In case there was any doubt Prime Minister Abbott shares the same conspiracy driven world view of the more extreme elements of the climate sceptic movement, his recent speech to the Tasmanian Liberal Party Conference makes it clear (ABC reports):
Mr Abbott also said the carbon tax was a socialist policy in disguise.
“Let’s be under no illusions the carbon tax was socialism masquerading as environmentalism,” he said.
“That’s what the carbon tax was.”
This claim is straight from the New-World-Order playbook of paranoia.
Equating environmentalism with a global plot to take over the world via concerns about climate change is often referred to as the “watermelon theory”. It has been a staple of right-wing conspiracy culture for almost two decades. And it seems our Prime Minister is happy to share his paranoia in like-minded company.
In Battlelines Abbott hints at his belief in this great-big-conspiracy:
“For many, reducing emissions is a means to achieving a political objective they could not otherwise gain.” [page 171]
So – according to our Prime Minister a market based mechanism as represented by the emissions trading scheme is “socialism”. And yet supposed to we’re accept the Direct Action Plan, which plays polluters using the public purse, is the epitome of free market.
In retrospect, Abbott becoming Prime Minister is not such a bad thing – the lack of scrutiny that was missing in media during these past few years is dissipating. The world’s eyes are on the PM, and we’re getting a far better understanding of how Abbott sees the world.
[Hat tip Tim @ New Anthropocene]
Watching the Deniers 
in an interview on Sky News, July 29, 2009, Tony Abbott stated:
“I also think that if you want to put a price on carbon, why not just do it with a simple tax? Why not ask motorists to pay more, why not ask electricity consumers to pay more and then at the end of the year you can take your invoices to the tax office and get a rebate of the carbon tax you’ve paid.”
“It would be burdensome, all taxes are burdensome, but it would certainly change the price of carbon, raise the price of carbon without increasing in any way the overall burden.”
In other words, Tony Abbott once stated that if a price was to be put on carbon, it:
1. Should be done with a simple tax
Abbott was pushing a socialist agenda in his own words
just how stupid are Australians ?
haha
Exposes Abbott’s dumbagoguery very nicely…well done!
This could further delay action and make the outcome even worse
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-27/italy27s-mount-etna-volcano-erupts/5048242
He may have got away with “axe the tax” and without debate,
could he get away with “its just socialism” without debate?
he does not seem to realise that he is no longer in opposition,
It’s a tactic of the Tea Party.
Obamacare was labelled as socialism and therefore a dire threat to everybody’s freedom and well being. When the same members of the public who abhorred Obamacare were asked about the Affordable Care Act (i.e. “Obamacare” by its real name) they were all in favour of it.
I wonder if Phony Tony is a jiggler or a dangler?
Obamacare isn’t socialism since everyone is required to pay for their healthcare but the right certainly has tried to paint Obama as a socialist.
“In retrospect, Abbott becoming Prime Minister is not such a bad thing – the lack of scrutiny that was missing in media during these past few years is dissipating.”
Indeed, they could have stuck to the line that they accepted the science and that their plan was, like the Labor Party’s, to reduce emissions to 95% of the 2000 level except using a different means from the Labor Party’s.
However, their denialism was always simmering away just below the surface and it took very little to break through their thin veneer of scientific acceptance. I guess this is likely to break out into a full display of denialism.
It would seem the Cold War is still ongoing in the mind of phoney Tony
and on and on it goes
retards, we have had floods before
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/26/world/asia/india-floods/index.html
You’re right John anyone that doesn’t know that India regularly has flooding during monsoon season is a retard. Fortunately this was a very good monsoon season and brought some much needed extra rain to the region. It’s unfortunate that those rains also brought deadly floods in some places though. India is expecting bumper harvests this year thanks to those rains and that is very good news indeed.
powerfull cyclone
much needed rain, 85000 evacuated
oops, million evacuated
Hundreds of villages were inundated and crops were being ruined in what is called the Rice Bowl of India
Yep nothing unusual there it’s really common in India. I’m sure you could find the information on annual flood deaths in India if you ask google.
According to the World Health Organization there are over 388,000 deaths due to drowning every year worldwide and 43% of those deaths are in India and China.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs347/en/
Global warming increasing flood risk in india
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/21-2
so bill reveals that he does not even have a clue what he is debating, his link is to drownings not flood associated drownings
Bill Jamison says:
October 27, 2013 at 8:42 am
According to the World Health Organization there are over 388,000 deaths due to drowning every year worldwide and 43% of those deaths are in India and China.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs347/en/
and india and china make up 37% of world population in densely populated area
any better trolls out there >
Yes John I stated right in my post that it was drownings. People that die in floods usually drown.
If you have different stats that show only deaths due to floods instead of all drownings please post a link.
I don’t think it’s that simple that “People who die in floods usually drown.” Not everyone who dies in a flood dies from drowning as this Dutch study, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15720382, from 2005 states in its abstract, “a substantial number of flood disaster fatalities are not related to drowning” (approximately one-third). Of course, it’s possible to define “usually” as more than 50%. Impacts with flotsam, compression caused by building collapse, etc. during floods and tsunamis are overlooked by ‘most’ people. It’s like saying that people who die in house fires are usually burnt to death when most actually die from toxic fume and smoke inhalation. You just never know, do you?
Well I’d love to see stats on just flood related deaths in India but apparently John Byatt hasn’t been able to find any to post.
I wonder if Mr Abbott would call giving taxpayers money to polluters in the hope they would reduce their emissions, “Socialism”? It’s hard to think of what else it could be called. It certainly isn’t “direct action”, more like “indirect action”. My personal favourite way to refer to the Coalition’s policy is “Soil Magic” because most of the reduction in carbon emissions is meant to be achieved by burying carbon in the ground, an unproven method which certainly can’t be done for the money the Coalition have committed.
ask him where he is going to get the carbon to bury
‘Corporate welfare’…
CSIRO study
Click to access poei.pdf
It’s called “corporate welfare”, and most certainly isn’t socialism.
Apart from the time lag, the irony of Abbott’s plan to sequester carbon by planting more trees is that planting more trees (a) provides more fuel for bush fires and (b) will require land that is currently being used for crops/grazing. C’est donnant donnant!
The irony in Abbott’s ‘socialism statement’ is that the LNP has socialist policies such as (a) subsidising farmers and (b) paying parental leave up to $75K to woman who have babies. In fact, his minority Liberal government is propped up by the agrarian socialist National Party. Quel dommage!
Turnbull DAP
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/abbotts-climate-change-policy-is-bullshit-20091207-kdmb.html
It’s more likely that the tree planting program will use marginal grazing land. It’s actually a piffling proposal, not just for its cost and marginal utility. They can intensively plant at 800-1100 trees/hectare. 20 million trees won’t take much land.
20 million trees will also do bugger-all for capturing carbon, once the majority of them die in infancy from underwatering, browsing, vandalism, fire, or any number of other challenges.
And even if they did all miraculously survive and even thrive, their eventual embodied carbon would not address the emissions reduction problem because each tree would need to sequester 1.4 tonnes of carbon per annum – and that’s assuming that the baseline from which the carbon fixing is occurring is the same as emissions level at the year 2000. To the extent that emissions increase over the 2000 baseline each tree will need to fix additional carbon on top of that annual 1.4 tons.
And we haven’t even discussed yet the confounding resulting from loss of vegetation biomass through drought, catastrophic wildfires, potential renewed land-clearing, …
Oh, and the figures above are predicated on achieving only a 5% reduction of emissions at 2000 – tree planting on the scale that Abbott proposes simply cannot achieve reductions of 20-50%+ in an otherwise business-as-usual scenario – in fact they’d be lucky to achieve just 5% of the original 5% target…
there was a study some time back in canada to offset their emissions with trees
it was in the trillions
Bernard, yes and yes….Abbott does not realise or care how weak and inadequate his scheme is on simple professional evaluation. It does not pass muster.
This is a sign that this government does not take professional advice. They have a contempt for knowledge and experience.
There is nothing worse than true idiots regarding skilled people as the idiots.
Anybody on the land will tell you that planting a tree is an insignificant ‘feel good’ exercise. Watering the bloody thing at least once a week for the next 2-3 years until it becomes strong enough to survive without constant attention is the hard bit…and if you don’t plant it in the right place you can water it for 10 years and it will still die.
I could understand that proposal working in an area where it is being reforested but not in Australia. Doesn’t seem to be a viable solution.
connecting the dots
http://www.climatecodered.org/2013/10/connecting-dots-can-turn-table-on.html
Without a comma or a hyphen after “illusions” Abbott’s words could be taken to mean that he agrees that the carbon tax is not socialism.
With a bit of fancy editing a clever ‘interviewer’ could have Tony Abbott telling the world as much…
apparently it is also against the word of god
http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/nctcs-what-party-stands-for-and-against.html
headgear warning
All that thing needs is Land of Hope and Glory playing and Tim Brooke Taylor.
Arghhh!
For those who don’t want to up the hit stats for the climate change deniers’ party, John’s link above is archived here:
http://archive.is/BUjB2
What an interminable loony ramble! What is wrong with these peoples brains?!?!
John sure reads some strange blogs.
this needs wider dissemination
http://uknowispeaksense.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/time-to-count-our-exported-co2-emissions/mountainsofcoal/
Homework for bill
http://www.skepticalscience.com/DMI-data-on-Arctic-temperatures-Intermediate.html
A great example of your disconnect John. That is from 2010 and has no bearing on anything I’ve posted. It certainly has nothing to do with my accurate statement that the arctic could be the warmest it’s been in 40,000 (or 120.000) years and yet this past summer was the coldest on record. Both can be true, one doesn’t negate the other.
” Both can be true, one doesn’t negate the other”
Bill “you can the coldest summer on record with one of the highest sea ice melts on record”
Have you finally figured out the problem with your logic John? Now you want to change the debate.
You do know that it’s much more than air temperature that causes arctic sea ice to melt – don’t you? Otherwise the melt would stop when the temperature drops below the freezing point but it continues one. Solar radiation and sea temperature play a big part, probably a MUCH bigger part, than air temperature.
But none of that has anything to do with your claim that this couldn’t have been the coldest summer on record because the temperature trend has been rising dramatically in the arctic over the last few decades.
So there can be a “hiatus” in surface temperature while the planet continues to warm.
Welcome to the dark side William.
but bill you have not been up to date with your jo nova
the ocean is cooling according to her
shucks, foiled again
SST temperatures Arctic
no record bill you lose
retard
“You do know that it’s much more than air temperature that causes arctic sea ice to melt – don’t you? Otherwise the melt would stop when the temperature drops below the freezing point”
no bill it depends on the amount of salt but around minus 2DegC or lower in most cases
bozo bill’s homework
Wow John you really are that dumb. I should have known that by now but you continue to amaze me. What does that chart you posted have to do with ANYTHING? It shows lower troposphere temperature above the oceans. Nothing specific about the arctic and nothing about this past summer. Are you really that dumb or do you think this chart indicates something to support your assertion that this past summer couldn’t have possibly been record cold in the arctic because of the decades long warming trend?
You never fail to amuse me with your scurrying around trying to find something to justify your erroneous claims even if they have nothing to do with it. This chart is a great example and so was your link to a 3 year old post at SkS.
The desperation is strong with this one!
As zoot points out, a “hiatus” in warming doesn’t mean the warming has stopped. Particularly if it’s a single season in a single year!
BTW John that salinity chart indicates when sea ice will form not at what temperature ice will stop melting. Do I really have to explain something so simple to you?
From NSIDC: “Sea ice melts during the summer when solar radiation heats the ice surface.”
solar radiation not warm air.
“Energy to melt ice can come from sources besides direct solar energy. Water that is under the ice and that has a temperature above the freezing point causes the bottom surface of the ice to melt. Warm surface waters cause the edges of the ice to melt, particularly in leads and polynyas.”
The don’t even mention warm air melting the ice!
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/processes/thermodynamic_melt.html
at last you get it
“solar radiation not warm air.”
No John not “at last”. I’ve known that. You keep trying to shift the debate and distracting from the fact that you’re completely wrong about your claim that this past summer couldn’t possibly be the coldest on record since the arctic is claimed to be warmer than any time in the last 40,000 years.
While I didn’t say this, even though you put quotes around it to make it appear that I did (why do you do something that is obviously intended to mislead people John?) I do agree with it:
Bill “you can [have] the coldest summer on record with one of the highest sea ice melts on record”
Yes you can because it’s solar radiation and SSTs and wind and storms that have the biggest impact on ice melt not air temperature.
PS Please stop being dishonest and making up quotes. If you’re going to quote me then quote me. Don’t make up quotes that I never wrote.
you cannot be serious
the arctic was warmer this last century than any time in the last 100,000 years and you make a stupid comment that last summer the arctic could have set a new record cold.
this is idiotic,
your evidence is some moronic blog making this absurd claim.
it is now impossible that any arctic summers could set a new cold record, to do so would mean an actual temperature drop well below the base period, and well below 1910
do you understand the term base period,
it would also be headline news, “coldest summer in Arctic for 100 years”
is there a conspiracy to hide this ?
the arctic storms turn much of the ice over and we see algae growing on the bottom of it, guess what ? it has not melted from below,
moronic claim as was your one ice core global anomaly stupidity
Once again you try to change the story John. Why is that?
You tried to link the new paper claiming the arctic is the warmest it’s been in 40,000 years or whatever with the claim that this was a record cold summer in the arctic. As I keep repeating, both claims can be true.
Instead of admitting your mistake in logic and moving on you keep deflecting and trying to change the issue. You look like a fool and appear desperate with your links to blogs that don’t do anything to support that failure in basic logic.
“both claims can be true ”
not in reality, they cannot be true and you even admit that it was not in fact true that a record cold summer was set, basically it is impossible in 2013 for such a record to occur
you premise is false
Okay John I’ll indulge you: Please explain why they can’t both be true.
The footpath was wet this morning therefore it must have rained last night
logical but only because it is based on a false premise
Just as I expected. John you never disappoint.
the arctic has been warmer in the past century than anytime in 100,000 years but this summer could have set a new cold record
“both can be true”
implicit in that premise is that last summer could have been the coldest in one hundred years
that is what you are claiming
your premise is false
the same as only rain could account for the wet footpath
“implicit in that premise is that last summer could have been the coldest in one hundred years ”
Yes it could be. No reason it can’t be. If you go back and read your SkS link you’ll see they discuss how little variation there is in summer temperature. It hasn’t increased much at all in the arctic and it can’t while there is a considerable amount of ice. So it wouldn’t take much for a summer to be below average temperature. The physical processes that prevent it from getting too warm don’t keep it from cooling.
“So it wouldn’t take much for a summer to be below average temperature.”
so from record cold to now below average
waste of time, your premise is wrong
NASA
Evidence of Arctic Warming
Comiso’s new study presents some striking trends. When compared to longer- term, ground-based surface temperature data, the rate of warming in the Arctic from 1981 to 2001 is eight times larger than the rate of Arctic warming over the last 100 years. There have also been some remarkable seasonal changes. Arctic spring, summer, and autumn have each warmed, lengthening the seasons when sea ice melts by 10 to 17 days per decade. Temperatures increased on average by almost one and a quarter (1.22) degrees Celsius (C) per decade over sea ice in the Arctic summer. Conversely, Arctic winters cooled from the 1980s to the 1990s. The study finds that winters were almost 1 (0.89) degree C cooler per decade.
The same scientists 2012
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00113.1
“The sea ice cover is shown to be strongly correlated with surface temperature, which is increasing at about 3 times the global average in the Arctic
give it up you are just making a jackass out of yourself
Nope you still have failed to prove your statement. You have a simple logic failure and can’t see it. There’s nothing in the claim about the last 100 years of arctic temperature that precludes a single summer from being the coldest on record. The climate record is full of large swings in temperature and not just in the arctic.
More importantly you seem to think that somehow a record cold year in the arctic would actually MEAN something when it doesn’t. It’s noise. It’s weather. You just don’t get it.
Besides if you were actually correct then others would be jumping in to defend you. This is just like when you didn’t understand that actual mean temperature for individual months is different than the annual average mean temperature. No one tried to defend you because they all knew you were wrong. But you kept trying to defend your statement to the point of embarrassing yourself and proving your ignorance. This is a similar example.
why would anyone need to defend anyone?,
the science is clear, there could not have been a 2013 Arctic summer which was the coldest in 100 years read again
your whole premise is idiotic
your claims are not in accord with the science at all, all you have is some idiot blog
and you went from coldest on record to below average,
Bill ” no one is defending you therefore i am correct”
is that the whole basis of your crap?
from the link “The sea ice cover is shown to be strongly correlated with surface temperature,”
hard to believe but even bob tisdale is not as stupid as you
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/13-arctic-ssta.png?w=640&h=442
Still making up quotes after I asked you not to quote me? Your dishonesty knows no bounds John, it’s shameful.
The “science” on the past 100 years has no bearing on the present. A science paper that covers a period of 100 years or 1,000 years published today won’t tell you what the weather was yesterday and won’t tell you whether this past summer was record hot or cold. To claim otherwise is sheer stupidity.
well it would tell you that the chances of the summer anomaly dropping off the bottom of the chart would be zilch it was also the sixth lowest extent of sea ice this year and your stupidity is that it could even possibly be associated with a new record low temperature for summer
you do dumb better than tisdale
So try to explain how the 6th lowest extent on record can happen with a lower than average temperature for the arctic this summer.
The answer is simple but yet you don’t seem to know it.
No Tisdale still not as stupid as you
Wow it really is a simple answer to that question but obviously you don’t know what it is or else you wouldn’t resort to posting the same link to an image of the arctic.
Nice non-answer. Your ignorance is astounding at times John Byatt!
The word socialism can mean different things to different people. To suggest that Abbott’s use of the term is the equivalent of him buying the accusations that the Copenhagen Treaty was about a UN power grab is a bit of a stretch in the same way as walking from Hobart to Launceston is a bit of a stretch.
The way I read it is this. The structure of the tax was that it was another form of redistribution with the ALP smack in the middle. It was about taxing Peter and Paul and then having the government decide how much was going to Paul and other favoured groups and how little to Peter and the rest.
There were many ways the tax could have been structured so as to keep the government at arms length but this one was structured so that the government was pivotal in how the proceeds were redistributed. This is how the Fabian transformation of society takes place. It allows the government to insinuate itself into every aspect of life that it deems unto itself.
By generating a large pool of funds the government seeks to make itself indispensable to large numbers of the population. Even though it was claimed that the tax was revenue neutral, it was not tax neutral for all groups.
Remember how Gillard claimed that she’d construct the tax in such a way as to make it irreversible. This was done by given the proceeds out as untied gifts to many (favoured) groups in the belief that no government would ever be brave enough to take those gifts back. And to some extent that was true in that Abbott will continue to so-called compensation payments. Where Gillard failed was in not realising the depth of antipathy to the tax such that Abbott was prepared to wear the fiscal losses of dumping the tax but retaining the payments.
That’s what the right means when they say this is socialism. Its the creeping accretion of more and more power into the centre so beloved of the socialists, Fabians and so-called social democrats.
Would that be the new world order, one world government end times, satanic Fabians ?
is that the type of socialism that Abbott is against because it sounds exactly what mike was stating ?
““For many, reducing emissions is a means to achieving a political objective they could not otherwise gain.” [page 171]”
Would that be the new world order, one world government end times, satanic Fabians ?”
errrr, no. I thought I just said that.
Abbott and those of like mind aren’t worried about a NWO government. They’re worried about the slow socialisation of Australia and the consequent loss of liberty.
braincell needs a recharge
“That’s what the right means when they say this is socialism. Its the creeping accretion of more and more power into the centre so beloved of the socialists, Fabians and so-called social democrats”
which is “the new world order, one world government end times, satanic Fabians ?”
“which is “the new world order, one world government end times, satanic Fabians ?””
Its not. It’d be too hard to explain to someone so determined to misunderstand reality so I won’t bother.
I was refering to the accumulation of power into the centres of power in Aust. But as I said, you are determined to misrepresent that,aren’t you?
Gids, governments have the power to levy taxes…they are all re-distributive indirectly or directly in the process of maintaining and buying services, and compensating those who bear inordinate proportional burdens. Taxes buy civilisation and social cohesion. Low tax, low governance countries are notoriously short of liberty, unless you cheer the liberty of warlords, bandits and nepotists.
Face it, Abbott is a chump for offering tax=socialism rubbish… he’s essentially attacking his own parental leave scheme.
Nick,
We could probably get into a whole thing abot taxes and their effects on society but that’d be way OT. Needless to say I don’t agree with statements like “taxes buy civilisation”. I wouldn’t argue against taxes, just about their current levels and the way they are used to buy and favour certain constituencies. But OT.
What the right who see this one as socialism feel is that it was designed in a very specific way. There are myriad ways that the arms of government could have been used to force or encourage reductions in spectacularly falsely named “carbon pollution”, but the previous leadership chose the one that gave it the greatest leverage to insinuate itself into our lives. That’s why is seen as a socialistic measure. .
another statement from ignorance
“falsely named “carbon pollution”,”
Gids, crap! It [carbon pricing] is not seen as a ‘socialistic measure’. No one saw it as a ‘socialistic measure’. No one. Until, dumbo-demagogue Abbott decides it’s time to further poison the well of public discourse by using the authority of the PM’s office to propagate this childish meme.
Pricing on pollutants are disincentives to pollute. Simple. As. That. Pricing that drives energy efficient behaviors.
WTF is Abbott doing?? He’s going the way of the dangerously destructive Campbell Newman. They are dragging the country backwards.
WTF are you doing trying to support Abbott? Who needs that hyperbole, that dishonest framing, that ramping up of tensions? Act like a grown-up, please.
Sorry Nick but its simply factually incorrect that this was not talked about until recently. It may be that it wasn’t being talked about on your approved sites but within the conservative community it was taken as a given.
Even Abbott was talking about this over a year ago. If you cared to look you’d find many others drawing the link between the design of the tax and its fundamentally social rather than environmental aims.
Again, Gids, you and your sources are not ‘conservative’, you’re ill-informed and you are cranks. Have some respect for the language!
Abbott is in the business of framing an innocent mechanism as a political evil. This is anti-intellectual and appallingly short-sighted populism.
You said no one was talking about it until recently. I showed that that was factually incorrect.
Your response : change the subject.
“Even Abbott was talking about it”. Let me clarify that for you: Only Abbott was talking about it! And since he was the originator, it does not count: he is trying to seed the commentariat and get them to spread it.
No-one was talking about it!! Abbott, and his media advisers, put the idea out and it died!! He has revived it again for purely distracting purposes [expenses scandal]!!
Are you really so stupid? “Within the conservative community it was taken as a given” What ‘conservative community’?
Nobody in his party pushed it. He has no support from the economics punditry in the media. He has no support from economists, here and internationally. No one in the media opinion pages framed it that crudely. None of these people have ever talked about it since he first tried it on. None of them mention it. Not even the IPA and its suck-holes frame it like that!
A few me-toos from obscure blog cranks does not count, though you constantly over-estimate their numbers, competence and visibility. Your ‘conservative community’ is a figment of your imagination.
Again, are you so stupid as to claim ‘carbon tax=socialism’ was some type of spontaneously appearing, self sustaining discussion point? ‘Always trying to invert reality, to normalise nonsense,and sell outrageous distortions, you and Abbott.
I laugh at your bullshit, you really believe your won rubbish don’t you! Pfft!
That’s just so dishonest Nick. You said no one was talking about it and I showed that wasn’t so. I could have carried any number of links but there is a policy on that here as I understand it. Still:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/carbon-tax-is-socialism-by-deceit/story-e6freomx-1226092632850
http://australianconservative.com/2011/07/gillards-desperate-carbon-tax-is-really-neo-socialist-wealth-redistribution/
That one is from Cory Bernardi. (“Nobody in his party pushed it.”?).
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/the-real-julia-is-true-to-her-socialist-forum-past/story-e6frgd0x-1226113361553
But this is my favourite:
http://twawki.com/2011/11/01/green-socialism-and-the-carbon-tax/
I could go on but hopefully an honest man would admit that indeed it was being talked about way back and isn’t a recent creation of PM Abbott.
Its an interesting character flaw that launches into a tirade of “Are you really so stupid” and “you really believe your won rubbish” etc just because you were shown to be wrong. What’s so hard about saying you were unaware of these earlier discussions because you don’t inhabit that world, and then moving on.
As I said weeks back, this site is a place where warmists meet to tell each other how smart they are and how dumb those ‘others’ are. Admitting even the most mundane of errors is contra-indicated.
That’s just so dishonest Nick. You said no one was talking about it and I showed that wasn’t so. I could have carried any number of links but there is a policy on that here as I understand it. Still:
Courier Mail wrote a story carbon-tax-is-socialism-by-deceit
australianconservative gillards-desperate-carbon-tax-is-really-neo-socialist-wealth-redistribution
That one is from Cory Bernardi. (“Nobody in his party pushed it.”?).
The Oz the-real-julia-is-true-to-her-socialist-forum-past
But this is my favourite:
http://twawki.com/2011/11/01/green-socialism-and-the-carbon-tax/
I could go on but hopefully an honest man would admit that indeed it was being talked about way back and isn’t a recent creation of PM Abbott.
Its an interesting character flaw that launches into a tirade of “Are you really so stupid” and “you really believe your won rubbish” etc just because you were shown to be wrong. What’s so hard about saying you were unaware of these earlier discussions because you don’t inhabit that world, and then moving on.
As I said weeks back, this site is a place where warmists meet to tell each other how smart they are and how dumb those ‘others’ are. Admitting even the most mundane of errors is contra-indicated.
Remember this ‘carbon tax=socialism’ is a talking point seeded by the Libs. It was not the product of a groundswell of public sentiment that the Libs responded to.
I mentioned that Lib-connected cranks talked about it, Gids…thanks for providing a list of the few but conspicuously stupid people like Bernardi who ran with the instructions from the COALition bunker.
No one talked about it seriously, only dutiful soldiers tried to fan the fire for this facetious claptrap of Abbotts. I do not count f**kwits like News Ltd professional trolls, or twawki and Bernardi, they are nobodies just following instructions.
No one with competence, a genuine reality-calibrated opinion, core expertise in economics or industry policy, or half a brain would offer such a low-brow equivalence. People who write policy, make things work, and generally get asked to help with serious stuff don’t indulge in such stupid populist generalisation. The person in the street never made the connection. It fails the question: why is that ‘tax’ socialism and not others?
So you and a few other desperates talked about it. As I said that isn’t ‘people’, as in ‘people’ without an axe to grind: it never got out of the Lib feed.
You are simply trying to normalise stupidity. I could not give a toss what you think of my character. You are bringing Tea Party crazy tactics to the table, whether you realise it or not.
Abbott is screwing with your mind: on the one hand carbon tax is socialism, on the other his parental payment scheme is not socialism. This is Orwellian doublethink. prescient folk like Orwell and even Kissinger were aware of the power of audacity to normalise shocking incivilising behavior. It must not stand, Abbott’s shitty meme has to be called what it is: cynical and destructive, not germane to making real policy under any contingency.
We can rarely afford to have stupid people running countries. We have them here, their minds handicapped by ideological insanity. More interested in feeding idiot ideas into the public space than governing wisely.
I notice wrecker Newman is being told to think twice by somebody at the coal face of the legal system. He won’t back down because he is an arrogant, insecure ideologue who has substantially lied his way into power, and he only knows confrontation. You ask people who have worked for muppets like Newman or Rudd, they are shocked by their audacity and the sheer chaos they leave behind them.
Abbott is treading the same path.
“J Giddeon says:
October 30, 2013 at 6:39 am
But this is my favourite:
http://twawki.com/2011/11/01/green-socialism-and-the-carbon-tax/”
Of course some extreme right wing blog is your favourite. You are a right wing nutter. We are never surprised when you quote some other right wing nutter to prove how much of a right wing nutter you are. Stop trying to force feed your right wing nutter crap on everyone here. Typical troll.
Nick,
Your original (unresearched) assertion was that no one was talking about this until “Abbott decides it’s time to further poison the well of public discourse by using the authority of the PM’s office to propagate this childish meme.”
In your crazy world-view Abbott just conjured the idea out of think air and started talking about it recently to ramp up tensions.
Now you have backtracked so far that you are reduced to the sad assertion that the people who were talking about (big surprise for you there, eh?) were “nobodies just following instructions” – it would seem superfluous to ask for evidence of that.
So where you’ve gotten now is that the people talking about it weren’t the ‘right’ people (in your view). Wouldn’t it have been easier to admit from the start you misspoke out of ignorance?
fuck, he has explained this to you a dozens times
only you right wing loonies even knew about it
no one else did, we do not inhabit the extreme right wing goon blogs like you under different names.
get over it no one has heard it before except those in lala land
You don’t have to search very hard to find the OWG conspiracy theorists amongst Abbott’s flock of idiots.This “socialism” comment was a dogwhistle to all the right wing loonies who prop up his party. It harks back to the days of “reds under the bed” and equally repulsive “yellow peril” which has since morphed into anti-Muslim sentiment amongst Abbott’s followers.
Abbott also repeated this line in an interview with Lally Weymouth a journalist from the Washington Post and went on to embarrass himself by engaging in domestic political opposition bashing in this interview.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lally-weymouth-an-interview-with-australia-prime-minister-tony-abbott/2013/10/24/f718e9ea-3cc7-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story_1.html
The Sydney Morning Herald had this to say about it.
“Tony Abbott’s use of a Washington Post interview to brand his Labor predecessors as ”wacko” and ”embarrassing” could set back his working relationship with the Obama adminstration, a leading US commentator says.
Norman Ornstein, an author and political scientist with the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said he ”winced” when he read the interview in which Mr Abbott put the boot into the Rudd-Gillard government in unusually strong language for a foreign interview.
”It really does violate a basic principle of diplomacy to drag in your domestic politics when you go abroad,” Dr Ornstein said. ”It certainly can’t help in building a bond of any sort with President Obama to rip into a party, government and – at least implicitly – leader, with whom Obama has worked so closely.
”Perhaps you can chalk it up to a rookie mistake. But it is a pretty big one.”
Politicians around the world typically refrain from engaging in fierce domestic political argument when they are speaking to an overseas audience.”
When even fellow right wingers criticise you……. I think Norman Ornstein is being far too polite. Abbott is far from being a rookie having been in politics for as long as he has and as a former minister he should know better. He seems to be employing university style student politics at every opportunity and it’s embarrassing to watch.
Abbott ” boat people are acting in an unchristian manner”
“‘Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it’s not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia.’
dog whistles alright
Only dogs can hear a dog whistle.
curious that you can detect it. Actually now that I think about it, I don’t find it curious at all.
your reply is interesting considering that they were to the fundamentalist christians
Yep, well I guess that makes me a dog then. If we are going to attribute other animals to each other, coming from you, I’ll take ‘dog’ as a compliment, given your propensity for caecotrophy.
You are so freaking dumb aren’t you. It’s not supposed to be taken literally. It’s a saying.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dog%20whistle
Why is it that every time you post you out do your last stupid comment and take it to a new level of stupidity. A super retard. A bag of hammers is smarter than you.
” It’s not supposed to be taken literally. It’s a saying.”
Oh really? And here was I thinking UKI was saying Abbott was actually blowing a whistle. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
Good grief.
How was breakfast ratboy? Still swallowing your own shit I see.
I wonder how many of the right wing morons who deride socialism think the Sheriff of Nottingham was the good guy who got a raw deal?
the site is called get our ABC back but about the only subject is climate change denial
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Get-Our-ABC-Back/580574238667824?ref=stream&hc_location=stream
ABC in this case stands for what? A Bloody Clue? [sounds like they need one, they are All Barking Crazy]
they are happy 4 corners said that the power lines are causing the fires ,
so cannot be climate change,
these retards voted for Abbott , we are fucked
Alp Broadcasting Corp?
Anyone But Conservatives?
What an idiotic, out of touch, ignorant, dumb bastard comment
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/contributors
unleashed is full of conservatives IPA Reith etc etc etc
anyone but conservatives ?
is your IQ higher than your shoe size?
Yes, because the ABC’s core business is The Drum.
ABC TV and the various ABC radio outlets are a mere bagatelle by comparison.
Your obtuseness proves my point.
you specified “anyone But conservatives”
the ABC online is filled with not only conservatives but the extreme right”
but that does not count now
you are seriously deficient in brain cells
Yes I’m sure they have lots of conservatives in their kitchen staff as well.
But in terms of their paid commentariate, not so much.
Gids, you’re confusing ratbags with real conservatives. Most of the Reiths of this world a grifters, shonks and confidence men. They are radicals –strippers of rights, dealers of favors, inside traders, and money elitists– who accuse others of being radical, methodically inflaming tension, and advocating draconian measures against societies weakest. As Alistair Campbell described The Daily Mail: “They are the worst of values posing as the best”. These fake conservatives are plaguing the ABC with their failed ideas. They are holding us back.
“Gids, you’re confusing ratbags with real conservatives”
Nick,
You probably need to re-read the thread. I wasn’t talking about Reith or anyone else for that matter.
I was simply pointing out that in terms of journalistic employees of the ABC, conservatives are hard to find.
JG “i was talking nonsense”
Yet, among those who arguably matter most – the journalists in senior editorial ranks who have the most power to decide news agendas – a dramatically different picture emerged.
Among the 83 senior editors who took part in the survey, the Coalition was the party of choice on 43.2%, followed by Labor (34.1%) and the Greens (11.4%).
This suggests that Australia’s media bosses are more in line with the broader electorate, at least according to recent Newspoll results.
It is important to note that there is little research showing that journalists’ personal political biases affect their work.
When asked in this survey about a range of influences on their work, many journalists said their superiors have a much stronger influence than their personal values and beliefs.
@the conversation
this is what these goons do not get
there are just as many idiots arguing that the ABC is a right wing liberal party news outlet
http://www2b.abc.net.au/tmb/Client/Message.aspx?b=33&m=9591&ps=50&dm=1&pd=3
“JG “i was talking nonsense””
Despite the quotation marks I didn’t actually say that. Why do you do this? Do you think you might sneak it through or are you just so used to making stuff up that you can’t help yourself even when the fabrication is so obvious?
As to the article you quoted (without quotation marks!) there was quite a bit of it you somehow forgot to mention. eg
With numbers like that, I wonder why people think the ABC leans left?
These numbers are unremarkable. I’ve seen other surveys coming up with similar numbers in the past and, internationally, most public broadcasters (PBS, BBC) are captives of the left.
of the 34 ABC journalists who declared an intention
this is what is wrong with the ABC is left biased, ABC is right biased idiots
anything can confirm their own preconceptions
ABC more than a 1000 journalists
You need to get your head around the fact that the ABC is a conservative organisation, J Giddeon! Just because they get labelled ‘left’ by your mad neo-con mates does not mean they are ‘left’! You fall for, and collude in, the great re-framing. Anything you find threatening to your status quo you frame as ‘left’…
The staff are generally tertiary educated technical and journalistic types who belong to the mortgage belt. The commentariat include ‘fake conservatives’ who can be regarded as ‘radical right’. ‘Radical right’ includes people who professionally pretend to be conservative in the respectable sense, but on examination of their work, are anything but. Most of these people spin like crazy, and are constantly airbrushing, re-writing, re-positioning and buffing the Liberal and neo-liberal legend, while attacking social and political minorities. They are in a constant state of aggression, while claiming to be under attack in their classic mode of reality inversion.
As our ‘conservatives’ tip-toe to embrace the unreality and social divisiveness of the Tea Party, they cannot be regarded as anything but anarchists.
“You need to get your head around the fact that the ABC is a conservative organisation,”
what I need to get my head around is that you can say that without a hint of irony or sarcasm.
“The commentariat include ‘fake conservatives’ who can be regarded as ‘radical right’.”
Can you name one or two such people currently employed by the ABC? Not guests or guest writers, but members of the ABC family.
“Anything you find threatening to your status quo you frame as ‘left’…”
See, you just assume I’m threatened by change. But I want change to the status quo. Some of those changes would be considered to be to the right, some to the left.
JG – who do you think are lefties and why?
There is no objective evidence indicating that ABC journalists as a whole lean one way or the other.
You can claim they are leftist – but that is purely an opinion. It carries no more weight than my contention that they are a bunch of conservatives.
Now switch the case study to Andrew Bolt. Do you think he is conservative, left-wing or even-handed?
Now switch again. Do you think the Australian promotes a conservative view of the world. a leftist view, or is even -handed ( remember their campaign against the greens)?
The point here is that identifying conservative allegiances can be easy. Identifying leftist allegiances requires a hard work, not just simple assertion.
For example, I nominate Amanda Vanstone as a conservative (but she also seems fair-minded).
I nominate Phillip Adams as leftist (but also fair-minded).
I dont think these examples are contentious. Now, provide me with your list of ABC lefties and explain why.
“There is no objective evidence indicating that ABC journalists as a whole lean one way or the other.”
Just today JB has linked to an article which referenced a survey showing significant leftie bias among ABC jounos. So you assertion is objectively wrong. This is not the only survey and analysis that finds that, on average, jounos are more left leaning than the general community. There was an analysis a year or two back on Q&A guests which found that there were twice as many overtly left guests as conservative.
So you are just wrong to say there’s no evidence. You go away and absorb the ramifications of that survey and then we can talk.
“Just today JB has linked to an article which referenced a survey showing significant leftie bias among ABC jounos’
there are over 1000 ABC journos that survey was just 34.
pure nonsense claim
Well JB you were first to link to it. Were the only valid results those that suit your prejudices? With that sort of bias you could get a job at the ABC 🙂
“you were the first to link it”
well then you must be correct 34 journos must represent the more than 1000 who work for the ABC
JG – you are dodging the question(as usual).
Now focus – tell us which on-air ABC people are leftist and why.
No, No, it is you and your BFF’s who are avoiding the question. I asked earlier for some names of these supposed conservative/right wing ABC journalists. Response – stunned silence.
But just to go on with try these names: Kerry O’brien, Barry Cassidy. Both previously worked for the ALP . Why are they lefties – well that’s a question for the ages.
stunned silence
no gids those were the voices in your head in stunned silence
this is written here, do you understand that the voices in your head are not us?
And still they avoid the point.
Anybody faintly familiar with reality is a leftist according to Gids. Giddy thing, people would call you ‘on the right’, but it’s worse than orientation with you, it’s the disregard for facts. Left or right, some things are true and others are not. No?
Still waiting for someone to tell me about all these righties offsetting the lefties in the ABC family. After hassling me for the names of some lefties….silence.
you are the one claiming that the ABC is full of lefties
onus is on you to prove that
What ‘lefties’ at the ABC, Gids? You still haven’t made a case.
European report
it is bloody long but required adaption measures at end
http://www.dnva.no/binfil/download.php?tid=58783
[…] 2013/10/26: WtD: Carbon tax is socialism: Tony Abbott’s great big conspiracy theory […]
here is that CSIRO report into home insulation scheme
Click to access csiro-report-into-home-insulation-scheme-aka-pink-batts.pdf
new study
http://www.gympietimes.com.au/news/could-dangerous-jellyfish-move-further-south/2067940/
rodger we need you to volunteer and tell the retards what a back of F***wits they are
http://www.skepticalscience.com/mediacollaboration1a.html
Man I need to become a climate activist so I can get people to give me money for travel. What a scam.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-30/climate-change-authority-emissions-trading-scheme/5057258
“It has not recommended a final, tougher target, but has canvassed two options for emissions reductions targets.
It says there could be a 15 per cent reduction by 2020, with a trajectory range of 35 to 50 per cent by 2030.
Alternatively, there could be a 25 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020, with a trajectory range of 40 to 50 per cent by 2030.
The report says a weaker 2020 target would require faster reductions later, if Australia is to play its fair role in contributing to the international goal of limiting global warming by 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels.”
The Climate Change Authority rattles the doors again:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-30/climate-change-authority-emissions-trading-scheme/5057258
Greg “I (mis)-read it on Wikipedia” Hunt chucks a tanty and reaffirms his determination to play Chicken with the rest of the world – he really is a petulant petal…
If CO2 wore colours and rode a motorcycle the federal and state conservative politicians would be gagging to price carbon at fifty dollars per ton, and make it wear a pink jumpsuit to boot. They really are a bunch of self- and buddy-serving hypocrites – they will only respond to restrict the actions of things that get up their collective nose, and assiduously ignore problems that are inconveniently at odds with their ideologies.
Oh, I see that John beat me to it. One day I’ll learn to refresh… 🙂
You should just assume John has already posted about anything and everything. It’s what he does. It makes him feel important.
what nothing to add about Australia not pulling its weight?
just another troll comment ?
john ” my goal is to look important by posting a lot”
Why yes you are a troll!
Bill ” my goal is to look stupid and i am doing an excellent job at that”
John “I like to misquote people to try to make them look bad since otherwise it will be obvious that I’m losing the debate”
That would be the most honest thing you’d ever post here johnny
Did anyone here just see David Murray’s gobsmacking science denial and scientific ignorance displayed in all its glory on the ABC’s Lateline?!
This guys is straight from the Head-In-Sand School of Extreme Economic Conservatism. I’m staggered that a person of this profound level of disconnect from the laws of physics has actually been entrusted with economic insitutions of national importance, and may be soon again be so entrusted.
And Emma Albarici’s limp challenge of Murray’s false statements leaves a lot to be desired too.
It’s times such as this that I wish a canny producer had someone like Will Steffen or James Hansen ready in the wings to dismantle these sorts of erroneous claims.
Link to follow when the segment is up on the ABC’s site.
I think Alberici was excellent. She gave Mr Murray every opportunity to clearly demonstrate his views, and there they were in all their crank glory!
Firstly,he got a bit squirmy when Abbott’s PPLS was inserted into the picture he was building. Nice context supplied by the interviewer.
Raise the GST, lower company tax, streamline personal tax [is PT really that complex?] The usual mantra. Conspicuously absent was tax reform at the top.
Murray claims ‘carbon tax’ was terrible idea, but effectively he advocates for results a carbon tax could deliver. Maybe if we called it something else?. To tax carbon is to attack one of our comparative advantages and ‘the very fabric of the economy’! Alarmism with a poker face…thankfully he explained how the very fabric of our economy has been so well maintained by the swingeing globalism he has personally benefited greatly from.
Arguing for a prudent risk management approach, he looks for fuel efficiency measures but won’t explain why a carbon price wouldn’t drive such efficiency. The explicatory void was obvious.
I think that Albarici has gently highlighted his inconsistency as he demands fuel efficiency but bridles at mechanisms that deliver it, and she flushed him out : Murray, in sagging tent with shaky card table, incense and crystal ball offers : “the climate problem is severely overstated” ….[crap in Abbott speak]
And then….just wow. He will be convinced when he sees “some evidence of integrity amongst the scientists themselves”….. ‘A breakdown in the integrity of the science’ He offers no justification for that view beyond a claim that he has looked at ‘systems and behaviors’. I wonder what ‘systems and behaviors’ told him about his peers during the GFC…in fact, the telling way the ‘financial services community’ disports itself constantly.
He’s an idiot and hypocrite, calm and deliberate in the delivery of absolute tosh. What is Alberici supposed to do? She has pulled back the curtain, that’s enough.
is this it?
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3880680.htm
TRANSCRIPT
EMMA ALBERICI: The latest IPCC report – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – was written by 250 authors from 39 countries, subjected to a review involving more than 1,000 experts. What would it take to convince you of the science?
MURRAY The Flannery the Flannery
yeah, its funny…we apparently need a new body, just like the old body but [um] not like it….just kicking the can down the road, isn’t he?.
CC really is not Murray’s subject, he would not know his arse from his elbow, but he just knows it’s politically potent.
She certainly did that. I think though that she could have clubbed him on the head once she had given him his line with which to play.
The trouble is that Murray’s crankery is only visible to those who have a sufficiently developed understanding of the nonsense he spouted – to the average joe he would have sounded authoritative, and to many conservative and business interests he would simply have confirmed their biases. That’s where I believe that Alberici fell short.
He needed some correction point by point and that is really not something that an interviewer can do. She can reveal, and contextualise… but she did fall short on the slur about integrity.
That should have been challenged with a demand for evidence, and sources.
Mind you, if the scientists genuinely lacked integrity, there would hardly have been a new report on the table, would there! She did point out the multi-government backing and the numbers involved in production, guiding the viewer to the reasonable conclusion that Murray is a conspiracy theorist.
I like how the interview moves from Murray’s CC foolishness straight to the expected inquiry into the ‘five trillion [dollar]’ [Alberici pops eyes] financial services industry… indeed an eyepopping figure, and exactly the location of another of the blind-spots in the vision of the Murrays of this world…and it seems he will be chairing the inquiry….