ClimateGate: What It Means
Filed under: Australian News, Australian Politics, International News, International Politics, Science
‘ClimateGate’ is the name given to the controversy surrounding the leaking of emails belonging to the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia that took place in late November. This institute is a major research centre that played a key role in promoting Global Warming Alarmism and contributing to the IPCC report on Global Warming.
There has been some coverage in the Australian mainstream media, but most of it has completely ignored the meat of the issue, and instead focussed on ’computer hacking’ or how it could impede the Copenhagen climate summit. The most thorough coverage has been in the Australian newspaper and the blogs of News Ltd. columnists Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair.
For those of you that are unfamiliar, emails contained in these archives strongly suggest that academics at CRU have prepetrated widescale scientific fraud and engaged in highly unprofessional, if not criminal conduct. Furthermore, it casts a strong shadow of suspicion and doubt on their conclusions of future global climate catastrophe.
These practices include:
- Suppressing the views of dissenting scientists
- Mathematically manipulating climate data to hide features of the curve that disagree with alarmist opinions
- Knowingly incorporating poor quality, unreliable data into their research
- Subverting the peer review process
- Withholding and destroying information in response to Freedom of Information requests
I have no doubt that ClimateGate played a significant role in increasing opposition to the Australian ETS legislation and the fall of Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull.
Plenty of great posts have been written that explain the content of these emails and surrounding issues in depth, so I will just include the links:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/global_warming_fraud_and_the_f.html
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html
http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/23/media-missing-the-plot-on-climate-gate-its-the-fraud-stupid/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/
http://fascistsoup.com/2009/11/25/more-on-the-climategate-source-code/
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Young Couple from Queensland to Face Trial For Using Abortion Medicines
Filed under: Australian News, Australian Politics
Australia is truly regressing backwards. Earlier this week, we had the stupid Liberal MP Scott Morrison tell parliament that pornography is as dangerous as firearms. Now we have this:
A young couple in Queensland, aged 19 and 21 respectively, have been commited to trial for using abortion drugs to ‘procure a miscarriage’. The story goes that the police, whilst searching their home for another undisclosed reason, came across the used packaging for the abortion drugs RU486 (Mifepristone) - commonly called the ‘Abortion Pill’, and Misoprostol. Due to meddling by religious conservatives in parliament, RU486 is not easy to obtain in Australia, even though it is widely available in other countries, including our neighbour New Zealand and most European nations.
Here are some newspaper links that tell the story in depth:
- Couple Face Trial for Procuring Miscarriage
- Doctors threaten Queensland Abortion Test Case
- Queensland Abortion Law to Spark Vexed Debate
One can infer from the above that the Queensland police did not find what they were really looking for during the search, and just so that would not leave empty handed, they came up with another petty reason to charge the couple. Apparently, this is the first prosecution for this offence in 50 years! If convicted, the woman may face up to 7 years prison and her partner may face up to 3 years.
What beefs me even more is that if the couple had gone to a public hospital or private clinic for a surgical abortion, that would have been perfectly legal, but because they took the drugs of their own initiative – obviously because it was faster, cheaper and less traumatic than surgery – they now face prosection.
In my opinion, there is no greatly cruelty than to give birth to an unwanted child who does not have parents with the will or means to look after them. This young couple had mutually agreed to abort their pregnancy and they knew they were not ready. Furthermore, they had the support of both their parents.
In what way does society gain from prosecuting this young couple?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Emissions Trading Scheme Set To Increase Food And Grocery Prices By 7%
The Food and Grocery Council, together with large Australian retailers have warned that the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will result in more expensive food and groceries, with food price increasing at the checkout by up to 7%.
What this means to you is that if this mangled, complicated and utterly useless ETS legislation is passed, food prices WILL increase by 7%, as farmers, wholesalers and retailers will have a solid excuse to justify their profiteering.
Such price increases occurred when the 10% GST was introduced in the year 2000, and you may remember when a cyclone hit a banana-producing region of Queensland, ALL banana prices went up by up to ten times – 1000% for almost a year, even though other banana producing regions were unaffected and we could have easily allowed cheap imports from New Zealand.
I am conservative when it comes to my belief in human nature. Most people will pretend to believe in something whilst they believe it is socially beneficial [cool] or financially beneficial to do so. People are happy to make token gestures like sticking a ‘go green’ bumper sticker to their car or have a fun day out at a protest rally with friends, but when it comes to pulling money out of one’s wallet, people show their true selves. We are seeing increased voices in the media questioning the basis of evidence for catastrophic predictions of climate doom.
The proposed ETS legislation, that has been the subject or negotiation (horse-trading) between the major political parties and independents is complicated and full of exception clauses for all industries with powerful political lobbies.
Its phasing in has been drawn out over a number of years to try and stem public outrage. I question whether this legislation will result in a single molecule of CO2 from being generated. If there are any savings, the CO2 emission growth of our crucial trading partner China will cover them within a week.
If talks over this legislation collapse and resulting an election. I know who’ll be getting my vote - the party that promises to rip up this worthless piece of paper.
Oh yes – the disclaimer - I will take a complete U-turn on my position once I see:
- Falsifiable scientific evidence proving that human CO2 emissions have a significant and detrimental impact on climate – i.e. an experiment that makes a clear prediction that can be tested.
- Evidence that any plan to mitigate this will be effective and based on sound science.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kevin Rudd’s $6.2 Billion Auto Industry Package
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced a $6.2 billion dollar package to support the Australian Car Industry. This was after foreign owned car manufacturers announced plans to shut down local production in the wake of the global financial crisis.
$500 million of this money will be set aside for a ‘Green’ car innovation fund, to produce environmentally friendly vehicles.
The intentions of this plan are certainly noble. Australia has a proud history of automotive production. The industry employs many people who hold a lot of valuable know-how.
These are the problems I see with the plan:
1. It’s a large amount of money and it may only temporarily defer the problem. Foreign manufacturers will milk the government funds, artificially boosting their profits, then shut down the factories when the money has been exhausted.
2. Australian automotive tariffs are set to fall from 10% to 5% making it harder for our local industry to remain viable in the presence of low cost German, Japanese and Korean imports. Would we be merely sustaining an uncompetitive local industry out of pride?
Here are some possible alternatives:
1. Assist Australian entrepreneurs in buying out the local arms of these manufacturing firms, to ensure that the industry is under Australian ownership and that profits remain in this country.
Perhaps a new Australian company can focus on producing low cost, energy efficient vehicles that would offer something unique and provide a competitive edge on the market.
2. Use the money to pay for redundancies for these workers and retraining to allow them to get job in other industries where their skills can be adapted, e.g. Agricultural technology, military vehicles
What are your thoughts? Your comments are most encouraged.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Stop Internet Censorship in Australia
Filed under: Australian News, Australian Politics, IT News
The Australian Labor Party Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, has put together a plan to censor all Internet traffic in Australia with the stated intention of protecting children from pornography and blocking “illegal material”.
It is my opinion that this plan is completely unnecessary and serves merely as a distraction from the real issues affecting our country at this point in time. It is also a huge waste of money, with $44 million being budgeted in this financial year alone, with more to be spent in the following years.
The are a number of readily available options available today to concerned parents. These include PC software packages, routers with in-built filtering, and Internet Service Providers who offer optional filtering services on a per-account basis.
Australians will not be able to opt out of this scheme - we will only be able to choose between a ‘child-friendly’ setting or an ‘illegal content’ setting. What is illegal or child friendly will of course be determined by the government. It has not been discussed how one would get an incorrectly blocked site removed from the list.
The adoption of Conroy’s plan will result in web browsing being slowed considerably due to the overhead of filtering.
Filtering technology is known to be highly ineffective. A recent Tasmanian trial showed that a significant number of innocent pages were falsely blocked, and similarly, a significant number of ’child unsafe’ pages (1 in 13 clicks) got through.
Apart from the inaccuracy of the filtering, its overall impact is highly limited – it appears that the filter will only be applied to HTTP (web) traffic. P2P networks such as BitTorrent will not be filtered. Even the HTTP filtering can be easily bypassed using any number of off-shore anonymous proxy servers and VPN gateway.
If you don’t want Internet censorship forced upon you, contact your local Federal MP and let them know. If you don’t know who that is, this site should help:
http://apps.aec.gov.au/esearch
And if you want to complain to Senator Conroy, here is his contact page:
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/senators/homepages/senators.asp?id=3L6
The following sites are leading the campaign to oppose the filtering scheme and have detailed information:
http://nocleanfeed.com/
http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
WA Opposition Leader Troy Buswell Steps Down
Yet another politician’s career has been ended by committing a social faux-pas. In this case, the WA Liberal Opposition Leader, Troy Buswell, was forced to step down, due to a chair-sniffing incident with a female colleague back in 2005.
His colleagues may have had good reason to take offence, but it was a private matter that should not have concerned the media or the public, and they should have been able to resolve it between themselves.
Why this had to resurface 3 years later is anyone’s guess. I wish we lived in an age where politicians were forced to step down due to their incompetence, poor planning or managerial skills – things that actually affect the electorate!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
