JoNova

While Turnbull and the Liberals are attacking Labor for wanting a “massive new carbon tax on electricity,” it turns out that the Climate Change Authority is going to recommend the Liberals do exactly that but not ’til after the election. Allegedly Greg Hunt’s office are “very happy” that the report will be delayed. It would muddy up that scare campaign about Labor’s carbon tax if the punters knew the Libs planned to bring one in too. Labor and the Greens are crying foul, saying the report should be released now.

We are bizarrely reliving 2009. The public don’t want carbon trading. They have voted against it at every opportunity. They don’t want to spend even $2 to neutralize flights, yet both major political parties are now demanding we have one. If the report is suppressed in any way it shows Turnbull and Hunt know the public don’t want a carbon tax, but they’re going to give them one despite that.

The Climate Change Authority was rescued from the Abbott sabre by Al Gore and Clive Palmer. Turnbull and Hunt pointed at it on Sept 22 last year, barely two weeks after the coup, and announced carbon trading and a “cap” […]

Tony Abbott’s plan is one of the most efficient and effective programs anywhere in the world. But the Green hero is really enemy number one. Apparently giving the eco-cartel what they say they want is a disaster. Don’t look now, but green underpants are showing. Who cares about carbon reduction or trees? Givem’ power and money!

Gillard’s carbon tax cost $5310 per ton. Abbott’s plan at $10/ton this round is 531 times greener. The Direct Action plan uses a reverse auction to buy the cheapest carbon reduction in Australia. In the third round another half billion dollars has bought 47m tons of carbon reduction at an even cheaper price than the first two rounds. Most it achieved by planting or restoring greenery and trees.

The real problem with the Direct Action plan is manifold — a/ it doesn’t specifically punish the “big polluders” (those big independent companies that don’t need the government to survive). b/ it doesn’t reward the right patrons — there’s no money for the parasitic windmills and solar industries. And c/ It is more like the real free market solution the eco-fans say they want — showing that the fake free market idea of imposing an […]

Dismal failure can be rewashed as success. An outbreak of Dengue Fever could be a “hot holiday island with weight loss”.

Yesterday a study showed that the worlds sharpest fund managers couldn’t give a toss about climate change. Less than a fifth could even manage a “tangible” effort. These guys manage trillions. They assess risks for a living. They can’t see either a green revolution, nor the need for one. As I noted, most heavyweight investors are acting like skeptics.

But some poor sods reading “The NewDaily” and listening to John Hewson would think it’s a booming thing. Hewsen, by the way, ran for PM in Australia circa 1993 as the leader of the Liberal Party.

Let’s translate the marketing: When the news is bad, find a reason to cheer (don’t mention the rest):

Super funds get top marks on climate index

Tony Kaye

On an index where 80% failed to do anything at all, there are still A, AA, and AAA rated divisions of tangibility:

Three Australian superannuation funds are among just 12 institutional investors in the world to receive the top rating for climate change risk management from the Asset Owners Disclosure […]

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Lockheed EF-80 (P-80) prone pilot test aircraft

An interesting link from commenter Pauly about the danger of thinking in averages.

In the late 1940s planes in the United States airforce were mysteriously falling out of the sky. No mechanical faults could be found. A young researcher named Gilbert Daniels collected data on thousands of pilots body measurements to update the old 1928 averages and discovered there was no such thing as an average pilot. The cockpits were designed to fit a man that did not exist. Human variability is such that once three different factors were taken into account, even allowing the cutoff for “average” to include 30% of the population in each factor, a mere 3.5% of the population would match the average for all three.

Once more variables were considered, the bell curve got rapidly thinner:

The Flaw of Averages

Using the size data he had gathered from 4,063 pilots, Daniels calculated the average of the 10 physical dimensions believed to be most relevant for design, including height, chest circumference and sleeve length. These formed the dimensions of the “average pilot,” which Daniels generously defined as someone whose measurements were within the […]