The Dog Ate my Data

It seems like the mainstream media (MSM) are finally starting to catch on. Terry McCrann attacks the ETS, Copenhagen and carbon dioxide pricing in perhaps the most aggressive article I have seen to date here in The Australian newspaper concerning the climate fiasco. I have said all along that once people are asked to put their money on the table and actually pay for carbon dioxide they will run faster than rats from a sinking ship and it appears that is the case. Common sense makes a comeback in Oz! I think it is worthwhile reposting my ETS countdown timer I posted earlier.


Now of course the Australian is a high brow paper and the article is in the business section which even the chardonnay swilling urban coffee club members that routinely read the paper probably skip but it is a definite milestone. It appears that global alarmists will no longer be getting the free ride they have been in the MSM and I look forward to seeing carbon apologists scrutinised in the MSM not just on their beliefs and statements but also on the cost of implementing their draconian proposals. It is my hope that this fiasco will start to be defined in terms of its lefty “green” supporters v. everyone else – a simplified paradigm that is much more easily managed and dealt with strategically than the naive religious model of piety and “saving” oneself and the earth we have seen to date. Here are a few gems from Terry McCrann’s article, Let's face it: the ETS is dead:

“Tony Abbott almost singlehandedly put the Emissions Trading Scheme on life support. Now Copenhagen has killed it stone cold, motherless dead.

Climate change minister Penny Wong, who is too emotionally committed to it to accept that truth, will carry it into the new year.

A responsible prime minister would give the ETS a decent Christian burial. And it has to be a formal state funeral.

A Treasury that was not so absolutely compromised by a bizarre combination of religious zeal, institutional pomposity and basic incompetence would be gently but persistently and emphatically advising the government that the ETS was no longer a good idea. If indeed it ever was.” ...

“Two things simply cannot be denied about Copenhagen. Australia locking in its ETS wouldn't have made the slightest difference to the outcome. Not even Kevin Rudd is delusional enough to believe that if only he and Penny had been able to arrive with their bit of paper, China would have agreed to destroy its future.

Secondly, but for Abbott's aggression -- helped in no small part by Malcolm Turnbull's overweening arrogance -- we would have been locked into a bad policy and a disastrous process, which is even worse. The ETS.

It's time the business community woke up from its dozy slumber, with the doziest of all being the Business Council.

Now it would only be the certainty of the grave. That of carbon export and permit volatility and rip-offs.

That's the export of jobs, businesses and investment to other places that had no price on carbon dioxide. Those "other places" are essentially the rest of the world except for Europe -- which doesn't matter and in any event has totally debased the permits system, just as it has cynically approached the whole sorry climate saga, starting with Kyoto.

Our ETS could only work as part of a properly regulated and audited global system in which at the very minimum the US, the second-biggest emitter, participated. Even then it would still have been extremely volatile, open to manipulation and outright rorting(Ed: see links below): the very antithesis of certainty.”

And just in case the reader is still confused Terry shines more penetrating sunlight ont he issue,

“If we believe we have to join hands with the rest of the world in a mutual suicide pact, let us at least choose the more efficient method.”

Bravo. Well said Terry McCrann.

One thing Terry doesn’t give credit to in the Australian turnaround on ETS are the tens of thousands of people that personally contacted their politicians by telephone, mail, email and bloggs on the disastrous ETS proposal. That is the driver that led to the change and a hearty well done to the people that took the time to invest in their futures and the future of Australia by doing so. Already the mainstream public is starting to awaken thanks to your efforts, and awaken in a big way.

In case you missed it the arguement that Terry refers to regarding lack of certainty of any Cap in Trade scheme has already been superbly illustrated by the $USD 7.4 Billion (AUD 8.37 Billion) fraud that hit the international headlines only a week ago.

See for example the New York Times, Europol: $7.4 Billion Lost from Carbon Trading Fraud in Europe, and

Fox News, Fraud in Europe's Cap and Trade System a 'Red Flag,' Critics Say. The top cops in Europe say carbon-trading is an organized crime scheme that has robbed the continent of $7.4 billion.

What a hoot.
Happy Holidays.