EU mulls carbon tax to fight climate change

www.chinaview.cn | Oct 2, 2009

GOTHENBURG, Sweden, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) — European Union (EU) finance ministers on Friday discussed the idea of introducing a carbon tax across the 27-nation bloc as a way to help fight climate change.

“Today, there were few reactions, but all the reactions were positive,” Laszlo Kovacs, EU Commissioner for Taxation and Customs Union, told reporters after presenting the idea to EU finance ministers at an informal meeting in the Swedish port city of Gothenburg.

Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg, whose country holds the EU rotating presidency, said there had been a constructive exchange of views and that the European Commission was encouraged to make a formal proposal, possibly next year.

He said a number of ministers welcomed the idea of introducing a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from sectors outside the EU Emission Trading Scheme.

The EU currently runs the world’s largest Emission Trading Scheme, which imposes emission caps on certain EU industries, including power generators and some heavy industrial plants, and requires them to buy extra permit if they want to emit more.

The new carbon tax is likely to be applied to transport, agriculture, forestry, households and others.

In fact, several EU member states have already introduced such tax on national basis.

Borg said Sweden’s carbon tax had proved “very successful” since it was introduced at the start of the 1990s.

Denmark, Finland and Slovenia also have taxes on household carbon emissions resulting from heating and electricity use. France is planning to introduce a carbon tax on gasoline or diesel fuel for cars next year, hoping it can bring more revenue for the government.

But Kovacs admitted it would not be easy to reach a deal since taxation is reserved for national sovereignty under EU rules and any change requires unanimity among 27 member states.

“Introducing a new tax in the EU has never been easy, and particularly it is not easy in the time of a financial and economic crisis,” he said.

“But it is evident that the climate change is an even more disastrous global challenge than the current financial and economic crisis. It’s a question of life or death for the population of the globe,” he added.

Kovacs said the tax would not only help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the EU, but also its revenues could be used in financing the fight against climate change in the developing world.

The revenues “should be used for climate change purposes (and) to finance the climate change efforts of the developing countries, because they need some support and we need revenues to support them,” he said.

EU finance ministers also had an “active and constructive” discussion on the issue of climate financing today, according to the Swedish EU presidency.

World governments are expected to reach a new deal on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to replace the Kyoto Protocol after it expires in 2012 at a United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen this December, but current negotiations have been deadlocked, with climate financing proving to be a stumbling block.

Developing countries have called for generous financial support from rich countries to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impact of global warming, for which industrialized nations are historically responsible.

In early September, the European Commission unveiled a blueprint for scaling up international finance to help poor nations, proposing that the EU would contribute some 2 to 15 billion euros (2.9 to 22 billion U.S. dollars) a year by 2020, a sum criticized by developing countries as not enough.

British royal family to be exempt from any cuts in public spending

The total spent under the 2008 civil list was £13.9m, including £9.9m on salaries. Photograph: MJ Kim/Getty Images

Revealed: the royal waive which means no spending cuts for the Windsors

Queen’s income outpaced inflation for two decades

Guardian | Sep 26, 2009

by Alan Travis

The Royal Family is to be exempt from any cuts in public spending next year when its civil list funding is settled for the next 10 years.

Although all of the major political parties are vying to demonstrate their willingness to wield the axe on public spending, MPs will be powerless to reduce the £7.9m a year paid under the civil list because of an obscure deal struck between Buckingham Palace and the Treasury in 1972 when the current legislation governing royal finances was drawn up.

Palace officials made clear earlier this summer that they are actually seeking a rise in the annual civil list payment to cover “increased costs” despite the fact that they currently have a £21m surplus in the reserves on the civil list account.

Informal talks between the Treasury and the palace are already under way.

A Treasury order settling the annual civil list until 2020 must be laid before parliament by next July to come into effect from January 2011.

But with Gordon Brown and David Cameron acknowledging the need for public spending cuts, any bid for a royal rise looks politically fraught. Earlier this month, Cameron said cuts were an “issue of leadership and the burden had to be shared fairly, including by the rich and powerful”.

The palace, when it published its annual report on royal finances in June, claimed that without any increase there would be a £40m backlog of repairs and environmental improvements by 2019.

Uniquely in the public sector, royal civil list finances are negotiated – and debated by MPs –only once every 10 years. A serious misjudgment approved by John Major in the 1990 settlement made provision for an annual inflation rate of 7.5% for the following 10 years and the annual civil list payment was fixed at £7.9m a year.

But inflation in the 1990s turned out to be only 3.7% and the palace built up a huge surplus of £35m, including £12m in interest by the time Tony Blair came to decide the 2000 settlement.

Despite protests from a handful of MPs that the royal family should hand back some of that surplus to the Treasury it was confirmed that parliament could not amend the annual payment downwards. The deal under the 1972 Civil List Act confirmed by background Treasury papers in the National Archives seen by the Guardian means they can only ever vote to increase it. Labour MPs protested at the time that this applied to no other category of public expenditure.

Blair tried to make a virtue out of “freezing” the payment at £7.9m a year and played down the existence of the £35m reserves. He said the palace had agreed to finance from the civil list an extra £2.5m a year that had previously been paid directly by other government departments. Taken together with the predicted effects of inflation it would mean a real terms reduction by 2010, said Blair.

But the inflation rate has tumbled further since 2000 and the latest accounts show there is still a £21m surplus on the civil list account. Officials estimate that a further £7m of the reserves will be used this year but the Queen will still be £14m in the black as the negotiations for her pay rise get under way.

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, said: “When we are looking at potentially painful cuts in public services the royal family should not be feather-bedded in this way. I am talking about the taxpayer paying for Prince Andrew’s flights to take part in golf matches.” If the royal family was short of cash the whole of Windsor Castle could be handed over to English Heritage and opened to the paying public. “They have a duty to make savings as much as everybody else,” he said.

‘Let us arrange things…’

In August 1971 when the royal finances legislation was being framed, leading Conservative John Boyd-Carpenter wrote a confidential letter to the then chancellor, Anthony Barber, saying that they had to ensure that the civil list reviews did not take place under a future Labour government. He complained that the 1970-71 review of royal finances had led to the former Labour chancellor, Roy Jenkins, using the occasion to extract information about the Queen’s personal fortune and that Harold Wilson was trying to use it to get his hands on the revenues from the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster. “If Labour were in power at a moment when an increase in the civil list became essential, the Queen would be in a position of very great difficulty … In any event let us so arrange things that the Queen does not have to expose herself to this again.”

Some U.N. members are envious, arrogant beggars

Washington Times | Sep 22, 2009

by Wesley Pruden

Manhattan will be a dangerous place this week for President Obama, where the terminally envious of the world are waiting at the United Nations with envy, arrogance and outstretched begging bowls.

The diplomats representing the envious countries, some of them little more than tribes with flags and an embassy in a rooming house on a side street in Washington, have cooked up an interesting week to blunt the skepticism of a growing number of scientists who are finding the courage to say what they believed all along, even as Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, and others insist that time is running out to make the sun change its spots, the tides recede and the weather behave itself.

The London Guardian reports that the U.N. chief and global-warming negotiators “say that unless they can convert world leaders into committed advocates of radical action it will be hard … to avoid the most devastating consequences of climate change.”

If true, that’s good news for the rest of us, because “the most devastating consequences” would be enactment of Al Gore’s nightmare vision, to give the bureaucrats of the world all the taxes they can spend while bankrupting the most productive countries of the West.

The ambassador of the European Union to the United States is in particular need of a shot of Midol and a nice lie down until he feels better. Sen. Harry Reid’s disclosure that the U.S. Senate won’t take up cap-and-trade legislation, the centerpiece of “controlling” the effects of global warming, until next year has thrown the Europeans into a royal pout.

“Sometimes in this country,” says EU Ambassador John Bruton, the greatest deliberative body in the world acts as though it is the only deliberative body in the world, and we should wait until it gets health care passed. The … world cannot wait on the Senate’s timetable.”

Organizers of global-warming week at the U.N. are determined to “imbue leaders with a new sense of purpose,” one of the organizers tells the Guardian. Instead of speeches, leaders of big countries and small countries – some we’ve never heard of – will spend the day communing with each other. Britain, for example, will be paired with Guyana, Tuvalu with the Netherlands, Mongolia with the European Union.

There will be no respite from global warming at dinner, which will be a good hot meal (no Wonder Bread and cold cuts). Leaders of big countries will be regaled with whines by the likes of Bangladesh, Kiribati and Costa Rica. Kiribati is said to be one of the “primary victims” of global warming. Who knew? (U.S. Marines will not so fondly remember Kiribati as Tarawa, one of the fiercest island battles of World War II.)

“We need these leaders to go outside their comfort zones,” explains one of the organizers. “Our sense is that leaders have got a little too cozy and comfortable. They really have to hear from countries that are vulnerable and suffering.”

None of the delegates will hear any dissent from the mantra that the sky is falling, that only socking it to the taxpayers of the West can save us from being boiled in saltwater. But ghost stories told around the campfire, of melting ice caps and polar bears floating past Duluth, are losing their power to terrify. Slowly but inevitably, verifiable facts are dissolving the fondest fantasies of Al Gore’s hired scientists.

A new book by an Australian geologist, Ian Plimer, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, argues that scientific fact has overwhelmed the doomsday scenarios of sinking islands, rising temperatures and collapsing ice shelves. He argues that global warming, which has naturally occurred over the billions of years of the Earth’s life, has often been a cycle of wealth and plenty. The Romans grew lemons, limes and oranges as far north as Hadrian’s Wall.

This naturally causes heartburn in certain labs and faculty lounges.

“They say I rape cows, eat babies and that I know nothing about anything,” he says. But the professor is not susceptible to the usual smear that he is a right-wing religious nut. He’s actually a member of the Humanist Society and wrote an earlier book attacking creationism, making him at one with the atheists, infidels and heretics who wear unbelief as scientific credentials.

American presidents always get grief abroad for looking out for American interests. Life was tough for Gulliver, too. But Lilliputians in every age are merely irritants, like ticks and mosquitos. President Obama should keep that in mind this week in New York.

France set to impose carbon tax

It will apply to households as well as enterprises, but not to the heavy industries and power firms.

Two-thirds of French voters say they are opposed to the new levy, fearing they will struggle to pay higher bills.

BBC | Sep 10, 2009

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced plans for a new carbon tax aimed at combating global warming.

The tax will be introduced next year and will cover the use of oil, gas and coal, he said.

The new tax will be 17 euros (£15) per tonne of emitted carbon dioxide (CO2). It will be phased in gradually.

It will apply to households as well as enterprises, but not to the heavy industries and power firms included in the EU’s emissions trading scheme.

Most electricity in France – excluded from the new carbon tax – is nuclear generated.

Mr Sarkozy said revenues from the new tax would be ploughed back into taxpayers’ pockets through cuts in other taxes and “green cheques”.

The carbon tax plans have already encountered stiff opposition across the political spectrum.

France’s Le Monde newspaper says the tax will cover 70% of the country’s carbon emissions and bring in about 4.3bn euros (£3.8bn) of revenue annually.

Mr Sarkozy insists the new tax is all about persuading the French to change their habits and cut energy consumption, the BBC’s Emma Jane Kirby reports from Paris.

Critics say it is just a ploy to boost ailing state finances.

Two-thirds of French voters say they are opposed to the new levy, fearing they will struggle to pay higher bills.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon had previously set the new tax rate at 14 euros per tonne of CO2.

Federal Government Needs Massive Hiring Binge of 600,000 New Workers, Study Claims

The study estimates that the federal government will need to hire nearly 600,000 people for all positions over President Obama’s four years — increasing the current workforce by nearly one-third.

Federal Government Needs Massive Hiring Binge, Study Finds

Washington Post | Sep 3, 2009

By Steve Vogel

The federal government needs to hire more than 270,000 workers for “mission-critical” jobs over the next three years, a surge prompted in part by the large number of baby-boomer federal workers reaching retirement age, according to the results of a government-wide survey being released Thursday.

The numbers also reflect the Obama administration’s intent to take on several enormous challenges, including the repair of the financial sector, fighting two wars, and addressing climate change.

“It has to win the war for talent in order to win the multiple wars it’s fighting for the American people,” said Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, the think tank that conducted the survey of 35 federal agencies, representing nearly 99 percent of the federal workforce.

Despite its comprehensive scope, the survey is necessarily imprecise about certain questions in looking so far into the future. The number of hires would be affected, for example, by federal workers deciding to delay their retirement, the government continuing to rely on private contractors to handle some of these jobs, and Congress balking at the price tag of adding new workers to the federal payroll.

Nevertheless, the survey makes clear that the majority of new hires will be needed in five broad fields — medical, security, law enforcement, legal and administrative.

Mission-critical jobs are those positions identified by the agencies as being essential for carrying out their services. The study estimates that the federal government will need to hire nearly 600,000 people for all positions over President Obama’s four years — increasing the current workforce by nearly one-third.

The medical and public health area is most in need of hires, according to the study. Stier described the Department of Veterans Affairs as a “dramatic example” of an agency with pressing needs, as a result of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. VA, according to the report, will need more than 48,000 hires over the next three years, including 19,000 nurses and 8,500 physicians.

Intelligence agencies expect to hire 5,500 people in the next year and “in the same order of magnitude” over the following two years, according to Ronald P. Sanders, chief human capital officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Such agencies include the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.

“It’s a combination of how much turnover we expect and how much growth we expect in our budget,” Sanders said.

The nation’s unsettled economy and high unemployment rate may ease the government’s task, as workers turn to the federal sector for job security and good benefits. But Stier said many federal agencies will have to fight to attract top talent, particularly in fields in which government cannot compete with private-sector salaries.

“Most are going to see extreme competition with the private sector,” Stier said. This could be especially true in fields such as medical, legal and information technology, he said.

Yet federal hiring remains a cumbersome process for many agencies. “Fixing the hiring process is a key component in making it work,” Stier said.

“Most government agencies have been historically passive, announcing jobs and waiting for people to line up,” said Sanders, who served as associate director for policy for the Office of Personnel and Management before joining the national intelligence office.

But Sanders said Obama’s vow to make government service “cool” and federal efforts to streamline the hiring process should leave the government in good stead to make the hires.

The Department of Homeland Security expects to hire for 65,730 positions by 2012, an increase of more than 48,000 from the previous three-year period.

The Justice Department is expecting 4,000 new positions among law enforcement personnel, correctional officers and attorneys in the 2010 budget, said Mari Barr Santangelo, chief human capital officer for the department.

But, federal officials said, the ultimate accuracy of the hiring projections will depend on whether current employees retire as predicted.

Despite the projected growth in federal jobs, the size of the government would be no larger than at most other times in the country’s post-World War II history, both in relative and absolute terms.

In 1970, for example, the number of civilians on the federal payroll numbered 2,095,100, a figure that represented a little more than 1 percent of the U.S. population. In 2008, the comparable figure was 2,020,200, or 0.66 percent.

However, the figures do not reflect the enormous growth of the government contractor force as the result of privatization efforts pursued by previous administrations.

The Obama administration has signaled in its budget its intention to replace many contractors with government workers, particularly in the field of defense acquisition. This is another reason for the predicted surge in government hiring.

OPM Director John Berry was unavailable to comment on the report, according to a spokesperson.

The survey results are to be posted Thursday at http://www.wherethejobsare.org, according to the partnership.

Staff writers Joe Davidson and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.

Ground broken on $3.4 billion Homeland Security complex

It’s biggest federal building project in D.C. area since Pentagon 68 years ago

Project to gather more than 15,000 employees now scattered in 35 offices

“It will help us hold meetings,” Secretary Janet Napolitano said. “It will help us build that culture of ‘One DHS.’”

CNN | Sep 9, 2009

By Mike M. Ahlers

Rendering of future Coast Guard headquarters, with green roof designed to capture and reuse water.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Washington notables broke ground on the future home of the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday, symbolically starting construction on the biggest federal building project in the Washington area since the Pentagon 68 years ago.

The project will bring together more than 15,000 employees now scattered in 35 offices in the region, placing them on a 176-acre campus strewn with historic buildings in a long-neglected corner of Washington, five miles from the Capitol building.

Department leaders hope the $3.4 billion consolidation will help the department fulfill its core mission — protecting the homeland — in ways big and small.

“It will help us hold meetings,” Secretary Janet Napolitano said. “It will help us build that culture of ‘One DHS.’”

Related

Cash for Slackers: Federal government needs 600,000

DHS & GSA Participate in Joint Groundbreaking Ceremony for Consolidated DHS HQ

At the groundbreaking, political leaders shoveled dirt with care, but pitched historical references and metaphors with abandon.

“I do have a kind of paternalistic feeling towards DHS,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, an early advocate for creating the department. “I feel like we’ve finally given a home to this child we’ve created, which is finally reaching maturity.”

Lieberman likened the creation of the department’s headquarters to the creation of the Pentagon. Ground was broken on the Pentagon on September 11, 1941, exactly 60 years before the 2001 terrorist attacks, he noted.

President Franklin Roosevelt planned the defense consolidation, Lieberman said, because he knew war was imminent and felt it could be coordinated more efficiently from one location. The Department of Homeland Security also will benefit by consolidation, Lieberman said.

The site today has the appearance of a sprawling college campus — although one stuck in time. Established by Congress in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane and later renamed St. Elizabeths, the campus has 62 buildings built between the 1850s and 1940.

The federal government plans to preserve 52 of the historic buildings, which are in varying stages of decay. Of the 10 buildings to be destroyed, eight are greenhouses that have major structural damage.

Some $650 million in Department of Homeland Security and General Services Administration federal stimulus money is expediting some of the rehabilitation, the latter agency said.

The project also includes large amounts of new construction. The first building, a 1.8 million-square-foot U.S. Coast Guard headquarters, will cost about $435 million and is scheduled for completion in 2013. The building will include “green roofs” and landscaped courtyards to capture and reuse surface water.

Former Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend said the department is right to consolidate its facilities but cautioned it won’t make the huge differences some people claim it will.

“For one thing, what we know is St. Elizabeths is not big enough to hold all of their headquarters components,” she said. And while the department needs to be far enough away from downtown Washington to survive an attack, it “suffers from not having a presence on the National Mall just like all the other major agencies,” she said.

City officials were ebullient Wednesday about the prospect of a blighted area being transformed. The gated campus borders some of Washington’s most violent streets.

“They’re going to try us, and they’re going to like us,” said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s delegate to Congress.

Councilman Marion Barry, who has long complained the area is ignored by the federal government, tweaked visitors at the groundbreaking.

“I hope most of you had your GPS’s working,” he said.

IMF: Countries need to raise taxes to pay off trillions spent fighting global recession

IMF sees slow growth, tax hikes soon

Toronto Star | Aug 19, 2009

OTTAWA–The International Monetary Fund says most countries will need to raise taxes to pay off the trillions of dollars they spent fighting the global recession.

IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard says in an article to be published today that governments acted properly in ramping up spending to stop the worst slump since World War II.

Soon, he says, nearly all countries will have to raise taxes to pay the recovery bill.

Canada’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has rejected the idea he will have to raise taxes to pay off about $47 billion in stimulus spending.

Blanchard, meanwhile, says with the recession virtually over, what is left are deep scars that will take years to heal.

He sees positive growth for most countries in the next few years, but says it will be sluggish.

“The recovery has started,” Blanchard says in the paper released by the Washington-based lender.

“The crisis has left deep scars, which will affect both supply and demand for many years to come.”

In many countries, the potential exists for economies never to return to where they stood before the recession hit, Blanchard states.

A rebalancing among nations is also needed, the IMF says, with countries like the United States increasing imports and economies like China increasing exports.

Having rescued economies from Pakistan to Iceland in the past year, the IMF is advising officials to keep economic stimulus in place no longer than needed to chart a path to sustainable growth.

Blanchard calls that process a “delicate rebalancing act,” in which capital flows to emerging markets “may not fully come back in the next few years.”

Most economies may expand for a few quarters but “growth will not be quite strong enough” to reduce unemployment, unlikely to crest until some time next year, he adds.

The IMF has said the world economy would expand 2.5 per cent in 2010, not 1.9 per cent as it predicted in April.

But this year’s contraction will be 1.4 per cent, worse than the 1.3 per cent drop the IMF saw in April.

Blanchard cautions that rising government debt levels mean fiscal stimulus programs cannot continue for “very long” unless private consumption and investment replace public support for growth.

“We may not go back to the old growth path,” he said in the paper. He adds that a sustained global recovery may hinge on the ability of Asia to boost domestic demand to levels that help U.S. exports.

“The United States was not only at the origin of the crisis. It is central to any world recovery.”

Inability or unwillingness by China, Japan and other Asian economic powers to reduce current-account surpluses could lead to a slower U.S. recovery and political pressure to pump in more fiscal stimulus and borrow more.

U.S. inability to trim debt, then, would become a concern.

Fiscal deficits could feed “worries about U.S. government bonds and the dollar … causing large capital flows from the United States,” Blanchard added.

“Dollar depreciation may take place, but in a disorderly fashion, leading to another episode of instability and high uncertainty” that could derail recovery.

‘A Tax on Thin Air’

RealClearPolitics.com | Aug 17, 2009

By Robert Tracinski and Tom Minchin

In a potential preview for America, the Australian Senate has just defeated that country’s version of cap-and-trade by a vote of 42-30. Most of the overseas coverage of this event, however, has missed the most interesting feature of the defeat. The BBC report, for example, claims that the bill was blocked because “opposition senators…feared the legislation would harm the country’s mining sector.”

In fact, the bill was defeated because there is now serious disagreement in Australia on the very existence of human-caused global warming. That’s the backbone behind the collapse of what was supposed to be bipartisan agreement. As Senator Nick Minchin put it in a blistering speech opposing the bill, “this whole extraordinary scheme, which would do so much damage to Australia, is based on the as yet unproven assertion that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are the main driver of global warming…. The Rudd government arrogantly refuses to acknowledge that there remains a very lively scientific debate about the extent of and the main causes of climate change, with thousands of highly reputable scientists around the world of the view that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are not and cannot be the main driver of the small degree of global warming that occurred in the last 30 years of the 20th century.”

In a previous article, we have already described this “intellectual climate change” in Australia’s global warming debate, and arguably no one is more responsible for the shift in opinion than University of Adelaide geologist Ian Plimer, whose new book Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science is an authoritative scientific refutation of the claims of human-caused global warming.

The influence of Plimer’s book is particularly interesting because it is not a light introduction to the topic. It is a thick book, chock full of science. Plimer’s prose is spirited, but there’s so much detail it can be a lot take in. Yet that is part of the point of the book. If the book is comprehensive in its scope, that is because everything science has discovered about “history, archaeology, geology, astronomy, ocean sciences, atmospheric sciences, and the life sciences”-Plimer’s list-refutes the global warming dogma.

What has Plimer been telling his Australian readers-including Australia’s top journalists and politicians? Below are excerpts from Professor Plimer’s responses in our interview with him, published last week in TIA Daily.

“The past is the key to the present. Previous rapid and large climate changes were not related to carbon dioxide.

“This has occurred on all scales of time. This century temperature has been decreasing, yet CO2 has been increasing. Over the last 150 years, temperature has increased (1860-1880, 1910-1940, 1976-1998) and decreased (1880-1910, 1940-1976, and 2002 to the present), yet CO2 has been increasing. If CO2 has been increasing, how can CO2-driven warming have driven cooling? Over historical times, there were the Minoan, Roman, and Medieval warmings, when temperature was a few degrees higher than at present. Sea level did not change. Over archaeological time, ice cores show that temperature peaks some 800 years before CO2 peaks, hence CO2 could not have driven temperature rise.

“In geological time, there have been six major ice ages. During five of these six, the CO2 content [of the atmosphere] was higher than now, and for two of these six, the CO2 content has been up to 1,000 times higher than now. If high atmospheric CO2 drives warming, then how could there be an ice age during times of high CO2? Furthermore, two of these six ice ages were at sea level at the equator.

“Over the history of time, climate changes have been driven by galactic, solar, orbital, tidal, and tectonic processes, and there has been no climate change in the past driven by CO2. The [current] rate of sea level change, CO2 release, and temperature rise and fall are well within variability, hence modern times are little different from past times….

“Geologists use integrated interdisciplinary science and look at planetary cycles over the history of time. Anything catastrophic that can happen has happened over the last 4,567 million years, and such events are preserved in the geological record. It is only if time is ignored that we can conclude that humans change climate by CO2 emissions…

“Climatology suffers from the same fads, fashions, dictators, and fraud that other fields of endeavor enjoy. In order to be funded well, climatology needs to be fashionable, and it is. The fundamental causes have been known for a long time, but predictions are only based on computer models that have very incomplete input. The IPCC models of 1990 and 1995 did not predict the 1998 El Nino nor the 21st-century cooling. So how can we use these to predict climate a century in advance?… The models have been spectacularly wrong, yet they are still used with no humility….

“The difficulty for politicians is that science is now politicized in the bureaucracy, universities, and research institutes and in many ways is forced to arrive at a predestined conclusion…. Most scientists are dependent upon governments for research funding, most universities have a large proportion of funding for climate research, and to challenge the popular paradigm is to guarantee [career] suicide. It is really only retired scientists or those few like me who are fearlessly independent who dare to question the popular paradigm [and] put up with the incessant ad hominem attacks….

“Environmentalism has many of the hallmarks of failed European socialism and Western (failed) Christianity. It has a holy book which few have read (IPCC reports), has prophets (Gore) who cannot be challenged, relies on dogma, ignores contrary evidence, has armies of wide-eyed missionaries…; imposes guilt, has a catastrophist view of the planet, and seeks indulgences.”

When asked for his advice to politicians who are asked to make judgments on the science of global warming, he urges them “to understand that all science is contentious, where there is one theory there is a competing theory, and that as a legislator one must look to keeping maximum gainful employment of the electorate.”

As for his advice to those who don’t buy the global warming hysteria, he urges them to “Continually pester your politicians…write letters to the editor and start a groundswell of opinion. This needs to start like a guerilla war in rural, smokestack, and mining areas and to be brought into the cities, where there are queues lining up to make a fortune on cap-and-trade activities.”

He concludes: “A tax on thin air is what we are being asked to approve.”

Today, thanks in part to Professor Plimer, the people of Australia did not approve it.

Trans-gender police roadshow spreading the word at gay festival

Transgender members of the National Trans Police Association and Greater Manchester Police take part in ‘Sparkle’ festival in Manchester

Daily Mail | Aug 15, 2009

Dressed in matching black t-shirts and handing out balloons, these are trans-gender members of the National Trans Police Association.

They were pictured at the recent Sparkle 09 festival in Manchester’s Gay Village in a bid to encourage the trans community to report more incidents to the police.

But the association has sparked allegations of misuse of taxpayers’ money after it emerged that the group may receive public funding.

As the Mail’s Richard Littlejohn revealed yesterday, the Trans Police Association is already recognised and supported by both the Association of Chief Police Officers and the National Policing Improvement Agency.

Its website says it represents and provides support to serving and retired Police Officers, Police Staff and Special Constables with any gender identity issues ‘including, but not exclusively, Trans men, Trans women, people who are Transgender, androgyne or intersex and people who cross dress’.

But Tory MP Philip Davies, speaking to The Express, slammed the use of taxpayers’ money to fund the group and accused the police of being ‘institutionally politically correct’.

He said: ‘I don’t care if a police officer is gay, straight, trans-gender or whatever, I just want them to catch criminals. If they get any funds out of taxpayers’ income, that would be completely and utterly unacceptable. Everyone a few years ago said the police were institutionally racist. Now they are institutionally politically correct.’

According to the website, the NTPA was set up after a meeting at the police staff college at Bramshill in Hampshire.

Mike Cunningham, who was Deputy Chief Constable of Lancashire Police at the time, was heavily involved in its formation and was responsible for dealing with lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and trans-gender issues for the Association of Chief Police Officers.

The websites states that Mr Cunningham decided to split the portfolio because trans people’s ­primary issue ‘is about gender and not their sexuality’.

The Home Office, however, said the group had not received any public funding.

Government’s green energy plan may cost 17 times more than its benefits

The figures are buried deep in the Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy paper produced last month.

Telegraph | Aug 10, 2009

By Edmund Conway

The Government’s plans to increase the proportion of Britain’s energy generated by “green” sources is set to cost between 11 and 17 times what the change brings in economic benefits.

The figures are buried deep in the Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy paper produced last month.

According to the document, while the expected cost will total around £4bn a year over the next 20 years, amounting to £57bn to £70bn, the eventual benefit in terms of the reduced carbon dioxide emissions will be only £4bn to £5bn over that entire period.

The figures make up part of the Government’s impact assessment of the policies, which include plans to raise the proportion of British electricity produced by renewable sources from 5.5pc today to 30pc.

It is the Government’s assessment that the non-monetary benefits of the policies will compensate for the possible £65bn shortfall, but economists are sceptical as to how much of this sum such factors can make up.

The White Paper has also calculated that household gas and electricity bills will have to rise by up to £249 a year, although Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband has insisted that new measures to improve consumers’ energy efficiency would reduce the extra cost to an average of £92 a year per home.