Declaring the backbench would “end up saving the government from itself”, Mr Abbott said the Coalition was “getting the message that we just have to drop any idea of a clean energy target over and above the existing Renewable Energy Target” — which he legislated as prime minister in 2015.

“We have more than enough renewables in the system already and if there were to be an attempt to legislatively increase subsidies for renewables, I couldn’t and won’t support it,” he told Sydney’s 2GB radio. yesterday.

“I’m encouraged that the Prime Minister is talking almost as much about coal, baseload and keeping Liddell open, as he is about pumped hydro. He wasn’t very keen about keeping Hazelwood open when I suggested it back in March but now I think he’s got the message and we’re talking about baseload, we’re talking about coal.”

Liberal MP Craig Kelly said he would “reserve his right” to cross the floor until he saw the detail of the CET and agreed with Mr ­Abbott that taxpayer-funded subsidies to renewable energy sources should not be extended. However, he said a CET mechanism could ensure there was “adequate dispatchable power in the grid”.

The Turnbull government is still to land on a CET more than three months after it was recommended by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel amid deep divisions within the Coalition party room.

Malcolm Turnbull said government MPs were “absolutely of one mind” in ensuring Australians had affordable and reliable energy but refused to comment on Mr Abbott’s latest intervention in energy ­policy.

“Everyone in the Coalition, of which Mr Abbott is a member, are united on ensuring that Australians have affordable and reliable energy,” Mr Turnbull said.

“I’m not going to run a commentary on other people’s remarks. We have a Renewable Energy Target, as you know, which runs out in 2020. It was amended and legislated in 2015, while Tony was prime minister.

“So it’s part of the law … What we are considering … are the arrangements after 2020 to ensure affordable and reliable energy, and, of course, to meet our emissions reduction obligations under the Paris Agreement.”

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said backbenchers were free to do as they liked but urged concerned colleagues to see what the “final plan was” before making decisions.

Full story

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

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September 20, 2017 at 10:17AM

Climate scientists have rushed to criticize a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, which found that less warming in the early 20th Century suggests it’s slightly easier — though still difficult — to meet to goals of the Paris accord.

One would think climate scientists, especially those alarmed about warming, would see this as positive, but prominent researchers were quick to express their skepticism of results questioning the integrity of climate models.

Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann told Seeker he was “rather skeptical” of the research. Mann doubted meeting the Paris accord goal of keeping future warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times was impossible without “highly speculative negative emissions technology.”

University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins said media headlines “have misinterpreted” the new study that questioned models relied on by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Hawkins contributed to the IPCC’s major 2013 climate report.

“A recent study by Medhaug et al. analysed the issue of how the models have performed against recent observations at length and largely reconciled the issue,” Hawkins wrote in a blog post.

“An overly simplistic comparison of simulated global temperatures and observations might suggest that the models were warming too much, but this would be wrong for a number of reasons,” Hawkins wrote.

Berkeley Earth climate scientist Zeke Hausfather said the models matched observed global temperatures “quite well.”

Study authors, however, contend the models and observations diverged in the past two decades during what’s been called the “hiatus” — a period of roughly 15 years with little to no rise in global average temperature.

“We haven’t seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models. We haven’t seen that in the observations,” study co-author Myles Allen, a geosystem scientist at the University of Oxford, told The Times on Monday.

“The models end up with a warming which is larger than the observed warming for the current emissions. … So, therefore, they derive a budget which is much lower,” study co-author Pierre Friedlingstein of the University of Exeter said, according to The Washington Post.

The study seemed to confirm claims made by scientists skeptical of catastrophic man-made global warming claims that models were showing more warming than actual observations.

Full story

via The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

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September 20, 2017 at 10:10AM

I have been invited by famous Lars Larson to talk on his national The Lars Larson Show about the Google search bias.  You can listen to 09/19/2017 The Lars Larson Show podcast.  The segment with my participation is somewhere in the middle.

via Climate Realism against Alarmism

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September 20, 2017 at 10:06AM

On this date in 1845, a tornado traversed 275 miles from lake Ontario to Lake Champlain.

20 Nov 1845, Page 4 – The Vermont Union Whig at Newspapers.com

via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog

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September 20, 2017 at 10:05AM