertising is being planned”.

The documents, provided on notice to a Senate committee, show the Government has already spent $8.1 million buying advertising, $476,000 on creative agency fees and advertising production costs, $149,000 on market research, $13,000 on website development, and $83,000 on the call centre.

About $8.8 million has been spent out of $13.9 million that was set aside, leaving almost $5.1 million unspent.

The question is how far will Brother Number One be willing to push this issue? Will he for instance want to go to the people to test their faith in the Warminista liturgy?
An interesting one to watch.
Cheers Comrades

Unapproachable glorious sound

Norton NRV588 Tracktest at Donington and Dynometer for Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy). Glowing exhaust pipes and a unmistakable buzzsaw sound!

Listen to the glorious sound!!

Hat tip to JF Beck

Cheers Comrades

So this is Global warming Eh????

You have to be amused by the responses to the current weather from the Warministas as they desperately try to find excuses fro the current claimatic pattern that fit their liturgy.

A COLD weather outbreak this week broke records across the southeast as one of the most intense Bass Strait low pressure systems in the past decade brought an early taste of winter.

National Climate Centre climatologist Blair Trewin said “the persistence of the cold air was exceptional”.

“Melbourne had four days below 15C, Canberra had four days below 15C and Hobart had three days below 12C,” he said.

“In all three cases, you’d have to go back to the 1940s and 50s to find longer runs of cold days in April.”

The Bass Strait low, with pressure of 952 hectopascals, and a following high were slow in moving east, allowing the southerly air to settle and cool.

In the past week, night-time temperatures were up to 4C below normal in central Queensland. Tuesday morning’s minimum of 8.2C at Brisbane Airport was 8.7C below the April norm. That morning, Longreach and Charleville recorded minimums 6.8C and 8.1C below average.

Ah well such frenzied dancing around the truth may actually prevent them getting hypothermia…
Cheers Comrades

The ETS scheme is going down the gurgler and Penny is in denial.

The snow has come early this year, so much for global warming...

One of my favourite aphorisms is “act in haste and repent at leisure” and it is most apt when you consider the Governments attempts to create a carbon trading regime.

AUSTRALIA’S electricity generators have warned the Rudd Government that power stations could face insolvency this year under an emissions trading scheme that forced such rapid change it risked “blowing up in their faces”.

The National Generators Forum told a Senate committee yesterday that many power stations would simply not be able to afford the 100 to 200 per cent increase in operating costs under the current plan to require them to buy more than 80 per cent of necessary emissions permits. This would leave some insolvent and all struggling to find $50 billion in new and refinancing capital over the next five years.

The forum said the $3.9 billion compensation in free permits on offer fell short of the $10 billion or more in asset value loss they would suffer.

The warnings came as the Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce said there was almost no chance the Nationals would agree to emissions trading amendments being prepared by the Liberal Party in preparation for Senate negotiations over the Government’s “carbon pollution reduction scheme”.

“I think it is exceptionally, exceptionally unlikely that an alternative emissions trading scheme would be any better, any less tokenistic, than the Government’s emissions trading scheme,” Senator Joyce said.

The problem for Ms W(r)ong is that her scheme was conceived and gestated during the recently deflated boom, with all of the assumptions of continuing growth and willingness of people to absorb and ignore increases in costs for the necessities of life, like our energy bills. But now in harder times no one is as flippant about such things.
On top of that there is a growing chorus of voices that are saying that this scheme will do diddly about actually lowering our emission of CO2. Finally there is the little problem (for Ms W(r)ong That the climate is still not following the Warminsista script as this country has an particularly cool start to autumn…
Hmm does not look good For Ms W(r)ong or her lord and master Brother Number One.
Cheers Comrades