18 April, 2013

Global Warming/Climate Change

As the European carbon market collapses and European Governments come under increasing pressure on energy policy, the following communication to a senior Shadow Minister is concise, crystal clear and timely.


"I agree with the Opposition's policy to rescind the carbon tax and abolish the Climate Commission, but not with the rest of its climate change policy. 

The key issue at stake  is what influence if any does human activity have on climate change.

You and others unquestionably believe that human-induced greenhouse gases have a significant impact on global warming -- the process known as anthropogenic global warming (AGW). However, AGW is hypothetical, as  scientists  have not been able to table scientific evidence to prove that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are a significant driver of global warming.

Scientists have developed computer models with which to make  alarmist projections that have received wide media coverage. These models are invalid, as they do not adequately  represent  the interaction of the factors that influence  the climate change process. In fact, these factors still are not properly identified, let alone understood. Contrary to climate model projections, there has not been any statistically significant global warming since 1998, despite anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions continuing to increase.

There are no scientific papers that report the measure of global warming that has been contributed by human activity. This is clear indication that the contribution, if any,  is miniscule, and that the AGW-believing climate scientists have grossly over-estimated the influence of anthropogenic  greenhouse gases on global warming.

Despite this,  the AGW believers claim that there is scientific consensus  and assert  that climate science is settled -- whereas in fact it is not.

Scientific consensus is not evidence;  the opinions of the IPCC, the CSIRO, science academies, and environmental activists are not evidence;  and climate models are not evidence.

As renewable energy generation by wind turbine and solar is at least twice as costly as coal-generated power, there is no economic justification for subsidising renewable energy development.

AT THE VERY MINIMUM, IT IS CONSIDERED THAT NO MONEY SHOULD BE WASTED ON THE COALITION'S PROPOSOSED  DIRECT ACTION PLAN, AND  THE RENEWABLE ENERGY TARGET SHOULD BE RESCINDED. BOTH MEASURES ARE BASED ON POPULISM, AND CANNOT BE JUSTIFIED ON SCIENTIFIC OR ECONOMIC GROUNDS.

17 April, 2013

10 April, 2013

Climate Change or Climate Variability

With the Government's mendicant institutions, Climate Institute, CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology, and the Climate Commission all trotting out statistics and commentary clearly aimed at supporting the Government's Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) mantra, it is refreshing to read some basic comments from an elderly, salt of the earth, western NSW grazier.
In a letter to Bourke's Western Herald, John Oldfield of Belalie Station has written-
"There has been a great deal of discussion this summer about record temperatures. Perhaps the records do not go back very far.
On an old rainfall chart put out by Bourke Stock and Station Agents, Ware and Whittaker in 1953 or 1954, there are rainfall and temperature records.The heatwave of 1939 was still fresh in everybody's memory then. I was a small boy at the time and remember it well. There was no airconditioning and people died.
The average daily maximum for 37 consecutive days was 109 degrees (42.8C) and the maximum for 1939 was 119 dgrees (48C). Measurements were recorded in a weather box beside the Bourke Post Office.
The maximum recorded for Bourke was 125 degrees (52C)  in 1909.

The chart shows average rainfall for 30 years preceding 1939 at 299 mm and for the 30 years before 387 mm. The average rainfall for 76 years from 1878 to 1953 was 345.6 mm.

We obviously have a very variable climate. (My emphasis).

The Global Warming Policy Foundation


This organisations name keeps coming up in my reading, including an excellent recent paper on world energy.

This morning I had a look at their website http://www.thegwpf.org/ and was very impressed with the people on the Board of Trustees and the Academic Advisory Council, several of whom I have met personally. Freeman Dyson, Nigel Lawson, James Spooner, Lord Fellowes, Mat Ridley, Deepak Lal, Ross McKitrick, Richard Lindzen, Bob Carter, Ian Plimer-not bad for starters.

Whilst most of them would be classified as climate change sceptics (like most really intelligent people!), they claim open mindedness in respect to the unsettled science. Their focus is more on the policy positions which should (or should not) be adopted. Chairman Lord (Nigel) Lawson has consistently argued for an "adaptation position" rather than trying to take costly actions to physically change the climate. Their mission and history statement spells it out.

They clearly produce well researched work and I commend the Foundation to you. Have a look at their website.

09 April, 2013

Concept of a Social License


Live cattle: stakeholders v steak holders
·         BY:NICK CATER 
·         From:The Australian 
·         April 02, 2013 

THE evidence that Noah actually built an ark is sketchy to say the least, but one thing can be said with certainty. If Noah were to build his ark in Australia today, he would struggle to get an export licence. Gathering up every living creature that creeps upon the surface of the earth is one thing, but the demands of the Australian Standards for the Export of Livestock (version 2.3) are quite another.
Where is the evidence that Noah adopted "a whole-of-chain risk-based approach"? Did he lodge a notice of intention to export with the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service? Where was his consignment and risk management plan? Did he engage an accredited veterinarian to carry out any inspections or treatment deemed necessary under the approved export program? When it comes to Australian export regulations, livestock beats uranium every time.
Fukushima could not stop the trade in yellowcake, but a grainy video from a single dodgy abattoir in Indonesia was enough for the government to shut down the whole live cattle export trade for a month.
The live cattle ban was one of eight grievances Julia Gillard was reminded of by the ABC's Leigh Sales in a cracker of a question last week. The Prime Minister assured us that banning live cattle had saved the industry "because they were not going to get the social licence they needed unless we addressed animal welfare standards".
It is official: a valid export permit and a current health clearance certificate that meet the requirements of the Export Control (Animals) Order 2004 are no longer enough to safeguard Australian cattle sent for slaughter in foreign climes. The livestock export business is now required to obtain a social licence as well as a real one.
Where does one apply for a social licence? What fees and charges apply? Who sets the criteria and how are they assessed? What recourse is there to appeal an adverse decision? And will they be valid beyond the next edition of Four Corners? These are the great unknowns.
One thing is for sure: parliament won't get a look in because the terms and conditions that apply to social licences are not determined by our elected representatives but by "the community at large".
Social licences have become popular among the shadow civil service of NGOs, pressure groups and lobbyists who drive much of the contemporary policy debate. The old way of influencing public policy -- joining a political party, getting elected, consulting, drafting white papers, bills and passing acts of parliament -- is far too slow for this attention deficit era. Besides, Australian parliaments, state and federal, are frighteningly democratic. One vote, one value may be fine and dandy on paper, but many a visionary social reform has been defeated by the stubbornness of bone-headed MPs elected by dim-witted voters.
The theory of the social licence to operate, or SLO, came out of the US in the late 1990s and, together with ethics planning and triple bottom line accounting, has become part of the subversive toolkit of global activism.
A 2011 report for the CSIRO by the Sustainable Minerals Institute, Queensland University provides a useful summary. An SLO is "an intangible and unwritten, tacit, contract with society, or a social group".
A mining company that wants a social licence must maintain "a positive corporate reputation" and understand "the cultural and historical context of the community and operation".
The weasel word here is community. In the lexicon of the moral crusaders, it no longer means a geographic community encompassing the people who actually live in the vicinity. The new communities are communities of interest and might include, for instance, ethical investment funds, human rights activists and animal rights campaigners, all of whom are said to have a stake (as opposed to a steak) in the live cattle export trade. These groups make up the "stakeholder network" that decides if a mining company or a cattle exporter is acting in the best interests of "the community", that is to say in the interests of the stakeholders, rather than the steak holders.
The social licence that the Prime Minister now requires is very different from the old kind of licence where the authorities provided clear benchmarks. With a social licence the stakeholders make up the rules as they go along, or, as they prefer to put it, the social licence is the subject "of an ongoing iterative process of inquiry and reflection". Statutory licences are practical instruments in the pursuit of the public interest. Social licences are a form of righteous red tape in the pursuit of public virtue. They are devilishly hard to define and prone to capture by articulate, well-funded minorities for public virtue. As Saul Bellow once said, "public virtue is a kind of ghost town into which anyone can move and declare himself sheriff".
Until recently we might have been prepared to sit back and wait for this postmodern fad to pass. Surely the community would one day wake up to the undemocratic, unaccountable nature of settling civic business this way and hand the job back to parliament? Parliamentarians, like cattle, may sometimes go astray, but elections held every three or four years seem to act as a reliable prod to jolt them back on to the straight and narrow.
Since the Prime Minister herself is now prepared to entertain the drab, illiberal notion of the social licence, however, it is time the idea was nailed once and for all. Nobody wants special interest groups, steakholders or stakeholders, to run the country. Popular democracy may be slow, unwieldy and a little untidy, but surely it will do us for now.
Nick Cater's book, The Lucky Culture, is published by HarperCollins in May.

03 April, 2013

Dysfunctional Government


We really can't afford another six months of the dysfunctional Gillard Government.
Last week I sent the following email to Tony Windsor-without response. We need to apply some pressure.

"Dear Tony,
Whilst you couldn't have been expected to have perfect foresight, the fact remains that you and Rob Oakeshott foisted this appalling Government on the Australian people.

I appeal to you both to spare us all from a further six months of their socialist, trade union centered mismanagement by supporting the foreshadowed no confidence motion.

If the polls are any indication, such an initiative would be widely welcomed by the great majority of the Australian public and would indeed be a great public service.

In hope,

J.D.O.(David) Boyd
Tel:   02 9449 7501
Mob: 0429 999 444
Email: jdoboyd@gmail.com
Blog: http://davidboydsblog.blogspot.com/
Skype:david.boyd6