While our politicians are attacking Cate … While in Australia the climate change neanderthals are playing the woman, the International Energy Agency is warning the world that greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history.

The Guardian reports this morning:

The story continues:

The shock rise means the goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius — which scientists say is the threshold for potentially “dangerous climate change” — is likely to be just “a nice Utopia”, according to Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA. It also shows the most serious global recession for 80 years has had only a minimal effect on emissions, contrary to some predictions.

Last year, a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuel — a rise of 1.6Gt on 2009, according to estimates from the IEA regarded as the gold standard for emissions data.

“I am very worried. This is the worst news on emissions,” Birol told the Guardian. “It is becoming extremely challenging to remain below 2 degrees. The prospect is getting bleaker. That is what the numbers say.”

In Australia the actress Cate Blanchett — that remarkable woman who despite her fame and fortune chooses to stay in Sydney and contribute to making the city’s theatre company a national treasure — is lambasted on page one of the Murdoch tabloid Sunday Telegraph for appearing in a television advertisement saying it’s time to do something about global warming!

Front pages like that almost make me want the death of newspapers to arrive.

Depriving me of Andrew. The censors at Southern Cross Broadcasting have struck. We unfortunate provincial souls are being denied our Sunday morning dose of The Bolt Report. Outside the capital cities only the 4pm repeat is broadcast and that’s no good at all if you are a football loving political groupie. Support is needed for my protest to Southern Cross management!

Falling for Iris. I suppose the good thing about not being housebound watching Andrew Bolt on Sunday morning was that I was able to make the screening of Mrs Carey’s Concert where I was introduced to a natural star named Iris Shi.

Her wonderful rebelliousness was a joy to behold in this magnificent documentary of a school music director preparing her students for a concert at the Sydney Opera House.

There’s no such thing as a certainty. With my mind having been turned to gambling by an editor wanting a little piece on sports betting, I cannot resist passing on a wonderful example of the wonderful uncertainty of the pastime.

The scene is the weekend’s Indianapolis 500 motor race and rookie driver J.R Hildebrand is a long way clear coming into the last turn. He just needs to get around it safely to win the biggest event of the year in his sport: