Global Warming's Forced Vegetarianism Conspiracy Exposed

As the Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt has repeatedly warned us, the threat of global warming is just one big Leftoid conspiracy to turn Australia into a nation of hair shirt wearing, bicycle-riding, lentil consuming, sun worshipping hippie delusionists, living in perpetual darkness while begging for salvation in front of home shrines to Bob Brown and Tim Flannery.

And now here's further proof - an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (!!!) that reveals how Australia will be forced to cut back on pollution in the decades ahead, thereby cutting greenhouse emissions.

But amongst all the crazed extremist talk of using less electricity, increasing energy use efficiency, and reducing the kinds of pollution that retard children's brains, there is this landmine of totalitarianistic social change that threatens to undermine the very fabric of Australia's meat-eating heritage :

AUSTRALIA could cut its greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 30 per cent by 2020 without relying on clean-coal technology or nuclear energy, but it might have to sacrifice its aluminium sector and produce less beef, says a new analysis of the country's emissions.

To achieve the 30 per cent cut, more controversial measures such as...a 20 per cent cut in beef production to reduce the effect of methane from cattle (will be needed).

Man the barbecues, arm yourselves with tongs, guard your sirloins.

We look forward to more on this shocking conspiracy aimed at forcing Australians into becoming a nation of veggie crunching, water saving, clean air breathing, solar power using Flannery worshippers from the always reliable Andrew Bolt, Rupert Murdoch's anti-global warming alarmism alarmist.

It's refreshing to know that the likes of Bolt's Herald Sun, and its parent media portal, news.com.au, will never get caught up in promoting the Great Global Warming Leftoid Conspiracy like the SMH.

Remember, first they come for your V8s, then they come for your plasma wall screen TVs, then they come for your steak sandwiches.

Key Howard Ally Ramps Up The Fear Factor On New 'Asian Invasion'

Liberal senator Bill Heffernan is looking decades into the future with his talk of a new climate change driven 'Asian Invasion' and proposes the mass development of underpopulated northern Australia as a mechanism to deal with the problem :

"Without being alarmist, it would be better for us to do it than letting someone else," he told the (Bulletin) magazine.

"We're not talking tomorrow, but in 50 to 80 years time. If there are 400 million people who have run out of water – Bangladesh or Indonesia – well, you've got to have a plan."

Senator Heffernan said northern Australia was a soft entry point in security terms.

"If we go to the level of climate change that science is predicting, where you're going to have 50 per cent of the world's population water-poor and you're going to have the Arctic melt and rising seas, it will be a very attractive proposition."

Heffernan's comments follow the warnings raised by federal police commissioner Mick Keelty, who said climate change posed the most important and looming national threat to Australia's security, a threat worse than international or regional terrorism.

Keelty's claims were hosed down by defence minister, Brendan Nelson, who wants the Terror Threat to remain at the forefront of Australians minds when it comes to the things they should fear.

John Howard, at first, said that the threat of terror was also much worse than the climate change induced mass migration scenario posed by Keelty, before being advised by his staffers that recent polls showed Australians were far more concerned with climate change than terror. Howard quickly rejigged his message to say that both terrorism and climate change posed "equal threats'.

It will be interesting to see if Howard finds a way to use the reality of climate change and the new 'Asian Invasion' scenario now being popularised by his close friend Bill Heffernan to go after the Rudd opposition. Perhaps he will claim that Rudd Labor is "soft" on dealing with the threats of mass migration that "will possibly result" from climate change?

Presumably Howard will steer clear of associating himself with a new fear campaign based around a climate change induced 'Asian Invasion', while refusing to rein in the likes of Heffernan, and other Liberal Party bulldogs who can be expected to capitalise on Heffernan's start.

Tying the reality of climate change to the bedrock century old popular Australian fear of being swamped by an 'invasion' of illegal Asian immigrants, and then claiming that Labor would do nothing to stop such an 'invasion', just might be the new Tampa-style fear and smear election issue the Howard government has been looking for.

Andrew Bolt Outraged By Media 'Hyping' Of Climate Change Threats

Except When His Own Newspaper Is Doing It

Andrew Bolt is outraged, outraged dammit, by the ceaseless hyping from the Australian media when it comes to reports on how climate change will effect Australia's future, and the dire warnings of coming climate chaos extrapolated from scientific studies. Why can't they restrain themselves from all those doom and gloom headlines?

But does he tell ever you that his own newspaper, the Herald Sun, and its Rupert Murdoch-owned parent company News.com.au is the biggest Australian campaigner and promoter of climate change fear and paranoia?

Of course not.

Bolt is always so very, very vague now on just who is 'hyping' climate change in the Australian media. He used to attack the ABC and Fairfax newspapers for 'hyping' the effects of climate change. That is, until Rupert Murdoch became the world's biggest promoter of raising awareness of "the clear, catastrophic threat" posed by global warming and climate change, and promised to "weave" the issue into the content of his media empire.

Yesterday Bolt headlined a blog post with this :

Even More Panic Over CSIRO's Less Scary News

He clearly means panic in the media in the reporting of the CSIRO's findings on how Australia is likely to be effected by climate change in the coming decades.

Bolt then writes :

Some old stuff, but the usual scary headlines follow, like this:

CSIRO warns of climate chaos

According to Google News, the only newspapers and media sites in Australia who used that 'scary' headline were Bolt's own newspaper, The Herald Sun, the sister Sydney newspaper, The Daily Telegraph and the main portal for Murdoch's Australian media sites, News.com.au.

Most non-Murdoch newspapers and media outlets used far more restrained headlines. But don't look to Andrew Bolt to tell you that fact.

News Limited's Brisbane paper, the Courier Mail went with this far more dramatic headline :

Aussie Climate In Hot Water

And Murdoch's Adelaide Advertiser served up :

Climate Chaos Warning

Not one of the numerous stories carried by Murdoch newspapers and websites, including the Herald Sun, followed Bolt's usual demands that "alternative views" be included in media reports on climate change to provide balance on the 'reality' of climate change, or if humans are really responsible for global warming.

Literally dozens of stories were published, without "alternative views", on the News Limited newspaper and website network. Bolt didn't even notice. Surely he can't be that ignorant?


"I've Done My Dash" - Andrew Bolt Admits Defeat On Global Warming

Bolt : "We All Love A Good Conspiracy"

The Changing Climate Of Andrew Bolt

Back In The Gutter Where He Belongs

The Professional Idiot Admits Defeat On Global Warming

"I've Done My Dash..."


After months of pretending that little had changed at the newspaper and the media company he works for, anti-global warming alarmist, Andrew Bolt, has finally admitted defeat off the back of a massive eight part 'Saving Planet Earth' campaign, with poster liftouts for the kids, in Sydney's Daily Telegraph. A campaign soon to be replicated in Bolt's own newspaper, The Herald Sun, which he likes to point out is "Australia's biggest selling newspaper".

Ever since his boss Rupert Murdoch announced that "climate changes poses clear, catastrophic threats" in early May, Bolt has been slowly degrading the sharpness of his attacks on those who claim to be fighting the rise of global warming.

No longer does Andrew Bolt lash out and call the likes of Al Gore and Tim Flannery deranged and mentally unstable and peddlers of fiction, as he did not so long ago, for their calls to combat climate change. How could he? His own boss has joined the campaign.

Murdoch said he would use his worldwide media empire to spread the message about combating climate change, and seeing as he control 70% of Australia's newspapers, News Limited can now claim the title of being Australia's largest reaching, and most influential, anti-global warming campaigner.

Before Rupert Murdoch converted, Bolt used to call Gore, Flannery and other CC campaigners frauds and liars. If they weren't mentally ill, they were "hysterical". Or they were falling victim to "the "warming faith", "the irrational faith", or the "new apocalyptic faith".

Here's Bolt on May 3, referring to global warming as :

"...a religion that already shows signs of falling apart."

Here's Bolt on Thursday, May 8 :

"I repeat, it’s a religion, and with that old-time hook - Repent, for the end of the world is nigh..."

True believers in global warming and climate change were, according to Bolt, all a bunch of "cultists" and, my personal favourite, they were busy promoting "the most superstitious pagan faith of all".

But then Rupert Murdoch delivered his "Clear, Catastrophic Threats" speech on May 9, and Bolt began to tone down the attacks on the "warming faithful", clearly because Rupert Murdoch had become one of them.

Now the Sydney Daily Telegraph has launched its massive 'Saving Planet Earth' campaign - with a similar campaign to soon begin in the Melbourne Herald Sun - Bolt is facing up to his corporate responsibilities, where blinding hypocrisy is clearly worth less than eight pages of ads in a Sunday liftout. But Bolt goes down with plenty of whining :

"How thrilled I am that one of the papers in our News Ltd family is campaigning to save the world from this shocking global frying that will start any time soon..."

Back in the days when Andrew Bolt didn't have to curb his opinions, or rein in his ranting, global warming campaigners were "planet wreckers". Now he calls them "planet savers".

How infuriating it must be for Bolt to see the "inspiring words" of his arch-enemies of reality, Tim Flannery and Al Gore, featured so prominently, without criticism, at the forefront of News Ltd's full blown climate change campaign.

Flannery? Gore? Even worse, soon to be federal Labor environment minister, Peter Garrett, was online the Daily Telegraph's live blog "discussion" of the day.


Andrew Bolt has admitted defeat :

Face facts: There’s no place now for my kind of petty carping....who might employ me now that I’ve done my dash.

Seniors Weekly?


Tim Blair, columnist with the 'Saving Planet Earth' Daily Telegraph, once warned Tim Flannery and other global warming proponents to stop scaring children with fear campaigns based on (in Murdoch's own words) the "clear, catastrophic threats" posed by climate change.

In particular, Blair warned those climate change true believers to "stay away" from his nieces, and fulminated over the teaching of global warming in schools.

The Daily Telegraph now devotes web resources pages and newspaper liftouts to teaching students the very same kind of Flannery approved "fear campaigns" that Blair and Bolt once railed so vehemently against.

News Limited is even linking up with a 'cool' mascot to 'get down' with the kids on ways of conserving energy : Ollie!

Will Blair now warn of the "alarmist" climate change fear campaigns of his own newspaper, and debunk the 'Saving Planet Earth' series? Particularly now the Daily Telegraph is pumping stories he once mocked about polar bears turning into cannibals due to the effects of global warming?

Yeah, right.



Regardless, Murdoch columnists struggling with their boss's embracing of all that they hate has become a very, very entertaining spectator sport, with plenty more fun to come.


The Changing Climate Of Andrew Bolt - Betrayed By Murdoch Over Climate Change

Bolt Anticipates Terror Attacks In Australia So Howard Can Showcase His "Vast Experience"

Back In The Gutter Where He Belongs

The Changing Climate Of Andrew Bolt

Betrayed By Murdoch Over Global Warming, The Bolter Now Pulls His Punches

By Darryl Mason

Andrew Bolt, of Melbourne's Herald Sun, and a self-titled blog, finds himself in an interesting and career-stalling quandary. For a few years now Bolt has found great success in railing against the occasionally exaggerated predictions of climate change activists, and has filled hundreds of columns and blog posts with demands that the "debate" over global warming be more balanced.

How balanced?

For almost a year, Bolt demanded that the theory that solar activity be considered as responsible for climate change, instead of human generated carbon emissions. Let's just say the 'Blame The Sun' theory hasn't exactly set the scientific world on fire, particularly after the hopeless documentary that Bolt championed, The Great Global Warming Swindle, got an airing on Australian TV.

Bolt simply didn't believe that global warming of the kind promoted by scientist Carl Sagan in the mid-1990s was a reality, and often barked about it all being a huge scam, a cult, a new religion.

Bolt still rails against climate change true believers. Well, sort of. Then again, not really. He's now clearly lost his enthusiasm for the battle against the generally accepted truth that climate change is real.

There's a bevy of very simple reasons for why Bolt has toned down his attacks on all those who accept the reality of global warming induced climate change. John Howard backs it as policy shaping fact, as does President Bush, and virtually every major world leader. But most important of all, Bolt's own boss, Rupert Murdoch, backs climate change reality so devotedly he is reshaping his entire world media operations and content around spreading the message that climate change is real and the world must unite to fight it.

Murdoch has stated that climate change is now beyond debate, and it's time to find solutions. Being a good Murdoch employee, Bolt won't mention his boss's embrace of carbon trading and had next to nothing to say about Murdoch's May 9 acknowledgement that climate change was real, and that the debate had now shifted, at least as far as Murdoch and most of the Western world is concerned, to finding ways to solve the problem, and even stop its worst effects from becoming a terrible, centuries long reality.

Bolt spent years haranguing any scientist who dared to say our future prosperity and viability was in peril from climate change. But Bolt clammed right up when Rupert Murdoch said this :

'Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats."

Murdoch told his employees and stockholders that would use his worldwide audience of hundreds of millions of people, on five continents, to look at the problems of climate change as "exciting" and he promised to "weave this issue into our content, make it dramatic..."

In the next season of Fox's '24', special agent Jack Bauer will leave the terrorists alone long to somehow fight climate change. Presumably the bad guys this time will be heavy polluters, or perhaps there will be some Bond-esque bad guy using HAARP-type technology to speed up global warming to claim the mineral and energy riches of the melting Arctic.

Whatever the storyline of '24' is, Murdoch will use the show's popularity to ram home the threat of climate change, and the overwhelming need to do something about stopping it. Jack Bauer will do his bit, but it is also likely there will be extensive promotions tied into the new series telling Americans how they can be like Jack Bauer and help stop climate change.

The '24' website is already pumping Murdoch's message to the masses, and Jack Bauer himself, Keifer Sutherland, is pre-empting the focus of the new series by appearing in public service announcements on behalf of Rupert's mission to save planet Earth from "clear, catastrophic threats".

Will Andrew Bolt rail against Fox Television falling victim to the global warming "scam"?

Of course not.

You only have to leaf through The Herald Sun, which carries Bolt's columns, to see how heavily the Murdoch promise "to weave this issue into our content" is already being fulfilled.

Has Andrew Bolt whined and wailed and demanded more debate in the pages of his own newspaper, in opposition to the stand taken on climate change taken by Rupert Murdoch?

Of course not.

Bolt only takes pot shots at the easy targets.

When Rupert Murdoch gave his now famous speech on May 9 about acknowledging the reality of climate change, and announced his plans to restructure all his media operations to reduce News Corp's carbon footprint, Andrew Bolt claimed that he wouldn't be cowed and he would continue to hammer the 'Climate Change Is Real' crowd for being a bunch of gullible drogues.

But Bolt has been cowed, of course. And it only took a couple of weeks, punctuated by a Bushesque five week long holiday.

When Bolt now writes about the climate change "preachers" he chooses his targets very, very carefully. He says little, or nothing, about the Howard government's embracing of climate change as an election issue, or President Bush's proposals to reshape American industry and the economy to become more 'green'. And he certainly does not attack Rupert Murdoch.

For years, those trying to warn of the very real dangers and threats of climate change were called mentally ill by Bolt. If they weren't mentally ill, they were "hysterical". Or they were falling victim to "the "warming faith", "the irrational faith", or the "new apocalyptic faith".

Here's Bolt on May 3, referring to global warming as :

"...a religion that already shows signs of falling apart."

Here's Bolt on Thursday, May 8 :

"I repeat, it’s a religion, and with that old-time hook - Repent, for the end of the world is nigh..."

Here's his boss, Rupert Murdoch, on May 9 :

'Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats."

Yeah, we all had a great laugh over that one.


Sometimes, when not being particularly creative, Bolt referred to what Rupert Murdoch was in the process of embracing as "the global warming scare".

True believers were all "cultists" and, my personal favourite, they were busy promoting "the most superstitious pagan faith of all".

As Rupert Murdoch cranks up the anti-global warming promotions and campaigns through his TV shows, newspapers and cable stations across the world, Bolt now calls those fighting global warming merely "preachers" and "planet wreckers", which is so comic as to be all but harmless.

When he's particularly hepped up, Bot might even lash out with a claim that some anti-global warming advocate is an "Alarmist". But that's about as far as Bolt will go these days.

He might truly believe that climate change is some vast left-wing conspiracy to help clear cities of pollution and create new energy industries, but Bolt is not going to accuse his own boss, Mr Murdoch, of being insane and hysterical and a member of a superstitious pagan cult.

Bolt clearly wants to keep his very well paid job, and if he has to tone down the rhetoric, stifle his conspiratorial beliefs and swallow his pride and dignity to do so, then that's exactly what he will do. Over and over and over again.

Bolt must be thanking all the gods that his beloved prime minister, John Howard, is only a few months away from losing the election.

When Kevin Rudd takes control of Australia, Bolt will be re-born. No longer will he have to play along and praise the prime minister at every turn, and make silly excuses for hundreds of very clear and obvious failures of judgement and downright open deceit of the Australian people, as Howard did again and again through the years Bolt has been writing and blogging for Rupert Murdoch's once firmly pro-Howard Australian media.

By the end of the year, Bolt will likely have a whole host of federal Labor politicians in power to attack and smash and trash and flail, and he will finally be able to let go of the 'Global Warming Is A Superstitious Pagan Faith' nonsense, just as Murdoch now wants him to.


Andrew Bolt Attacks : "Hating Howard To Death"

Rupert Murdoch's Speech, May 9 : "Climate Change Poses Clear, Catastrophic Threats"

Andrew Bolt Anticipates An Australian Terror Attack So Howard Can Display "His Firmness" In Dealing With The Aftermath

Plans To Use Super Tankers To Ship Fresh Water From Tasmania To East Coast Cities

When bottled water can sell for $3 dollars a litre, filling supertanker with 40 or 50 millions of litre of water from Tasmania and shipping it up the coast to parched cities like Sydney and Brisbane not only becomes a reasonable part-solution to looming water shortages, but an extremely profitable one :

A number of companies, including one chaired by former prime minister Bob Hawke, are negotiating to capture excess water from swollen rivers on the state's high-rainfall west coast.

(Tasmanian state) Water Minister David Llewellyn told The Weekend Australian he now believed the idea stacked up economically -- and could be used to benefit Tasmanians as well as mainland consumers.

Mr Llewellyn said a proposal from Solar Sailor, a NSW company chaired by Mr Hawke, to export 50 billion litres of water a year from Tasmania, was just one of a number before the Government.

Mr Llewellyn said Tasmania's fresh water supplies were equivalent to two Murray-Darling systems. The state has a population of about 485,000, or 2.3 per cent of Australia's total, yet it has 12 per cent of the nation's water.

Mr Llewellyn said revenue from the sale of water otherwise flowing from rivers into the sea could be invested in dams and irrigation infrastructure in the state's dry north and east.

Tasmania's west coast, home to wild mountains and swollen rivers, often complains of an excess of rain while parts of the state's east and north are in drought.

Although only one of a number of proposals, Solar Sailor is understood also to be in discussion with several mainland states as potential customers for Tasmanian water.

The company's chief executive, Robert Dane, who has held talks with Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries and Water, has flagged using several supertankers to ferry water to centres along the eastern seaboard, including Sydney, Melbourne and Queensland.

Even if the exported water was sold in bulk for a few cents a litre to East Coast cities, exporting 50 billion litres of it a year is going to make some people extremely wealthy.

Maybe the supertankers should load up on melting ice from the Antarctic. Not only will the resulting water be cleaner, wouldn't scooping up all that melting ice and shipping it to Sydney help slow the supposed sea level rises that are likely to result from global warming?

John Howard Suddenly A Global Warming True Believer...And So Is George W. Bush

Howard Commits To Carbon Trading, Emission Targets And The Reality Of Climate Change

So John Howard has finally, officially recognised that climate change is going to cost Australia a lot of money, houses and jobs in the decades to come, and that his absolute stubborn refusal to set up a carbon trading system has already put us behind many other industrialised nations of the world.

Howard huggers are mortified that their glorious leader has fallen victim to the "global warming hysteria". But he hasn't, of course. Howard has just finally relented to the four year old calls from Australia's biggest corporations to get on board the carbon trading world currency wagon, and awoken to the reality that if Australia doesn't go along with the rest of the world they will punish us brutally with trade sanctions and boycotts sometime in the future.

Howard has, as always, a not-so-hidden agenda in his announcement yesterday that his government will actively pursue setting up a carbon trading system and also eventually set emissions caps and targets. The not-so-hidden agenda is that Howard will use his sudden "I'm A Believer" status to push nuclear power, at the expense of a new industrial age of nationwide renewable energy rollouts. We also now learn that Howard can over-ride the states and force them to take nuclear reactors, even if every single person in that state doesn't want such a thing.

Here's the news.

From the ABC :

The Prime Minister's carbon emissions task force says a trading scheme could be up and running by 2012, and efforts to cut emissions will lead to higher energy prices.

John Howard received the report of his task force yesterday, but has not made the findings public.

The ABC understands the report recommends a cap and trade system, in which polluters are issued permits and trade them according to their emissions.

Companies could buy pollution permits if they cannot keep their emissions under a certain level.

The report says the system would take four years to develop.

Setting a carbon price would be up to the market, and instead of recommending a target of greenhouse gas reduction the report simply urges the Government to take a cautious approach.

It says the setting of goals should be done with great care and more research.

But for consumers there is a sting in the tail.

The study warns cutting emissions has a cost: higher energy prices.

Ahh, yes. Higher energy prices. All those pensioners living in the dark so they can afford to feed their cat have had it far too good for far too long.

It should come as no surprise that Howard has basically allowed the corporations that use the most energy and produce the most carbon emissions to shape the next few decades of Australia's involvement in carbon trading and emissions reductions. The beauty of a system designed by the biggest energy users and carbon emitters is that they won't actually have to use less energy or reduce their emissions, not in the short term anyway. They can pay their way through their climate changing 'pollution'....or that should, You Will Pay Their Way.

They will set the agenda, and the public will pay. It's that simple.

They have billions invested in their companies and projects, you see, so you can't expect them to lose even one dollar while this slow but steady transformation of how Australians get their energy takes place.

To be clear. The biggest carbon emitters and energy users will not lose one single dollar. But you, yes you, You Will Pay.

Nobody is even trying to deny it.

From 'The Australian' :

THE Coalition has signalled its willingness to accept a long-term target for cutting greenhouse gases as John Howard readies today to receive a task force report on emissions trading.

As Labor attempted to trump the Prime Minister yesterday by promising to create an emissions trading system by 2010, Mr Howard last night gave his strongest indication yet that the Government was prepared to adopt a target to cut emissions.

"If we move towards an emissions trading system, that will as a necessity involve a long-term target of some kind," Mr Howard said.

The Coalition has long resisted setting targets for cutting greenhouse gases, criticising Labor for adopting its target of a 60 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050 without detailed analysis of its likely effect on the economy.

Mr Howard's signal that he was now prepared to adopt a longer-term emissions target came only hours after playing down the prospect in parliament.

Only hours? It used to take weeks, if not years and months, for Howard to backflip this spectacularly.

Soon he will be down to backflipping in minutes, and then seconds.

By the time the election rolls round, Howard will be backflipping on policies he hasn't yet announced yet.

Opposition leader Kevin Rudd has had a pretty good idea, for weeks, of what the prime minister is going to announce this weekend, about how his government will deal with carbon trading and emissions reductions, and Rudd knows the public is with him instead of Howard on these issues.

So Rudd jumped the gun on Wednesday night and announced the first stages of his own anti-climate change policies, and successfully managed to steal most of Howard's momentum :

John Howard's expected announcement of a carbon emissions trading scheme has been gazumped by the Federal Opposition who last night outlined their own plan.

In a series of statements, Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd said a federal Labor government would increase the use of green electricity in government buildings and hand $50 million to geothermal companies to develop "hot-rock" technology.

John Howard will today receive a much-anticipated task force report on climate change and is believed to be poised to announce a long-term target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions as early as today.

Mr Rudd said a Labor government would lead by example, using its enormous purchasing power to drive markets for cleaner and greener goods and services.

All commonwealth buildings would be forced to meet the five star mark of the Australian Building Greenhouse Ratings - including Parliament House.

He said Labor would aim to power the House with entirely renewable energy.

"Every year the commonwealth government spends hundreds of millions on energy to power its offices and its operations, generating over a million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions," Mr Rudd said.

Labor's environment spokesman Peter Garrett said the funding for exploration of hot-rock energy would help the burgeoning industry over the hurdle of high costs for drilling rigs in the current mining boom.

Geothermal or hot-rock energy is produced by drilling deep wells into naturally hot rocks, cycling water through those wells to heat the water which then drives a turbine.

"Geothermal energy holds the promise of being a renewable energy source with zero greenhouse gas emissions that can operate 24 hours a day providing critical baseload power for Australian homes and industries," Mr Garrett said.

So what brought all this on? What made Howard change his mind about climate change, when only a few months ago (hell, even a few weeks ago) he was denying it was even a reality, and mocking those who feared for their families' futures, and the future prosperity of Australia?

It was the polls, of course, and perhaps some 'international influence'.

Howard had lost at least half of his voters to Rudd over climate change in a matter of months. The vast majority of Australians believe climate change poses a far bigger threat to their lives, and livelihoods, than terrorism.

That was shocking news to Howard & Co. After all, they had spent hundreds of millions of dollars since 9/11 trying to scare the living shit out of all Australians about the potential terrorists in their midst, of whom, few if any, so far have be proven to anything more than a bunch of racist, fascist idiots who talk big into police-bugged telephones.

But Australians grew bored with all that Howard fear-mongering about terrorism, when nothing exploded. They clearly preferred Al Gore-style fear-mongering about climate change instead.

And so John Howard learned in the most brutal way just what will be the decisive election issue later this year when Australians cast their vote.

But Guess Who Else Just Became A Climate Change True Believer?

Of course, Howard's change of heart and mind on climate change has nothing at all to do with this equally spectacular, and spectacularly sudden, reversal from President Bush :

President Bush, seeking to blunt international criticism of the U.S. record on climate change, on Thursday urged 15 major nations to agree by the end of next year on a global emissions goal for reducing greenhouse gases.

Bush called for the first in a series of meetings to begin this fall, bringing together countries identified as major emitters of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. The list would include the United States, China, India and major European countries.

''So my proposal is this: By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases. To develop this goal, the United States will convene a series of meetings of nations that produce the most greenhouse gasses, including nations with rapidly growing economies like India and China.

''Each country would establish midterm management targets and programs that reflect their own mix of energy sources and future energy needs,'' he said. ''In the course of the next 18 months, our nations will bring together industry leaders from different sectors of our economies, such as power generation, and alternative fuels and transportation.''

Welcome to the Change Climate Change Party, Mr Bush and Mr Howard.

You're a bit late, but they'll probably still let you inside. After all, per head of population, Australia and the United States lead the world in pumping out the carbon.

In less than twelve hours, both Bush and Howard gave their thumbs-up to the eventual rollout of the new world currency : global carbon trading credits.

And the Howard and Bush backflips have arrived just in time for this weekend's Bilderberg meeting, in Turkey, which brings together 100 of the world's most powerful and history-making leaders of politics and industry, where climate change and carbon trading will be front and centre of the future-altering agenda. An agenda that few journalists for the mainstream media have ever reported on, despite Bilderberg meetings being held every year for more than five decades.

Surely it's all just some huge coincidence. Right?

November, 2006 : How Howard Left Australia To Go Begging On The New World Carbon Trading Economy

Government And Opposition's Climate Change Policies Now Take Centre Stage Of Federal Politics - Much To Howard's Regret

Lateline : Howard And Rudd Step Up Climate Change Debate

Peter Garrett Reveals Labor Unlikely To Produce Carbon Trading Plans And Emissions Targets Before Federal Election

Australia's Corporations Lobbied Howard For Four Years For Introduction Of Carbon Trading

The Seven Tests Of An Effective Carbon Trading System For Australia

Australia's Emissions Barely Matter On A World Scale, But If We Don't Play Along A Trade Boycott Would Hurt

Howard Can Force The States To Accept Nuclear Power Plants, Whether They Want Them Or Not

Key Media Global Warming Denier Can Barely Believe John Howard's Triple Double Backflip On Carbon Trading

LP : How To Talk To A Global Warming Skeptic

John Quiggin : A Climate Change Round Up

Allegations Surface That ABC Was Pressured Into Screening "Discredited" Documentary Debunking Global Warming

Further proof that if you whine long and loudly enough, and you happen to write for the Rupert Murdoch media, you can get pretty much whatever you want.

Global Warming "Truthers" Andrew Bolt and Daily Telegraph opinion editor Tim Blair led the thinly populated parade of those demanding the ABC screen a documentary that supposedly debunks the "myth" of global warming.

That the ABC hadn't already screened The Great Global Warming Swindle, the likes of Bolt and Blair would have you believe, amounted to a conspiracy to censor "the debate" about whether or not severe climate change is a reality, and whether or not humans are responsible for global warming.

Now ABC programmers have reportedly caved in to "pressure" from the ABC board of directors to screen the British documentary in July, not long after the Howard government delivers its own long awaited report into how it plans to deal with rapid climate change:

The program caused controversy when it was aired on Britain's Channel 4 in March. Eminent scientists and some of the scientists interviewed later accused the documentary makers of using fabricated data, half-truths and misleading statements.

The ABC science journalist and broadcaster Robyn Williams, who advised the TV division not to buy the program, told the Herald yesterday the director of ABC TV, Kim Dalton, had intimated in a conversation that he was under pressure from the board on the issue.

"Kim implied on April 16 the board had pressured him into it … that is what our inference was from what he said and did [in that conversation]," said Williams, who described the documentary as "deeply misleading" and "part of the school of total bollocks science journalism".

A reporter on the ABC's Four Corners program, Jonathan Holmes, who took part in that conversation, said: "My impression was whether you call it pressure or some kind of indication from the board or members of the board or a member of the board that he [Mr Dalton] should look at the documentary and consider running it."

Mr Dalton denied he had come under any influence from the board or that he had spoken to any of its members about the program.

Asked whether he thought running a program that had been shown to include falsified data would damage the ABC, Mr Dalton said: "I don't think it will at all. It will affect our credibility in a way that shows where there are areas of public importance that we will provide the forum for them to be discussed."

The rights to screen The Great Global Warming Swindle had reportedly already been snatched up months ago by Channel 9, who then sold them on to ABC, presumably at a tidy profit.

It should make for a moribund night's viewing. The only way the screening of Swindle could be made even more perfect for the Boltists is if the ABC pulled it's top rating comedy show, The Chaser, off air to make way for it.

The Great Global Warming Swindle has been available to view, for free, on the internet for months, and it makes its case about as convincingly as the documentary it is supposed to counter - Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Pretty unconvincingy.

Both documentaries push their politically weighted barrows right up to your face and dump a load of factoids and graphs, and demand you must believe it all, or be doomed by your own ignorance.

Just like An Inconvenient Truth, The Great Global Warming Swindle is light on facts, and big on clever editing, questionable statistics and opinion. Both documentaries lack overwhelming and cohesive scientific evidence to back up their claims.

It's a shame that both documentaries can't be screened together, on the same night. At about 3am.

If The Global Warming Swindle is an example of the kind of documentaries the ABC-haters think should make for a good, informative night's viewing on the national broadcaster, they need to get out more.

Here's global warming cult-buster Andrew Bolt recently showing the sort of valuable insight he is famous for :

"...the chances of you seeing The Great Global Warming Swindle on your TV are pretty low."

Not if you have mates on the ABC board and you use a blog and newspaper funded by the global warming "cultist", and frequent flier, Rupert Murdoch, to whine on and on about how not screening the documentary amounts to censorship and proof that the ABC is infested with cursed "Lefties".

The truth is the ABC probably would have shown The Great Global Warming Swindle anyway, had Channel Nine not first secured the rights to screen it in Australia.

But mounting a media campaign to "pressure" the ABC into screening the documentary allows global warming skeptics, like Bolt, to claim a victory for his followers.

So why is this doco repeatedly claimed to be "discredited"? George Monbiot attempts to debunk the debunkers of the Swindle :

The problem with The Great Global Warming Swindle, which the ABC plans to screen and which caused a sensation when it was broadcast in Britain earlier this year, is that to make its case it relies not on visionaries, but on people whose findings have been proven wrong. The implications could not be graver. Thousands of people could be misled into believing there is no problem to address.

The film's main contention is that the rise in global temperatures is caused not by greenhouse gases but by changes in the sun's activity. It is built around the premise that in 1991 the Danish atmospheric physicist Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen discovered that recent temperature variations on Earth coincided with the length of the cycle of sunspots: the shorter they were, the higher the temperature. Unfortunately, he found nothing of the kind. A paper published in the journal Eos in 2004 reveals that the finding was the result of incorrect handling of data. The truth is the opposite: temperatures have continued to rise as the length of the sunspot cycle has increased.

Cherry-pick your results and choose work which is outdated and discredited, and anything and everything becomes true. The twin towers were brought down by controlled explosions; homeopathy works; black people are less intelligent than white people; species came about through intelligent design. You can find lines of evidence which appear to support these contentions and professors who will speak in their favour. This does not mean that any of them are correct.

The first time I recall seeing the "sun causes global warming" theory anywhere was on the Russian 'news' site Pravda, a site where you can also find stories about how the moon landings were faked, how communities of wolf-boys live happily in Siberian forests and reports on how the Russian Army fought against UFO invasions.

Of course that doesn't mean the "Blame The Sun" theory of global warming isn't true. Just as it doesn't mean that the Russian Army didn't really go into battle against UFOs.

Believe whatever you want. But don't throw a hissy fit when the majority of the public don't share your beliefs.


Now that the ABC has shown it is not scared to show documentaries chock-full of "discredited" claims that "question the accepted truth", viewers should look forward to seeing some other widely discredited documentaries, like the ones that question the truth about the Holocaust and the myriad of conspiracy theories surrounding the events of 9/11.

Hell, there are docos on the internet that claim President Bush and his dad are members of satanic human sacrificing cults. Why not screen one of those on the ABC as well?

After all, as Andrew Bolt so succinctly puts it, showing the other side of a widely accepted truth is "not a spoof, it's debate".

Drinking Beer Causes Climate Change?

Murdoch Media Wastes No Time In Blaming Working Class For Global Warming


"Drinking beer, driving the car, and mowing the lawn all contribute to climate changes.." claims news.com.au front page

By Darryl Mason

Less than 48 hours after News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch announced that his worldwide media corporation was Going Green, and that he intended to reduce his corporation's "carbon footprint" to zero by 2010, he's lived up to his promise to transform the thinking of News Corp's audience by guilt-tripping the Australian public over the amount of beer they drink and how they cut their grass :

Having just one schooner of beer after each working day costs the planet 120kg in greenhouse emissions each year.

Working fathers doing traditionally male household jobs like mowing the lawn and odd jobs around the home produce almost 3.75 tonnes of emissions each year.

Yesterday it was revealed Australian mothers juggling child-rearing responsibilities and housework pumped out more than four tonnes of emissions a year.

Simon Hunter, a father-of-two and owner of a wood-fired pizza restaurant in Seaforth, usually does two separate trips in his car each day - one to the bank in the morning and one 20-minute drive to work in the afternoon.

He uses a toaster and kettle at breakfast, as well as his computer.

The household's big energy guzzler is the airconditioning system, which he said would be switched on twice a day every second day.

"I make sure that lights are turned off when they're not being used because that's obviously money being wasted and it affects the environment," he said.

As the public debate on climate change heats up, Mr Hunter is thinking more about the latter.

"Everyone has to contribute, not just government but businesses and the individual," he said.

It's beautiful propaganda - inspiring, responsible and guilt-laden. Get used to it, the flow of similar articles and news products from Murdoch's media will only get thicker.

Murdoch was remarkably frank in this speech on May 9, about how he would use News Corp to transform the way the public thinks about climate change, "carbon footprints" and the why we must transform the way we live and work. Naturally, his speech was covered extensively across Murdoch's media spectrum :

Our audience's carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours...

That's the carbon footprint we want to conquer.

We cannot do it with gimmicks. We need to reach them in a sustained way. To weave this issue into our content-- make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.

Murdoch made it dramatically clear that he would use his media reach of some one billion people (via his cable, newspaper and online media companies) to change the way his mostly Western audience live their lives.

He intends to use his News Corp media assets to simultaneously inspire, guilt-trip and fear-up his worldwide audience about their impact on climate change and the future faced by their children and grandchildren.

But Rupert knows he has to do it subtly, less Fox News or the Sydney's Daily Telegraph become the embodiment of the environmental and green lobby groups so many of his journalists have long despised, mocked and relentlessly hammered :

We must avoid preaching. And there has to be substance behind the glitz. But if we are genuine, we can change the way the public thinks about these issues.

...the debate is shifting from whether climate change is really happening to how to solve it. And when so many of the solutions make sense for us as a business, it is clear that we should take action, not only as a matter of public responsibility but because we stand to benefit."

Guilt-trip the public and profit handsomely at the same time. It's the News Corp way.

Australia In The Year 2020

2500 Scientists Agree Land Down Under Is Facing Climate Change Devastation

Seen The Great Barrier Reef Yet? Don't Wait Too Long...

Just how completely wrong could 2500 of the world's leading scientists be when it comes to severe climate change and Australia?

It might be time to start slaughtering a few animals to honour your God Of Choice and get busy praying.

The news about what is likely to happen to Australia between now and 2020 is not good. In fact, it's downright shocking. No doubt this is exactly the kind of reaction the scientists who put together this report were hoping to score. Mission accomplished!

You can find a summary of the predictions and projects from the IPCC below, but there is little to report today on what the federal government, or the opposition, are planning for how to combat these expected, very dramatic changes to our climate and environments.

An important argument now entering the debate in Australia about the impact of climate change is centred around how we are going to adapt to fast, dramatic changes to almost every aspect of Australian life, rather than just concentrating on lowering greenhouses gas emissions. It's an important part of the debate, and well overdue.

In short, the changes are coming, and while lowering greenhouse gases will help in the long run, the public is going to want to know how are we going to cope with the changes that are expected to be all but irreversible.

Here's some of the predictions from the world's leading climate scientists on what we can look forward to in Australia, with 13 years :

* More cyclones, a greater risk of tsunamis striking the east coast.

* 300,000 Australians could be exposed to the dengue virus each year.

* Coastal communities left "vulnerable".

* Critical fresh water shortages for eastern and southern Australia.

* Deaths from hotter temperatures in our capital cities expected to rise from some 1100 per year to more than 2500.

* Coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef to increase dramatically, placing its future and viability as a tourist attraction at risk. Where there is now some of the world's most beautiful coral expanses, there may soon be seaweed. 1C to 2C rise in temperatures will leave the Great Barrier Reef devastated. A 3C rise is predicted to all but wipe it out.

* "Significant loss of biodiversity", with massive damage to World Heritage sites like Kakadu, vast stretches of rain forest, and even ski resorts in alpine region seeing dramatic drops in annual snow fall.

* Species extinction "virtually certain" to increase, threatening populations of possums and koala bears.

* Emergency services and transport systems under increased strain.

* Increased danger to lives and homes from more extensive bush fires, across longer bush fire seasons.

* An increase in power blackouts during summer months in east and south Australia.

* Sea level rises to impact on coastal communities and beachfront properties and resorts through tidal surges and eroding coastlines.

* Forestry and agriculture significantly impacted through increased drought, lower annual rainfalls across vast regions of the country.

So does an Australia 2020 scenario including most, if not all, the climate change effects listed above constitute a national emergency?

More than 70% of Australians listed Climate Change as their greatest worry, well above increased interest rates or the threat of terrorist attacks.

The Howard government has been hammered for months for having left it to the last minute to start taking climate change and global warming seriously.

And deadly serious, very valid questions are now being asked about just how prepared the Howard government is to deal with the monumental changes to Australian society and lifestyles that climate change looks set to wrought.

Climate Change may well be the most important issue of all for voters at the coming federal election. At the very least it will be the Top Three of all the major issues.

The Kevin Rudd led Opposition is ahead of the government when it comes to who the general public thinks will move faster and more effectively to deal with the effects of climate change, and to mitigate its future impact, if that's actually possible.

But if the Australia 2020 predictions listed above take root in the greater public mind as being the New Reality for their children, both Howard and Rudd may find themselves in a position where the general public thinks that neither is going to do enough, or do it fast enough, to Save The Future for the next generation.

The general fear of severe climate change may well leap ahead of the plans now being put together by both Howard and Rudd, leaving the public at large feeling that neither leaders will measure up to the kind of visionary they expect to lead the country until 2010. The kind of visionary they believe they will need.


CODA : Projections for Australian in 2050 are, not surprisingly, a hell of a lot worse, and you'll be hearing plenty about those horror stories soon enough. Hell being the appropriate word.
Actually, 2050 is expected to be very hell-like for many areas of Australia that aren't currently regarded as stinking-hot, desert-blown, dengue infested, cane toad overrun, hellholes.

Plant, Animals And People All Feature In Dire Climate Change Predictions,
Estimates

Good News For Cockroaches, Cane Toads And Kangaroos, Not So Good For Possums And Koalas

Island States Close To Australia May Become Uninhabitable Due To Fresh Water Shortages

Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change

Howard To Form Global Coalition To Save Ancient The Forests

Except For The Ones In Tasmania



Australian prime minister, John Howard, has announced that his government intends to spend more than $200 million planting trees and trying to wind back deforestation in developing countries as a way of combating global warming.

Howard wants to form a "global coalition" to tackle deforestation in South East Asia, in particular the massive illegal logging now underway in Indonesia.

The government claims it has the support of countries like the US and the UK for their forests plan, but neither country has officially signed up, or committed to help funding the fight against deforestation.

This is the latest attempt by Howard to position himself well out from the federal election as a full-blown, forest-focused conservationist. If the look of distaste on his face when he announced the plans is any indication, Howard is still having a hard time adjusting.

"...20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from clearing the world's forest and that's second only to emissions from burning fossil fuels to produce electricity and it's more than all the world's emissions from transport," John Howard said.

The plan will be John Howard's counter to the Kyoto Protocol, aimed at reducing global greenhouse gas emissions in an attempt to slow down global warming.

The more new trees planted, goes Howard's theory, and the less old trees are cut down, the less carbon and/or greenhouse gases go into the atmosphere.

Howard believes that if you can cut the rate of deforestation in half, and plant enough trees, you can notch up reductions in greenhouse gas emissions on the order of 10 times greater than would come from signing onto the Kyoto Protocol and meeting their projected targets for cuts.

The forests plan, announced on Thursday, is yet another example of how John Howard wants other countries to pick up the carbon slack so Australia doesn't have to shut any coal-fired power stations or dive too deeply into the renewable energies revolution sweeping through China and EU countries.

He claims Kyoto, and emissions targets proposed by the Labor opposition - cuts of 30% by 2020 - will cost Australia thousands of jobs and destroy the economy. His plan is better, he claims, because it will lead to great emissions cuts than those offered up by Kyoto without the loss of any jobs or the vast profits (and taxes) spawned by Australia's coal-rich resources boom.

But the vague proof Howard offers to back up his claims that emissions cuts of 30% by 2020 will cause an economic catastrophe in Australia is as questionable as the doom-mongery spouted by the most evangelical of global warming true believers.

By shouting in Parliament that Australia's economy and mining industry workforce is at dire risk from hard emissions cuts, Howard indulges in exactly the same kind of fear mongery that he accuses climate change alarmists of spouting.

"History is littered with examples of nations having overreacted to presumed threats to their great long-term disadvantage," Howard said, but did not cite one such example.

Primarily because the most obvious example of a nation overreacting to "presumed threats" is the United States under his good mate President Bush. The presumed threat being Saddam Hussein's non-existent WMDs.

Greens senators and Labor both picked up on the fact that Howard allows vast deforestation via clear-felling of ancient forests in Tasmania at the same time he is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to wind it back across South East Asia :

Greens Senator Christine Milne says it is hypocrisy to focus on South-East Asia when clearfell logging and regeneration burns continue in Tasmania.

"It's absolutely a last minute coming to recognise what we've all been pointing out for years, a loss of forests, deforestation, a major driver of climate change - start in Tasmania, Prime Minister," she said.

While few would argue against planting more trees and preserving ancient forests, John Howard is clearly still having a hard time adjusting to hearing such talk coming out of his own mouth, after a solid decade of mocking and attacking conservationists and green-orientated politicians.

But Australians are green-minded now in the vast majority, and global warming and climate change rank high as decisive election issues.

Howard must now be hoping he can make it to the next election without having to come clean on the fact that carbon trading, particularly centred around coal mining, coal exports, and coal-fired power stations, is already becoming the unofficial world currency. Australians are going to have to pay, and pay big, for getting wealthy off coal.

The World Bank is a key backer of Howard's forests plans, and their involvement adds another layer of credibility to the carbon credits as "world currency' theory.

Australia will eventually have to pay the rest of the world, probably via a carbon trading system run through the World Bank, to mine, export and burn coal at the rate we do today, and that price will see electricity costs skyrocket.

Howard has no one to blame but himself for the fact that he now has to play catch up and quickly re-brand himself as somewhat of a radical new conservationist, despite how distasteful he finds it all to be.

His own government's scientists and climate change specialists were trying to warn Howard & Friends for eight years that severe climate change was a reality, and global warming was likely to be most responsible for the coming changes. There were hundreds of reports that were locked away from the public, and the greater scientific community.

The Howard government successfully kept the views and warnings of their own scientists out of the public debate (for the most part) and locked up the government's own scientific agencies from having access to the media, and the public at large, to warn them of the horrors that they could all but verifiably prove were becoming an alarming, and dangerous, reality.

Howard left his conversion to climate change "realist" very late in the game, no doubt hoping that new, undeniable proof would emerge that humans are not responsible for global warming, but the proof never came.

Or, at least, the humans-are-responsible theory behind global warming became common currency and widely acknowledged as The Truth. Howard bet big that global warming would be exposed as a myth, a conspiracy theory, and he lost that bet.

Australia will soon have to pay for those savage losses, long after John Howard has retired to the United States and a cosy boardroom chair in Washington DC.

Telling Indonesia to do more to stop deforestation, while allowing it to continue in Tasmania is as ridiculous and hypocritical as playing down Australia's solar-powered future while demanding Australians accept that dozens of nuclear power plants will be needed to keep the country energy sustainable.

From 'The Australian' :

....the $200 million Australian initiative will operate outside the Kyoto climate change protocol and will be funded by other developed nations to help developing nations preserve forests.

Germany, Britain and the US are expected soon to contribute to the fund, which will have Indonesia as its prime target. The UN has identified Indonesia as having the world's highest rate of forest clearing.

The new world fund - with a similar structure to the six-party Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate created early last year - will give John Howard momentum on the climate change issue as Labor paints him as negative and reluctant on global warming.

The forest fund, to be managed by the World Bank, is designed to help developing countries start sustainable forest industries, plant new forests, stop illegal destruction of rainforests, provide monitoring of forest production, education in forest management and help communities dependent on illegal rainforest timber find alternative jobs.

Deforestation accounts for 20per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and it is estimated that a tonne of CO2 can be sequestered - or taken out of the atmosphere - through tropical reforestation for just $US2, a fraction of the cost of other technologies.

The World Bank has estimated the mismanagement of forests costs the global economy $US10billion a year and says 85 per cent of the world's forests are not managed in a sustainable way.

From the ABC :

Mr Howard has rejected British economist Sir Nicholas Stern's proposal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent in 13 years, saying it would damage Australia's economy and cost thousands of coal industry jobs.

He says combating deforestation will make a real difference, but will not harm the economy.

"What this initiative will do in a shorter period time is make a greater contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions than in fact the Kyoto Protocol," he said.

It should be noted that while John Howard and government ministers talk up their forests plan as having "the support" of England, the US and other key countries, they are yet to get anything close to a firm commitment of additional funding, and signatures to this new protocol are a long way away, probably on the other side of the coming federal election.


Howard Talks "Global Warming Nonsense" - 75% Rate GB As A Personal Concern
April, 2004 : In The Tasmanian Forest With The Men Who Cut Down Ancient Trees

Green Groups Welcome Plans To Reduce Asian Logging, But Claim It Is Hypocrisy To Not Do The Same In Australia - "Our Prime Minister Is A Forest Fool"

Indonesia Struggles To Fight Organised Crime Involved Illegal Logging - Estimates Of $4 Billion In Losses To Indonesia Every Year

Prime Minister Announces Eco Warrior-In-Chief Is 'Australian Of The Year'

Howard The Global Warming Denier Becomes A "Climate Change Realist"

By Darryl Mason

Tim Flannery, best selling author and Australia's lead campaigner for conservation, river protection and the fight against global warming has been named Australian Of The Year.

At a ceremony late yesterday, he was named AOTY by prime minister, John Howard, who's plastered cringe-grin shattered when Flannery gave his acceptance speech and made sure the public remembered that Howard had only recently become a convert to the threat of global warming.

Howard's grin was lost in a comical open-mouth-drop of horror when Flannery said :

"Prime Minister, I need to add I will be passionately critical of delays or policies by anyone that I think is wrong-headed..."

'The Australian' described Professor Flannery as :

(a) long recognised...provocative - but highly successful - alarmist on climate change.

Professor Flannery, a critic of the Government's refusal to sign to the Kyoto Protocol, said he was "humbled" by his award...

Professor Flannery said receiving the award from Mr Howard was one of the "ironies of life".

Howard refused to acknowledge for a solid decade the rising of evidence, indeed the rising tide itself, on climate change and global warming. But now he defines himself as a "climate change realist".

Flannery has, for more than ten years, sounded the warning bells on our increasingly chaotic weather systems, droughts, disappearing rivers and fragile environment.

Therefore, he's a climate change alarmist.

The Australian newspaper recently underwent its own transformation into the chief mocker of anything to do with warnings on climate change and global warming, sometimes devoting five or six opinion columns and the lead editorial to near hysterical bludgeoning of what were, mostly, reasonable arguments from some of the most respected scientists that time was running out if we wanted to protect and preserve the planet for future generations.

Once The Australian's owner, Rupert Murdoch, spoke out on how governments must do more to stop global warming, suddenly the newspaper, which boasts that it keeps Australia "informed", suddenly decide to inform Australia that global warming and climate change were actually realities. And time was running.


So how does the Australian Of The Year define what is at the core of being an Australian? It's not the old cliche of football, meat pies and Holden cars :

....the true underpinnings, the one thing that we all share as Australians, is this land.

It's what gives us our water and our food and our shelter and defines us as a nation.

Why isn't that the basis of our common sentiment about what it means to be an Australian?

The rest of it seems to me to be sort of randomly chosen bits of icons that we just happen to like.

...this sense of being part of an ecosystem that supports you and nurtures you and takes you into its bosom when you die and recycles you is very, very important to me and this country in a sense is very important to me for that reason.

From the Sydney Morning Herald :

Prof Flannery was presented with his award at an Australia Day-eve ceremony and concert on the lawns of Canberra's Parliament House.

"I do feel that the honour comes with a deep obligation, for it speaks eloquently of the desire of Australians to address climate change," he told the audience of flag-waving concert-goers.

"We are, on a per capita basis, the worst greenhouse polluters in the world and I don't think any of us want our children asking in future why we didn't give our utmost when it was still possible to influence the course of events.

"The best thing I can do for my country in this role, I think, is to continue to challenge and to work with all Australians and particularly our governments to stabilise our climate.

John Howard's Inner Green Embracement

The Australian prime minister has undergone one of the most dramatic transformations of all the world's key global warming deniers.

Naturally, he first had to be guided into finding, or creating, and then embracing his inner greenie by the Business Council of Australia, who directed him to do more to fight global warming once the nations' largest corporations realised how dramatically sudden climate change would affect their profit margins.

And no doubt, 18 months worth of polls that revealed Australians regard global warming and climate change as a greater threat to their lives, and livelihoods, than terrorism could have only helped the prime minister to realise climate change would be a key federal election issue in 2007.

On his side was the fact that Australians, like most people, really do have short memories.


Australians will always wonder just how different things might have been had Howard acted earlier.

And they will wonder this plenty in years to come if climate change, supposedly the result of global warming, grows more and more severe and smashes the country and hammers the economy, with superstorms, waterless towns, more and more acute drought and crumbling coastlines.

And Flannery, no doubt, will be there to remind them just how late the Howard government was in coming to the 'Climate Change Realism' table and beginning the transformation of Australian industry, water, rivers, forest management and pollution control.

Howard now denies his years of denial.

He was only being cautious, he claimed a few days ago :

I think we've been more measured than others. I don't think we've been indifferent or neglectful. I do think you have to look at the two things of climate change and water scarcity together.

So now Howard's a Climate Chang Realist, how exactly does he define climate change realism?

By defining it as real? Not quite :

(Climate change realism) means looking at the evidence as it emerges and responding with policies that preserve Australia's competitiveness and play to our strengths.

"There does appear to have been a contraction to the south in the weather systems which traditionally brought southern Australia its winter and spring rains.

"Our rainfall has always been highly variable. The deviation around average rainfall is enormous. And it seems to be getting bigger."

Howard hasn't really embraced his inner greenie, it wasn't there to begin with.

He doesn't really believe in climate change or global warming, but believes he has to be seen to be, at the very least, semi-believing, because 70% or so of Australians already believe, and they will be voting this year based on their beliefs.

Now he's hedging his bets, after finally stepping up to the table, but the losers will be the youngest generation today if he doesn't come up with a handful of aces.


John Howard : "...The Accumulated Evidence Is Undeniable, There Is Global Warming Occurring... Climate Change Is Occurring..."

Young Australian Of The Year Wants To Bring Back A Fair Go For Indigineous People

Government Claims Its $10 Billion Water Plan Will Be World Leader

Australian Of The Year Tim Flannery On What It Means To Be An Australian, Our Nuclear Future And The Federal Government's Awakening To The Realities Of Climate Change

Full List Of 2007 Australia Day Honours