Impending events local and national

At a State Level, the Essential Services Commission of South Australia will present modelling on each of 4 solar feed-in tariff option, ahead of Parliament sitting again on June 21 to debate the State Government’s legislation to raise the tariff to 54c/kWh and close it off to new entrants from October.

See ‘Tiser story here.

At a federal level, this Friday sees a business round table discussion with the government on the issue. So expect to see all sorts of scare stories about the sky falling in the Murdoch “news”papers on Friday morning, and on Saturday. No change there then…

Rupert’s mum wants a carbon tax

See here.

Somehow I don’t think she’ll get monstered and smeared in the papers the way that Cate Blanchett did.

Come on, fearless Andrew Bolt – take a pop at your employer’s mum, if you think you’re hard enough.

UPDATE 10am. By which I mean not a “some of my critics will wonder if I am going to mention that the mother of the owner of this newspaper has announced her support for a carbon tax. Well, I am a brave and independent commentator, and I confound these critics by saying, yes, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch wants a carbon tax, and yes, I think she is wrong. She and I and her son – unlike the foaming children on the Left and the climate alarmists – are adults and are not afraid of differences of opinion” but a “what’s this ancient out-of-touch do-gooder doing butting in on issues she knows nothing about…” on the level he attacks Blanchett, Flannery and all the other “warmists.” My money is on the former rather than the latter…

Youtube – A Carbon History of the World

So, what would the planet look like from the perspective of a carbon dioxide molecule? One who’d been trapped for 300 million years as oil, until released in the 19th century…

Here’s my four minute attempt at an answer. Not very polished (!), but it was useful for me to make, and perhaps useful for some other folks to watch.

After making it, I found this 5 minue effort (from the Post-Carbon Institute), which is of course way better.

Climate denialist comedy gold on “Q and A”

Were other people laughing their socks off with me last night, when some young chap in the audience proclaimed that climate change “was just a theory, like gravity,” and the journo on the panel picked up and dropped a pencil and then a hat? OMG, it was priceless. Perhaps though, it wasn’t gravity, but “intelligent falling“?

Anyhow, that’s a good excuse to embed this corking video, from an equally hilarious ABC programme (gotta love them state-funded commies, eh?)

Watching it again, I see that at 1:34 they actually do the “just a theory like gravity” thing.

Finally, in other climate denialist news, the new website “the Conversation” has an open letter from climate scientists telling us the sky is blue… no, wait, that climate change is real (well, duh).

Beginning today, The Conversation will bring much-needed and long-overdue accountability to the climate “sceptics.”

For the next two weeks, our series of daily analyses will show how they can side-step the scientific literature and how they subvert normal peer review. They invariably ignore clear refutations of their arguments and continue to promote demonstrably false critiques.

We will show that “sceptics” often show little regard for truth and the critical procedures of the ethical conduct of science on which real skepticism is based.

The individuals who deny the balance of scientific evidence on climate change will impose a heavy future burden on Australians if their unsupported opinions are given undue credence.

While I’m glad to see this, I worry about the Backfire Effect and here and here and also the Streisand Effect, and whether this is just on an ‘information deficit’ model.