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foxnews-sammon

Fox News ordered staff to cast doubt on climate science

One of the premier climate change policy blogs, Climate Progress, has gotten ahold of a leaked email from Fox News boss Bill Sammon, which appears to direct staff to report that climate science has been “called into question” by its critics. Climate Progress reports: This morning, MediaMatters released the bombshell e-mail “sent by Fox News [...]

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toles-carbon-pricing

Costs to reduce pollution cheaper than expected: Grattan Institute

The Grattan Institute has released a report that confirms that costs to reduce pollution, especially carbon pollution, are cheaper than governments anticipate. The report examined six market-based pollution reduction schemes, including the NSW Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme, the EU carbon trading scheme and the US sulphur trading scheme. In each case the outcomes diverged significantly [...]

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youwillpay

Exchange rate movements had bigger impact than a carbon price

The rising Australian dollar has had a bigger impact on our economy than an $85 per tonne carbon price. A new Access Economics report says: Exchange rate movements and the introduction of a carbon price are similar to the extent that both have comparable economic impacts and firms are able to adapt to the new [...]

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windfarm

This election, $9 billion in renewable energy is at stake

The Clean Energy Council has revealed that up to $9 billion in renewable energy investment could be put at risk by the election of the Baillieu Government. This equates to 650 new jobs each year by 2016, and a massive 3000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity. The risk comes from the Liberal Party’s opposition to [...]

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climatehawk

Should we be “climate hawks”?

Over at Climate Progress – probably the best climate focused blog out there – Joe discusses a recent move to rename those who advocate swift, decisive action on climate change as “climate hawks”. “It’s time to be patriotic about something other than war.” John Edwards. The term was coined by Dave Roberts from @grist and [...]

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The Murray Darling Basin Plan

The debate around the Murray Darling Basin Plan is deeply disappointing, not least the political debate, which is characterised by opportunism and meekness respectively. It doesn’t help that the Basin has been a political football for decades, most recently in 2007 when Howard tried to use the Basin to buttress his non-existent environmental credentials through [...]

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Blog Action Day is coming up

This year’s Blog Action Day – on 15 October – focuses on water. There aren’t as many issues that are as important as water. Over a billion people don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. The health of our water systems are essential to human civilization – our coasts, rivers and lakes provide food, [...]

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waste

The nuclear energy spectre

A topic of conversation that has recently come up in my social circle is nuclear energy, a debate largely inspired by the attempts by ghost of the Howard Government Nuclear energy lobby (led by Ziggy Switkowski). A fear expressed to me was that the climate change committee that Labor and the Greens Party will set [...]

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climate

Good news for Tony Abbott: Off the deep end on climate change

Tony Abbott has gone off the deep end when it comes to climate change, expressing the view that the climate has cooled in recent years. This view alone – the equivalent to believing the sun rotates around the earth or that the world is only 6000 years old – is enough to disqualify Tony Abbott [...]

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The Climate Change Citizens Assembly

Ad Astra over at The Political Sword has a very interesting post about Julia Gillard’s citizens assembly policy. It’s a long post and it is all worth reading. I’ll excerpt a fairly large part below: I suppose we should not be surprised that most journalists have sneeringly dismissed the proposal by Julia Gillard to convene [...]

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100% renewable energy in Australia by 2020

The target in Australia of 20% renewable energy by 2020 is the lowest it can respectfully be. There is no reason for the target number other than “it sounds good”. We’re currently around less than 5% in Australia. A recent report by Zero Emissions Network and the University of Melbourne Energy Research Institute shows that [...]

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skwjjz

Crikey runs with misleading coal-lobby ads

NewGenCoal is a slick marketing campaign by the coal lobby to try to convince politicians and Australians that the fossil fuel industry is serious about climate change. Unfortunately, the reverse is true, and the coal lobby has done everything in its power to stall comprehensive action on climate change. Crikey has often lambasted the Australian [...]

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