Youtube: Climate Change is a left-wing issue

Trolls keep telling me climate change is really a communist plot. And, as usual, they have all the evidence on their side. No, wait…

Click below for a four minute scroll through the mainstream politicians and big business who want action on climate change, followed by wild and provocative speculation on some of the psycho-social dynamics of denialism.

UPDATE: USEFUL COMMENT SENT VIA EMAIL –

Not sure I’d characterise it as an old white guy thing. Sure, they mostly are old white guys and the dominance of grey haired old wrinkled faces is striking. But as I’m sure you know, it’s all about the values system that these old guys happen to have.
They would also say it’s not about control, they’d characterise it as the opposite – that it’s about small government and reducing the control government has over our lives. Check out this quote from Roy Spencer (which affirms the values basis for climate denial):
 
“I view my job a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government.”

Truly hilarious survival guide to the carbon price apocalypse

Crikey’s Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane has written a genuinely laugh out loud and extraordinarily useful guide to the coming days and weeks of special pleading. Pure, unadulterated genius. It starts…

Out they’ve come over the last two days, lured by the imminent announcement of the carbon price details — more corporate shills, more politicians, more unionists, more polluters, with their hands stuck out, making that distinctive bleating noise of the rentseeker in full cry. It’s like a zombie film, with a shuffling, clumsy but somehow inescapable horde of the undead — braindead, more correctly — roaming the streets, demanding “compensation”.

Ralph Hillman rose at the Press Club a short while ago to repeat his long-discredited claims about the impact of a carbon price on the coal industry, a sector which faces only one real problem, how to count all the money that’s going to roll in from China in the next few years. Instead, Hillman wants handouts from taxpayers for an industry that is the chief dealer to the cheap energy and cheap steel junkies of the planet.

Andrew Wilkie has joined in. Having declined to participate in the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee, he’s now pulled the classic swing vote stunt of issuing demands right at the death. Wilkie has his own version of “think global, act local” by demanding special measures for his own electorate and its industry. Nicely played.

This stuff will be incessant for the rest of the week and then really ramp up next week, when the rentseekers who missed out will lift the pitch and volume of their bleating. To cut through all the propaganda, self-interested analysis and political race-calling, it might be useful to keep in mind some basic principles in judging Sunday’s announcement. These are some criteria by which to judge a carbon price scheme.

And continues here. OMG, ROFLMAO.

PS And (most of) the comments are worth a read to (up to 9.22pm, anyway) – astute stuff.

Youtube: IPCC scenarios for beginners

This 5 minutes of your life will feel a LOT longer. May also cure insomnia (I’ll leave the claims of cures for HIV to Christopher Monckton).
It would take a better youtube maker than I (currently am) to add zest to such a dry subject. The IPCC released a “Special Report on Emissions Scenarios” in 2000. I couldn’t find a video explanation of them on tinterwebs, so have made one. Here it is.

Pro-carbon tax businesses sign statement

This from AAP via Indaily

MORE than 50 companies including GE, AGL and The Body Shop have signed a statement backing a price on carbon.

The federal government will on Sunday outline its emissions trading scheme (ETS), including a fixed price on carbon from July 1, 2012, household and industry assistance and funding for low emissions technology.

The companies representing the infrastructure, energy, technology and retail sectors say a carbon price, with “cost-effective complementary measures”, is critical to cutting emissions and ensuring Australia remains globally competitive as the rest of the world reduces emissions.

They have also launched a website, Businesses for a Clean Economy (www.b4ce.com.au), out of concern that many businesses are not getting a say in the carbon price debate.

continues…