Independent MP Rob Oakeshott was equally critical of behaviour in Parliament this week, advising the Speaker, Harry Jenkins, to pull speakers into line when they stray off topic.

"He has that power and this week was a really good example where I think that should have been used a lot more than it was," Mr Oakeshott said.

A spokesman for the Leader of the House, Anthony Albanese, says standing orders negotiated last year by the independents prevented the Government resuming Question Time after the interruptions.

"There were complaints of Question Time going on too long and it was decided during the talks between (Rob) Oakeshott, (Tony) Windsor, (Christopher) Pyne and (Anthony) Albanese that Question Time should go from 2pm to 3.30pm.

"By the time the interruptions were over it was already past 3.30pm."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/04/3155483.htm?section=justin

The debate continues, between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, about who is the biggest bullshit artist on climate change.

Like all arguments about art, it is a highly subjective one.

Mr Abbott is drawn - in his critique - very strongly to the Prime Minister's bold pre-election work, "There Will Be No Carbon Tax Under The Government I lead". And it is certainly proving very difficult for Ms Gillard to divert attention from this seminal piece, much as she is now a little ashamed of it, and prefers critics to remember her obscure pen-and-ink series "This Government Is Serious About Pricing Carbon," from the same period.

Even bullshit artists have phases, and Ms Gillard is no exception.

In 2007, she was a key member of the sweeping Kevinist movement, with its curious brand of moralistic exuberance, and its graphic depictions of bleached-out reefs, uncontrollable bush fires, and tropical plagues assailing the continent's north driving a strong agenda for environmental change.

After the Copenhagen summit in late 2009, however, Ms Gillard fell into a nihilistic phase, fed by parliamentary failure, the political death of Malcolm Turnbull and a series of discouraging polls. Call it the "I See Dead People" phase; Ms Gillard, along with Wayne Swan (a fellow artist of the early Kevinist school) became convinced that the movement needed a change of direction; to dwell less on climate change, and more on other subjects. As history records, this experiment ended in horrific artistic differences, the end of the Kevinist movement and the beginning of a new phase for Gillard as an artist: the Nouveau Denialist period.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/04/3155218.htm

-------------------------

Gus: funny pathetic piece and not helping the planet one iota... The  climate change issue is not subjective like art. Annabel if you bother reading this website (latest comment in letter to prue) about climate change and read the serious scientific papers on the subject, you would be ashamed we've not done anything sooner on the matter of climate change. Tony is a little amateur sociopathic painter, worse than Hitler was. Gillard understands the bigger canvas and has decided to go with bigger brush strokes on this issue. Bugger what the opposition or armchair Sunday critics like Glenn Milne think, CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL and induced by OUR "CARBON-based ECONOMY" (actually carbon "spending")... Science does not lie on this matter — only politicians, flat-earth theorists and bigoted motor-mouthed shock-jocks do. The latter are doing untold damage by being brilliantly ignorant. Wake up, Annabel... See toon at top and other toon as well.

And shame on our (THEIR) ABC for publishing mostly silly flippant and inconsequential comments from "readers" of Annabel's piece (see above), most poopooing the government and praising Abbott's ningnongery, while submitted serious comments, relevant to the science of climate change, are not posted.

I know, it's a bit of a repeat but it's seriously serious — it has been corrected as well for spelling.

Dear Annabel (Crabb), Prue (McSweeney), Alan (jones) et al...

It's time we had a little chat, head to head...

I do not know where you're all coming from — for example if the carbon lobby is paying you to appear as the global warming anti-information mouth-pieces, but your polemic supporting the carbon industry or your middle of the road antics (Annabel) smells of sulfur. You may be genuinely concerned about losing some of your and our (thank you) "carbon" comforts and you may believe that global warming is crap. But I still smell the sulfur nonetheless — Too much aggression, too much anger, too much flippancy, too much fibbing flap...

Sure, the present events in the Arab world might do more to reduce our consumption of petroleum products than a carbon tax ever would — at this stage. But the idea presently is to change our perception about what we do next. Should we carry on acting our life with a habit of slash-and-burn for pleasure till we run out of things to burn or should we shift into a habit of caring a bit more for this planet — which at present is the only one we've got.

Some people would think that slashing and burning while compassionately looking after their mad barking dogs is a way to care, but these are sadists who love to hurt others for vicarious pleasure in this world — or for profit. Others are masochists who don't mind the pain.  Monks whip themselves for christ sake... Of course there are excuses and mitigating porkies that tells us they also flog us so we can go to heaven.

The religious peddlers push the concept of the grass being greener on the other side of the Styx, but let's be real here, it's a bit of a crock, isn't it? We manufacture illusions and lies in order to create and protect our comforts (moral, philosophical and material). Some of what we do hits the mark and some remains totally illusionary and plain wrong. But this is another story for another time.

It's the privilege of politicians to tell us the truth — or whatever rot — while not believing in it. Like Kevin Rudd telling us that global warming is the greatest threat to humanity, then becoming pragmatically impotent about it. Or like the Little [censored] Abbott, who — as the bully [censored] he appears to be to me — tells us global warming is crap while getting his crook information from his confessor George Pell who gets his skewed information from that pseudo-self important non-climatic scientist Ian Plimer, all to suit the catholic fantasy and the mining enthusiasts...

At this stage, I do not know if Little [censored] Abbott believes that global warming is crap or not since one day he also said that climate change isn't crap... Little [censored] Abbott is one windbag ready to change his mind and beliefs according to the direction where the voters — mostly those ignorant bums who listen to the igno-rants of an Alan Jones [yes, you] on this subject (and on a few others doozies) — fart.

The point here is that global warming is REAL. Even NASA, a fairly respected body in doing spectacular things, can tell us by its observations that this planet surface is warming up and has been doing so for the last 150 years in a weird and surprising manner. What is also noted by scientists who work on this subject is that this warming appears to be exponential. they know it is not. My own research tells me the increase is a complex sinusoidal-parabolic curve with a hint of pseudo-exponentialism in it. The key would be to find the "base turning point" (I place it at 1996)... But let's leave the maths to the mathematicians and statisticians on this subject (and to a bit latter on, in the second part of this letter), meanwhile we need to understand what this means for us, where does this warming comes from, and if it continue — what consequences can come of it. For some people it's a bit like looking in a crystal ball — yet we know a lot more about where we're coming from.

Weather people who predict the paths of cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons know historical patterns of their kind and also know a few things about momentum. A cyclone is like a giant top. The faster it spins the hardest it is to make it change course, the bigger it is the harder it is to make it change course. No matter what comes in their paths — lows, highs, troughs — cyclones will move on regardless, though interference can reduce or increase their impact depending on what happens in these contact. Land usually acts as a brake — though in some places, it acts as a crude catalyst to warm and cold air pockets, such as in the formation of tornadoes. Ultimately, "we use tops" inside gyroscopes to maintain direction... And the more spin the spin doctors spin, the more difficult it is for the truth to come out... It's your job to halt reality and protect your "denying clients' need" or be brilliantly ignorant...

Till about 150 years there was only ONE "average" natural carbon cycle on earth. Lengthy and complex studies of the dynamics of the surface of the earth would place the last major carbon "super-cycle" at about 120 million years ago or such. This was the last time when massive amounts of carbon were sequestered below the surface. Sure, carbon is sequestered below the surface daily in the seas at the bottom of oceans and other places, but the ones that really count are places like continental shelves or massive bogs... It takes a very long time to turn a bog into a coal seam... It takes a long time to sequester carbon.

So till about 150 years ago humanity subsisted on burning surface carbon. In a way, it was "re"-cycled back into the natural carbon equilibrium, though some brave scientists in specialised fields harbour the theory that the last big melt was helped along by humans burning large forests. Burning forests would have induced massive release of CO2 and removed some of the ability of the earth to "re"-cycle it fast enough. Time is the essence in these processes... The geological record shows an enormous amount of ash from wood-burning (not volcanoes) associated with this warming period.

A big warming event happened anyhow. An increase of about 5-6 degrees C globally, inducing MASSIVE sea-level rise. Aboriginal people recorded the event. The catalogue of fish in the overhangs of Arnhem Land show a dramatic artistic representational change. Freshwater species were replaced by saltwater fish species. Rivers became estuaries. Plains became sea.

So till about 150 years ago — after this warming of 12,000-10,000 years ago, which some other scientists in specialised fields, concluded would be followed by a cooling period, according to the patterns of the geological periods we're living in — we humans were subsisting on burning wood and some "natural" oils, such as mutton grease. For this country, it may have been kangaroo fat, which is not much, considering the leanness of the beast.

Yes, we are living on a dynamic earth, where many events have changed the surface over eons going back to even before life on earth was a soup in the oceans, and land masses were united in Pangea-Gondwana. The atmosphere would have been toxic to humans then. The surface heat would have been deadly. These concepts are scientifically correct. They are of course erroneous to the flat-earth theorists, to the christian fundamentalist and other fundamentalists of whatever creed — and to the carbon industry front-end peddlers. The people at the back, doing the mining and the extracting work, know these complexities too well. Evolution, these changes of the surface and the life it engendered are part of this little planet that eventually gave us our existence and the ability to sustain it — as brief as it is for us, individual midgets...

So 150 years ago, we discovered the hidden treasure: the buried carbon... Sure, some carbon had been used before by humans but in quite negligible quantity — used especially to "manufacture" weapon-grade steel swords, cannons and pointed arrows. But till 150 years ago, it was mostly surface coal burnt for this sort of capers...

The newly discovered carbon had been buried for millions of years... The rest of course is the history of the industrial revolution, in tandem with the "privatisation" of ideas and inventions. At first, our growing cities became sooty slave-dens, so we invented better ways to burn and use this "new" carbon (coal). Less soot, more heat, more coal — less slaves dying from coal dust....

Petroleum, which had also been used in very small quantities till then (surface petroleum from tar pits) was soon online to become a magic product. Applied scientists invented "Cracking" to break down the heavier molecules. Refining crude oil became a gigantic activity for humanity. And the more we refined, the more we, the plebs, were pushed to consume. Nature had provided us with a bountiful cheap source of energy and stuff... We obliged...

Yes, we were in carbon heaven. But as you know, there are always two sides to the coin in such stories... There is the original sin in some narratives and the yin-yang in others.

In relative terms, there is some elasticity in the universe according to Relativity — a theory that is simply expressed but is far more complex than, say, global warming to comprehend. Einstein knew the drill, at one end he knew how to give simple grabs to the adoring pubic via a well orchestrated public-relation mind, while in the back room the mathematics were mind-blogging. It worked for him and his vision. Should he still be alive, he would be appalled by the climate change denier (you lot) and would help us make strides to protect us from what "we" have unleashed. Of all people he would know. "World War IV will be fought with stone axes" he proclaimed soon after having assisted the birth of the nuclear age...

Yes, the carbon heaven may have a down side... possibly warming the future beyond our comprehension. Thus we need science to tell us what is going on. Is the undeniable warming due to our carbon usage? This is the multi-trillion dollar question. IS HUMAN PRODUCTION OF CO2 WARMING UP THE ATMOSPHERE?

The answer in a nutshell is yes. The real answer is very very very complex. It's much easier to deny it and get on with our burning of more and more EXTRA carbon. The price at the end — there is never an end per se, though — will be heavy to pay. We might get banned from paradise...

But we are gamblers, aren't we? It's like the forbidden fruit...  Gambling is what makes the human "greedy spirit" work. There was this "economist" the other day in one of the major papers contemplating the idea of forever measured capitalist growth... "What an idiot!" I thought, despite all his well-presented arguments and impeccable university credentials. I've been there before. Universities in three major continents have developed irrefutable mathematical models that the capitalist system relies on booms and busts in order to recycle the loot faster. Imagine a banker placing his money at a sure 3 per cent per annum bet, year after year after year. He'd be bored out of his bleeding mind!!! No thrill of the chase, of the kill... No double or nothing? Pitiful bonuses!!! Yar gotta be kidding!!! That's why they invented "derivatives"!!! Presently a single wrong derivative bet could burn the entire world economy twice over... I jest a bit here but you get the drift.

Yes you lot, carbon dioxide IS a global WARMING gas. Nitrogen isn't, contrary to what Pell and Plimer peddle. In the last 150 years we've added roughly 100 ppm of CO2 into our fish bowl... according to climate-change serious scientists, this has raised the average temperature of the globe by about one (1) degree C...

We're adding about 2 ppm of CO2 per year at the moment. By 2100, we will have added another 300 ppm due to increase population and energy supplies — and the lack of doing anything about our emissions of CO2.

Anyone who says that this won't have an effect in the dynamics of the atmosphere is negligent or criminal. Take your pick...

Part two ------------------

A day ago, some suburbs of Perth had a mini storm that wrecked havoc. This happened after a RECORD long heat wave and unusual winds from the east in WA. The water shortage in Perth has been critical for yonks and the rain yearly average has been declining since the 1940s at a rate of knots. They had to build a desalination plant and they are building another one or two. This goes against the worldwide trend of humidification of the atmosphere. But as we know nothing is equal everywhere on the surface of the planet. there are places with hot dry weather and other places with hot humid weather on the same latitudes. Continental masses play a big part in redistributing heat and humidity away from the oceans. This process is not new, nor are the long droughts and the floods in this country. What is new is the "extra energy" added into the atmosphere by a MEASURABLE extra CO2.


Since the early 1600s, humans have plonked a thermometer in the butt of the earth to measure the rise and fall of heat. Atmospheric pressure and humidity measure followed. Why would they do this soon after the inquisition had reigned? Renaissance? There would have been no way the measurements could influence nature and the seasons, thus it was only done "for the record" and studies of trends. After a few years, trends would give a better understanding of weather patterns and eventually this would give clues as to the optimum times for sowing, for example. Some very specific criteria were devised as not to influence the readings. Eventually readings were and some still are made in a little slatted wooden box in which the ambient temperature is measured in the shade. New devices such as satellite have given a broader scope for observation. Even in the little boxes, temperatures could be measured accurately to a tenth of a degree, back in them days of horse and cart.

But before going any further I would like to point out, that you lot are professional talkers/writers, spinners, spruikers and in any debate on this subject, a professional scientist is a... professional scientist.

Not many scientists have communication motor-mouth skills at the level you have, and from your position you can control the polemic. Facts and figures are dry uninteresting arguments and while it appears you don't understand any of these, you can get away with bull brilliantly... As a scientist is about to open his/her trap to present another boring piece of data, you can talk over him/her with excellent patronising and somehow measured aggressive skills. It makes great television and great wrting. It makes a very poor information channel... No-one is the wiser, the scientist goes back in his/her box and the clock is ticking... A job well done for the denying side...

Thus, the viewers and readers have had their dose of mindless entertainment, while the arguments — which are not much more than facts and figures — to explain global warming have not been aired. I must say here that some greenies have gone bonkers on the other side of the scale and presented an Armageddon picture of global warming... It is not.
Global warming deserves a more serious image than a fake religious overtone that preys on people's own mortality.

So what do scientific experiments and measurements tell us?
I quote:
"The greenhouse effect was first notice by a man named Joseph Fourier in 1824. But it wasn’t really explored until 1896 by a man named Svante Arrhenius. He discovered the absorption of radiation by the atmosphere that actually warms a planet.

If there weren’t any of those greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide [and water vapour, adds Gus] the planet would be about 30 degrees Celsius cooler than it is. The greenhouse effect really has nothing to do with actual greenhouses... " etc.

I quote from another source:
"The next major scientist to consider the Earth's temperature was another man with broad interests, Svante Arrhenius in Stockholm. He too was attracted by the great riddle of the prehistoric ice ages, and he saw CO2 as the key. Why focus on that rare gas rather than water vapor, which was far more abundant? Because the level of water vapor in the atmosphere fluctuated daily, whereas the level of CO2 was set over a geological timescale by emissions from volcanoes. If the emissions changed, the alteration in the CO2 greenhouse effect would only slightly change the global temperature — but that would almost instantly change the average amount of water vapor in the air, which would bring further change through its own greenhouse effect. Thus the level of CO2 acted as a regulator of water vapor, and ultimately determined the planet’s long-term equilibrium temperature.

In 1896 Arrhenius completed a laborious numerical computation which suggested that cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by half could lower the temperature in Europe some 4-5°C (roughly 7-9°F) — that is, to an ice age level. But this idea could only answer the riddle of the ice ages if such large changes in atmospheric composition really were possible. For that question Arrhenius turned to a colleague, Arvid Högbom. It happened that Högbom had compiled estimates for how carbon dioxide cycles through natural geochemical processes, including emission from volcanoes, uptake by the oceans, and so forth. Along the way he had come up with a strange, almost incredible new idea.
It had occurred to Högbom to calculate the amounts of CO2 emitted by factories and other industrial sources. Surprisingly, he found that human activities were adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a rate roughly comparable to the natural geochemical processes that emitted or absorbed the gas..."

These were scientifically made observations without ANY OTHER PURPOSE than observing. No political polemic, no words about "global warming".

The point is that since the 1950's, scientists have noted we've added far more CO2 in the atmosphere that can be reabsorbed by "natural" processes. This excess is PRESENTLY warming the atmosphere according to Högbom and Arrhenius calculations and more recent science studies and experiments HAVE CONFIRMED this. Such observation have shown irrefutably (except for flat-earth theorists, fundamentalists of whatever creed and morons) that an increase of CO2 is changing the average amount and performance of water in the atmosphere. The processes are complex and to show the exact calculation and observation would take another several thousand pages of data here. BUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CO2 AND WARMING OF THE ATMOSPHERE IS SCIENTIFICALLY UNDENIABLE. Furthermore some new peer-reviewed papers just published confirm this link.

GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL. IT IS CO2 INDUCED AT PRESENT and most of the CO2 inducing it comes from our extra (dug up/pumped up) CARBON economy.

So, what effects have been observed so far?

Increase humidity in most parts of the world, polar melts, glacier melts, increasing frequency of an unusual array of bigger storms with devastating floods, sea rising in some areas, increasing temperature average trend of 0.05 degree C per year, acidification of oceans and more — ALL IN LINE WITH PREVIOUS RECORDS OF CO2 increase in the atmosphere —  despite what some sneaky pseudo-scientists object to... Sure, there are anomalies in some of the record, but other factors have been at play then... AT PRESENT, AFTER HAVING ALLOWED FOR ALL OTHER FACTORS (earth wobble, volcanoes, sun activity, other greenhouse gases et al) global warming rests fair and square with the extra CO2 added by human activity... and the methane. Let's not forget this gas which is 10 times more greenhousey than CO2 but tends to breakdown somewhat fast. Human activity is also producing this EXTRA methane, including the methane from permafrost and bogs that are defrosting from present human induced global warming.

So were do we go from here to eternity?...

At present the world economy pays zilch attention to global warming... Sure, a few 'policies" have been put in place to encourage "renewable" sources of energies but our heart is not in it... We like a bargain and CARBON is at bargain price in whatever form we use, even with the events in Libya. The Saud king has promised to produce more oil to make up the short-fall and stabilise the world BARGAIN price — all while making EXTRA profit... And carbon is so easy to use — just light a match and that's it.

But then a bit of warming never hurt anybody, has it?... Some industry captains aware of the reality of global warming have turned the table and pronounced without flinching that warming is good for us. The brilliant cads... My hat to them...

But this does not stack up. Studies of the past geological events tell us that with warming and cooling come some big changes in climatic conditions — some beneficial for some areas and some very dramatic in other places. At present if the ENTIRE world reduces emissions of CO2 by 60 per cent by 2050 (based on 2000 levels), we would only have an increase of world average temperature of 2 degrees C by 2100 (but still going up). Fact.

What does 2 degrees C mean for the world climate?

This is the zillion-dollars question. Bigger storms in most places, sea level rising by at least 40 centimetres worldwide, devastation in many parts of the globe and possibly cooler average temperatures in say Britain while other places will cook in the sun. Predictions of such are hard to make with a degree of accuracy BUT things will change and not for the best, you can trust me on that...

And this is the minimum trouble... Because what chance have we got to reduce our emissions of CO2 by 60 per cent when, by 2050, the world will have eaten more food, between now and then, than in the previous 8000 years (latest figure release from the United nations). Energy demand, between now and then, will also grow at more than twice than the demand for food.

We are in trouble already and we don't know it. We prefer our comforts of now and say "que sera sera" to the future. If we had said the same when the ozone layer was being depleted, we'd be in deep shit. Lucky some clever SCIENTISTS found the cause and government around the world acted pronto without much fuss.

Our problem now is that we have to do something far more drastic than the elimination of of CFCs WORLDWIDE. We have to dismantle our carbon economy WORLDWIDE to avoid say a 4 to 6 degrees C increase by 2100. And an increase of 9 degrees C may not be out of the question for 2150.

The future of this planet is in our hand. SCIENCE HAS PROVEN we are inducing the climate shift.

I'll be long dead when the major shit hits the fan, but it's not an excuse for doing nothing about it now. If you have not understood any of the explanation here, there is nothing more I can do for you. Stay in your ignorant and comfortable little hole. Keep spruiking for the deniers? I don't really care if you do. I said what I had to say..

Have a good day.

Who is doing the orchestrating? Talkback radio: "That's the link point," Windsor says. Shock jocks have been broadcasting his phone numbers and email address and urging listeners to besiege him with complaints.

Windsor has no beef with people who disagree with him, he says, only with people who try to intimidate him.

The shock jocks are the volunteer sergeant-majors in the "people's revolt" summoned by the commanding general, Tony Abbott.

The Opposition Leader has said he anticipates "tens of thousands of people" will "bombard" Labor and the independents to stop the proposed carbon tax.

Labor was indignant yesterday that two Liberal frontbenchers had likened Julia Gillard to the Libyan butcher, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The National Party's Senate leader, Barnaby Joyce, never short of a colourful phrase, nonetheless showed restraint: "Obviously I don't think Ms Gillard is a person to be compared to Colonel Gaddafi, a tyrant and a murderer," he told Sky News.

But Abbott declined all opportunities to distance himself from the comparison.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/dial-up-death-threats-do-not-deter-as-shock-jocks-maintain-the-coalitions-rage-20110302-1bey4.html

This could be the title of a modern day children's book — with no spider in it but the big www. No, it's in reference to Annabel Crabb's article the Art of Bull, which despite its funny side offended me, no end. I believe that Annabel is more intelligent than this. But the honchos at our (THEIR) ABC have decide to enforce the fair and balanced rule — imposed by the inquisition let a certain Paul Chadwick — so that bullshit gets as much exposure as reality. Thus Annabel seems to be caught in this ABC antagonist/protagonist web: Equal time for all, whatever the value. In mathematics this would be a sin. Most factors are loaded with coefficients otherwise we never grow up beyond one plus one equals two... But caught in the rules of the ABC Annabel ended up spoofing all without fear nor favour with brilliant stupidly... Get out of there before they trim your wings, Annabel. Or fight with your might to have a proper opinion, unless your opinion is what it is — a blancmange of good puns with little substance and understanding. I hope not.

In the rage of battle, I say something like "nitrogen is not a greenhouse gas"... In fact like most gases in the atmosphere, nitrogen acts as a shield against heat and cold of the greater space. But nitrogen's proportionate fluctuation in the atmosphere is quite minimal at this point in time and could be considered "base load". This gas that makes up nearly 80 per cent of the atmosphere does not influence climatic conditions with the same vigour as, say, a tiny fart loaded with methane/sulphur dioxide stinks up a room.

For example if you have a glass of pure water, water has no taste. Water is water... Add a "negigeable" amount of chlorine (1 ppm — one part per million such as in tap water) and one can pick the taste. Triple the amount (3 ppm) of chlorine and the taste is strong like the water in a swimming pool.

But if your water has a tiny bit of "impuries" in it, there is a chance that the chlorine will combine with some of the elements and create toxins called trihalomethanes (THMs).

More complexity follows... Ah chemistry...

Add 2 ppm of extra carbon dioxide per annum into the atmosphere and it's changing the behaviour of climatic conditions, like a tiny fart changes the smell in the room.

At present, it appears that gaddafi is winning .... see toon at top.