Real Climate Science

She plans to do this by not adding new petrol taxes, and instead steal their money through taxing the producers.

Ordinary motorists set to be spared fuel price rise
PM says move will be a big help to ordinary Aussies
Move will save motorists extra 6c a litre at pump
ORDINARY motorists will be saved from the carbon tax under a federal deal that shields households from spikes in fuel prices.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard today announced one of the most significant planks of her controversial tax in a bid to ease concerns about increases to households bills.

“For the many, many Australians who drive long distances, maybe to work, maybe driving their kids on the weekend or going on holidays with the family, this will be a big help,” the PM told the Sunday Herald Sun.

“This means that families, tradies and small businesses won’t pay a cent more at the petrol pump because of the carbon price.”

More than 12 million “ordinary” motorists – families, tradies and small business – will be exempt from paying about 6c a litre extra at the pump under a price of $25 a tonne.

It is expected the price of carbon will be about $25 a tonne when the tax starts in July next year.

Environment Minister Tony Burke said the point of the carbon tax was to target Australia’s 1000 biggest emitters.

“The individual motorist is not one of those,” he told Sky News this morning. “It makes sense for motorists to be carved out.”

He said the government well understood that drivers were already under the pump, arguing price pressures were “100 per cent already there”.

He wants Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to admit he was wrong about petrol costs going up under a carbon price.

“In the last four months, Tony Abbott on more than 20 occasions has said a price on carbon will put petrol up,” Mr Burke said.

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/

Julia’s band of mental midgets thinks they can tax producers – without the cost of products going up.

http://news.google.com/newspapers

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I remember skiing at Flagstaff that winter, and driving up through a tunnel of snow 12 feet deep.

It will come the same summer as the doping-free Tour de France.

http://io9.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/us/03oilspill.html

Word from the fire lines is that much of acreage of the Las Conchas  fire burning near Los Alamos, NM consists of ground fire only – i.e not in the crowns of the trees.

Why is this? Starting in 1977, several very large fires burned the excessively thick growth and ground cover out – leaving a thinner, healthier forest. Now that those same areas are burning again, the fire simply clears out the litter on the forest floor, and scorches only the outer bark of the trees.

Smokey The Bear was responsible for the earlier catastrophic crown fires, but as his legacy burns – the forest returns to a healthier state.

James is a really nice guy. He was at my table in Lisbon, so be polite.

the melting and breakdown of polar ice sheets seems to be in the vicinity of a couple of degrees warming. This expectation is based on current high rates of mass loss from the ice sheets compared to relative stability through the Holocene (the past 10,000 years) and on past ice sheet response in periods such as the Pliocene (a few million years ago) when the Earth was a couple of degrees warmer than preindustrial times (and sea level up to 25m higher).

We have already had about 0.8°C warming globally, with another third of a degree locked in by the inertia of the climate system.

That leaves, somewhat optimistically, perhaps a degree or so of wiggle room. Translating that into carbon emissions, if we wish to keep the total warming below about 2°C (with 50% chance), then we have a total global carbon emission allocation of between about 800 and 1000Gt carbon.

We have already emitted about 550Gt, leaving perhaps another 250–450Gt. Current global emissions are about 10Gt per year, growing at roughly 3% per year.

That leaves a few decades at present rates before having committed to 2°C warming and crossing the expected thresholds for ice sheet disintegration. And that is for a 50% chance of not crossing the 2°C threshold. For more comfortable odds of staying within the threshold, the total carbon allocation drops and so the time to threshold is even shorter.

http://theconversation.edu.au/

The experts tell us that Arctic ice is the thinnest and youngest on record. They tell us that ice extent and area are the smallest on record. They tell us that the Arctic air and water is the warmest on record. The tell us that warming is unabated and that 2010 was the hottest on record. They tell us that Greenland is melting at the fastest rate in 2,000 years. They tell us that the remaining multi-year ice is rotten, and that the Arctic is in a death spiral.

Given all these expert claims, we can certainly expect the September minimum to blow away the 2007 record.

Either that, or they are completely FOS. I look forward to September.