Australia’s carbon tax benefits will kick in in May 2012
Carbon tax’s family dividends http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2012/04/14/318411_tasmania-news.html
DAVID KILLICK | April 14, 2012 HUNDREDS of thousands of Tasmanians will shortly benefit from increased welfare payments and tax cuts under the Federal Government’s new carbon tax regime. Increases in family payments, pensions and benefits will start with lump-sum payments next month, followed by benefit rises which take effect in the new year.
Tax cuts also kick in on July 1 and 14,000 Tasmanians will no longer have to pay tax at all, thanks to a tripling of the tax-free threshold. More than 100,000 Tasmanian pensioners will receive up to $510 a year more in benefits, 44,000 families will get $110 per child and self-funded retirees will be $380 a year better off. Around 17,000 jobseekers will be paid another $218 for singles and $390 for couples, the state’s 8500 single parents will receive $234
more a year and 7500 students will be $218 a year better off. And 179,000 Tasmanians on less than $80,000 a year will receive tax cuts. Continue reading
Murdoch press ‘informs’ public opinion on climate change
negative articles about the proposed carbon emissions tax in Murdoch’s newspapers outweighed positive ones
82 percent to 18 percent.
AUDIO How Murdoch’s Aussie Papers Cover Climate Change, NPR News by DAVID 
FOLKENFLIK April 6, 2012 “…..[journalist Wendy] Bacon delved into her own harvest: the results of a case study about how the country’s newspapers handled a pressing and contentious issue.
Bacon, a professor of journalism at the University of Technology in Sydney, commissioned researchers and graduate students to examine six months’ worth of every article, feature piece, editorial and columns in 10 leading Australian papers on a proposal by the governing Labor Party to tax carbon emissions.
“What our study showed is that the majority of Australians are not getting a balanced or diverse view on a policy which was designed — at least in a small way — to tackle this problem,” Bacon said.
Seven of the 10 papers studied were part of News Corp.’s Australian newspaper arm, News Limited. The overwhelming majority of newspapers sold in the country are owned by Rupert Murdoch’s company. With such dominance of the press, the Murdoch papers draw careful scrutiny of how they cover sensitive issues. Continue reading
Climate denialism book sent to hundreds of Australian schools
Teachers, scientists slam IPA for sending Plimer book to schools Crikey.com, by Matthew Knott, 7 April 12, Scientists and teachers have accused free market think tank The Institute of Public Affairs of spreading scientific disinformation by sending copies of Ian Plimer’s latest book to hundreds of schools around the country.
Plimer’s tome, How to Get Expelled from School: a guide to climate change for pupils, parents and punters, argues that the theory of man-made global warming is a….. http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/04/05/teachers-scientists-slam-ipa-for-sending-plimer-book-to-schools/
Queensland Premier will demolish environmental funding programs
Australia: Queensland Premier axes environmental funds 28. MARCH 2012 PV Magazine, BY: SHAMSIAH ALI-OETTINGER The new premier of Queensland Liberal National Party’s (LNP) Campbell Newman plans to axe the state’s climate change and renewable energy programs, including funds allocated for solar flagship programs. The Newman government is said to be planning the abolishment of eight of the former Labor government’s environmental funds, the 300 million Australian dollars (AUD) climate change fund and the AUD50 million renewable energy fund.
The other funds identified were the Queensland smart energy savings fund, the future growth fund, solar initiatives
package, waste avoidance and resource efficiency fund and the local government sustainable future fund. The FITs will however remain for Queensland’s home solar power systems at AUD0.44/kWh for surpluselectricity fed into the grids….
Victoria backs out too The state of Victoria also decided to back out of the 2020 20% emissions reduction target that was set by the Labor government. The conservatives supported this scheme when Labor was in power. The pressure mounted on the Victorian government from opponents such as Exxon Mobil.
: http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/australia–queensland-premier-axes-environmental-funds_100006254/#ixzz1qXst4p48
Intimidation tactics against climate scientists
“I have been subject to all sorts of personal attacks, threats to my safety, my life, threats to my family, and it’s not just me, it’s
dozens of climate scientists in the US, in Australia and many other regions of the world where our findings are finding that climate change is real and potentially poses a threat to civilisation if we don’t confront that challenge. That represents a threat to certain vested interests and they’ve tried hard to discredit the science, often by discrediting and intimidating the scientists. “
VIDEO http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3454652.htm Climatologist slams intimidation of scientists Australian Broadcasting Corporation Broadcast: 15/03/2012
Reporter: Emma Alberici Climatologist and director of the Earth System Science Centre in Pennsylvania State University Michael Mann joins Lateline.
Transcript Continue reading
Will Western Australia take climate change seriously, or just pander to fossil fuel lobby?
You’d think that Western Australia would now go all out for renewable energy. You’d think that Western Australia would now renounce all projects for water intensive uranium mining.
But it seems that the W.A. government will still be fiddling around, pandering to the fossil fuel and uranium industry, while their State burns.
WA’s south-west ‘drying out’ fast, Daniel Mercer, The West Australian, March 14, 2012, Two of Australia’s foremost scientific agencies have warned that south-west WA is warming and drying faster than anywhere in the country and will be increasingly prone to drought.
After a record eighth heatwave in Perth this summer, the Weather Bureau and CSIRO will today release the latest biennial snapshot of climate trends in Australia. The report backs up earlier conclusions that Australia’s land and sea temperatures are rising and rainfall is shifting from southern latitudes to the country’s centre and north.
It said average temperatures were expected to increase 0.6C to 1.5C by 2030 and 1.0C to 5.0C by 2070, with particularly harsh effects on south-west WA, including Perth. The report suggested the area would have long-term reductions in rainfall and more years like 2010 – the driest ever.
Rising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the rising acidification of Australia’s oceans were noted in the report, which said it was “90 per cent likely” the trends were because of man-made global warming…… http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/wa/13159615/was-south-west-drying-out-fast/
Premier Baillieu out of step with voters, on climate chnage
Voters call for action on climate change, The Age, Adam Morton March 9, 2012 AS THE Baillieu government prepares to reveal the future of Victoria’s climate change laws, a poll has found two-thirds of Coalition voters think the state has a responsibility to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Essential Media poll of 1009 Victorians, commissioned by conservation group Environment Victoria, found 76 per cent believed the state government should cut emissions and not leave it to the federal government to take action through a carbon tax or other steps.
Among Coalition voters, 66 per cent said the state had a responsibility to cut emissions.
Victorians want the state government to act despite belief in climate
change being split between those who think that it is caused by human
activity (47 per cent) and those who think it is either due to natural
variation or not happening at all (44 per cent).
The poll comes as the state government is due to this month release a
review of the Climate Change Act introduced by the previous Labor government, which includes a target of cutting Victoria’s emissions by 20 per cent this decade.
The Baillieu government has wound back some clean energy programs and fuelled expectations the target could be reduced or scrapped.
Other findings from the poll conducted in December and January were:
■ Just 22 per cent of voters consider wind farm laws that give households right of veto over turbines within two kilometres of their house fair. Fifty per cent said the laws were not fair. ■ A majority said they wanted fewer coal-fired power plants (63 per cent) and more renewable energy (78 per cent) and energy efficiency (82 per cent). : http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/voters-call-for-action-on-climate-change-20120308-1un7y.html#ixzz1ofcfEu4I
Climate change severely affecting Torres Strait islands
A SINKING FEELING IN THE TORRES STRAIT, ABC Radio National, Hagar Cohen.4 March 2012, There are six islands in the Torres Strait facing inundation from tidal flooding. The encroaching sea is slowly washing away everything from building foundations to ancestral graves, and mosquitoes are thriving. One island has had its worst malaria outbreak in 50 years. There is a temporary solution—building seawalls—but the federal and state governments are showing little interest in paying for that, and in the meantime these island communities have a sinking feeling that relocation may be the only option left for them.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2012-03-04/3857272
Climate denialist campaigner joins Gina Rinehart’s boards
Plimer does very nicely from the mining industry which has set him up for a very comfortable retirement. He is a director of mining companies Ivanhoe Australia, Silver City Minerals and the UK-listed Kefi Minerals, , and is chairman of TNT Mines. He is reputed to earn more than $350,000 in director’s fees and shares — a lot more than he receives from the University of Adelaide where his fellow academics have written him off as a joke. . http://www.independentaustralia.net/2011/politics/plimer-and-howard-ape-creationists/
Gina brings climate sceptic on board, BY: ANDREW BURRELL The Australian February 02, 2012 GINA Rinehart’s crusade against the Gillard government’s carbon tax has gathered steam with the appointment of one of Australia’s most prominent climate-change sceptics, Ian Plimer, to the boards of two of her key companies.
Professor Plimer, of the University of Adelaide, has served as an informal adviser to Mrs Rinehart and spoke at an event she organised for world business leaders in Perth last year.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/carbon-plan/gina-brings-climate-sceptic-on-board/story-fn99tjf2-1226260017472
Time to expose the money that funds Australia’s climate denialist think tanks
“The public should know who is funding climate denial so they can properly judge the information put out by organisations like the Global Warming Policy Foundation,”
“In Australia, the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is a leading source of climate disinformation, yet it retreats into secrecy whenever it is asked about the source of its funding. Environment groups are upfront about their funding, yet denialists claim privacy.”
The first available set of public accounts shows the foundation, which has declared Australia as one of its areas of operation to UK authorities, received £494,625 in donations in its first year.
Bid to out the money behind the voice against climate change, SMH Graham Readfearn January 27, 2012 – A British journalist’s court bid to unmask the financial backers of a group of climate change sceptics is being used to raise questions about how think-tanks are funded in Australia and whether they deserve tax exemptions.
The UK’s Charity Commission, which regulates charities in the UK, is being asked to release a document that would show the start-up funders of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, chaired by former UK chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson.
Launched in November 2009, the foundation has consistently challenged the mainstream scientific view that human emissions of greenhouse gases represent a significant risk to the planet and societies.
Later today, freelance journalist Brendan Montague will appeal to the UK’s Information Rights Tribunal for the release of a bank statement provided to the Charity Commission by Lord Lawson, which Mr Montague believes will identify the source of a $50,000 seed donation.
The case has raised the issue of how think-tanks engaged in public policy debates are funded and whether potential conflicts of interest should be declared. None are required by law to publicly disclose their funders. Continue reading
The case for Australia’s carbon tax now stronger than ever
The arguments of big polluters against a price on pollution and the CEFC are evaporating…… Remember when we couldn’t act because the US and China had no price on pollution? China has just announced its carbon tax will begin in 2015, while many US states (including California, an economy about 30 per cent larger than Australia’s) are establishing their own prices on pollution.
Slacking off on climate is just not cricket, IAN LOWE, ABC Environment, 23 JAN 2012 “….. we should be wary of short memories and predictions of doom when it comes to Australia’s price on pollution, which comes into force on 1 July this year. As the legislation was passed in October last year, we were subjected to big polluters’ predictions of apocalypse……
The risk we now face is that, in the wake of a ‘win’ in the form of the Clean Energy Future package, Australia will take its eye off the ball, even though the need to focus on a long-term goal remains crucial.
Now is the time to begin moving to a cleaner, healthier economy.
The price on pollution and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation will open up job opportunities in a range of new and existing industries. Research by the Australian Conservation Foundation and the ACTU in 2010 showed that shifting Australia to a cleaner economy will create 3.7 million new jobs across the country by 2030. Continue reading
Australia should welcome climate change refugees from the Pacific islands
Australia is the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, per head of population. The consequences of global warming already mean extreme climate events here in Australia.
But low-lying Pacific islands pay the greatest price of global warming – the complete loss of their homeland. Yet these Pacific islanders are among the least causers of greenhouse gas emissions.
It’s a staggering injustice. Already, Australia has a reputation for treating asylum seekers like criminals. We had better shape up to responsibilities, and not become a global pariah – Australia should welcome climate change refugees from the Pacific. – Christina Macpherson
Maldives warns of climate refugees, The Age, Ben Doherty, January 7, 2012 THE president of what could be the first country in the world lost to rising sea levels has urged Australia to prepare for a wave of climate refugees. Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed’s government is considering Australia as a new home if the archipelago disappears into the ocean.
”I think it’s really quite necessary for Australians and for every rich country to understand that this is unlike any other thing that’s happened before,” Mr Nasheed told The Saturday Age.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a sea level rise of up to 59 centimetres over the next century, a level that would inundate most of the Maldives’ inhabited atolls. Low-lying Pacific island nations, such as Kiribati and Tuvalu, would also face being flooded…..
Fourteen islands in the Maldives have already been abandoned because of massive erosion by the sea. Mr Nasheed described Australia’s decision to adopt a carbon tax from 2012 as a ”brave move forward”.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/maldives-warns-of-climate-refugees-20120106-1poog.html#ixzz1ioGSk6q0
Ian Plimer and co. manufacturing doubt on Climate Change?
Could their real agenda be in manufacturing doubt rather than the search for scientific truth?
If so, it wouldn’t be a first, as Naomi Oreskes points out in her recent book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.
Cherry-picking contrarian geologists tend to obscure scientific truth, THE AUSTRALIAN, BY:MIKE SANDIFORD December 31, 2011 GINA Rinehart notoriously claims she has never met a geologist who believes “adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will have any significant effect on climate”.
To listen to prominent “contrarian” geologists such as Ian Plimer, you might imagine she never could. But, despite the bluster, our contrarian geologists are out of kilter with their own community and seem deeply confused about the way the greenhouse effect – by adding more CO2 to the atmosphere, for example – has shaped both the past and the present.
All geology students learn of the importance of the greenhouse effect. It’s simply impossible to understand the geological record without it……. Continue reading
Climate denialist adopts creationist tactics to “educate” children
Plimer does very nicely from the mining industry which has set him up for a very comfortable retirement. He is a director of mining companies Ivanhoe Australia, Silver City Minerals and the UK-listed Kefi Minerals, , and is chairman of TNT Mines. He is reputed to earn more than $350,000 in director’s fees and shares — a lot more than he receives from the University of Adelaide where his fellow academics have written him off as a joke. He is also closely in cahoots with Australia’s richest miner, and individual, Gina Rinehart.
The launch of the book is funded by the notorious “cash for comment” right-wing skeptic group, the Institute of Public Affairs. . The IPA is run by ultra-right Liberals and funded by organisations which include BHP Billiton, Western Mining, Caltex, Esso Australia (subsidiary of Exxon), Shell, Woodside Petroleum, News Ltd, Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, to name a few. Rio Tinto was a sponsor.
Plimer and Howard ape creationists, Independent Australia, 14 Dec 11, http://www.independentaustralia.net/2011/politics/plimer-and-howard-ape-creationists/ The mining lobby, with a helping hand from long-time chief climate change action roadblock, former Prime Minister John Howard, has taken a leaf out of the creationists playbook and is now trying to inculcate children with their unscientific nonsense. Environment editor
Sandi Keane reports. Oh my goodness, what next? The mining lobby, desperate to stop any regulation on Co2 and having failed to convert the grownups to climate skepticism, are now taking aim at our children! Climate skeptic, Ian Plimer, has really lost it this time. His new book is called “How to Get Expelled from School”, and it targets school children and teachers. According to Plimer:
“…these children are being fed environmental propaganda and these children are too young to be fed ideology.”
Does the book’s name ring a bell? The anti-scientific film entitled “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” was trotted by those crazies, the creationists, in the U.S. to try to stop the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution in American schools. Continue reading
Promoting renewable energy is the way to save the climate change debate
The heavy polluting industres know they cannot easily shift basic values, so they have undermined solar and wind at the next level of understanding, around jobs, prices and the electricity industry. In reaction to the statement, ‘Investing in renewable energy is good for the economy by creating jobs,’ 80 per cent were in agreement, and only 10 per cent in disagreement.After two years of campaigning for coal and against renewables, energy-intensive and heavy-polluting industry, along with certain media outlets and Opposition leader Tony Abbott, have done barely any damage to the perceived value of renewables as an industry.
Cleaning up the climate debate, Climate Spectator , 8 Dec 2011, Dan Cass A recent poll confirms what I have come to believe after watching the global warming issue for 20 years; renewable energy is the only way to save the debate about saving the planet. If the UN wants to make progress in the climate negotiations and closer to home, if Julia Gillard wants to win the next election, then the debate should be couched in terms of the tangible benefits of today’s solar and wind technologies.A poll by Essential Research, conducted during Australia’s recent carbon price negotiations, shows overwhelming public support for investment in solar and wind, and that this support might just win the politics of a carbon price.
detractors. Solar and wind have been politicised and companies need to step in and vigorously defend their interests. Continue reading
1 This month
Help Aunty Sue Protect Her Land and Sacred Sites From Destructive Rocket Testing.
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PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
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