climate change Archives - Page 5 of 11

BREAKING: Liberal Party of Australia chucks Turnbull, caucus elects Abbott

In a caucus revolt triggered by (former) leader Malcolm Turnbull embrace of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the Australian Liberal causus has ejected their leader, electing Tony Abbott in his place. Turnbull lost his leadership by one vote this morning.

Mr. Rudd’s ETS which will face a Senate vote, and is expected to be defeated in the Upper Chamber. Last week, Turnbull faced the first significant challenge to his leadership over ETS when five of his shadow ministers resigned in protest of their leader’s support for Rudd’s carbon trading bill.

Upon failure of the ETS legislation in the Senate, the bill can be reintroduced by Rudd but this would likely cause a double dissolution election; Rudd cannot pass the legislation due to a majority possessed by the Liberals and Family First party (a party also against Rudd’s ETS legislation). Leadership rival Joe Hockey said that he’d allow Liberal senators a free vote on ETS, however, Mr. Abbott has said this would not be allowed if he assumed Turnbull’s office.

The Liberals would prefer to defer the legislation to committee until the Copenhagen conference on climate change has concluded. Recent Australian polls have shown the Aussies to be unfavourable to a defined carbon trading system before testing the mood at the international conference. About 30% of Australians favour no carbon-trading scheme at all.

Abbott was the former health and industrial relations minister in Prime Minister John Howard’s cabinet. He led the monarchist movement before entering into politics.

This defeat is quite embarrassing for Turnbull having lost his leadership prior to challenging Australia’s governing Labour party on the hustings. A IT millionaire and former head of Goldman Sachs in Australia, Turnbull was seen by supporters to be an important figure ready to rebuild the Liberal Party after that party’s defeat to Rudd’s Labour Party in 2007.

RELATED: In the UK, Conservative Party leader David Cameron is facing grumblings within his own party regarding his stance on climate change. (Read the comments)

UPDATE: I’ve just chatted with some Liberal friends down under who’ve given me some more insight on who Tony Abbott is. Abbott, in the political sense is described as a “conviction politician” meaning that he doesn’t shy away from issues. A staunch Catholic, Abbott once studied to become a priest. He is described as an outdoorsman, a former boxer and rugby player with the crumpled ears to match.

Abbott came into formal politics under the leadership of John Hewson, where Abbott worked as the Liberal leader’s press secretary. Prior to this Abbott worked as a features writer for the Australian Murdoch Daily paper.

Originally elected in 1994, Abbott’s career includes the ministries of health and industrial relations. First, as the Industrial Relations minister, Abbott took a confrontational stance against the national construction union and regulated it. Abbott’s approach with striking workers was often an unusual one; during strikes, he would often go and address the workers himself. As for the federal government’s unemployment services, he deregulated them and privatized a large part of their function.

In Health, Abbott served to “keep health off of the front page” meaning that the portfolio was largely defensive in contrast to his tenure as Industrial Relations minister. However, Abbott faltered in this role when an old speech on abortion surfaced reigniting that debate in Australia. At the time, Australia was debating RU486 and a private member’s bill was quickly introduced stripping the minister of discretion on the issue.

After the defeat to Rudd’s Labour Party, Abbott served as shadow minister for aboriginal affairs.

The defeat of Turnbull is described as a major victory for the grassroots on ETS. Abbott’s preferred track is to defer ETS to the Senate committee until after Copenhagen. This will only be possible with the support of the Greens or via the two independent Senators. However, it is still possible that the government will allow the defeat of the bill. If it is defeated twice by the Senate, this will allow the PM an election where both houses of parliament would be dissolved for a general election.

Regarding Malcolm’s surprise defeat, another insider contact writes to say that the former Liberal leader massively misjudged party sentiment on the issue of ETS. My contact suggests that Malcolm is “intellectually captured by the prosperous urban left” and that he’s a “rich lefty at heart”. Liberals in parliament and street-level Conservatives were upset with Turnbull for ceding ground on the ETS debate to the Rudd government. My contact suggests that Turnbull could have taken the more tenable position of waiting on ETS until after Copenhagen and explained that the party perceived their leader to be handing a gift to the PM to take to the conference. Turnbull took the position that the party should fall in line and needed to be progressive and “give the planet the benefit of the doubt”.

Politically, the Liberals need to take the fight back to the government’s position on ETS whereas the last 8 months of debate have centred around what the Liberals would do instead. Under new leadership, Liberals hope that the party will be able to shift the focus back on Rudd.

Hockey sticks and email leaks: Dr. Ross McKitrick responds to the “Climategate” story

Dr. Ross McKitrick is a professor of environmental economics at the University of Guelph and is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute. His work with Stephen McIntyre — another Canadian — provides much of the basis for skepticism of the hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change. The “Hockey Stick” graph authored by Mann, Bradley and Hughes and published by Nature has come under renewed controversy after emails and data from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit were hacked and leaked revealing smoothing, manipulation, clumsy patching and omission of data used to construct climate models based on direct and indirect temperate readings. The hockey stick graph provided basis for the 2001 IPCC report, and a significant foundation for the modern mainstream view on climate change. The emails also revealed a tightly controlled and collaborative peer-review process which appeared to be designed to suppress skepticism and debate.

Leaders from industrialized and non-industrialized nations will meet in Copenhagen in just over a week to discuss a new agreement to replace the Kyoto protocol and seeks to transfer GDP from richer nations to poorer ones under the guise of aiding the implementation of CO2 emission reduction capacity around the world. I emailed Dr. McKitrick to ask him about the CRU hack/leak, the news of a pending US Congressional probe into the revelations that came from it, his opinion if such a move is necessary in Canada and whether this will affect the “scientific consensus” and political track as we move towards Copenhagen and beyond.

ST: What is your opinion of Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) calling for a congressional probe into climate change and the Mann hockey stick graph?

RM: As time goes by the specific legal issues will become clearer, especially regarding deletion of emails subject to FOI requests and whether there was an intent to deceive governments and the public. The overriding issue right now is that we have more than sufficient evidence to establish that the reports produced by this group of people: Jones, Mann, Overpeck, Schneider, Solomon etc.; are tainted. They did not follow the assessment and review procedures they claimed to be following, they doctored graphs, deleted or hid contrary evidence, and worked to a set of foregone conclusions even though in private they admitted far more serious uncertainties and discrepancies than were communicated in the final IPCC reports. So in addition to any hearings, what is now needed is: governments rescind any acceptance of the IPCC 3rd and 4th Assessment reports and implement a large-scale independent audit of these reports. We need to know exactly which graphs were doctored, what evidence was deleted, and whether the authors concealed doubts and uncertainties when assembling the text.

ST: Do you believe that it behooves the Canadian standing committee on the environment to do the same? Would you testify?

RM: Yes, and yes.

ST: How do you believe this will affect the Copenhagen conference, if at all? Can you comment on the political vs. scientific motives of researchers implicated in the CRU leak story, and more broadly of the “scientific consensus” that will be presented at the conference?

RM: Hard to say. The recession and the plunging popularity of the Obama administration will probably have a larger immediate impact, but if there was any sanity in the world this would surely have a large impact. I liken this situation to the discovery of some discrepancies in that Ontario Pathologist’s work — Smith, I think his name was. So they had to reopen all his case files and they found a festering heap of fraudulent convictions and incompetent analysis. They didn’t demand that his critics prove all the fraud before they began reopening his files, they started the job when there was prima facie evidence that a re-examination was necessary. Same here. The prima facie case for a full audit of the science and the IPCC operating procedures has been met.

The Liberal Party policy amendment that’s causing a buzz this morning

123. Climate Change

WHEREAS:
Scientists confirm that human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, is altering the atmosphere, changing Earth’s climate, and damaging the environment; Urgent action is required to combat the adverse effects of climate change; Biofuel production from crops grown for fuel (rather than for food) contributes to higher food prices, and risks increasing poverty and hunger, particularly in the global South.

BE IT RESOLVED that the Liberal Party of Canada urge the next Liberal government of Canada to:

Support unconditionally Canada’s commitment under the Kyoto Protocol by enacting comprehensive legislation designed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Canada, including, but not limited to:

establishing a carbon tax, a cap and trade system, or a combination of both, including hard
limits on the emission of greenhouse gasses for large final emitters;

providing financial support for energy efficiency and conservation measures, generating clean
energy, and public education on the effects of global warming.

Initiate constructive negotiations relating to the post-Kyoto period intended to build an international climate regime that includes:

deeper mandatory GHG emission reductions for industrialized countries;
expanding the group of countries committed to binding emission reductions;
protection for tropical forests;
prioritizing climate-friendly technologies.

Combat climate change by committing Canada to a 25-40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (relative to 1990 levels) by 2020, and an 80% reduction by 2050.
Favour the production of biofuels from forest product and agricultural residues.

Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec)

Questions:
1. Will Michael Ignatieff and his OLO/Liberal HQ team do everything in their power to prevent this policy from making it to the main floor of the convention?
2. If approved by Liberal delegates, will Michael Ignatieff allow this policy to be binding upon the Liberal Party?
3. If not, does this mean that the Liberal Party is ceding environmental policy to the NDP/Greens… to the Conservatives? (the Conservatives have passed legislation on GHG reduction)
4. Will the passing of such a resolution merely reflect the Liberal record of more talk than action on GHGs and climate change?
5. Last month, Michael Ignatieff said “We took the carbon tax to the public and the public didn’t think it was such a good idea”. Does this mean that Liberal Party policy is determined via polling rather than by party principle?
6. Will the Liberal convention (including flights, hotels, presentations and other travel) be carbon-neutral? Will the Liberal Party be buying carbon offsets for the entire carbon footprint of the convention?