Australian Climate Madness: Climate news stories decreasing?

It's only anecdotal, but climate change news items appear to have dropped significantly over the past few days, with the number of stories in the news feeds today down by nearly 30% on last week.

Australian Climate Madness: Fiji and Papua New Guinea have better things to do than turn up to pointless "climate" meetings

At least some countries have the sense not to waste valuable time and money attending yet more pointless climate gab-fests. There was head-scratching all around the table at the Samoan climate change conference when Fiji and PNG didn't show. I wonder why? Maybe they have better things to do...

Australian Climate Madness: Solar panel rebates costing $150m in 16 months

Token Gesture Alert: Krudd and Co have been handing out grants of $8000 to householders to install solar panels on their roofs. And the scheme has swallowed the $150m budget for three years in less than half that time.

Solar power is inefficient and expensive to install, and the kind of systems available for private homes produce pitifully little power - on average about 1kW, which is less than half of what is required to boil a kettle - and only that for a few hours in the middle of the day, if it's not cloudy. You can run the lights or the fridge, but not both. But nobody in government cares about the reality of this, because it makes us feel like we're saving the planet.

Australian Climate Madness: Garnaut report printed on "expensive Italian paper"

One rule for the governing elite, and one for the poor general public, that's the situation under Rudd's government. Whilst most of us are being told to tighten our belts and get used to paying more for our electricity and gas under Rudd & Wong's barking ETS, Ross Garnaut has been spending taxpayers' money like water.

Anyone with half a brain would have thought that Australian paper would be perfectly adequate for printing copies of Garnaut's tedious tome. But no, Aussie paper just ain't good enough, so Penny Wong's department specially imported $18,000 worth of Italian paper, adding even more to the Garnaut Reports already huge carbon footprint...