Rudd's climate castle is built on sand

A large part of the justification that Rudd has offered for his climate adventures is a CSIRO report on how global warming (if it ever happens) would affect Australia. The CSIRO is a greatly respected scientific research body but its funding depends on political favour and has often been threatened. So political expediency is not of course beyond them. You can get all sorts of answers out of climate models (which is why the IPCC reports the results from many of them) so if the CSIRO people know what the government wants, why not choose a model that gives it to them? Below is one summary of the CSIRO report (from July 6):

The Federal Government has released a report into the link between drought and climate change, which it says will trigger major review of drought policy. The report is by the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO and is the first of three commissioned by the Government.

The report warns that extreme conditions previously thought to occur once in every 20 to 25 years, could become as frequent as every one or two years. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has told ABC1's Insiders the report paints a very disturbing picture about the future of droughts in Australia. "When it comes to exceptional or extreme drought, exceptionally high temperatures, the historical assumption that this occurred once every 20 years has now been revised down to between every one and two years," he said. "Exceptional circumstances drought conditions ... will occur twice as often and with twice the area of droughted parts of Australia included. "Now this is a serious revision of the impact of climate change on drought."

Recently, however, an examination of the assumptions behind the CSIRO report has been done by Dr David Stockwell, a modelling expert. Excerpt:

"Therefore there is no credible basis for the claims of increasing frequency of Exceptional Circumstances declarations made in the report. These results are consistent with other studies finding lack of adequate validation in global warming effects modeling, and lack of skill of climate models at the regional scale..

Except in the few cases noted above, the model simulations have no resemblance to patterns of observed droughtedness in the last century. We conclude the models have failed internal validation and no further testing is warranted."

In other words, those wonderful "models" the CSIRO relied on don't give an accurate picture of what has actually happened in the past. And if they can't get the past right, how can we expect them to get the future right?

A recent article in the Hydrological Sciences Journal also found that climate models had no validity in portraying the climate of regional areas (such as Australia). The one thing we can test about such models is how accurate they are in "back-predicting" the past -- and they fail utterly. The journal Abstract:

On the credibility of climate predictions

By D. Koutsoyiannis et al.

Geographically distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models, are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible, whereas a common argument that models can perform better at larger spatial scales is unsupported.

Source (H/T Agmates)

Kids defy food fanatics

Children are defying a junk-food ban in school canteens by smuggling in fattening snacks and selling them to classmates. Frustrated teachers reveal they are powerless to stop many children who bring unhealthy treats from home in their bags. ``I've even seen them selling chocolates to their classmates at school. It's almost like they're dealing drugs,'' said a teacher from a prominent Perth southern suburbs public school.

Education Minister Mark McGowan conceded he could not halt the junk-food flood, even though the Government stopped it from being sold in canteens last year. ``What students bring to school in their lunchboxes is not covered by the canteen policy,'' he said. ``And we can't police what foods children bring to school. If teachers notice a particular child selling junk food on the side, I encourage them to alert the school principal. ``We as a Government can only do so much. It is important parents keep a close eye on their child or children to make sure they are doing the right thing.''

Obesity was a serious issue, which was why the Carpenter Government required all public school canteens or food services to have healthy menus, Mr McGowan said. A healthy canteen menu, combined with the required two hours of exercise a week for Years One to 10, were great initiatives. ``But parents also need to come on board in the fight against obesity. This is not the sole responsibility of the Government,'' he said.

Rob Fry, president of peak parent group the WA Council of State School Organisations, said parents should realise they were ``killing their kids'' with bad food. They should pack healthy lunches, or pre-pay for canteen meals, so children had no cash for junk.

WA State School Teachers Union general secretary David Kelly said teachers could contact parents if they were concerned about certain students. But parents and schools had to work together to address obesity. The southern suburbs teacher said: ``When they banned junk food from canteens it came back into school with a vengeance. They just started bringing their own from home, like chips and chocolates. ``I'd love to be able to confiscate it. But we're not allowed to take food off kids because they can just say `mum gave me this for lunch'.''

Another southern suburbs teacher said: ``Most teachers I know are all for the ban. But there's no use having a ban if you can't stop them from bringing it to school. ``Some kids are selling it to their mates, which would be funny if our kids weren't so fat. ``But you can't really say anything to your students these days. They swear at us in the classroom and get away with it, so this would be hard to stop.''

Another teacher said healthy canteen food had great potential to help children who weren't getting good food at home and it was a pity the situation had deteriorated to this. Canteens have a ``traffic light'' system banning ``red'' items such as soft drinks, confectionery, deep-fried foods, chips, chocolate coated ice-creams and cakes. [All of which are completely harmless -- or we would all be dead]

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Old lady waits 40 hours in public hospital corridor for surgery

A 40-hour wait for emergency surgery has made health the most important West Australian election issue for pensioners Cathy and Arthur Wardle. Mrs Wardle, 73, arrived at Royal Perth Hospital's emergency department with gallstone pains at noon last Saturday. She did not have surgery until Monday afternoon.

Most of her time was spent waiting on a trolley in a hospital corridor. "I was calm and collected until a nursing co-ordinator told me I was privileged to be lying in a corridor," Mrs Wardle said. "It's not good enough what is happening to people in our hospitals."

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A dubious fate for many well-intended charity donations

Donations given in good faith in Australia sometimes fall into the wrong hands

CHILDREN with distended bellies, villages destroyed by earthquakes, a bandaged infant lying in a makeshift hospital bed recovering from bullet wounds. These are images used by some humanitarian organisations to promote their fundraising campaigns.

Hezbollah supporters carry models of weapons in Lebanon. Security experts say donations to some charities end up funding such banned groups. But such images of human tragedy tell only part of the story. The rest is often lost in translation from the moment people dip into their pockets for a good cause to the time their money reaches its destination. In reality, funds raised for good causes sometimes have a way of taking other routes.

The most dangerous route delivers the money to the hands of Islamic terrorists to bankroll their suicide bombings and other deadly campaigns. It's a route that continues to dog Western security agencies, which are attempting to significantly curb, if not stop, terror financing through charity organisations. Two of Australia's most prominent Islamic charities -- Muslim Aid Australia and Human Appeal International -- are being investigated for their alleged links to Palestinian terrorist network Hamas.

MAA was raided by the Australian Federal Police last month following The Australian's revelations of the group's connection to humanitarian aid body Interpal, which is proscribed by Australia and the US for its alleged terror links. While the MAA and HAI, both Sydney-based humanitarian organisations, have denied having any terrorism connections, they have brought into focus questions about whether charity groups have hidden agendas and the extent to which terrorist organisations go to exploit the finances of such bodies.

And for Australia, the second most generous nation among the 30 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries, such questions are demanding an answer, especially to put at ease the minds of Australian donors, who in 2006-07 raised more than $750 million for overseas aid through local non-profit charity networks.

National security expert Carl Ungerer says it is difficult to determine whether money raised by charities for humanitarian aid in developing countries is being used for terrorist operations or for the manufacture of things such as rockets and suicide vests. He says compounding such difficulty is that some proscribed groups such as Hamas and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah have humanitarian offshoots that are not banned by Australia. And even if authorities can prove that Australian-raised funds reach such groups, they must be able to prove the money is being used for non-humanitarian purposes.

"There's a leap of faith in distribution of funding anywhere in the world that you're going to have the outcome that you hope will occur," says Ungerer, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. He says it must also be remembered there are some Australian Muslims who do not believe that Hamas or Hezbollah -- organisations that do not separate the pool of money between their humanitarian and military wings -- are terrorist organisations. "Hezbollah and Hamas are not only considered resistance groups in the Middle East but ones (that) do charitable work that governments won't do," Ungerer says. "The Lebanese Government in southern Lebanon is really nonexistent. It really is Hezbollah that is first on the ground after any sort of natural or political conflict."

Ungerer's words are a sobering reminder of the declaration of support for terrorist groups by Australia's most senior Muslim spiritual leaders. At a 2006 rally during the Hezbollah-Israeli war, Australian Sunni Muslim spiritual leader Fehmi Naji El-Imam praised the militants as "freedom fighters". In June last year, The Australian revealed that Shia Muslim spiritual leader Kamal Mousselmani openly declared his support for the Iranian-backed terrorist group. And former mufti Taj Din al-Hilali was investigated by the AFP last year following revelations that he gave $US10,000 ($10,986) of Australian-raised funds to an accused terrorism supporter in Lebanon in 2006. Hilali was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Hamas, which has claimed responsibility for numerous terrorist attacks and suicide bombings in Israel, was proscribed in Australia on November 9, 2003. Hezbollah was banned in Australia on June 5, 2003.

Senior Muslim leader Ameer Ali admits there are some local Islamic charities that need to be more accountable and transparent about the way their Australian-generated funds are spent overseas. He says the Muslim charity sector -- which benefits from followers of Islam being obligated to give alms, or zakat, under sharia law -- also needs to be more active in assuring its donors that their money is reaching its intended destination. "Zakat is commendable and encouraged," says Ali, a former Howard government adviser on Islam. "But what happens is that sometimes some charity organisations can take advantage of this. And nobody knows where that generated money goes to. So it is possible that some of this money may end up in the wrong hands." ......

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Guest worker scheme cut back

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has dramatically scaled back plans for a controversial Pacific 'guest worker' scheme amid fears of a community backlash. The Coalition has already raised concerns over the radical immigration plan, allowing Islanders to work in rural communities for up to seven months. But with unemployment on the rise, the Rudd Government has halved the number of participants to just 2500 over three years. Only three countries - Tonga, Kiribati and Vanuatu - will be involved in the "pilot" scheme, although the Government is keen to sign up Papua New Guinea.

Senior Government sources confirmed Cabinet had adopted a "safety first" approach, following concerns it could trigger a backlash from "Pauline Hanson-type forces". The Prime Minister will announce the scheme in the next few weeks ahead of meeting with Pacific leaders on the tiny island of Niue on August 19. It is expected to get off the ground later this year, although the Government may hold back until 2009.

Islanders will be granted special visas of up to seven months, paid award wages and put to work in areas where labour shortages are most acute. This is likely to include areas of northern Victoria, southern NSW and northern Queensland. New Zealand has been trialling a similar "guest worker" scheme this year, although it has about 5000 temporary workers from five Pacific nations.

The Coalition is warning that even a small number of Pacific Islanders on these special visas could displace domestic labour. "Does Australia want unskilled labour coming in from a number of Pacific Islands given there are half a million unemployed in Australia already, and a projection (of) a further 134,000 unemployed people?" Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Andrew Robb asked.

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