Peace Legacy

Anyone who is still in doubt that the era of freedom and tolerance is rapidly drawing to a close, please note this week's shocking news. From Menzies House, we hear of this behaviour completely unbecoming a government of any free people:

Four thousand, five hundred Australians have just been censored by the Gillard-Brown regime.

I thought I had seen everything. I thought after all the attacks on freedom of speech I have written to you about before, that nothing could surprise me.

I was wrong.

In a shocking and historically unprecedented suppression of political expression and abuse of democracy, 4,500 Aussies - all opposed to this unnecessary and destructive tax on carbon dioxide - have just been told that they don't count. That their opinions don't matter. That their thoughts are not allowed to be heard.

The background: As you will remember, last month, the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future Legislation asked for submissions about the carbon dioxide tax legislation. They specifically stated that they "encourage submissions to its inquiry from a wide range of individuals and organisations". There were no terms of reference.

Although they only gave us one week, four thousand five hundred of us took the time to write to the committee. Four thousand five hundred Australians took the time to read the over 1000 page legislation. Four thousand five hundred Australians wrote in depth submissions detailing the flaws in this proposed legislation.

Yesterday we discovered that their work will be suppressed. Will be silenced. Will be censored and stripped from the record without a trace.

The New York Times published a 'map' of 'organised climate change denial', which is supposed to be 'winning' because of the deep pockets and superior organisation of the hidden movers and shakers in the fossil fuel industry. As I showed before, the Australian fossil fuel industry alone is funding the climate alarmists to the tune of a billion dollars. I would be very much surprised if Andrew C. Revkin, author of the latest piece of work at NYT, can identify even a tenth of that much money spent worldwide on the skeptic side of the argument. In other words, pot - kettle - black.

But in the comments, this neat summary of the whole scare appeared:

They Burned a Child for Global Warming

This is one of the most disgraceful doings I could ever hope not to have needed to write about. A violent attack by troops evicted villagers from their homes and burned them to the ground, without even taking the elementary precaution to see if the homes were empty, let alone allow the villagers to remove their property before the attack. As it happened, a sick child in one home was burned to death. But don't worry, as the New York Times put it:

But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.

Oh so that's all right then: it was for a "good cause". Others have written about this terrible tragedy, and I can't better their efforts, so let me try to widen the discussion to get at the root cause of why it was possible for this to happen at all.

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On Friday we had the great privilege of hearing the Dalai Lama at his Brisbane audience. Human beings whose goodness goes all the way through are a rarity, and when you see the real thing, the difference is striking. The event started comically, with the Dalai Lama sitting with the Mayor of Ipswich and an ABC interviewer, who had probably never had their hands held in public before!

I wanted to mention just a few incidents from his answers to audience questions, first an important practical one, then an insightful emotional one.

Here's a very interesting viewpoint I noticed on Groklaw. It was published anonymously:

I am not a software person, but I have written and studied a lot about software. I've been annoyed that Groklaw has (seemingly) presented the idea that it is only software patents which is a problem. The problem in today's society is ALL patents.

At morgsatlarge there is an excellent and detailed account of the dangers posed by the nuclear reactor meltdowns following Japan's earthquake. In short, a heck of a lot better designed than Chernobyl and coping quite well with a disaster five times bigger than its design parameters. And the press have almost entirely got it wrong. Read the whole story at the above link.

The Australian tells us "ENVIRONMENTALIST and former Australian of the Year Tim Flannery has been appointed to a newly-created position as Australia's climate commissioner."

Unlike many who disagree with the global warming hoax, I do have respect for Tim Flannery. That doesn't mean that on "climate change" he isn't dead wrong. After a month of weather devastation in which everything that was predicted by the warmists about Australia's future climate was directly contradicted by actual events, one would have imagined the government would spend our money on helping the victims rather than appointing a brand new useless committee.

Future generations will certainly think people of today have gone cold stark raving loony. "Nature" used to be a highly respected scientific journal. Their recent behaviour in the "climate change" arena has trashed their reputation, possibly for good.

Wattsupwiththat brings us the news that Nature is about to put out a special journal to be called "Nature Climate Change". About the list of climate blogs Nature acknowledges, Anthony Watts writes:

I note RealClimate, Climate Progress, Stoat (William Connolley of Wiki fame), and even the paid Hoggan public relations firm “DeSmog Blog” are listed.

I reckon that skeptical sites like WUWT don’t rate with Nature, even though we have more traffic and reach than those blogs. I suppose that speaks to the tone of this new journal before it is even published.

What caught my notice, though, was this little gem in "Nature's" instructions to authors:

New Scientist has reported that Chinese companies are threatening to release vast amounts of a highly potent greenhouse gas, HFC-23, into the atmosphere unless they are paid a hugely profitable amount in carbon credits. They write:

Nobody needs HFC-23. It is a waste by-product of the manufacture of a refrigerant called HCFC-22, used mostly in developing nations. To curb the release of HFC-23 into the atmosphere, the signatories to the Kyoto protocol agreed to pay carbon credits to refrigerant manufacturers that agree to capture and destroy it. The manufacturers can then sell the credits to western companies that want to offset their obligations to cut emissions of other greenhouse gases, under a Kyoto scheme known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

The offer only applies to HCFC-22 plants that were built before 2000. Even so it has proved highly lucrative. By some estimates, the value of the carbon credits is up to 100 times the cost of incinerating HFC-23. The resulting income of Chinese companies alone is estimated to reach $1.6 billion by 2012. ...

As a result, the "waste gas" HFC-23 has become much more profitable to refrigerant factories than HCFC-22 itself. Watchdog groups like the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) say the compensation system ends up providing a strong incentive to overproduce HCFC-22, using methods that maximise the output of HFC-23.

Cutting a long story short, a review was started at the behest of the European Union, a threat was issued to release vast quantities of the gas, and the review was cancelled.

So let's get this clear: