Monday 28 November 2016

When weird sits in the Senate


There are only four One Nation politicians in the Australian Senate and two have recently displayed their political weirdness by putting pen to paper…….

The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 November 2016:

Embattled One Nation senator Rod Culleton has been referred to Queensland police amid allegations he may have attempted to pervert the course of justice or even threatened a judicial officer.  

Queensland Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath said on Tuesday she had asked police to investigate a letter allegedly sent by Senator Culleton to a Cairns magistrate asking for a matter before the court to be adjourned.

On November 15, Senator Culleton wrote to the Cairns Courthouse about a complaint from a person who he said was facing imprisonment. The letter foreshadowed a motion in the Senate to recall unnamed judges for "proven misbehaviour".
The letter noted Senator Culleton and others were watching with interest the conduct of all Australian judicial officers after he claimed to discover an error relating to the status of the High Court.…..


Lismore Echo, 21 November 2016:

ONE Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts has been personally rebuked by a senior NASA official over claims the space-agency had manipulated data. 
Mr Roberts' claims NASA had removed climate data from the 1940s in order to mask global warming in the Arctic were at the centre of the stoush. 

"You appear to hold a number of misconceptions which I am happy to clarify at this time," NASA official Gavin Schmidt told Senator Roberts in letters and emails obtained by Fairfax Media.
"The claim that GISS has 'removed the 1940s warmth' in the Arctic is not correct."

Dr Schmidt went on to explain why NASA had undertaken a process in which temperature figures were altered. 

"Homogenization of the raw temperature records is a necessary task to ensure that non-climatic influences in the analysis are minimised as much as possible," Dr Scmidt wrote.  
"These adjustments (for station moves, instrumentation changes, urban heat island effects etc.) are estimated via comparisons with neighboring stations and using relevant metadata. If we were not to adjust for these effects, we would be rightly criticized for using uncorrected data."

A spokesman for Senator Roberts said the letter was only received this weekend and would be "reviewed."

The Canberra Times

"You appear to hold a number of misconceptions which I am happy to clarify at this time," Dr Schmidt told Senator Roberts in letters and emails obtained by Fairfax Media. "The claim that GISS has 'removed the 1940s warmth' in the Arctic is not correct."

"We are certainly gratified by the attention Australia pays to our analysis, but in case you have remaining questions, I urge you to perform your own analyses."

The claim that NASA tampered with decades-old Arctic data is a favourite conspiracy theory among global warming sceptics who argue the current run-up in temperatures – especially at the North Pole – is nothing exceptional, and so action to address climate change is unnecessary.

In his letter to NASA dated November 14, Senator Roberts explained his interest in the agency's temperature calculations, saying they had "influenced" the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's warnings on global warming that in turn had informed Australian government policy. 

Senator Roberts, a former coalmining manager, rejects the idea climate change is related to carbon-dioxide levels and last week attacked the CSIRO's climate science…….

Senator Malcolm Roberts during a recent press conference, attacking CSIRO. 
Photo: Andrew Meares

"In Australia, we have considerable concern about temperature adjustments made by NASA over many years," Senator Roberts wrote, including charts from Icelandic stations at Vestmannaeyjar and Teigarhorn.

"In dropping the temperatures for the early period, the [Arctic] warmth for the 1930s and 1940s appears to have been removed," he said. "What is your specific reason for doing this?"

In an email, Truasti Jonsoon, senior meteorologist with a specialty in historical climatology at the Icelandic Meteorological Office, told Senator Roberts that the temperature "adjustments" are "quite sound".

The original data was not from NASA but the Smithsonian publication "World weather records", he said.

"During this early period there was a large daytime bias in the temperature data from Iceland as presented in this publication," which accounted for much of the "discrepancy" at Teigarhorn and less so at Vestmannaeyjar, Mr Jonsoon said. 

For the latter station, it was relocated in October 1921 to a higher elevation. "Comparative measurements at both sites have shown that the later location is about 0.7 degrees Celsius colder than the former – this relocation has to be 'adjusted' for," he said.

"I assure you that these adjustments are absolutely necessary and well founded although the finer details of the resulting series shown in your letter differ slightly from my own version," he told Senator Roberts.

Dr Schmidt said the Arctic was "not so much" the target of data critics.

"But the insistence that the data must've been inappropriately adjusted [is what the sceptics say] all the time," he told Fairfax Media. "[It's] pretty much the definition of denial." 

Dr Schmidt said he was not surprised that the query about Arctic temperatures was coming from Australia.

"I'm aware of who Malcolm Roberts is, and the only surprise is that he is in fact a senator," he said. 

Facebook, 21 November 2016:

21 November 2016 

I just made the following speech to the Senate.

Matter of Public Importance

I rise, as a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia. I am very proud to represent my home state and stand up for everyday Australians who had to endure years of green guilt.
The debate on this Matter of Public Importance is in the context of the statements made by The Honourable, The Senator, George Brandis QC, earlier today during question time when he stated, “At the heart of our national interest is our alliance with the United States”.

Mr President I say to my fellow Queenslanders, that this historic debate in this chamber marks the beginning of a Western Spring.
Today begins the process by which we expose the truth of the green-guilt-elites, those that sit in this chamber and others who stand over Australians as if they are our Lords and Barons at birth, as if the red of this chamber was infused in their blood as a right.
The world of the elites, came crashing down when Donald J Trump was elected. They knew it last Wednesday, and that night they collectedly wet their beds.

Mr Trump has previously called the alleged human-caused climate change catastrophe a “hoax”, and has thus vowed to “cancel” the USA’s participation in the Paris Agreement as well as ending Obama’s ‘war on coal’ by removing a number of climate policies and significantly ‘down-sizing’ the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

One Nation applauds President-Elect Trump’s highly moral and courageous position.

Yet many in this parliament still want to recklessly ‘plow ahead’ with ‘economy-killing’ climate policies such as ratifying the Clayton’s Paris Agreement, in stark contrast to the plans of President-Elect Trump.

If the Honourable Prime Minister would like to reconsider his Government’s stance, then my office team is in a strong position to assist given both: the presence of our team economic policy adviser (and former Trump campaign economic policy adviser) Darren Brady Nelson; and our growing relationships with senior members of the Trump presidential team like Myron Ebell (who will reportedly lead the EPA) and David Malpass (who is under consideration to lead the Treasury).

We need to use every resource at our disposal if we are to extricate ourselves from reprehensible accords such as the Paris Agreement.
It is important at this juncture to highlight the Paris Agreement, like all Australian federal, state and local climate policies over the past few decades, was not subject to a proper and independent cost benefit analysis for the benefit of the Australian people. A Paris Agreement CBA is long overdue, and preferably by the highly credible Productivity Commission (PC).

Any such CBA will need to include at least two scenarios: one based on the evidence-lite pseudo-science of the climate ‘alarmists’ (eg CSIRO, BoM, UN, etc) along with the related calls for massive government control; plus one based on the evidence-heavy science of the climate ‘realists’.

The National Interest Analysis (NIA) for the Paris Agreement states that: “The Office of Best Practice Regulation [OBPR] confirms that a Regulation Impact Statement [RIS] is not required for the ratification of the [Paris] Agreement.” This is outrageous given that the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) says: “Treaties which affect business or restrict competition are also required to be tabled with a RIS.” A RIS often includes cost benefit analysis, as it should.

My recent submission to DFAT on the Paris Agreement emphasised the crucial need for cost benefit analysis. One of the reasons was that CBA most explicitly recognises that human wants are infinite and natural resources are finite. Decisions have to be made between alternative government actions that compete for such resources. There are always choices to be made … even if the choice is to ‘do nothing’.

It is also important I draw the Senate’s attention to the wealth of experienced people President-Elect Trump has gathered around him to dismantle the elites running the global climate agenda.
The potential future head of the EPA Myron Ebell is currently the Director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Sometimes called a climate ‘denier-in-chief’, he has called for abolition of the EPA and wants to scrap the Paris Agreement, a deal Trump has vowed to withdraw from.

The potential future head of Treasury, David Malpass, is currently the founder and president of Encima Global, an economic research and consulting firm based in New York City. He served as Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary under President Ronald Reagan and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under President George W. Bush.
As may be recalled Pauline Hanson’s One Nation took to the last federal election a comprehensive environment policy. To quote from it;
“Climate change has and will continue to be used as a political agenda by politicians and self interest groups or individuals for their own gain. We cannot allow scare mongering by people such as Tim Flannery, who make outlandish statements and are not held accountable. Climate change should not be about making money for a lot of people and giving scientists money. Lets know the facts and scientific evidence to make a well informed decision as to how best to look after our environment.

Our solution is comprehensive because core problems cannot be solved by adhoc, one-off party politics. That failed Liberal-Labor-National-approach, combined with Greens grandstanding, is causing Australia’s deterioration. To tap into Australia’s wealth and to share it with all Australians we need to get to the root causes, the core problems and address them comprehensively. We need to involve people across Australia in developing solutions to restore Australia’s productive heartland and wealth for the benefit of all.
Instead of so-called 'alternative energies' that are really 'alternatives to energy', we will work to reduce energy prices, and bring back dependability and reliability through environmentally responsible, energies. Low cost energy enables efficiency and productivity that generate wealth to protect the environment.”

For the pleasure of the Senate, I highlight the following summaries provided on the environment policies of the Trump Administration.
President-Elect Trump, who has called the alleged human-caused climate change catastrophe a “hoax’, vowed to “cancel” the United States’ participation in the Paris Agreement.
Mr Trump also has committed to scrapping the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration’s signature effort to reduce production of carbon dioxide.

Mr Trump has said he will review and possibly reverse the EPA’s determination carbon dioxide is a pollutant endangering public and environmental health. Reversing the endangerment finding would end the legal justification for a range of climate regulations. In the process, it also would end radical environmental activists’, who are supported by American billionaires such as George Soros, ability to use the courts to impose climate policies on an unwilling public whose elected representatives have repeatedly rejected climate policies.

Before the election, Mr Trump said he would reverse Obama administration rules imposing undue burdens on businesses. In particular, Mr Trump said he would cut the EPA’s budget dramatically, virtually reducing it to an advisory agency, and review all EPA regulations, eliminating many of them because: “Over-regulation presents one of the greatest barriers to entry into markets and one of the greatest costs to businesses that are trying to stay competitive.”

Mr Trump says he wants to open up more federal lands to oil and gas drilling and eliminate regulations that have contributed to the decline of the coal industry.

I put it directly to the chamber Mr President, many here joined the congo line behind President Obama when his policies suited them and said we had to follow our ally’s lead. As Senator Brandis said this morning our most important strategic alliance is the United States. If it was good enough for some here to use the US when it suited them, then it is good enough now for us to follow the Trump administration.

Australia’s prosperity, and the prosperity of the world, is now reliant on our country withdrawing from the great global warming swindle. Future generations will judge us poorly if we don’t take action now to stop our de-industrialisation.

Australia was once a great manufacturer, our agricultural out-put was second to none, and budgets were once balanced. The self-serving elites tell us that for those who have missed the economic opportunities of their brave new world, ‘well all you need is more education about how great life is’.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party says to those forgotten Australians, ‘we are here for you, and we have your back’. We will fight for our greatness to return.

No comments: