A FEDERAL Labor minister has apologised for describing Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's fire fighting deployment as a "stunt".

Mr Abbott has been a member of the Davidson Rural Fire Brigade since 2000 and was part of a crew sent to manage a blaze near Nowra today.

Yesterday the Warringah MP tweeted: "I'm on my way to Sydney to be on standby with my local fire brigade".

Labor minister Brendan O'Connor retweeted the message but added the tag "standbystunt".

He deleted the message today, saying: "Apologies for any offence. I respect and acknowledge the critical work of all our volunteer firefighters including Tony Abbott".

NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell today criticised Mr O'Connor's original tweet calling it "unhelpful" in a Twitter post.

He also wrote that Mr Abbott "helped fight '04 Lane Cove NP fires & my community's was grateful".

Mr Abbott left for Nowra at 5.30am today and will be there for three days as part of a 21-person contingent from the Warringah-Pittwater Rural Fire Service.

According to the RFS website, the fire at Deans Gap was "out of control" and had burnt out an area of more than 4,000 hectares, with a perimeter of 44km.

http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/tony-abbott-under-fire/

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Now as part of fighting wild (bush) fires, Tony Abbott should support — and demand — the carbon pricing be extended all around, to all forms of carbon consumption. Furthermore, imports should cary a carbon footprint status and incure a tax penalty should these not have been subject to a carbon pricing in countries of origin...

In its 2010 Quadrennial Review, the U.S. Department of Defense identified the links between climate change, energy security and economic stability. It regards climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ and energy efficiency as a ‘force multiplier’.

The U.S. military is scaling up investment in energy efficiency, assessment tools and renewable energy projects for all its installations.

Just last week the U.S. Navy Secretary announced“Biofuel technology has arrived” touting a so-called “Green Fleet” of ships as well as a bio-fuelled “Green Hornet F-18″.

Having declared war on carbon, the U.S. military may remain the word’s best hope of preventing irreversible global warming.  One of the most profound technologies of our time was invented by the U.S. Department of Defense during World War II – the computer.

This invention led to another extraordinary human achievement – the internet.

If Tony Abbott wants to avoid making an ass of himself again, he needs to remember that the information highway is now at everyone’s fingertips.  Telling porkies about how Americans wouldn’t kick an own goal by implementing an exit strategy for coal is easily debunked by just a quick surf on the internet.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/burning-the-budgies-over-u-s-carbon/

Climate change denial is almost a national pastime in Australia. People such as Andrew Bolt and Ian Plimer have made a career out of it. I WONDER what Tony Abbott will say about the record heatwave now ravaging his country.

The Australian opposition leader has repeatedly questioned the science and impacts of climate change. He has insisted that “the science is highly contentious, to say the least” and asked – demonstrating what looks like a wilful ignorance:

“If man-made CO2 was quite the villain that many of these people say it is, why hasn’t there just been a steady increase starting in 1750, and moving in a linear way up the graph?”

The Australian – owned by Rupert Murdoch – takes such extreme anti-science positions that it sometimes makes the Sunday Telegraph look like the voice of reason.

Perhaps this is unsurprising. Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal – the most carbon intensive fossil fuel. It’s also a profligate consumer. Australians now burn, on average, slightly more carbon per capita than the citizens of the United States, and more than twice as much as the people of the United Kingdom. Taking meaningful action on climate change would require a serious reassessment of the way life is lived there.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/australia-burning-questions-for-tony-abbott/

From Miranda devine...

WHEN Julia Gillard toured fire ravaged parts of Tasmania on Monday she couldn’t resist opportunism - using the calamity to push a climate change agenda. 
“As a result of climate change we are going to see more extreme weather events,” she said.

But the fact is Australia gets hot in summer - sometimes very hot - and if there is fuel on the ground it will burn. The more fuel, the wilder the fire.

Tasmania is a petri dish, demonstrating the consequences of green ideology run rampant. No jobs, the forestry industry on its knees, and bushfires feasting on fuel built up over two mild fire seasons. Yet, instead of facing up to their errors, the Greens conveniently blame climate change. They pretend imposing a carbon tax or destroying the coal industry will prevent bushfires, while reducing the actual fuel which powers the flames is “futile”.

Despite the lessons which should have been learned in Victoria in 2009, the fuel in Tasmania’s forests has been allowed to build up because of green opposition to fuel reduction burns, which they call “outdated, old school” and a “horrible blight”.

The state’s largest landholder, the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, last year planned 36 fuel-reduction burns on 10,000ha, according to the Department of Primary industries 2011-12 annual report. That would have been less than 4 per cent of the 2.6 million hectares it manages.

But it only managed to conduct 27 burns on 1927ha - less than 20 per cent of its target. In other words, prescribed burns were conducted on less than 1 per cent of land managed by the Parks and Wildlife Service.

“If I pulled my hair out any more I wouldn’t have any,” laments Phil Cheney, Australia’s foremost expert on bushfire behaviour, now retired from the CSIRO.

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Yes, Miranda... bush-fire management is a funny beast and should be done with care...

One should realise though that AS THE AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT (including Tasmania) BURNS, the status of the forest changes and has done so for the last 10,000 years. Burning the forest accelerate the change... The original forest becomes what is known as a dry sclerophyll forest compared to what was before — a wet sub-Antarctic forest in Tasmania and further north on the mainland, a wet temperate/tropical rain forest... This change, started about 45 million years ago, but is accelerated by human intervention.

In the last 200 years, 90 percent of the remaining "forested", or wooded areas, in Australia have been taken down for timber or has been burnt to make room for bean crops...

Fire management has thus become essential, as "natural" fires are becoming more intense due to the nature of the forest, now more sclerophyll than ever... The key word is dry... the next concept here is that this is mostly Eucalyptus trees with hard leaves and lots of volatile oils... The understory is often dried up too, mostly because the weather has changed and as the weather becomes "drier" (less rain, despite increasing humidity in a global warming set up), and with MORE FIRES, THE MORE THE wet temperate FOREST BECOMES a dry sclerophyll forest...

So, the management of the forest — in order to protect humans from fires — is mostly designed, as it has done for thousands of years during the aboriginal burn offs ( I have seen Cape york under a permanent haze during winter till spring, November) to give extra nourishment to the forest floor as well as thinning out the forest from a thick wet forest into a dry screrophyll forest... eventually dying out into grassland, itself dying out into desert.

Having said this, the Prime Minister is correct in warming about "global warming" — something that you don't "believe in", Miranda, because you're a mule-head — without any intent to learn about the subject of global warming from reputable scientists... And no please, on this subject Jo Nova and Ian Plimer are not reputable.

Anthropogenic global warming is real... it is a scientific fact whether you "believe" in it or not... Beware... or as we should say "be aware"...

If the Coalition were to win the upcoming federal election, Liberal MP Greg Hunt says the carbon tax will be scrapped within six months.

Let me be clear from the start: there is no doubt that, contrary to David Forman's claims on The Drum yesterday, a Coalition Government will abolish the carbon tax.

We will scrap the tax because it is both an economic and an environmental failure. Removing this tax is the only responsible course of action for an incoming government.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4460656.html?WT.svl=theDrum

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Thank you Greg for letting us know exactly what Tony Detritus and his hordes of ruthless savages would do... Yes the "carbon tax" has not detroyed Wyhalla so, in your little mind, it was innefective... Idiotic and untrue... What is innefective is Tonicchio's own solution to a problem he does not believe in... His direct action would line the pockets of his rich mates and achieve NOTHING... BRILLIANT!

Labor's carbon pricing works and should be tweaked some more to reduce our emissions. Meanwhile our entire capitalistic dependency on carbon burning should also be promtly revised to manage the planet better. Renewable "natural" (in the present context) sources of energy should get priority as well as limiting the population of humans on the planet... If we wait for the moment there are too many of us, it will be too late and the planet would have suffered irreparable damage... Wake the f&^%$ up!

On other issues such as Industrial Relations, the Coalition is basically telling us that shoving a stick up our bum would be for our own good. The Coalition takes general pride in the destruction of the environment (that it presents as beautifying nature, by building golf courses). The coalition would shift the NBN towards a ten-hump camel hybrid that won't deliver what it should — at twice the cost of Labor's NBN. 

And by the end, a lot of social programs that have been useful for many people would be scrapped like Barry O'Feral did in NSW and Newman did in Qld... These two loonies are tiny samples of what the Libs are really planning to do to this country...

If you believe any words of what tey say to allay fears, you're nuts. Tony Abbott is an iddiott.

Greg Hunt is another idiot of the rightwingnuts peddling crap on ... you/ve guessed it ...THE ABC.

A new report from the Federal Government's Climate Commission says the heatwave and bushfires that have affected Australia this week have been exacerbated by global warming.

The report - Off the Charts: Extreme Australian Summer Heat - warns of more extreme bushfires and hotter, longer, bigger and more frequent heatwaves, due to climate change.

It says the number of record heat days across Australia has doubled since 1960 and more temperature records are likely to be broken as hot conditions continue this summer.

When Prime Minister Julia Gillard linked the heatwave with climate change this week, the acting Opposition Leader Warren Truss said that was utterly simplistic.

But climate change experts have no doubt that climate change is a factor in the current conditions.

The scientific advisor to the Climate Commission, Professor David Karoly, has written the report for the Climate Commission to answer questions about the link between heatwaves and climate change...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-12/climate-commission-predicts-more-heatwaves-bushfires/4461960

I WONDER what Tony Abbott will say about the record heatwave now ravaging his country.

The Australian opposition leader has repeatedly questioned the science and impacts of climate change. He has insisted that “the science is highly contentious, to say the least” and asked – demonstrating what looks like a wilful ignorance:

“If man-made CO2 was quite the villain that many of these people say it is, why hasn’t there just been a steady increase starting in 1750, and moving in a linear way up the graph?”

He has argued against Australian participation in serious attempts to cut emissions.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/australia-burning-questions-for-tony-abbott/

See Tony explicitely denying the science of global warming as being "settled" and advocating "a carbon tax"...

See toon at top...

For the European Commission and for Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia, Oettinger said during a dinner event, it is clear that price concessions for energy-intensive companies in Germany amount to an inadmissible subsidy. In the best-case scenario, he said, the Commission would ban such subsidies. But, he added, the worst case could see Brussels demanding that such companies pay back the money they had saved as a result of the discounts they have received.

Competitors and neighboring countries had filed an official complaint about these benefits with the European Commission, prompting the EU competition authority to launch an investigation. The German commissioner had sought to assure industry representatives that the process was only just beginning and that the outcome remained unclear.

That, though, seems to only have been partly accurate, which helps explain the current agitation. The scenario Oettinger outlined at the Brussels dinner is a horrifying one for parts of German industry and for the government in Berlin. The prospect of having to repay several billion euros is certainly a daunting one. Even worse, though, is that the competitiveness of entire industrial sectors would be put at risk. Also at stake is the Renewable Energies Act (EEG), a central component of Berlin's shift away from nuclear power and toward green energy, also known as the Energiewende.

Since 2000, Germany has used the EEG to promote the expansion of renewable forms of energy. To ensure that the construction of expensive solar and wind farms is worthwhile for private individuals and investors, they receive a guarantee that the electricity they produce will be purchased at a fixed price for a period of several years.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/european-commission-set-to-fight-german-energy-subsidies-a-902269.html