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Imagine our society had green policies been in force when this country was settled.
If Labor is to have a future it must divorce itself from this idiocy.

A RESEARCH report that found there was insufficient water to make northern Australia a food bowl for the nation did not consider building dams because it was against Labor policy.
The Northern Australia Land and Water Taskforce relied heavily on the work done by the CSIRO’s Northern Australia Sustainable Yields project, whose scientists were told not to worry about investigating dams.

The IPCC’s dodgy data has made the global warming case look ridiculous. Climate Change minister Penny Wong adds to the load.

Scientists have found camels to be the third-highest carbon-emitting animal per head on the planet, behind only cattle and buffalo. Culling the one million feral camels that currently roam the outback would be equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road in terms of the reduction to the country’s greenhouse gases.
But Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told The Australian there was little point doing anything about Australia’s feral camels as only the CO2 of the domesticated variety is counted under the Kyoto Protocol. That equates to only a small number of the beasts, the sort found lugging tourists around Cable Beach in Broome and at Monarto Zoo, southeast of Adelaide.

This is great for the Australian economy. But how do Kevin Rudd and his Green extortionists square it with their war against carbon?

MINING magnate Clive Palmer says his company has secured Australia’s biggest export deal with a $A69.39 billion agreement to sell coal to China.
The Resourcehouse chairman on Saturday said the company’s proposed China First coal mine and infrastructure project in central Queensland had reached a 20-year agreement with one of China’s largest power companies, China Power International Development, the flagship company of China Power Investment Corporation (CPI).

You have to wonder which versions of their youth Barack Obama and Kevin Rudd will mull over when they meet next month.
Seems the One is as adept as The Boy Who Lived in the Back of a VW at gilding the lily about his emerging years.

A keen basketball player, Sen Obama highlights in his book the feelings of alienation caused by “always playing on the white man’s court – by the white man’s rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a teacher wanted to spit in your face, he could, because he had the power and you didn’t.”
But that’s not the Barack Obama, nor the Hawaii of the 1970s, recalled by his friends, teachers and team-mates. They remember instead the summer of 1978 when “easy-going Barry” was in constant search of a basketball game, strutting around the island as if he owned it, dribbling a ball from school to the golden sands of Waikiki beach as he belted out Earth, Wind and Fire songs in a distinctive, gravelly voice.
Kelli Furushima, 46, a close friend of Mr Obama, recalls: “We’re just such a mixed-up bag of races, it was hard to imagine that he felt that way because he just seemed happy all the time. Smiling all the time.” Flicking through an old school yearbook, full of pictures of a grinning Obama, she added: “You see he talks in his book about race and stuff, and we all have the same reaction: we’re all so surprised that he had any sort of anguish at all. You can see we had so many tones of brown. If someone is brown, they can be Samoan or Fijian or Tongan. I can’t tell if someone is Fijian, or black.” She paused to point out how Sen Obama had dotted his signature with a little Afro-haircut symbol atop the “B” and the “O”.

Pile up that firewood, erect that stake, the hunt is on.

A scientist at the University of East Anglia has been questioned by detectives ­investigating how controversial emails were leaked from the campus’s climate research unit.

What brought the boffin to the attention of the Old Bill? Well, he had communicated with known sceptics and had expressed such heresy as “science isn’t done by consensus”.

The scientist, Paul Dennis, explains his situation here.

UPDATE:
Dennis’ UEA colleague Phil Jones says the ClimateGate revelations almost drove him to extreme measures.

UPDATE 2:
Matt Ridley pays tribute to the bloggers who brought truth to the climate debate.

Ho hum, this is getting tiresome.
We kick off the week with yet another discovery of dodgy data from the UN’s official global warming alarmists:

Despite these checks, a diagram used to demonstrate the potential for generating electricity from wave power has been found to contain numerous errors.
The source of information for the diagram was cited as the website of UK-based wave-energy company Wavegen. Yet the diagram on Wavegen’s website contains dramatically different figures for energy potential off Britain and Alaska and in the Bering Sea.

Another IPCC claim is ripe for ridicule:

The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.
This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035.

Viewing Insiders this morning, you had to marvel at how much the political debate on manmade global warming has changed in a couple of months.
Bolta demanded, and got, his say, Cassidy took the middle road and the Fairfax hack steered clear of climate discussion. Only The Australian’s resident warmenista, Lenore Taylor, held the increasingly discredited faith. However, at times Taylor looked ready to burst into tears as the true believers copped the mockery they so richly deserve.

Christopher Pearson says the leftwing media has been forced to admit it is not all truth and light from global warming proponents.

LAST weekend looks likely to have been a tipping point in the media debate on climate change in the English-speaking world.
The two daily papers in Britain which have campaigned most single-mindedly on the urgent need for action on man-made global warming have begun to change their tune.

Local government councillors are frequently accused of myopia when it comes to the big picture.
These idiots do their best to prove that axiom amid claims and denials of racism.

A RACE row has erupted at a Melbourne council with a former Greens candidate accused of telling a fellow councillor not to vote on “Asian matters” because he has a Korean wife.

Oh, such indignation and high moral ground occupation from elected officials who have no problem approving a publicly funded facility for the exclusive use of one racial group.

Cr Reid told the council meeting Cr Ellis had a “hidden cultural agenda” over the proposed expansion of an all-Chinese nursing home in Donvale.

Kevin Rudd has defended his nephew’s decision to frock up in a KKK outfit, invoking the line of detesting your position, but defending your right to express it.
Wonder if it will wash with next month’s VIP guest, the POTUS?

By Jove, it’s reassuring to know that certain things remain sacred with some British educators.

A university registrar offered bogus degrees in return for spanking sessions in a hotel, a court was told yesterday.

Never let it be said the Herald Sun doesn’t give Kevin Rudd the benefit of the doubt.
Here’s today’s damning headline:
794 days of broken promises
However, News stablemate, The Daily Telegraph, is far less forgiving:
Our 795 days of empty promises

This is the most serious accusation the federal government has faced in its tawdry 26-month life.

PRIVATE records of a Chinese-Australian businesswoman close to the former defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon say he received substantial payments as part of a campaign to cultivate him as an agent of political and business influence.
Confidential papers of the businesswoman Helen Liu contradict claims last year by Mr Fitzgibbon – and his father, the former Labor MP Eric Fitzgibbon – that they had no financial or business relationship with Ms Liu

At the very least a senate inquiry should be mounted to discover how much this affair has damaged the national interest.
The commentariat should for once shelve their Labor sympathies, particularly Oakes, and dig to the bottom of this scandal.
What is it with the once-great Labor Party? When they’re not chasing slings at the federal level from anyone with a favour to purchase, at state level they’re taking corporation kickbacks, stacking branches and appointing crim-cuddling barrister mates to the judiciary. Even here at the local council, Labor stooges have been caught taking developers’ spondoola. You’d think any elector with a shred of decency would vote for another party from the left or right before the middleclass dregs’ party.

The tiger dragon has roared. In dissent.

China’s most senior climate change official surprised a summit in India when he questioned whether global warming is caused by carbon gas emissions and said Beijing is keeping an “open mind”.

It seems that every day another brick in the wall of manmade global warming comes toppling down.

The United Nations’ expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain tops on a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

Catch up with all the latest ‘gotchas’ here.

UPDATE: Reader David Elder points to an Andrew Bolt post on IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri’s latest work of fiction, a steamy bodice ripper, which has attracted much amusing comment from readers.
My favourite:
From ‘Hide the Decline’ to ‘Hide the Sausage’.
Struth

Home after a delightful summer break at Warrnambool, staying in my sister’s comfy, funky little beachside cottage.
We revelled in seven straight days of 25-30 degrees sunshine, unbelievable weather for the ‘Bool, where it’s likely to change seven times in a day.
With friends, we took full advantage of the city’s brilliant network of cycling and walking tracks and were out on the bikes every day.
We put in a 60km haul on Thursday, riding along the Merri River to west of the city then along the highway and lanes to Killarney beach for a swim and a cuppa. We then hooked up with the Port Fairy-Warrnambool rail trail for an easy uphill ride to Koroit, where we had lunch at the best pie shop in western Victoria. From there we rejoined the rail trail until it peters out near Illowa. Word is the trail will be completed to Warrnambool by mid-year. Reckon it will become one of the most popular cycling routes in Victoria when finished.
I’ve downloaded a free picture editing program, PhotoScape, which has a few attractive options that even a hamfisted hack like me can handle. Here’s some Warrnambool landmarks shot during the week.

There’s no carpet big enough to sweep the manmade global warming hoax under, so there’ll be a swish here and a swash there and let’s hope no one notices the dirty great pile of bovine waste reaching to the ceiling.

The timetable to reach a global deal to tackle climate change lay in tatters on Wednesday after the United Nations waived the first deadline of the process laid out at last month’s fractious Copenhagen summit.
Nations agreed then to declare their emissions reduction targets by the end of this month. Developed countries would state their intended cuts by 2020: developing countries would outline how they would curb emissions growth.

Great Australian institutions like the surf lifesaving movement show you don’t need a squillion dollars and the heavy hand of government to make a meaningful difference to people’s lives.

The 18-year-old Sudanese refugee has finally conquered her fear, through a surf lifesaving program targeting new arrivals who haven’t grown up near the beach.
“Today was a lovely day,” she said, beaming. “Before, when I went to the beach, I didn’t go in the water because no one was with me.”

They should have known this would end up in another fine old mess.

Carlos Laurel, 31, and Andre “Sug” Hardy, 39, of Lincoln Street, face eight charges related to cocaine trafficking. Police arrested Laurel and Hardy after they showed up at a Kingston residence and allegedly delivered 50 bags of cocaine to the unidentified occupant Tuesday at about 5:53 p.m. Police estimate street value of the cocaine was $2,500.

Huge headache for the Obama administration.

BOSTON — A little-known Republican upended the balance of power in Washington by winning a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, a result that imperils President Barack Obama’s top legislative priorities and augurs trouble for his party in this year’s elections.

Much sookie-laa-laaing over at the Huffington Post from where the blame is being placed on all manner of illogical factors, as interpreted by Chistery at Tim Blair’s:

1) Massachusetts used to be full of enlightened people, now just stupid rednecks who like Palin.
2) They voted for someone that wont help Obama.
3) Dirty liars got in because of their dirty lies.
4) The election may show democracy in action, but because it didn’t go my way, democracy sucks and you get what you deserve (whining continues a while longer).. Voters cut off their noses to spite their face.

Leftie elitists, they’re so misunderstood. Can’t the rubes see that even though they’re headed for the poorhouse, at least under Obama’s guided-from-on-high socialism, they’ll be enlightened along the way.

This commenter at the normally leftwing Washington Post illustrates the voters’ mood:

I am a Democrat who voted for Obama but I did not vote for massive debt, a health care reform bill that is anything but reform, backroom deals to buy the votes of senators, treating our allies Israel, England, Germany, and France as though they were the enemy, refusal to acknowledge that Islamic terrorism is a threat to our country and does exist, a carbon tax energy policy that will cost the middle class billions of dollars in new taxes, and the arrogance, hubris, and attitude of Obama and his diehard supporters that are harming America.
I am glad Scott Brown won and if the liberal Democrats don’t get the message that this country did not want a far left turn when Obama won the election this life long Democrat will never vote for a Democrat again.
Posted by: mjkoch* | January 19, 2010 11:51 PM | Report abuse

Climategate has crossed the Atlantic.

A computer programmer named E. Michael Smith and a Certified Consulting Meteorologist named Joseph D’Aleo join the program to tell us about their breakthrough investigation into the manipulations of data at the NASA Goddard Science and Space Institute at Columbia University in New York and the NOAA National Climate Data Center in Ashville, North Carolina.

Lots of links here.

That didn’t take long. Anthony Watts reports that the first book on Climategate has been published.
FURTHERMORE: With all these revelations of dodgy data, it looks as if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is indulging in a little pre-emptive error admission.

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it . . . It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

Oh dear, how will the luvvies deal with an image of the gentle, socialist Swedes as bunny boilers?

Swedes will turn on their central heating this winter in the knowledge that it may be powered in part by the burning carcasses of thousands of rabbits.