Abbott’s Munich agreement

A Hitler variation. I’m not sure about Tony Abbott as an historian. What did he actually mean by this Munich allusion when talking with Alan Jones earlier in the week about the Copenhagen Conference?

“Absolutely right, as if this is some latter-day environmental Munich agreement kind of thing.”

Perhaps he is seeing the light about global warming but fears that an agreement reached to do something about it will end up having no more meaning than peace in our time. Perhaps not too. More likely just another glib remark  from a man prone to talk first and think afterwards.

US administration offers climate change hope. What the Opposition Leader needs to wake up to is that the politics of climate change can change quickly. For the last fortnight he and the other Australian climate sceptics have been encouraged to be sceptical because of those stolen email messages casting doubt on some scientific calculations. They were further emboldened because of a belief that the United States would not support an emissions trading scheme Tony Abbott has ended up Leader of the Opposition because of these factors.

Now the decision of the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States to declare greenhouse gases as a danger to public health has changed the rules. Some kind of broad agreement out of Copenhagen looks possible with an ETS at its core.

And higher temperatures to come. Another political embarrassment for Abbott and Co will come if, as is looking increasingly likely, we end up with a full scale El Nino affecting the world’s weather. A normal consequence of this warming of waters in the Pacific around the equator is a higher world temperature.

A year of record high temperatures in 2010 w0uld put an end to the debate about whether the world is getting warmer or cooler. It would make this statement in that Jones interview look very stupid indeed:

And it seems that notwithstanding the dramatic increases in man made CO2 emissions over the last decade, the world’s warming has stopped. Now admittedly we are still pretty warm by recent historical standards but there doesn’t appear to have been any appreciable warming since the late 1990s.

An Abbott theme song. The rumour mill has it that the first Daryl Somers special for next year on Nine will feature Bronwyn Bishop singing a slightly updated version of the country and western classic Home of the Brave with an accompanying chorus of Young Liberals. The words of the  verse do seem to fit Ms Bishop’s new leader:

Home of the brave, land of the free
why won’t you let him be what he wants to be

It really burns me up, when they put him down
He’s the only one whose saying something in this whole town

Instead of those the trouble they hand him,
why don’t they try to understand him.

Home of the brave, land of the free
why won’t you let him be what he wants to be

he never hurt nobody,
why won’t you let him be what he wants to be

he just a little bit different.
why won’t you let him be what he wants to be

You got to understand him.
why won’t you let him be what he wants to be

A rough headline. Criticism is one thing but surely the Adelaide Advertiser went a bit far with this front page headline:

It is people accused of crimes who are put in the dock as the Websters Dictionary makes clear:

Main Entry: dock
Function: noun
Etymology: Dutch dial. (Flanders) docke cage
Date: 1586

: the place in a criminal court where a prisoner stands or sits during trial

— in the dock : on trial

Those giving evidence about being assaulted stand in the witness box.