‘High degree of acceptance': Wind farm commissioner received just 8 complaints last year

The bureaucrat controversially appointed by former prime minister Tony Abbott to investigate complaints about wind farms says public opposition has "dissipated" to just eight complaints about operating wind turbines last year.

The Capital Wind Farm near Bungendore. Complaints
over wind farms have plummeted over the past three years.

National Wind Farm Commissioner Andrew Dyer revealed the figures in Senate estimates on Monday, saying the fall in complaints followed efforts to dispel "misinformation" circulating in the community about wind farms.

Read the story from The Age by Nicole Hasham - “‘High degree of acceptance': Wind farm commissioner received just 8 complaints last year.”

Turnbull says climate change has become a 'third rail' for Liberal party

The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says a “constituency” of Coalition MPs believes climate change is a fraud, and that the issue has become a “third rail” for the Liberal party.

 Malcolm Turnbull: ‘The Liberal Party and the Coalition
is not capable of dealing with climate change.’ 

Speaking at the Australia Bar Association’s annual conference in Sydney on Friday night, Turnbull, the guest of honour at the event, said a climate-sceptic group within his own party held the line that “if you don’t do what we want, we will blow the show up,” the Australian reported.

“And that is essentially what you’ve seen — and so the problem is that everybody loses”.

Turnbull, who was replaced as prime minister by Scott Morrison in August and subsequently retired from politics, was asked at the event about his personal commitment to act on climate change. He famously crossed the floor in opposition to vote with Labor in support of an emissions trading scheme, but as prime minister led a government with little resolve to reduce emissions.

Read the story from The Guardian - “Turnbull says climate change has become a 'third rail' for Liberal party.”

Inside the AEF, the climate denial group hosting Tony Abbott as guest speaker

Securing a former prime minister to speak at your organisation is no doubt a coup for many groups.

Tony Abbott in Parliament House in December 2017.

Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy recently got Kevin Rudd. Australia’s Nelson Mandela Day committee has snaffled Julia Gillard for their next annual lecture.

What about our most recent former PM, Tony Abbott?

Next month, Abbott will deliver the “2018 Bob Carter Commemorative Lecture” to the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF), where the ticketing site says he’ll talk about “Climate Change and Restraining Greenhouse Gas Emissions”.

Read the story by Graham Readfearn from The Guardian - “Inside the AEF, the climate denial group hosting Tony Abbott as guest speaker.”

It’s personal: The only way the Abbott v Turnbull vendetta will end

Sky News should have issued a trigger warning this week, ahead of its broadcast of NSW Liberal MP Craig Kelly, in which the member for Hughes refused to rule out a Tony Abbott comeback.

Tony Abbott and Josh Frydenberg, left, shared more common ground in 2015.

A simple "some viewers may find this content distressing" across the ticker at the bottom of the screen would have sufficed - because hasn't the former prime minister put us through enough? Abbott's bonkers speech to Global Warming Policy Foundation in London this week was the most embarrassing thing an Australian has done in Britain since Shane Warne … well, since Shane Warne.

Abbott, ever the Jesuit, parsed his breezy, idiosyncratic summary of the crapness of climate science, all in terms of religion, natch. We live in a post-Christian world, he said, and climate science is the new religion, but it's also like a primitive cult because carbon abatement measures are akin to the goats the pre-Christian savages used to sacrifice to the volcano gods.

The goat-sacrifice metaphor, poking fun at loincloth barbarians, had a faintly colonial whiff that felt intellectually borrowed from Prince Philip, the Queen-husband and Abbott-anointed Australian knight who represents everyone who still doesn't understand why Little Black Sambo has been banned in schools.

Read the comment in today’s Melbourne Age by Jacqueline Malley - “It’s personal: The only way the Abbott v Turnbull vendetta will end.”

Climate change 'probably doing good': Abbott

Former prime minister Tony Abbott has told British climate change sceptics that a 'gradual lift in global temperatures' may be beneficial and likened climate scientists to the 'thought police’.

Former Australia PM gives "loopy"
address to British climate skeptics.

On Monday night in London Mr Abbott told the Global Warming Policy Foundation's annual lecture extreme weather events were not getting worse, but did more damage because there is 'more to destroy’.

'Beware the pronouncement, 'the science is settled',' Mr Abbott said, according to a speech posted on the think tank's website.

'It's the spirit of the Inquisition, the thought-police down the ages.'

Read the SkyNews story - “Climate change 'probably doing good': Abbott.”

Tony Abbott speech: Allies go to ground and Labor lashes 'loopy' ex-PM over climate change views

Labor, the Greens and climate change activists have rounded on Tony Abbott for a "loopy" London speech in which the former prime minister suggested temperature rises caused by climate change could be beneficial because "far more people die in cold snaps”.

"Loopy" London speech by former
Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.

Political allies and friends of the former leader went to ground on Tuesday following the incendiary speech to the sceptic Global Warming Policy Forum, which is the latest in a series of dramatic interventions from Mr Abbott into the energy debate, including a recent warning that he could cross the floor rather than vote for a clean energy target.

The Coalition has effectively signalled it will not adopt a clean energy target and an alternative policy proposal, designed to ensure greater reliability in Australia's electricity networks and force down prices, could go to cabinet and then the Coalition party room as soon as next week.

Read the story by James Massola and Latika Bourke in the Melbourne Age - “Tony Abbott speech: Allies go to ground and Labor lashes 'loopy' ex-PM over climate change views.”

Tony Abbott's climate change claims just don't stack up

Former prime minister and current backbencher Tony Abbott gave a speech at the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate sceptic thinktank, on Monday night.

t
The real Tony Abbott emerges in an
incendiary climate change spech

It was an interesting lecture in that it claimed that climate change isn't real (the "so-called 'settled' science of climate change [is] absolute crap") and also is real but nothing to worry about as the results could be beneficial.

But how accurate were his arguments?

In the same speech, Mr Abbott declared that Australia needed to adopt "evidence-based policy rather than policy-based evidence", which seems like an excellent idea.

So let's take him at his word and look at the evidence for the claims he has made.

Read the ABC News opinion piece boy Tony P. Street - “Tony Abbott's climate change claims just don't stack up.”