Australia worst performer on climate change - report - BBC News

The BBC headline this report thus:

'Australia worst performer on climate change'

Then there's a picture of Sydney under a polluted sky. You have to read the caption to see that the pollution is because of 'raging fires'. Looks as though the BBC's photos are chosen to set the agenda as well as ever.

You have to read on to discover that Australia was the worst performing industrial country in terms of climate change and that the bottom country on the list was in fact Saudi Arabia.

The BBC's hatred of governments that aren't of the right type means that Australia is ripe for attack, how dare Tony Abbott express doubts over the Religion of Climate Change? Meanwhile Saudi Arabia is beyond criticism as the home of Islamism.

As an addendum, how can Saudi Arabia not be classified as an industrialised nation? It's the 19th largest economy in the world and according to the latest figures I could find its economy is split agriculture: 3.2%, industry: 60.4%, services: 36.4%. It's an economy built on a sea of oil, it's not some sort of agrarian paradise.

Australia FM: Don't call settlements illegal under international law

Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has more balls than William Hague.

Australia FM: Don’t call settlements illegal under international law 

In candid interview, Julie Bishop expresses skepticism about the peace process, says boycott Israel activists are ‘anti-Semitic’

More here http://www.timesofisrael.com/australia-fm-dont-call-settlements-illegal-under-international-law/

The class of an Australian, in this case the Australian cricket captain Michael Clarke

"Get ready for a broken fucking arm" - What a classy chap.

Australia: 273-8, Stuart Broad 20.0 - 3 - 65 - 5

You cannot keep a good man down and all that pre-series name calling by the Australian media and some players has only served to gird Stuart Broad's loins. It's going to be a great series for the 'smug Pommy cheat' aka 'Stuart Fraud'...

Tony Abbott and family

This picture of the newly elected Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his wife and three daughters caught my eye. Eyes right!

Backpacker survives six weeks in Australia

'BRITISH 18-year-old Stephen Malley has managed to survive for six weeks in the heart of Sydney.  

Starved of culture and self-deprecation, Malley was forced to drink his own urine rather than sweet, fizzy lager.

He said: “Neighbours and Home and Away can’t prepare you for the reality of the situation.
“Everyone here is so relentlessly cheerful.”'

 Lovely satire...

Thanks to The Daily Mash

Australia to Ban Blowing Out Birthday Candles

If true then file under oh ffs

'Australia to Ban Blowing Out Birthday Candles'

'Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council has put forth guidelines barring groups of kids from blowing out birthday candles together. The reason? They "could be puffing germs onto one another."

The guidelines suggest that any kid who feels he absolutely has to blow out candles should bring his own cupcake with a candle in it, that he can step away from the group and blow it out.

In fact, the guidelines stipulate that the birthday child should always have his or her own cupcake for this purpose.

The new rules also require children to wash their hands "with alcohol sanitizer" before and after playing in a sandbox.

Australian Medical Association President Mr. Steve Hambleton sees the new requirements as outrageous: "If someone sneezes on a cake, I probably don't want to eat it either--but if you're blowing out candles, how many organisms are transferred to a communal cake, for goodness sake?"

Hambleton alluded to the fact that kids need exposure to "a certain amount of environmental antigens" in order to build up their immune system. These new regulations may slow or hinder that build up. '

More at  BreitBart


However did I make it through childhood? I travelled in cars without seat belts, with drum brakes & cross ply tyres. I scraped my knees & didn't get antiseptic applied until I got home hours later. I cycled the mile or so to the park where I played all day. I had no mobile phone but I did have 2p, later 10p,  for 'emergencies'.

My friends & I all blew out candles on cakes, played kiss chase and later found other ways to expose ourselves to each others germs and yet we're all still here.


Maybe children in Australia are particularly delicate or the doctors particularly stupid.

Happy Australia Day

Something for my Australian visitors - Do you like Dick? This advert was banned in Australia for it's content and innuendo - really? Australia Day is 26 January.

Carnita Matthews update

At the very end of last I year I blogged about Carnita Matthews the burqa-clad mother of seven who claimed she was the victim of mistaken identity has been jailed for six months for making a false complaint against a police officer. You can read the story at that stage on my blog, including the video that saved the policeman from censure.

Unfortunately I now read that:

'THE Muslim woman accused of lying about police trying to tear her burqa off has avoided jail – because her identity could not be proven.

Carnita Matthews, 47, from Woodbine, in Sydney’s southwest, had been sentenced to six months in jail for making a deliberately false statement that a policeman tried to forcibly remove her burqa because he was a racist.

But judge Clive Jeffreys said yesterday he was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that it was Mrs Matthews who made the racism accusation because the person who complained to police was wearing a burqa at the time.

The absurdity of the law is that, to reach the level of proof of identity to make the case, Mrs Matthews would have been required to identify herself by lifting her burqa at the police station – what started the uproar in the first place.

More than a dozen Muslim supporters linked arms and began chanting “Allah Akbar” as they stormed out of Downing Centre Court with Mrs Matthews concealed behind them.

Tempers rose and they began jostling with police after several members of the group attacked cameramen.

It marked a stark difference from their behaviour minutes earlier, when they had quietly assembled outside the lifts for prayer shortly after the judge’s decision.

Mrs Matthew’s lawyer Stephen Hopper defended their actions saying: “They are obviously happy with the result and are expressing it in a way that is culturally appropriate to them.”

Judge Jeffreys said yesterday that even if Mrs Matthews had made the complaint, he could not be sure she knew it was a “false” statement.

“I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that she made the complaint,” he said.

“Even if I was satisfied that she made the complaint, I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that it was knowingly false.”

Mrs Matthews made the claim in her court appearance last year, saying police could not prove it was her behind the burqa when the complaint was handed in to police. The local magistrate rejected it.'

Now I begin to see why wearing the burqa is so popular; it's a 'get out of jail free' card. I hope the Australian courts realise what they have left themselves open to...

The problem with the burqa

Accusations of racism, the burqua and Australia.

A very odd speech in the Australian Parliament - including a bit of The Time Warp

The Liberal Party's 'Senator Mary Jo Fisher does an unusual speech in the Australian Parliament, She does the Hokey Pokey and the Time Warp and talks about Julia Gillards new carbon tax in one session, good on ya senator Mary Jo Fisher!'

I can't imagine this being allowed in the House of Commons and since the retirement  of Michael Portillo I am not sure who would best play Dr Frank-N-Furter...


Thanks to Guido Fawkes for the spot.

Does less moisture in the atmosphere cause global warming, or does more moisture in the atmosphere cause global warming?

Haunting the Library relates the following:

'just before the floods. On October 11th 2010 the Science Daily website reported on the publication of perhaps the most authoritative study yet on the effects of global warming on drought in the southern hemisphere.

The study “Recent decline in the global land evapotranspiration trend due to limited moisture supply” was published in the prestigious Nature magazine and, as Science Daily reported, included many of the leading climate science research institutes across the world:
The study was an milestone for the climate science community and was an international effort. It found that soils were drying up in many parts of the southern hemisphere, including Australia and that this was leading to less moisture in the atmosphere:

...

Most climate models have suggested that evapotranspiration, which is the movement of water from the land to the atmosphere, would increase with global warming. The new research, published online this week in the journal Nature, found that’s exactly what was happening from 1982 to the late 1990s.

But in 1998, this significant increase in evapotranspiration — which had been seven millimeters per year — slowed dramatically or stopped. In large portions of the world, soils are now becoming drier than they used to be, releasing less water and offsetting some moisture increases elsewhere.

The study reported that Australia was one of the worst affected areas, but the loss of moisture in the atmosphere was widespread over the entire southern hemisphere.

A recent decrease in atmospheric relative humidity detected over Australia could be caused by declining ET on the Australian continent.
Jung et. al. Recent Decline in the Global Land Evapotranspirsation Trend Due to Limited Moisture Supply. Nature. 951–954(21 October 2010)

That seemed to settle matters. As Tim Flannery put it, coal fired power stations “emit much of the CO2 that is the ultimate cause of the drying”. Even more ominous, “Australia is likely to lose its northern rainfall” (New Scientist. Editorial: Australia, Not Such a Lucky Country. June 2007).
- That was before the floods -

Following the devastating Queensland floods, many activist scientists rushed to link them to global warming, and what’s more, they had a good reason why the floods were so severe – increased moisture in the atmosphere:

“I think people will end up concluding that at least some of the intensity of the monsoon in Queensland can be attributed to climate change,” said Matthew England of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

“The waters off Australia are the warmest ever measured and those waters provide moisture to the atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia monsoon,” he told Reuters.
World News Australia: Qld. Floods ‘Linked to Climate Change’.

Whoops. Surely he’d read the study in Nature, only weeks previously? Maybe not.

The Climate Progress could hardly contain their glee at all the scientists stepping forward to pin the blame for the floods on increased moisture in the air thanks to global warming. In a particularly tasteless story headlined Terrific ABC News Story: Raging Waters in Australia and Brazil Product of Global Warming (nice, ey?) they quoted climate scientist Richard Somerville and others on what caused the floods. Moisture in the air again, they said. Same thing that’s causing all the snow:

“Because the whole water cycle speeds up in a warming world, there’s more water in the atmosphere today than there was a few years ago on average, and you’re seeing a lot of that in the heavy rains and floods for example in Australia,” Sommervile said

Derek Arndt, chief of NOAA’s Climate Monitoring Branch in the National Climate Data Center, said 2010 was “an exclamation point on several decades of warming.

He said NOAA is tracking disasters like the floods in Brazil and Australia. “We are measuring certain types of extreme events that we would expect to see more often in a warming world, and these are indeed increasing,” Arndt said.

The added moisture in the atmosphere also explains the phenomenon we’ve seen this week at home — where snow blanketed the ground in 49 of 50 states.
Climate Progress. Terrific ABC News Story: Raging Waters in Australia and Brazil Product of Global Warming.

So which is it, guys? Does global warming mean more moisture over Australia and therefore floods, or less moisture over Australia and therefore drought? Does it mean warmer winters and therefore less snow, or colder winters and therefore more snow?

Can you at least get your stories straight?'

 What really annoys me is the way that 'warmists' lay the blame for global warming on mankind and explain how every incident is caused by x, y or z but have no consistency to their arguement. They will happily explain in October how increased x is causing global warming and then when x decreases a few months later they will happily explain how thisis definitely causing global warming. Either they think we don't remember or they just don't care because most of the media is willing to accept whatever they say.

More on who is to blame for the Australian floods

'Australia was told to prepare for droughts as a result of climate change, and let down its guard against flooding.

Ever more alarming facts are emerging to show how Brisbane’s floods were made infinitely worse by cockeyed decisions inspired by the obsession of the Australian authorities with global warming. Inevitably, the country’s warmist lobby has been voluble in claiming that such a “freak weather event” (as the BBC called it) is a consequence of man-made climate change. But far from being an unprecedented “freak event”, the latest flood was nearly a foot below the level of one in 1974 and 10 feet below the record set in 1893.

For years, Australia’s warmists have been advising the authorities that the danger posed to the country by global warming is not floods but droughts: not too much rain but too little. One result, in Brisbane, was a relaxation of planning rules, to allow building on areas vulnerable to flooding in the past. As long ago as 1999, this was seen as potentially disastrous by an expert Brisbane River Flood Study (which was ignored and for years kept secret). Instead of investing in its flood defences, Australia spent $13 billion on desalination plants. (Queensland’s was recently mothballed because of the excess of rain.)

Last week’s most disturbing revelation, however, was the contribution to Brisbane’s flooding by the South East Queensland Water company’s massive release of water from its Wivenhoe dam upstream from the city (for details see “Brisbane’s Man-Made Flood Peak” on the Regionalstates blog). Instead of controlled releases through the previous week, the company allowed the level to rise to within a few inches of the top of the dam before releasing a vast volume of water, with devastating consequences for Brisbane 36 hours later.

Last spring, Queensland’s prime minister, the drought- and warming-obsessed Anna Bligh, ordered the water company not to allow any releases from the dam because water was such a “precious resource” that none must be wasted.

Unsurprisingly, on Friday, the city’s Lord Mayor asked for a full judicial review of what had happened. But it is time our Australian cousins carried out a very much more wide-ranging inquiry into all the other decisions made by their gullible politicians in recent years, under the spell of a pseudo-scientific ideology which now looks utterly discredited.'

The above is Christopher Booker's latest thoughts from The Telegraph, thanks to Climate Relists for the spot.

Could the Brisbane floods have been averted?

Rantin Rab thinks so:

'It seems that the devastating floods in Queensland could have been prevented, or at least could have been less severe if a dam had been built as suggested over thirty years ago, after the last major flood.

However, plans were rejected by 'those who know better' after successful lobbying by the usual eco fascists and tree huggers.

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett on Wednesday said he made the interim decision to reject the controversial $1.8 billion plan to dam the Mary River because evidence showed it could kill off endangered species.

“The project would have serious and irreversible effects on national listed species such as the Australian lungfish, the Mary River turtle and the Mary River cod – both of those endangered."

As is now Brisbane....'

Meanwhile James Delingpole in The Telegraph has some more detail on the same story from a contributor called 'Memory Vault':

'I am sitting here in my home in South East Queensland, watching the news come in about the flooding everywhere. Entire suburbs around Brisbane and several smaller towns are either isolated by flood-waters or have been evacuated. Highways are cut everywhere.

People have been dying. So far about 20 people have died in the past week – nine just this morning when a deluge went through the Lockyer Valley. Most of them children. Another 70 are missing. One could put it all down to “just” weather.

Except EXACTLY the same floods occurred in EXACTLY the same places back in 1974, with much the same tragic loss of life and destruction of property.

Back then we weren’t nearly as clever and learned as you think yourselves to be today. Back then we had this silly notion that climate was cyclical, and if we didn’t prepare for it, we would have a repeat of the same tragedies to deal with in “about thirty years”. That was the thinking of the scientists back then – that climate went in roughly thirty year cycles.

Flood mitigation programs were planned. A series of levee banks and diversionary dams would be built. Brisbane and SE QLD would NEVER suffer such devastation again. After all, we had thirty years to plan and build and improve.

And that’s what we did – or at least started. Wivenhoe Dam got built as the first step, but by the time it was finished clever people like you lot who “knew” that such things were never going to happen again had taken over. CO2 AGW madness had already taken hold.

Instead we had “post modern” minds like Tim Flannery “advising” the government that because of Anthropogenic Global Warming, SE QLD would be perpetually in drought from then on. “Forget dams and flood mitigation programs”, intoned the wise Dr Tim – “build desalination plants instead”.

So that’s what our government did. And that is why thirty five years later, we are once again suffering exactly the SAME tragic loss of life and destruction of property, pretty-much exactly where, and when, and how, those stupid scientists who foolishly believed climate was cyclical had predicted.

Meanwhile our billion dollar desalination plant is quietly being mothballed, and emergency crews are frantically trying to work out how they might be able to save nineteen thousand homes from destruction in the next couple of days, as the Lockyer deluge hits Brisbane. Wise Dr Tim Flannery has been made ‘Australian of the Year” for his contributions.

I google on the internet for climate extremes and climate-related disasters in the 1972 – 1979 period – the period of the last transition in the natural weather cycle, and I find that it wasn’t a good period in many places around the world. Record and near record high – and low temperatures, record and near-record precipitation, and so on. Floods and droughts pretty-much mimicking what is happening now, and in pretty-much the same places.

I also noted that the indicators of the “silly” theory of the cyclical nature , ocean and atmospheric, are pretty much exactly as they are now.

I have to admit it could all get a bit depressing. But then I remember that the world is in the capable hands of much cleverer people than those silly scientists back in the Seventies who believed climate was cyclical. Now the decisions are being made by clever people like Dr Tim Flannery

– and you.

That is when I weep for my fellow Man.'

I await the BBC's coverage of this aspect of the story... but not with much confidence!

History repeating itself but the BBC just don't seem to see the parallels

The BBC manage to report with a straight face that

'Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has held initial talks with independent candidates to try to form a government after an inconclusive election.

Ms Gillard said she would continue to provide "stable" government as final votes are counted.

She acknowledged that neither her Labor Party nor the opposition conservative coalition was likely to win the 76 seats needed for an outright majority.

ABC Australia is forecasting 72 seats for Labor and 73 for the conservatives.'

Hmm a short-time serving Prime Minister losing an election but not by enough to give the opposition a pure majority, where have I heard that story before?

The BBC continue:

'"It is clear that neither party has earned the right to government in its own right," Ms Gillard said. She added that Labor had won the most votes overall nationally, if minor parties are discounted.

But opposition leader Tony Abbott, said it was clear Labor had lost its parliamentary majority and its legitimacy.

"There was a savage swing against this government," he said. Mr Abbott said he had also made contact with the independents candidates.

...

"It's my intention to negotiate in good faith an effective agreement to form government," Ms Gillard told journalists on Sunday.

She added that she would "continue to provide stable and effective government in accordance with our democratic process while the final votes are counted in this election".'

A Labour leader who seems reluctant to admit defeat and let go of the reigns of power, I am sure I have experienced this before.


Biased-BBC have a similar story, do take a read.

Conspiracy Theory time - The Australian Forest Fires

The Macedonian International News Agency report that:

"AUSTRALIA has been singled out as a target for "forest jihad" by a group of Islamic extremists urging Muslims to deliberately light bushfires as a weapon of terror.

US intelligence channels earlier this year identified a website calling on Muslims in Australia, the US, Europe and Russia to "start forest fires", claiming "scholars have justified chopping down and burning the infidels' forests when they do the same to our lands".

The website, posted by a group called the Al-Ikhlas Islamic Network, argues in Arabic that lighting fires is an effective form of terrorism justified in Islamic law under the "eye for an eye" doctrine.

The posting — which instructs jihadis to remember "forest jihad" in summer months — says fires cause economic damage and pollution, tie up security agencies and can take months to extinguish so that "this terror will haunt them for an extended period of time".

"Imagine if, after all the losses caused by such an event, a jihadist organisation were to claim responsibility for the forest fires," the website says. "You can hardly begin to imagine the level of fear that would take hold of people in the United States, in Europe, in Russia and in Australia."

With the nation heading into another hot, dry summer, Australian intelligence agencies are treating the possibility that bushfires could be used as a weapon of terrorism as a serious concern.

Attorney-General Robert McClelland said the Federal Government remained "vigilant against such threats", warning that anyone caught lighting a fire as a weapon of terror would feel the wrath of anti-terror laws.

"Any information that suggests a threat to Australia's interests is investigated by relevant agencies as appropriate," Mr McClelland said.

Adam Dolnik, director of research at the University of Wollongong's Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention, said that bushfires (unlike suicide bombing) were generally not considered a glorious type of attack by jihadis, in keeping with a recent decline in the sophistication of terrorist operations.

"With attacks like bushfires, yes, it would be easy. It would be very damaging and we do see a decreasing sophistication as a part of terrorist attacks," Dr Dolnik said.

"In recent years, there have been quite a few attacks averted and it has become more and more difficult for groups to do something effective."

Dr Dolnik said he had observed an increase in traffic on jihadi websites calling for a simplification of terrorist attacks because the more complex operations had been failing. But starting bushfires was still often regarded as less effective than other operations because governments could easily deny terrorism as the cause.

The internet posting by the little-known group claimed the idea of forest fires had been attributed to imprisoned Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Al-Suri. It said Al-Suri had urged terrorists to use sulphuric acid and petrol to start forest fires."

Well it's a theory but I have not seen such an angle reported elsewhere.