Lord Monckton Tour 2011. The carbon tax will bankrupt Australia. The science does not justify it. Lord Monckton, Dr David Evans and Jo Nova will explain why.

Lord Monckton is widely consulted by governments on climate issues. For instance, he has discussed the subject with President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, who is on public record as an admirer of his many publications on climate, has participated in climate conferences with him in New York and in Washington DC, and accepted his invitation to participate in a climate conference at Cambridge University in May 2011. He has twice spoken before representatives of the Chinese Government, one of whom asked for copies of his papers on climate sensitivity for forwarding to Peking, saying that his research conclusions had major implications for China. He has also prepared a brief on the climate for Canada’s Prime Minister...

http://premier.ticketek.com.au/shows/show.aspx?sh=LORDMONC11

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

Lord Monckton is widely consulted by governments on climate issues? Er... cough cough... Many governments, for good reasons, would not touch the good lord with a barge pole... A few humor him though... The Chinese of all people know that climate change is REAL and "man" (human) made. Lord Monckton's scientific understanding is zero. Absolute zero. If we count the porkies he makes up and delivers with a straight face (hard to do with a mug like his), absolute zero is relatively warmish. That the leaders of the Czech Republik and of Canada went to bed with him is a poor reflection on the leadership in these countries. His main argument about the ice age 700 million years ago does not hold water...

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

His acolytes, Dr David Evans and Jo Nova, are also well known for fudging the science for lazy journos to gobble up:

A few weeks ago, self-proclaimed “rocket scientist”, Dr David Evans, wrote an Opinion Editorial in The Australian, which was widely circulated across various email distribution lists (I got send the link a couple of times, asking whether what he was saying was valid. I passed them on to these two pieces from Deltoid). But it spawned a life of its own in the non-greenhouse theorist blogosphere, and also drummed up strong support among other Op Ed writers, which have also been thoroughly dissected.

In particular, Dr Evans made some very strong statements about the robustness of climate science, including the claim that there was a missing hotspot in the tropical atmosphere, which therefore invalidated the greenhouse theory (and therefore presumably required the development of a new branch of physics). For instance, Dr Evans said:

If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.

However, Dr Evans must have been unaware that: (1) the hotspot was not a signature of the greenhouse effect – it is a signature of warming from any source, and (2) that the hotspot is not actually missing…

http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/08/10/dr-david-evans-born-again-alarmist/

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

Yes, we all wish we didn’t need to protest, but it’s a small price to pay for living in one of the best nations on Earth. If we don’t stop this slide now, corruption and inefficiency grow stronger, and we will all be poorer in every sense of the word.

We don’t have to have a carbon tax. We don’t have to work for part of every day in order to prepare Australia for a threat that the evidence suggests is a non-event, and that most nations are not taking seriously.

UPDATE: Bolt has this listed as “a rally against the carbon dioxide tax tomorrow outside Melbourne’s Parliament House at 12.30pm. Advertised speakers include the Nationals’ Barnaby Joyce and the Liberals’ Sophie Mirabella.”

http://joannenova.com.au/2011/06/protests-coming-up-around-australia/

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

Gus: Ms Nova, most nations are taking global warming VERY seriously. Even the US. The evidence and the scientific experiments more than strongly suggest that we (humans) are inducing global warming with our carbon-based economy... We can still enjoy the best of the world by being smarter about climate change.

Speaking last night, Professor Ross Garnaut pulled no punches, saying the Opposition's direct action method of addressing climate change is "expensive and foolish".

"We do have a bitter public discussion of this matter at the moment with a rancour that's unusual, in fact unprecedented, in my experience in Australian public policy discussion," Professor Garnaut told an audience in Sydney.

He indicated the bitter debate is due to the Coalition repudiating the support for an emissions trading scheme that it took to the 2007 election under John Howard and continued under Malcolm Turnbull in opposition.

"I've been accused by some people of being partisan on this issue by favouring carbon pricing over what's called direct action, but I haven't changed my position from the one that was supported by both political parties four years ago and three years ago," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/22/3250258.htm?section=justin

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

What is not said in this news item (probably coming from a couple of press releases one from Ross Garnaut's office and one from Greg Hunt — it's easier for journos than having to sit through a long explanation of whatever) was that Ross Garnaut was interrupted quite loudly and often by a bunch of louts wearing placards making reference to Ross Garnaut being a fascist... I get my information from people who actually were there...

Of course anyone who's been involved in politics know that there will always be some extreme right or extreme left trying to disrupt any serious presentation. I could guess that last night louts were loosely recruited by the Liberal nappy-group — those rich brats barely out of school and still at university (law school) who have been raised as the most selfish generation ever by loaded parents... In the past, one would be proud to share a protest against a war, such as the Vietnam War... These days, it's a loud protest and covert war against science... sad sad new world...

...

The answer to the question "Is it real?" seemed connected to the question of whether the referee was somehow confused about his role: Was he too an entertainer?

 Photo Gallery: 11 extreme-weather signs the climate crisis is real

That is pretty much the role now being played by most of the news media in refereeing the current wrestling match over whether global warming is "real," and whether it has any connection to the constant dumping of 90 million tons of heat-trapping emissions into the Earth's thin shell of atmosphere every 24 hours.

This article appears in the July 7, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available on newsstands and in the digital archive on June 24.

Admittedly, the contest over global warming is a challenge for the referee because it's a tag-team match, a real free-for-all. In one corner of the ring are Science and Reason. In the other corner: Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing Ideologues.

How Obama gave up on climate change legislation

The referee — in this analogy, the news media — seems confused about whether he is in the news business or the entertainment business. Is he responsible for ensuring a fair match? Or is he part of the show, selling tickets and building the audience? The referee certainly seems distracted: by Donald Trump, Charlie Sheen, the latest reality show — the list of serial obsessions is too long to enumerate here.

Photo Gallery: 12 politicians and executives blocking progress on climate change

But whatever the cause, the referee appears not to notice that the Polluters and Ideologues are trampling all over the "rules" of democratic discourse. They are financing pseudoscientists whose job is to manufacture doubt about what is true and what is false; buying elected officials wholesale with bribes that the politicians themselves have made "legal" and can now be made in secret; spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year on misleading advertisements in the mass media; hiring four anti-climate lobbyists for every member of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. (Question: Would Michael Jordan have been a star if he was covered by four defensive players every step he took on the basketball court?)

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/climate-of-denial-20110622?page=1

Tony Abbott has moved to distance himself from controversial comments by British politician Lord Christopher Monckton, but says he is still happy to appear at an upcoming mining industry conference which will also host the prominent climate change sceptic.

Footage has been posted on the internet of a speech Lord Monckton gave to a conference in Los Angeles, where he displayed a Nazi swastika beside a quote from the Government's climate change adviser, Professor Ross Garnaut.

Lord Monckton compared statements made by Adolf Hitler to Professor Garnaut's suggestion that people should accept the mainstream science of climate change.

"That again is a fascist point of view, that you merely accept authority without question. Heil Hitler, on we go," he said.

Mr Abbott and Lord Monckton are both speaking at the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC) conference in Perth next week, although they are appearing on different days.

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

Gus: meanwhile if one is not aware of this, the insurance industry is preparing itself to what "global warming" (which it calls "climate change") is doing and will do to its bottom line... The industry members are going entirely with the sciencific knowledge on this subject, rather than fighting it, knowing that should they ignore the stats they will end up wearing budgie smugglers barely hiding their balls.

Since 2007 when there was a serious conference on this subject till today, there has been an increasing number of weather related catastrophes that has made an impact on the odds of insuring. There has also been some other natural disasters such as the Japan tsunami and the New Zealand earthquake, So in line with profit making, Lloyd (losses so far in 2011 of 3.7 billions from 44 billions major payout) joined a chorus of industry voices predicting that the 2011 Q1 losses will result in higher catastrophe rates.

"We expect to see a firming of rates as a result of this first quarter and the recent tornadoes in the United States," Lloyd's chief executive Richard Ward said in a press release.

So there...

http://www.canadianunderwriter.ca/news/lloyd-s-reports-2011-q1-claims-losses-of-3-7-billion-based-on-catastrophes-in-japan-new-zealand-and/1000428330/

Meanwhile from that 2007 paper and 2006 conference on insuring in climate change conditions...

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

Several recent studies have commented on the apparent increases in hurricane losses during this time period, and weather-related disaster losses generally, with markedly different interpretations. Some argue that loss trends are largely explained by changes in societal and economic factors, such as population density, cost of building materials, and the structure of insurance policies.27 Others argue that increases in losses have been driven by changes in climate. 28 To address this issue, Munich Re and the University of Colorado’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research jointly convened a workshop in Germany in May 2006 to assess factors leading to increasing weather related loss trends.29 The workshop brought together a diverse group of international experts in the fields of climatology and disaster research.
Among other things, the workshop sought to determine whether the costs of weather-related events were increasing and what factors account for increasing costs in recent decades.
Workshop participants reached consensus on several points, including that analyses of long-term records of disaster losses indicate that societal change and economic development are the principal factors explaining observed increases in weather-related losses.30 However, participants also agreed that changing patterns of extreme events are drivers for recent increases in losses and that additional increases in losses are likely given IPCC’s projected increase in the frequency or severity of weather-related events.

The insurance industry acknowledge that since the early 1900 sea levels have risen on
average 15 centimetres till today, in accordance with scientific measurements.

The present sea level rise is between 2 and 4 millimetres (depending on location) per year or averaged at 3 centimetres per decade.
By 2100, the rise will be a minimum 45 centimetres on present figure should we reduce our carbon dioxide emissions of CO2 by 60 per cent by 2050 and by 80 per cent by the end of the decade.
Sea level will rise more than 4 metres if we do nothing about it.

see toon at top...

The rate of ice loss in two of Greenland's largest glaciers has increased so much in the last 10 years that the amount of melted water would be enough to completely fill Lake Erie, one of the five Great Lakes in North America.

West Texas is currently undergoing its worst drought since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, leaving wheat and cotton crops in the state in an extremely dire situation due to lack of soil moisture, as wildfires continue to burn.

Central China recently experienced its worst drought in more than 50 years. Regional authorities have declared more than 1,300 lakes "dead", meaning they are out of use for both irrigation and drinking water supply.

Floods have struck Eastern and Southern China, killing at least 52 and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands, followed by severe flooding that again hit Eastern China, displacing or otherwise affecting five million people.

Meanwhile in Europe, crops in the northwest are suffering the driest weather in decades.

Scientific research confirms that, so far, humankind has raised the Earth's temperature, and the aforementioned events are a sign of what is to come.

"If you had a satellite view of the planet in the summer, there is about 40 per cent less ice in the Arctic than when Apollo 8 [in 1968] first sent back those photos [of Earth]," Bill McKibben, world renowned environmentalist and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences told Al Jazeera, "Oceans are 30 per cent more acidic than they were 40 years ago. The atmosphere is four per cent more wet than 40 years ago because warm air holds more water than cold air. That means more deluge and downpour in wet areas and more dryness in dry areas. So we're seeing more destructive mega floods and storms, increasing thunderstorms, and increasing lightning strikes."

So far human greenhouse gas emissions have raised the temperature of the planet by one degree Celsius.

"Climatologists tell us unless we get off gas, coal, and oil, that number will be four to five degrees before the end of this century," said McKibben, "If one degree is enough to melt the Arctic, we'd be best not to hit four degrees."

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/2011622132049568952.html

Christopher Monckton (''Garnaut called a fascist'', June 23), who refers to himself as ''Lord Monckton'', has been asked by the House of Lords to stop referring to himself as a member of the House of Lords because he is not. The House of Lords has publicly stated that Monckton ''is not and never has been a member of the House of Lords''.

Monckton is not a scientist, let alone a climate scientist. He is simply an architect. Indisputably, therefore, he is no climate expert. He simply makes money out of touring the globe, flashing his heriditary title and arguing against expert evidence when he is no expert, just a businessman making money. It's like taking plumbing advice from a pastry chef.

It is particularly interesting that conservatives, as opposed to true liberals, consider Monckton to be a credible expert in their hysterical attempt to thwart any progress on tackling pollution and its consequential destruction of our planet.

No doubt shock jocks are scrambling to interview Monckton, and none will mention to their audience that he is not who he claims to be. Nor is he a credible expert on climate change, let alone its causes.

Faramarz Ostowari St Ives

Next time Lord Monckton falls over, I suspect it will be due to the fasces of scientific opinion. Gravity is the learned scientific opinion that massive objects attract - there is no scientific proof of such force. Could it be that each time you drop your toast, it might be because the Earth sucks?

Tony Backhouse Narraweena

Christopher Monckton is obviously unaware of the corollaries of Godwin's law, which state that anyone utilising the Reductio

ad Hitlerum has just lost the argument.

Stephen Hocking Clunes

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/8985

Lord Monckton is due to speak at Notre Dame University's Fremantle campus next Thursday.

The Mayor of Fremantle, Brad Pettitt, who will be attending the lecture, says it is important it goes ahead.

"By engaging with people like this and showing how factually incorrect they are and this needs to be debated about, the fact and the climate science is very certain, I think we can actually show them for the frauds that they are and I think this is actually really important to have this event and actually show him for what he is and have that engagement."

The university's Dean of Business Chris Doepel says some invited guests now want it cancelled, but the event will go ahead.

"The university will hold it because we have a commitment to academic freedom," he said.

Professor Doepel says there are no plans to censor Lord Monckton's presentation.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/24/3253063.htm?section=justin

(Notre Dame follows the tradition and practices of Catholic higher education which, for centuries has offered leadership in university education. It is committed to a personalised education, underpinned by pastoral care and support for all its students. Degrees and courses are offered in the following disciplines: Arts & Sciences, Business, Education (Teaching), Health Sciences, Law, Medicine, Nursing, Physiotherapy and Philosophy & Theology.)

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

Gus: as an atheist, I find difficult to comprehend how a catholic university can be committed to PROPER science, that would of course include quantum theory, evolution and genetics... But in most places in the world, there is always the good old extra relative universal complexity: money.

MINOT, N.D. — Moving from their hillside condominium to a just-built house near the meandering waters of the Souris River, the Rasmussens, like so many of their neighbors, never even contemplated buying federal flood insurance.

After all, the once flood-prone river — known locally as the Mouse, after its French name — had seemingly been tamed by public works projects that reshaped the channel, raised the banks and controlled the flow of water.

When the federal government lifted a requirement a decade ago that low-lying valley homes have flood insurance, most residents stopped buying it.

“I didn’t have any concerns,” Dawn Rasmussen, a local real estate agent, said Thursday as she surveyed the flooded city landscape with her husband, Gary, a firefighter, a day after they fled their home. “It was not going to happen to me. I was in complete denial.”

An unprecedented — and still escalating — flood this week quickly overwhelmed those manmade defenses along the Souris, forcing a series of evacuations that displaced more than a quarter of the city’s population.

Already spreading across the heart of downtown and threatening to split the city completely in two, the river was expected to rise far higher and arrive far sooner than initially forecast.

The revised predictions, which showed the river topping the 130-year-old record level by more than eight feet, sent panic through a city that had believed itself prepared to handle the deluge. There were concerns that the water could destroy secondary defenses the city had built to safeguard critical parts of the infrastructure, like water and sewer facilities and the lone remaining bridge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/us/24flood.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

see re the insurance industry a couple of comments above...

British politician Lord Christopher Monckton says he was catastrophically stupid to compare the prominent Australian economist Ross Garnaut to Adolf Hitler.

In a speech in Los Angeles, Lord Monckton displayed a quote from the Federal Government's chief climate change adviser, Professor Garnaut, next to a Nazi swastika.

Lord Monckton called Professor Garnaut a fascist for suggesting people accept climate science.

But Lord Monckton has now told Channel Ten that he has apologised.

"First of all I should apologise on air once again to Professor Garnaut for having made the point I was trying to make in such a catastrophically stupid and offensive way," he said.

"I have written to him to withdraw that unreservedly."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/26/3253735.htm?section=justin

Someone should tell the ABC that Lord Monckton is NOT a politician... He has tried many times to be elected but so far he has failed miserably, sometimes with not a single vote... So now let me apologise to the planet for letting a Lord Monckton loose on its fragile surface....

Paul Roberts suggests a sort of value equivalence between the views of Ross Garnaut, Nicholas Stern, Ian Chubb and Christopher Monckton on the grounds that none of them are climate scientists (Letters, June 25-26).

Yet there are important differences. Garnaut and Stern make no claim to professional expertise in that field. They headed government inquiries in which they were briefed on the science and then presented what they understood to be the scientific consensus in their reports.

Ian Chubb, as chief scientist, has a responsibility to tell us lay folk what he makes of the science. He, too, makes no claim to expertise in the field, but surely is well placed to interpret it for us.

Monckton, on the other hand, claims to be an expert. He continually allows himself to be introduced as such.

He declares the science to be bunk, but has no standing whatsoever in climate science - no academic training, no work experience, no primary research, no technical papers. And he presents his views with a comical theatricality involving wild conspiracy theories of world government, which makes it difficult to understand how anyone could take him seriously. His performances can turn very nasty, as with his recent association, delivered in a crude parody of a German accent, of Ross Garnaut's views with swastikas and Fascists.

It is ridiculous to compare him to the likes of Garnaut, Stern and Chubb, men of standing and achievement in their fields, who contribute to public policy. Garnaut, in particular, has made significant contributions to economic reform in Australia.

Monckton is nothing like this. He is just a gadfly who contributes nothing but hot air and confusion. He is basically an entertainer whose vaudeville act provides palliative therapy to terrified deniers, their urgers, prompters and comforters in the media and politics, and to vested interests who don't want a price on carbon.

Michael Broughton Dunoon

It's not hard to imagine the damage weird weather inflicts on our planet. Hurricane Katrina, for example, obliterated coastal communities, wiped out businesses and left hundreds of dead bodies in its wake. Quantifying the cost of such a one-off (we hope) event is pretty easy too: Katrina left us with a bill of $81 billion, according to the National Hurricane Center. But what about the year-in, year-out price tag of our increasingly volatile weather? It's a whole lot harder to calculate the cost of a chronic condition like that — or at least it was. Now a study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research estimates that the bottom-line cost of all the meteorological craziness is a staggering $485 billion per year in the U.S. alone, as much as 3.4% of the country's GDP.

"It's clear that our economy isn't weatherproof," Jeffrey Lazo, the study's lead author, said in a statement. "Even routine changes in the weather can add up to substantial impacts on the U.S. economy."

The fact that it took until now for someone to try to come up with a hard figure is a measure of just how daunting the number crunching can be. After all, when it comes to the weather yo-yo, a debit to one industry can be a credit to another. Take what happens in a snowstorm: air travel is disrupted and heating costs skyrocket, but ski resorts hit the jackpot. Or consider a dry spell: crop supplies dwindle, but construction projects are able to stay on schedule.

Insurance companies have large exposures to Greek and other troubled European government debt.

Not only have the firms invested in Greek bonds, they are also thought to have written insurance on Greek credit risk in the form of credit derivatives.

French insurers own some 9bn euros (£8bn, $13bn) in Greek government debt.

Meanwhile, German insurers have been asked by their government to participate in a plan to relend Greek debts coming due in the next two years, with Allianz having agreed to provide 300m euros.

Besides sovereign debt exposure, the risks facing the insurance industry included:

— big losses on shares and other investments
— a sharp rise in interest rates
— a sharp rise in inflation, meaning the value of insurance claims outstrips premium payments
— major natural disasters
— a failure of the reinsurance market, which insurers rely on to share losses
It is second such set of stress tests for insurance companies, which shadow a similar exercise being carried out on the big banks by the European Banking Authority.

However, unlike the banks being tested, insurers that fail the test will not yet be formally required to top up the capital they hold to absorb future losses.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14011461

Not to mention global warming, from 2012... premiums to rise....

...

According to the World Bank, the amount of water per capita in China is only one-quarter of the global average. Furthermore, about 80 percent of the total supply is south of the Yangtze River, while only about half the Chinese population lives there. So the north is chronically short. The North China plain, which encompasses both Shanghai and Beijing, contains more than 40 percent of the national population, but less than 15 percent of the water. In this region, the per-capita amount is only about one-quarter the level considered the minimum for people to live on.
Pollution Hurts
Widespread pollution exacerbates the situation. About 90 percent of the aquifers underneath major cities in China are polluted. More than 300 million Chinese lack access to safe drinking water, according to the World Bank.
In addition to these challenges, there is a severe drought this year, which is the worst in half a century, according to some estimates. Rainfall is 40 percent to 60 percent lower than normal, which means less power from hydroelectric dams and too little water to support some coal-fired plants. The Chinese have, therefore, had to lean more heavily on diesel generators to help power the electricity grid. That, in turn, has led officials to ban exports of diesel fuel.
And that raises costs for the trucker on I-95.
So what can be done? Broadly, three things.
The first is to reduce China’s water pollution and, globally, address the threat of climate change. Some scientists say climate change is already increasing the pressure on China’s water supply by disrupting normal patterns of rain- and snowfall.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-06/why-we-care-about-the-price-of-water-in-china-peter-orszag.html

ABC radio presenter Adam Spencer has been told to "shut up" and stop being childish during a heated on-air exchange with climate change sceptic Christopher Monckton.

In what was more a debate than an interview on 702 ABC Sydney, Spencer hung up on his guest before Monckton called back and the interview resumed.

The tension began when Spencer asked Monckton about his claims that he is a Nobel laureate.

The Victorian Government is ramping up its campaign against the carbon tax, releasing figures highlighting the impact on public hospitals, transport and households.

The figures are based on an estimated $25 a tonne carbon price, which is higher than the $23 a tonne price expected to be unveiled on Sunday.

The State Government estimates Victoria's public hospitals will face a $13.6 million increase in annual electricity bills.

The Government claims the cost of running public transport will increase by $14.1 million a year and estimates a Melbourne household with an electric hot-water system will face an increase of $204 a year in electricity bills.

The calculations do not take into account promised compensation and the State Government has refused to release the modelling in full.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/07/07/3263529.htm?section=justin

This climate scientist is appalled at the level of debate in Australia.

Bemused, frustrated and appalled. All of these adjectives describe Will Steffen's attitude to the debate on climate change in Australia.

''What debate? There is no debate in the scientific community about this,'' says Steffen, 64, the executive director of the ANU's Climate Change Institute. ''Well over 90 per cent of scientists in the area are quite clear: the Earth is warming and human activity is the major cause.''

The blame for this ''phoney debate'', he believes, lies squarely with the media. ''A very small, very vocal minority is given the same weight,'' he says.

''I work around the world on climate change and it's only here and in the US that we've got this problem.''

Last week's visit to Australia of the controversial British climate change sceptic, Christopher Monckton, is a case in point, Steffen says.

''He is not taken seriously in the UK, yet he gets 10 times the media coverage of James Hansen, one of the most eminent climate scientists in the world [and who visited Australia last year].''

Some have suggested that the IPA and others like it should be forced, by law, to reveal who our members and donors are.

This is necessary, they argue, because the IPA's continued advocacy against excessive government regulation and nanny-statism might be motivated by support from some of our donors.

On the contrary, the IPA has been utterly consistent in its advocacy for free people and free markets since its foundation in 1943. Regardless of the issue, you'll find the IPA arguing against overbearing government and for the rights of the individual.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2785788.html

In 2003, the Australian Government paid $50,000 to the Institute of Public Affairs to review the accountability of NGOs.[4][not in citation given]
The IPA funded by its membership which include both private individuals and businesses. Among these businesses are ExxonMobil,[5] Telstra, WMC Resources, BHP Billiton, Phillip Morris,[6] Murray Irrigation Limited,[7] and Visy Industries.
IPA donors have also included Clough Engineering, Caltex, Shell and Esso.[8] Other donors were electricity and mining companies, as well as British American Tobacco (BAT).[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Public_Affairs

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

Gus: the IPA is concentrating a lot of efforts to discredit the science of global warming... Its scientific advisor is Professor Bob Carter, himself linked to the Science and Public Policy Institute of which the principal mouth piece (chief policy advisor) is Lord Monckton himself... There is no direct link to the funding of this organisation, except to note that some of its member's papers have been funded by the American Petroleum Institute...

The television advertisement by the business/mining comparing the carbon tax in Europe and that in Australia has conveniently forgotten to mention that some countries in Europe also have an ETS...

The total damage inflicted by Hurricane Irene may reach $7 billion by the time the storm dissipates in the coming days, making one of the insurance industry’s worst years even tougher, according to an early estimate by the Kinetic Analysis Corporation in Silver Spring, Md.

Most of the loss will very likely come from property in New York and New Jersey, according to industry experts. Although Irene had diminished to a tropical storm by the time it reached New York early Sunday, those two states have the most valuable coastal property on the Atlantic Coast.

At $7 billion in possible losses, Irene would be among the 10 costliest catastrophes in American history, according to the Insurance Information Institute.

The most expensive disaster by far was Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which caused $45 billion worth of damage, not counting costs that were covered by the National Flood Insurance Program. The second, at about $23 billion, was the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, which the institute counts as a single event.

All but one of the remaining top 10 were hurricanes, ranging in cost from $22 billion for Hurricane Andrew in 1992 to $6 billion for Hurricane Rita in 2005.

Insured losses in the Carolinas from Hurricane Irene were estimated Sunday at $200 million to $400 million by Eqecat, a company in Oakland, Calif., that models the effects of natural disasters. The company said that parts of North Carolina and Virginia had received 20 inches of rain, more than had been forecast, and that more than a million people were without power after Irene, which was ranked a Category 1 hurricane when it came ashore there.

In the Caribbean, Irene caused an estimated $500 million to $1.1 billion worth of damage, most of it in the Bahamas, where it was a Category 2 hurricane, but also in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and other territories, according to AIR Worldwide, a Boston company that analyzes the cost of storm damage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/business/irene-damage-may-hit-7-billion-adding-to-insurer-woes.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

Anyone with a brain would know that one can only blame urbanisation of the world so much for the increasing payout for devastation created by "nature" recently. Eventually, even the scientists too eager not to place blame of larger climatic events on global warming will have to push the warning button. The insurance industry is in a quandary: To tell the world or not. It knows that increase payouts do not match the increase of population but is more in line with the increase of climatic traumatic events. Sure, Irene was not a Katrina, but presently if I was working on an oil rig off the coast in the Canadian Atlantic, I'd request a transfer west urgently.

But the insurance industry is a capitalist system, thus can it fully support a reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere or will it continue to grin and bear it. It know global warming is on, but treading on rabid capitalist toes would be against "business" models, wouldn't it? I believe that secretly, the insurance industry thanks Julia for introducing a carbon tax — this could help tone down the increasing future losses.

see article on the insurance industry above and toon at top...

Australia's richest person, billionaire iron-ore heiress Gina Rinehart, is being sued by her daughter in a Sydney court.

The details of Hope Rinehart Welker's lawsuit remain a mystery after the case was mentioned briefly in the NSW Supreme Court today.

Justice Paul Brereton stood the matter over to the same court on September 21 and adjourned to the registrar's list on September 14 a "notice to produce".

Alan Sullivan, QC, barrister for Ms Rinehart - the only child of the late mining magnate Lang Hancock - told the judge that "in due course, if this case does proceed" he would apply for suppression orders.

But Mr Sullivan asked that third-party access to the court file be restricted until September 21.

The judge noted that, to date, there had been a summons, an affidavit and an order of the court.

Mr Sullivan said the reasons for the application involved "the impact on commercial negotiations".

Justice Brereton agreed to hear argument tomorrow afternoon on restricting third-party access, which would include the media

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/billionaire-rinehart-sued-by-daughter-20110908-1jzhl.html#ixzz1XLjRaWQs

see toon at top...

I got it wrong when I stated that Lord Monckton was a fraud or a whatever deliberate ignorant idiot... I'd like to thank the Chasers for enlightening me on this one. Lord Monckton is actually a character created by that great sneaky comic of our times, Borat, Bruno and Ali G...

Here at five minutes and thirty seven seconds into their program The Hamster Wheel —episode 3, the Chaser team explores the make-up bench, the comic tenure, the delivery of the stand up package and the fabulous costume department.

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