Rudd duds nation

HOURS after being sworn in as Prime Minister on Monday, Kevin Rudd thrust his hand deep into the pocket of every Australian.

The new Rudd-Labor Government's first act, the signing of the Kyoto Protocols, may be seen by many as largely symbolic. It is not.

It's a piece of international vanity me-tooism that will be charged against every Australian business and household through increased electricity charges and, very possibly, through charges against the national accounts should Australia fail to meet its carbon emissions reduction target.

Rudd-Labor has effectively locked the nation into using greater amounts of the less efficient and more costly energy sources such as wind and solar power while opposing nuclear energy.

It's attention grabbing but will it be effective? No, say some experts, who have looked at Rudd's national solar schools program which would give every school enough energy for a single two-bar radiator or 20 100-watt light bulbs.

Currently, these would cost less than $600 a year to run if used eight hours a day, five days a week, all year, drawing upon conventional electricity generation sources at top retail prices.

Rudd-Labor's plan will cost taxpayers a minimum $2200 more for each school, or far in excess of $20 million additional a year for all schools, increasing the cost of school electricity by more than 20 per cent over the life of the program. That's a partial cost of buying Green voters.

If anyone wanted to know how many Rudd-Labor frontbenchers it takes to sign a piece of paper, the answer is now clear. Five.

Adding to the Bali conference's carbon footprint - which the private jets of Al Gore and other fellow anti-capitalist travellers will ensure is bigger than that created by the annual output of the African nation of Chad - Rudd, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, Treasurer Wayne Swan, Trade Minister Simon Crean and Environment Minister Peter Garrett will join some 15,000 other politicians and lobbyists in releasing more than 101,600 tonnes of talkfest carbon dioxide.

Garrett, the millionaire former rock star bestowed upon the Labor Party by the wily Senator John Faulkner, now Special Minister of State, will not be able to tell the Australian people exactly what role he played at the Bali barbecue because he has been barred from answering questions on climate change in the House.

He will have to slip Swan a copy of his travel diary, as Swan will be taking questions on the issue when the new Parliament sits in February.

No doubt Rudd hopes to use the Bali conference as an international grandstand for his new Government while ignoring the fact that host nation Indonesia is a notorious polluter which has been unable to rein in rogue logging companies linked to the Indonesian Government.

Having achieved Government with the support of guilt-ridden Greens, Rudd will also turn a blind eye to recent research which notes that Green scientists have been exaggerating the dangers of climate change.

The report by the independent Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, a grouping of 41 free-market bodies, produced facts to show that deaths from weather-related disasters peaked in the 1920s and have been declining ever since.

Average annual deaths from such events in the past six years, which scientists have claimed have been the most intense for global warming, were down by 87 per cent on the 1900-89 average.

The Bali beano is sponsored by the UN and, as an indication of his commitment to the global warming hysteria, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Antarctica recently to boost the credibility-challenged Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Ban's visit was covered to the max, particularly his comment that he had personally observed global warming.

Unfortunately, all the data indicates that there has been a decrease in the temperature of Antarctica and the surrounding areas of the Southern Ocean in recent years.

A team of researchers from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation confirmed this in a newly-released report which found that the coastal ice sheet had thinned by "200m to 350m over the period from 13,000 years to 7000 years ago but had not changed since then".

Overall, the results indicate that earlier estimates of the size and thickness of the ice sheet based on glaciological modelling had been dramatically overestimated, the ANSTO paper said.

That modelling has let the climate change crowd down, as its modelling always seems to when empirical evidence is available.

But if they want modelling, a group of researchers has estimated the cost of Rudd's 20 per cent renewable energy policy will be in the order of $6650 per household per year.

Their calculation is based on the installation of some 8000sq km of solar panels worth $64 billion in 12 years, which will also see a doubling in the greenhouse gas emissions and the release of carcinogenic cadmium sulphate for the first time.

Little wonder then that Rudd will be accompanied by four new ministers when he jets to the Bali conference to bask in the gooey-green limelight - he will want someone to share the blame when Australians start getting their electricity bills.